To be honest, I have gotten more friends, although most of them being in their 40s or 50s, in real life for being a fan of Loudness and EZO than VK ever did for me.
However, VK did manage to snag me my boyfriend of 15+ years. It's hilarious to tell people that we started to date because I had pictures of Dir en grey and Malice Mizer hanging in my locker in the 8th grade and my SO overreacted when he noticed because he was a closeted VK fan and thought he would never find another VK fan in our tiny, country bumpkin town. We ended up getting a lot of our close friends into VK during high school, but I'm pretty sure most of them don't listen to anything related to VK anymore.