A rant about Hallowe'en - warning: curmudgeonliness ahead...

[littlehoudini]

Just got back from a Hallowe'en party - strictly speaking, a Hallowe'en event. This was a fundraising charity ball (the charity doesn't matter). The venue was one of the most expensive hotels in the city. I was hired to be freaky / scary / weird (my stock-in-trade, really). After some discussion with the event co-ordinator, it was decided that

Comments

[littlehoudini]

Okay... we're missing all sorts of data here for an actual, data-based conversation, but we're both bright enough to see where we're missing data, so working with that...

If not rat-lovin' (NRL) = ordinary and renFaire patron (RFP) = not-ordinary, I can see how you'd make an argument for a bigger overlap of RL and RFP.

However, this was a Hallowe'en party filled with people wearing actual costumes (HPGWAC) - is that automatically ordinary?

And also, while I'm biased, the majority of people at the CT faire are not costume wearin' playtrons, they're just... well, they're whatever they are. And yet, again, at least half of them think the rat is cute. And also, at other, larger faires, I tend to avoid the hard-core playtons (cute chicks omitted) 'cause they're already into being there and will get lots out of the experience already - I pretty much target the "ordinary" patrons and yet, my (admittedly subjective) data is that about half the people are fine with touching them, and 20% or less actually make an effort to distance themselves from me and the rat.

Your statements regarding your sister are a cherry-picked data point, and not worth discussing (because I can easily counter with many, many stories of people who had the belief that rats were nasty, scary, etc. until they'd met a clean, tame and friendly domesticated rat like mine).

If you honestly want to investigate this, I suggest we grab a couple of my rats and head to the Eaton's Center, and try if we can put together a decent, semi-objective MythBusters-style study. Until then, we're all just speculating, and I believe my statements about my experiences are better, 'cause a) I've had a lot of them, and b) I'm into numbers / statistics, so I understand what makes a decent and reasonable study.