from Hacker News

Dull Men’s Club

by herbertl on 6/16/25, 6:07 PM with 128 comments

  • by rester324 on 6/17/25, 8:46 AM

    I am a dull man by every measure. I don't have interesting hobbies, I am not an influencer, I don't post interesting posts on social media and I don't travel a lot, I don't do extreme things, I barely have any money at the moment, I bore others, in fact when I try to amuse my colleagues or the opposite sex, my jokes regularly fall flat and even my voice is dull I believe.

    But after my kids were born I noticed something: my kids loved my voice, they listened to every sentence I made, they laughed at my quirky jokes I made and they loved when I sang to them or I brought them to the park or to the nursery and when I sat them on my neck. My wife took all that from me though, so now I need to fight to get my kids back.

    But the moral of the story is: dullness is a matter of perspective. Even if you think you are dull, chances are you are not. It's just the world such a place now that the bar is raised too high that most ordinary people can't cross even by jumping over the moon.

    So I don't care any more what others think of me. I came to accept my dullness and embraced it. If it bores others, I don't care.

  • by ecshafer on 6/16/25, 7:42 PM

    The Dull Men's Club group of facebook is actually oddly interesting. I would classify it more as a group who point out the very small oddities of every day life that are not very interesting. There is a post where someone saw two geese with 42 bay geese, another where the rental company fixed a door with a piece of pool noodle. Its more like a "huh that's kind of weird I guess" group.

  • by _fat_santa on 6/16/25, 10:18 PM

    This is a cool concept but I have an issue with one being "dull" on a conceptual level. Personally I think that every single person on earth is both the dullest person you have ever met and the most interesting person on earth, it just depends on your perspective.

    I have friends that play DnD which I personally find very dull but hearing them talk about it, it's clear they do not see it the same way. Conversely I love cars and talking about cars and I can talk with another gearhead for hours on the topic, but the times my wife has listened in on my conversations she said it was the most boring thing she has ever heard in her life.

  • by mafro on 6/17/25, 6:47 AM

    One of the few Facebook groups I stayed in over time. It has a very British sense of self-deprecating humour. We're all amused by our mutual dullness.

  • by AuthorizedCust on 6/17/25, 2:13 PM

    There are two Dull Men's Clubs on Facebook. This article covers both.

    Both have around 1.8M members. The smaller one features Andrew McKean, the main topic of that article. The other one--with the registered trademark symbol in the name on FB--appears to be more of a commercial enterprise, run by the Grover Click character.

    I learned that the article is wrong on a point. All contemporary Dull Men's Clubs are copycats. The original is from 1980 and no longer exists.

  • by romanhn on 6/16/25, 6:51 PM

    Reminds me of the Dullest Blog in the World (https://dullestblog.com), which I frequently checked out more than 20 years ago. Hilarious to see a new entry just a couple years back.

  • by frakt0x90 on 6/16/25, 8:43 PM

    Reminds me of the proof that all natural numbers are interesting. If there is some set of uninteresting natural numbers, there must be a minimal element of that set. It being the smallest uninteresting number is interesting which is a contradiction.

  • by danielodievich on 6/16/25, 8:36 PM

    One of my most favorite places in nearby oregon is the community of Boring, OR https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boring,_Oregon. Exceptionally lovely place. I've yet to visit it's sister town of Dull in Scotland, but I hope someday to remedy that, albeit with measured levels of excitement

  • by sandworm101 on 6/16/25, 7:12 PM

    I think once you are features in a guardian article, you arent dull anymore. Building model airplanes in a shed is dull. Being so good at building them that journalists take time to visit you is not.

  • by RyanMathewson on 6/17/25, 2:29 AM

    James May, former host on Top Gear, now has a show titled “James May and the Dull Men“ (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt32651187). I find it delightfully dull to watch.

  • by tempodox on 6/17/25, 1:46 PM

    In the middle of this wonderfully dull article, The Guardian botched it. They embedded a link in the text:

    > Sign up for the fun stuff with our rundown of must-reads, pop culture and tips for the weekend, every Saturday morning

    Way too exciting, it totally broke the flow for me.

  • by zh3 on 6/16/25, 6:49 PM

    I will exclude myself from this club by finding it interesting enough to comment on.

  • by rramadass on 6/16/25, 10:39 PM

    This seems to be a riff off of the "Diogenes Club" invented by Arthur Conan Doyle in his Sherlock Holmes Stories - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diogenes_Club

    "There are many men in London, you know, who, some from shyness, some from misanthropy, have no wish for the company of their fellows. Yet they are not averse to comfortable chairs and the latest periodicals. It is for the convenience of these that the Diogenes Club was started, and it now contains the most unsociable and unclubbable men in town. No member is permitted to take the least notice of any other one. Save in the Stranger's Room, no talking is, under any circumstances, allowed, and three offences, if brought to the notice of the committee, render the talker liable to expulsion. My brother was one of the founders, and I have myself found it a very soothing atmosphere."

  • by guicen on 6/17/25, 4:01 AM

    There’s something oddly comforting about this. In a world where everyone’s trying to stand out, some people find peace in just noticing ordinary things. Maybe being "boring" is underrated. You don’t always need a big story to feel connected. Sometimes it's enough to care about small details nobody else pays attention to.

  • by thinkingtoilet on 6/16/25, 8:13 PM

    I laughed out loud at this line. It feels like something out of Futurama:

    >Australian member Andrew McKean, 85, had dullness thrust upon him.

  • by arethuza on 6/17/25, 1:37 PM

    Worth noting that there is also the village of Dull in Scotland - twinned with Boring (Oregon) and Bland (Aus).

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dull,_Perth_and_Kinross

  • by dalmo3 on 6/16/25, 8:14 PM

    No banana for scale?

  • by knowitnone on 6/17/25, 3:26 PM

    Bet the guardian would never write about the "Dull Women's Club"

  • by modeless on 6/17/25, 2:01 PM

  • by calvinmorrison on 6/16/25, 8:55 PM

    if you're interested in the opposite, finding the intrigue or fascinating in the seemingly mundane, you might be a candidate for the RR&R. The most recent topic was an elaborate history of a Oklahoma state senator based on some old telegrams found in a junk shop.

    https://www.ephorate.org/

  • by samirillian on 6/17/25, 4:32 PM

    Yes.

  • by silisili on 6/16/25, 6:51 PM

    Aw man, this sounded like just my kind of place. But...

    > 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.

    Apparently I'm too dull to even have a FB account. I know it's a bit tongue in cheek, but in the name of maximum dullness, something with UX closer to this site seems much more appropriate than a Facebook group.

  • by notnmeyer on 6/16/25, 8:48 PM

    > The over or under toilet paper debate raged (politely) for two and a half weeks.

    i found this particularly confusing because we all know that “over” is the only sane choice.

  • by Den_VR on 6/17/25, 12:58 PM

    I’ve never seen so many comments deserving of Dang’s banhammer as some mixed into this discussion.

    The Dull Men’s Club is an interesting curiosity of the world, but clearly one that evokes strong feelings in certain people.