Very normative homosocial banterspace. What is it good for? As enlightened ones, We’re required, prescribed a cynical attitude towards it, and we all know how repulsive the excesses are, but let’s not pretend it’s not our common source, where we begin
Maybe its because, if you surround yourself with people saying nearly enough the same thing you are, it can effectively "patch up" your blindspots, and in a fairly compatible way. That is, your friends may notice more or less obvious things that you somehow didn't notice, and learning it indirectly, through them, lets you advance faster than if if were left to your own devices.
Whereas, if those in the banterspace (great word) were making different enough assertions, you would be patching up your quilt with a mish-mosh variety of fabrics, rather than fabrics that, from some distance, blend into one another. You would be stitching incongruous answers into the framework, which isn't as useful
if these groups self-assemble in the interest of pooling their angles, with the greatest consistency possible, into a stronger group-angle
What is it good for? I guess just reinforcing value systems, world views. The players in the banterspace exchange similar fabrics to bolster each others patchwork takes on the world, and collectively these patchworks can, themselves, blend/spindle together into some kind of macro-fabric, and that is where the voice of the clique emerges, some kind of proto-dialect perhaps.