Whether Mensa is worth joining is sometimes asked on this board. Maybe in-person or online discussion groups for intellectual topics are more worthwhile. People who show up for discussions of literature or philosophy will tend to be high-IQ. The Rationalist community of Slate Star Codex looks interesting.

Mensa’s Debate: Deep Thinking or Games and Drinking?
By Ira Iosebashvili
Wall Street Journal
January 1, 2019
At a hotel on the outskirts of Cincinnati, members of a closed society dedicated to the highly intelligent gathered for their yearly meeting. On the agenda was a test for fresh aspirants and a discussion of submarine warfare techniques. There were also hours spent playing the game Exploding Kittens and consuming prodigious amounts of alcohol.

Despite Mensa’s reputation as a club for brainiacs, some are increasingly worried that discussions of highfalutin subjects are giving way to frivolity such as gaming sessions, cheese samplings and craft beers.

“They are wonderful, loving, playful people,” said Chris Harrison, a 38-year-old project manager and opera singer, of the North Texas chapter he joined several years ago. “They also drink more than anyone I’ve ever seen.”

Plenty of members are fine with the booze and board games, which have become as much of the seven-decade-old organization’s identity as its difficult admissions exam and the “hug dot” stickers Mensans sport at gatherings to indicate their hugging preference (Green = hug me! Red = don’t hug me! Yellow = ask first).

Others, however, grouse that the partying deviates from the group’s mission to “foster human intelligence for the benefit of humanity.” While being a part of Mensa has never exactly been cool, some worry the organization is losing the cultural cachet that made it a household name when membership exploded in the 1970s and ’80s. Membership in American Mensa fell to a 15-year low of 52,364 in 2018. Millennials make up around 13% of the club. Only a third of its members are women.

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Timi Olotu, a 30-year-old growth marketer from London, has also found a divide on frivolity in the U.K., where the organization was founded. He joined Mensa last year hoping to meet other technology entrepreneurs but found a roster that appeared to be full of “old folks from the countryside” discussing chess, backgammon and Go. He did meet a fellow techie in the organization a few months later, however, and the two soon founded a startup.

Lately, Mr. Olotu has warmed to the organization and enjoys online discussions on technology and cognitive function with his fellow Mensans.

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