At the PAX 2009 Saturday night concert, my 5+ friends and I were people watching. There really are some odd folks at any big geek convention. While we were wai

At the PAX 2009 Saturday night concert, my 5+ friends and I were people watching. There really are some odd folks at any big geek convention. While we were waiting for the next act, someone brought up the story of the shirtless dancing guy and I jokingly challenged my slightly drunk friend to be that guy. He said "I can't dance." I told him "Dude, just do the Hokie Pokie." He started singing and dancing and we all backed up a few steps. He was joking, but he soldiered on to the second verse, and then the third. During the 3rd verse, we kinda felt bad for how ridiculous he looked and people were watching us. So I and a few of our circle started in. Then, a girl in a giant dragon costume ran over to join. As soon as the dragon girl showed up, everyone was watching. We started the song over, expanded the circle, and before you knew it, there was 3 more people running over. By the time we actually made it through the whole song without having to expand the circle, there was almost 40 people doing the Hokie Pokie! The weird bit about this story, however, is that doing the Hokie Pokie in a circle limits how far you can grow. As the circle kept expanding, it became less and less space efficient. People were excluded simply because there wasn't space for them to join. At almost 40 people, the Hokie Pokie circle had effectively collapsed under its own size. Maybe next year we'll try a dance that scales better.