The 18th-century English writer Samuel Johnson once wrote, “He is not only dull himself; he is the cause of dullness in others’. It’s a sentiment eagerly embraced by The Dull Men’s Club. Several million members in a number of connected Facebook groups strive to cause dullness in others on a daily basis. In this club, they wear their dullness with pride. The duller the better. This is where the nerds of the world unite.
“Posts that contain bitmoji-avatar-things are far too exciting, and will probably get deleted,” warn the rules of the Dull Men’s Club (Australian branch).
Maintaining standards of dullness is paramount. Alan Goodwin in the UK recently worried that seeing a lesser spotted woodpecker in his garden might be “a bit too exciting” for the group. In the same week, a flight tracker struggled to keep his excitement to an acceptable level when military jets suddenly appeared on his screen.
View image in fullscreen Andrew McKean moved to a care facility after a heart attack. Photograph: Bec Lorrimer/The Guardian
This is the place for quirky hobbies, obscure interests, the examination of small, ordinary things. It is a place to celebrate the mundane, the quotidian. It is a gentle antidote to pouting influencers and the often toxic internet; a bastion of civility; a polite clarion call to reclaim the ordinary. Above all, it is whimsical, deeply ironic, self-effacing and sarcastic humour.
There is an art to being both dull and droll. “It’s tongue-in-cheek humour,” says founder Grover Click (a pseudonym chosen for its dullness). “A safe place to comment on daily things.” Exclamation marks, he says, “are far too exciting.” (On his site, ridicule is against the rules, as is politics, religion, and swearing.)
There is, says Bt Humble, a moderator for the Australian branch, “a level of one-upmanship. It’s sort of competitive dullness.” Dull people trying to out-dull each other.
View image in fullscreen In his writing, McKean has elevated the dull institutional days into something poetic and poignant. Photograph: Bec Lorrimer/The Guardian
Are there people who are just too exciting for the club? “There isn’t actually a mandatory level of dullness,” he admits, although some of the members he has met “would bore the ears off you”.
It all started in New York in the early 1980s. Click, now 85, and his friends were sitting at the long bar of the New York Athletic club reading magazine articles about boxing, fencing, judo and wrestling. “One of my mates said, ‘Dude, we don’t do any of those things.’” They had to face it. They were dull. They decided to embrace their dullness.
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