As I prepare to pull the plug on my Twitter account (I never did get used to calling it by a single letter), I’m forced to contemplate my next social media move. Where should we as academics have an online presence? Is the entire idea of trying to connect with strangers on for-profit platforms a cursed enterprise?
I can’t claim to have definitive answers yet, but a little corner of the internet has given me a glimmer of hope recently. It’s called “the Dull Men’s Club”, and it seems to have begun life as a website before sprouting offshoots on Instagram, Reddit and especially Facebook. “We do more than watch paint dry”, runs one of its mottos.
Scrolling through the posts that lately seem to have exploded on its various Facebook sub-groups, this is patently true: members also discuss the perfect consistency for soft-boiled eggs, compare the order in which they put clothes on in the morning, photograph manhole covers and much, much more. Somewhere along the line, putting a banana somewhere in the picture (for scale) became a running gag, and now this “dad joke” gets repeated seemingly hundreds of times a day.
All of this is surprisingly soothing. Among the Dull Men, it’s OK to be ordinary, a bit nerdy, even boring. No-one will try to sell you crypto or AI-generated artwork. You can take a picture of your inadequate parking job and receive friendly commiserations rather than mockery. What’s especially heartening is the gender dimension: there are many active and proudly Dull Women, but a large majority of posters are male. Male-coded interests such as DIY and car maintenance are very well-represented, but with seemingly none of the toxicity that has come to dominate the “manosphere.”
Of course, now that I’ve written this, I’ll probably open my browser tomorrow morning and see that one of the Dull Men has written something horrific. So hurry now and check out the proud coin polishers and snow shovel optimisers of Facebook while you still can. And let’s keep fanning the flames of ordinary, boring kindness wherever we find them.
Elsje Fourie, associate professor of Globalisation & Development