Several years ago, my uncle who has been the commishiner of his fantasy football league since 1990 (yes, the pre internet days of fantasy sports where he would calculate scores manually from stats in the newspaper), got me and my friends started in fantasy football. I was instantly hooked. I played fantasy football and fantasy hockey with my friends. I even got into fantasy baseball with a few friends, and at that time I knew almost nothing about baseball. I ended up learning a lot from it. I only played fantasy baseball for two more years after, but it taught me a lot about baseball, a lot of baseball players, and I even started watching some baseball games. After that, I focused more on fantasy hockey and fantasy football. Two years ago I became co-owners with my uncle in his fantasy football league. His league is a 31 player roster where we start 2 QBs and full IDPs. That league just entered its 25th season. I'm currently in that league, another league with similar player format, and 4 fantasy hockey leagues. 2 of them are full dynasty leagues. 1 is a keeper league with 7 keepers. The other is just a normal standard fantasy hockey league.
Fantasy hockey and fantasy sports might be a small part of my life, but it has had a huge impact on me. It teaches us about our favorite sports and teaches things that you thought you knew about your favorite sport, when in reality you didn't know how much you didn't know about it.
Hope this helps! I had more to say, but had so much things to say that I forgot while I was writing this.