I think it's fairly obvious why someone would do this? Suppose you want to create an event that happens to have a similar audience as those who might attend a

I think it's fairly obvious why someone would do this? Suppose you want to create an event that happens to have a similar audience as those who might attend a Hacker News meetup. Now you can create a marketing message to those people without spending any effort in recruiting members. It's easier to do a hostile takeover than trying to create a meetup event from scratch. In a way, it's like buying a very targeted email list. However, I'm sure there will probably be a backlash in this case, and I doubt Meredith would show up at any of these events because she'll probably get stoned to death there.