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Small-Scale Question Sunday for December 18, 2022

"Someone has to and no one else will."

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I wonder if bigger cities are more prone to boom/bust cycles, where a well-run group that organically arises with low status members achieves some success, which attracts attention and higher-status people in sufficient quantity to drive out the original members. Then the new arrivals list interest but the original members have already moved on, and the group dies. In smaller cities there may not be enough interested high-status members to displace the founders. Or perhaps the status games are not as ruthless to begin with.

In any case, I am aware of a sex club that has game nights in Milwaukee, so maybe it's just a Milwaukee thing. The vestigal influence of GenCon perhaps.

That sounds very much like the "geeks, mops and sociopaths" model of subcultures, though that adds the notion of "sociopaths": those in it to make money from the new popularity that end up focusing around the more easily monetised influx, rapidly diluting the original thing towards mass appeal.