Well its placed in the off-topic forum, and most of the images are totally fine by most prudish message forum standards. Again choice comes to play here, no one is forced to go into the thread and its a choice to do so.
I personally enjoy it because like Photon said, I prefer these types of images of clothed women over porn, and the internet is full of that, I find that a lot of the images posted in that thread are of stunningly beautiful women, all kinds, and the quality of many of these images is what you don't find many places in one convenient thread
From the images of cosplay, the asian girls from those asian girl bands in slowmotion (Thanks Photon!) are stuff I rarely come across, so I'm exposed to stuff that I wouldn't normally find.
I'd disagree it forms no connections, some of the posters there have put some unique content when it comes to what is sexy and what is not, I find it fascinating to see what is beauty to one person, while completely unsexy for the next.