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Comment by GauntletWizard | Hacker News Reader

Having been in a ren-faire and had friends in the SCA...

Holy crap, have you picked a bad comparison, if you're trying to refute my point.

Edit: To provide a bit more context: Mating dances in most bird species are not direct indicators of evolutionary fitness, but they are what is selected for. SCA events, Fursonas, and the like are the postmodern equivalent of mating dances. They are Conspicuous Consumption, Veblen-good displays of "I can spend my time doing this self-defining thing instead of productively". That's fine and dandy. I'm not judging people for making their mating dance some form of roleplay (because most any formal competition displays the same traits).

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Being in the SCA (though mostly peripherally) and having several friends in the SCA, I think it's safe to say that "it's all about sex" is too broad a generalization. Certainly that is an aspect of it for some people, but from my experience the SCA is not significantly more "about sex" than Sci-fi, Anime, or Video-gaming fandoms--as at least one other person has already pointed out, it's there, but it's not the main focus.

Perhaps more to your point, if these are mating dances, why do so many people who already have stable, long-term mates participate?

... That's about sex? I would have thought it would be very uncomfortable, with all the anachronistic chain mail and so on.

Edit responding to you edit: Okay, based on that thesis pretty much everything, beyond the bare essentials of life, is about sex. Which doesn't really sound plausible.

Chainmail can have Strategically Placed Holes too.

Life is about reproduction, yes. Nearly every non life-sustaining activity is about sex, and that's not even a thesis, that's an axiom.

But very specifically: Furry conventions are about sex. The drunken orgy room parties are far better attended (And yes, I have seen hotel contracts that prove this) than the "main event". Nerd conventions are about sex. SCA events are about sex. They are not exclusively, but as social activities, one of their significant motivating factors is mate-shopping, and there is every indicator that the other advantages of social activity (collaboration and trust building, trading, etc) are not significant motivating factors. People don't get jobs from BDSM conventions (Actually, they do, and then those workplaces go under because hiring people because you're fucking them is dumb).

Ever consider that people might do something for fun?

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