I went to a Nerf tournament and humans vs. zombies game at a college campus a while back. The Nerf hobby has some interesting intersections. On the one hand, there are some legitimately competitive teams who drill and practice and have standardized uniforms and blasters and everything, so there’s some organized sports types in there. On the other hand, it overlaps with the gun hobby, seeing as it’s playing at being a gun fight, and it uses a lot of the same accessories. On the other other hand, it seems to be a very queer-friendly hobby; definitely a lot of flags being represented that weekend.
All of these disparate groups had a great time with each other. Huge range of demographics, all having good wholesome fun, making new friends, using their bodies and their minds, expressing themselves while also respecting the rules and structures of the game and the college campus. It was beautiful.
At the end of the weekend, the college Nerf club, which had been running these events on campus for years, came out and tearfully announced that this would be the last such event, because the college administration had announced there would be no further blaster events permitted on campus. Nobody got hurt that weekend, but presumably the administration was afraid of getting sued if someone did.
And just like that, a beautiful mechanism for bringing together lots of strangers and making them into friends and comrades disappeared in a whiff of imaginary liability for a theoretical accident that hadn’t actually happened.
And we wonder why young people are addicted to social media and video games.
Almost every interesting kind of public event like that is going away due to liability issues. Liability insurance is going through the roof, and the insurance companies are forcing places to stop doing events.
I went to a Nerf tournament and humans vs. zombies game at a college campus a while back. The Nerf hobby has some interesting intersections. On the one hand, there are some legitimately competitive teams who drill and practice and have standardized uniforms and blasters and everything, so there’s some organized sports types in there. On the other hand, it overlaps with the gun hobby, seeing as it’s playing at being a gun fight, and it uses a lot of the same accessories. On the other other hand, it seems to be a very queer-friendly hobby; definitely a lot of flags being represented that weekend.
All of these disparate groups had a great time with each other. Huge range of demographics, all having good wholesome fun, making new friends, using their bodies and their minds, expressing themselves while also respecting the rules and structures of the game and the college campus. It was beautiful.
At the end of the weekend, the college Nerf club, which had been running these events on campus for years, came out and tearfully announced that this would be the last such event, because the college administration had announced there would be no further blaster events permitted on campus. Nobody got hurt that weekend, but presumably the administration was afraid of getting sued if someone did.
And just like that, a beautiful mechanism for bringing together lots of strangers and making them into friends and comrades disappeared in a whiff of imaginary liability for a theoretical accident that hadn’t actually happened.
And we wonder why young people are addicted to social media and video games.
Almost every interesting kind of public event like that is going away due to liability issues. Liability insurance is going through the roof, and the insurance companies are forcing places to stop doing events.
So let’s get rid of insurance companies. They are all a scam anyway.
Name and shame?
University of Maryland, Baltimore County