Question for those familiar with the Chicago area:
Where are the geeks? Back in Milwaukee, there were several gaming pubs and a hole-in-the-wall LGS that was packed to the gills Saturday nights, with Warhammer players, at least one 4-player EDH game going, and maybe a D&D session in the corner. There were one or two women there, typically someone's SO, but they held their own in Magic, and knew the references.
I go to a much larger store in a "real" city, and it's a godsdamned ghost town. Empty tables on a Saturday evening. It's got a handful of lumpy, poorly-dressed beardless dudes who use "diversity" in every other sentence, but there's no women, and fewer actual black people than the podunk hole-in-the-wall. I feel like the coolest person there (which is not a good sign).
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.
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Notes -
Question for those familiar with the Chicago area:
Where are the geeks? Back in Milwaukee, there were several gaming pubs and a hole-in-the-wall LGS that was packed to the gills Saturday nights, with Warhammer players, at least one 4-player EDH game going, and maybe a D&D session in the corner. There were one or two women there, typically someone's SO, but they held their own in Magic, and knew the references.
I go to a much larger store in a "real" city, and it's a godsdamned ghost town. Empty tables on a Saturday evening. It's got a handful of lumpy, poorly-dressed beardless dudes who use "diversity" in every other sentence, but there's no women, and fewer actual black people than the podunk hole-in-the-wall. I feel like the coolest person there (which is not a good sign).
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.
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