The dullness includes knitted post pox covers, rubber ducks in potholes and roundabout appreciation. Photo: Commons
The Dull Men's Club is an online club for dullsters who celebrate the ordinary and eschew glitz and glam.
More than 1.5 million people have joined their Facebook page, and together they discuss the joy they find in dull things.
Dullsters have wide-ranging fascinations, the club's founder Grover Click told RNZ's Sunday Morning.
"Peter Willis in England, has set out to photograph every post box in England.
"Steve Wheeler has got the one of the world's largest milk bottle collections, 20,000 milk bottles, they're very happy doing that. We laugh at it. It's amusing at first, sometimes hilarious, but they're onto something."
Dullness is a balm for a world in strife, Click said.
"There's so much turmoil in the world today, and they can retreat to their havens and enjoy their hobbies."
The clubs' motto is celebrating the ordinary, he said.
"There's so much rushing around now to try to get bigger, grander, fancier, move on to the next big thing.
"Well just slow down and enjoy what's right around you, instead of always trying to be restless and go on and do something greater and grander."
The club, like any other, has rules he said.
"We try to have no exclamation marks on anything we write or produce our website or anything like that. That's far too exciting.
"One of the main rules is no politics and no religion to discuss that's far too controversial, and we don't allow any four- letter words, of course, dull is a four-letter word, we say we're given a good name to a four-letter word."
One member in the UK has founded the roundabout appreciation society, another Brit, Tim from Orpington, takes pictures of potholes with plastic ducks floating in them.
"He calls it pothole art, he began with plastic ducks floating in them, and now he's branched out. He's got dioramas, he calls them. He's got astronauts landing in them, like it's a crater on the moon.
"A bus fell into one and he's got it being pulled out and he claims that he's promoting repairs because they get in the press, and quickly the road works people go out there and patch them up."
Dull Men's Club founder Grover Click. Photo: DMC
The club awards the prestigious Anorak of the Year, Rachael from Wales is one winner for her work beautifying post boxes.
"She started making what they call post box toppers, knitted covers for the iconic red post boxes.
"And she and her twin sister go out on bicycles at night and pop them on the tox post boxes. And it really became quite a phenomenon."
A Californian man is dedicated to the craft of making ships in bottles, he said.
"You put the parts in there, and then, with tools like a dentist, you just kind of unfurl the ship, unfurl the sail and build a ship up.
"Now he's put a petrol station in one and a bunch of chairs in another one. And he said, 'You know, I come home from work and turn on the television, oh my God, all that troubles in the world. Turn off the TV, go to my work bench. An hour later, I returned totally refreshed'."
A Wisconsin man works on a larger scale, he said.
"He does something called barn quilts. They paint quilt patterns on plywood, then they mount them up on the upper part of a barn, under the eaves there.
"He turned his county into the barn quilt capital of America."
The dull work of members around the world has enriched his life, Click said.
"I collect collectors. I like to find people that do this sort of thing, they're not really collectors, they're more curators. I think curator means you not only collect them, but you arrange them and work on them and improve them and make them work."
And don't call them dullards, he said.
"We developed a word and we're going to get it in the Oxford English Dictionary - dullsters, we're the opposite of hipsters."
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