It's Steve (now in blog form)

The last few days have had me thinking about groups. What drives people to aggressively associate around a particular activity or interest? Some groups that I’ve been thinking about:

Comic-Con – This is the granddaddy of comic conventions. I’d like to go, but I think we’d all generally consider this the bastion of dorks. Here’s the thing, 125,000 people attended it last year. Some of them were like this. Is there a point where the attendee number becomes either so large or saturated with gold bikini Leahs that I won’t have to tell people I went for work? I suppose we can only wait and see.

Mooning Amtrak – It seems that a bunch of people get together at a particular time and place once in a while to moon Amtrak trains. I think we can all see the intrinsic awesomeness of this one. My question here is around origins. How did this become a full-fledged group?

Drunk guy 1: Hey there fella, you gonna moon that train?
Drunk guy 2: Yup
Drunk guy 1: Can I join ya?
Drunk guy 2: Yup
Drunk guy 1: I know how to make web sites….

Kickball Leagues – This one actually makes total sense to me. It’s nearly impossible to be super competitive with kickball. Even softball can devolve into a bunch of former high school meatheads trying to relive the glory days (Come on! Get the ball!). I hate those guys. Kickball is less around crazy ideas like “practice” and “play to win”. It tends to focus on solid sports fundamentals like “bbq” and “beer”. God bless these pioneers of sport.

Renaissance Faires – I have some buddies that were heavily into Ren Faires for a long time (Kit, shoot me an email buddy). On the one hand, it’s theoretically like a big camp out costume party including wenches and elves drinking ale. On the other hand, most of the wenches look like this and you’re on the slippery slope to becoming these guys:

On a totally unrelated note, here’s a site dedicated to ugly dresses