When I was in high school I was in different Linux related channels on IRC as I was getting into Linux. I ended up on Quakenet, not sure why, because I'm not a big gamer. Looking back it was mostly the community and meeting like-minded people. Instead of watching TV I'd fire up irrsi and hang out in the chats, talk a bit, answer some basic Linux questions and learn a bit myself. It was also a great place to get help as the expertise was bundled there and there weren't many online sources like these days. I was also in some C/C++ channels and the same goes for that. Some of them were basically a live version of Stackoverflow these days (I'm trying to do X, here's my pastebin of code...any suggestions). I slowly faded away once I got more busy and forums/search engines provided quick answers for most questions.