VI. RACTORS IN THE CONTEXT OF SOCIAL ANXIETY

This is Social Anxiety's third Awareness page. See here for the first, alongside an index of further related Awareness pages.

One resolution of 1.2) there is for some activities to involve small person number interactions rather than (or as well as) group meetings.

Examples of this include the following.

a) Cakefaeries Surprise Cake deliveries.

b) Chain-Writing. In Cambridge, this is available in the following genres.

i) Sci-Fi genre: CUSFS,

ii) Creative Writing topics: with the Society of Confusing Anticipation

iii) Childrens'/Silly genre: Sheila and her Dog alias Silly CakeFaeries).

iv) Apolitical Utopia genre with Cambridge Utopia. Note: this is chainwriting actual utopias, rather than stories set in Utopias. Only in Cambridge... :)

c) Scavenger Hunting. In Cambridge, this is regularly available as

i) Wholesome Seasonal: with the Society of Confusing Anticipation

ii) CakeFaeries' Cooperative Scavenger Hunt, which has Bakey, Silly, Listeny (Safer Space), Duelly (Strategy/Security/Waterpistols) sections, and sometimes a Lego option as well ('Buildy').

VI.1) Of course, V.2) can be rolled into this by having some such activities be term-long.

VI.2) This only makes sense if these activities are also low-intensity.

VI.3) Some of these activities are moreover city-wide.

E.g. a cakefaerie-ing can occur at most places. (Except in zones where this would be disruptive, e.g. during classes, in places of worship or during 'serious' society meetings).

A CakeFaerie wearing the CakeFaerie badge can receive cake in a comparable range of locations. A CakeFaerie giving a room address may have a local resident CakeFaerie knock there something like between 10:00 am and 9 pm.

Chainwriting is usually done by email. Though at some points people have been known to write the next lines of chainstories on each others' doorpads.

VI.1) to 3) can be rolled together to make the Ractor concept. That is, a small person numbers long-timescale city-wide low-intensity inte-RACTOR.

Some ractors have been running at least since the 1960s (E.g. doorpad-chainwriting preceded the existence of email or the internet.) There are however other ways in which Ractors remain in their infancy.

Ideally, every Soc-Ring would run a Ractor to cater for the New, the Shy and the Different all year round.

[What Soc-Rings are is best dealt with examples. The Music Socs are one. The Quirky/Geeky Socs are another. The Thesps, the Science Socs... I.e. groups of 5 to 60 University-type Societies such that quite a lot of a given Society's members also belong to some other Societies in that Soc-Ring.]

And yet, with a few exceptions, it is only Quirky/Geeky Soc-Rings which have to date run Ractors.

[Another useful concept is the Lighter-Hearted member of each Soc-Ring. For the meetings of this are more likely to have all year icebreaker features. For instance CULES - the Light Entertainment Society - is a Lighter-Hearted member of the Thesp Soc-Ring.]

[A third useful concept is Soc-Parenting. This is like College Parenting in Cambridge but Soc-based, in which new people get more experienced parents who help them 'settle in'. Now, while CULES haven't to our knowledge ever run a Ractor, they have had CULES parenting at some point. Even Women's Rugby has been known to have Soc-Parenting :)]

We may expand on this here with a link to a list of suggestions for what Ractors might be suitable for each Soc-Ring. Some Conferences and Conventions also involve Ractors.

If each Soc-Ring had a Ractor, then All-Year Icebreakers and Soc-Parenting, Shy people, Different People and the Socially-Anxious would find a wider range of Societies Approachable.

Chainwriting and the CakeFaeries happen to be widely appealing. In this way, they make successful ractors on a timescale of years. So, while anyone could quickly design a Music, Rowing or Thesping Ractor, having this be well-attended and with no shortage of new organizers to keep it going for years is a rather more subtle business. Some ractors only work well above a certain size. Closeted people largely only use ractors that succeed in attracting 'for fun' participants. (The Closeted can then credibly pose as 'for fun' participants.)