Started on a whim
Someone, likely a “youngster”, had posted one of the “over 30” memes so young and old alike were commenting and I noticed something in that thread. There seemed to be a lot of older Ravers there who were active in the scene. Like most “seasoned” Ravers, you always think you’re the only one your age still going to events.
You could tell a distinct difference between the older and younger commenters. There was a different demeanor and experience between the two. So, I posted a comment and asked if anyone older would like to have our own group to chat with our peers. A few people said “that would be cool”. It was a few minutes later and 40+ was born.
Why 40+
As I’ve had to emphasize in our Facebook group on a few occasions, 40 is not a hard cutoff for us. It never has been and never will be. In those initial moments of naming the group, I thought that 40ish seemed like a reasonable break point between old school vibes and new school vibes.
So I named the new group; 40+ Ravers – Aged And Raving People [AARP].
Since we were viewed as the “old people” at events, I decided to have some fun with it. Of course AARP is associated with us “seasoned” folk, so I decided to incorporate a little humor in our name. Ever since, the AARP reference has brought a ton of good laughs by young and old alike. I think it makes us more approachable because the kiddos see that we can laugh at ourselves and actually cool still.
Let the poaching begin
I was very active in many Facebook Rave groups at the time so, I started discretely “poaching” new members in comment threads. Any time I would see one of those “over 30” memes, I would chat with people and post a link to our group. Sorry Admins.
This yielded us about 50ish members by the end of Summer. It was slowly growing and we would be happy if we could find 500 lost souls to bring together, so we were happy with our growth. Things were simple and every member basically knew each other online and started planning how we could actually meet in person sometime.
EDC Orlando was around the corner
It seemed a good number of our little group talked about going to EDCO and trying to meet in person. Well, I was a member of some EDCO groups, so I chatted with a lot of people and told them about our little group. All of a sudden, we started seeing more member requests. Cool!
By the time EDCO came, we had maybe 100 members, I think. We were still small enough that the turnout we had at our first meetup was a huge deal. The excitement and vibe that night was absolutely incredible. I doubt any meetup will ever match the significance of this one.
One of our long time members, now Moderators, reminded us of how we had no membership questions when she joined early on. LOL Oh, I miss the simple days sometimes!
