Am I included in this club?
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/jun/09/meet-the-members-of-the-dull-mens-club-some-of-them-would-bore-the-ears-off-you
This feels strangely similar to a recent discovery in our work Slack, the #YELLING channel. You can talk about anything you like but it all has to be yelled. And it's really just a people talk about whatever they like, given the context that it looks slightly silly and even a rant might get lost in the general noise.
So it's not really about having a rant, or being dull, it's about social connection.
To me no-one is truly dull, unless they deliberately underplay everything in their life and set out to do nothing. Even the people who pretend to just watch the TV for the entire weekend can still be drawn into telling me what they enjoyed or what they hated. Even the science student who thinks their work is boring to other people can be asked to tell me more, only for me to find they're researching something intriguing like chemical films that can change colour when given an electrical charge or in a magnetic field.