Meetup sure is a mixed bag

Friday night I dropped into Castlefield's Wharf pub, ideal for sunny sessions in their large beer garden, with Young Professionals in Manchester.

It was great catching up with people I hadn't seen in ages, along with some regular friends. I'm friends with the organiser of this group, and I'm one of the hosts, so I want to be clear at this point that the criticisms I'm about to make are about specific individual attendees, not the group itself. I've talked to a lot of cool people who are relaxed, decent people who talk and listen, who chat to anyone, and are generally positive people. But I find that the bigger the meetup, the more I bump into difficult, needlessly critical, arrogant people who don't listen and don't have the level of social skills that you'd expect from someone in their late 20s or early 30s. But then, you find that in every sphere of life, I guess.

You might have seen next week's Saturday night meetup with Manchester Cool Bars and Clubs, which I'm hosting, to Viva for the Manchester heat of Miss Swimsuit UK, a competition held across the UK every year. I've been ripped by a few people- usually guys- for running this meetup. It's been slated as misogynistic, (despite the CEO, the costume designer, the DJ and most of the judges being women) and that me running that event makes me look bad. I've explained that, at nearly 37 years old, I'm past giving a fuck about what some arrogant bloke from Oldham thinks. Or anyone else, for that matter.

I would still recommend people give this a shot. Among the group I found people who liked my kind of music, who I might be doing other nights out with soon.

Saturday night saw another big meetup, held by Manchester Megamix. we met in Tusk in the Northern Quarter, a small bar which we filled, and again was a mixed bag. Some great, cool people, and some difficult ones: in the latter case the same people, in fact, whom I'm convinced use Meetup as a crux to hold up a semblance of a social life, as nobody will invite them to anything else.

Arseholes aside, I'd still recommend people give Meetup a shot. It's growing by the day as people try it out.

Away from Meetup, I read Cowboys and Aliens, a graphic novel which was made into a movie a few years ago. I found it at Manchester comic fair for a quid, so I wasn't expecting a masterpiece. I thought, there must me more than just cowboys and aliens beating the crap out of each other, right?

Hmm. Very silly. I checked out the movie adaptation starring Daniel Craig.

Also dumb. Lazers blow up a wooden saloon, but don't set fire to the parts that weren't in the immediate beam? If you're going to do 'sci-fi,' get the 'sci' part right.

I'm seeing K Klass in Gorilla tonight. Get involved with this meetup and this meetup!