Different people may get different things. For example, I am very picky about people I spend my time with (always was, even before I found LW), and organizing local meetups helped me meet a few interesting people. As a side effect of LW, I stopped debating politics, which saves a lot of time and negative emotions; now I can spend the time on getting some free internet education, which so far didn't bring me further benefits, but at least feels better. But I imagine other people can get different things, and what I wrote here may be irrelevant for them.