WOW! In barely 2 years, we have grown from 75ish members pre-EDCO ’21 to, now August 2023, over 7500 members with nearly 7% being outside the US. That is a huge percentage considering less than 2 years ago new members questioned if the group was an Orlando group because of our saturation of Orlando and central Floridian membership at the time.

The best part is that many responses are the same to this day.

I’m so glad I found this group!

members in open chat after joining

I’m so glad to have found people my age

members in open chat after joining

I love this group!

members in open chat

This is the only group I follow on Facebook

members in open chat

I haven’t “poached” any members from other groups since early 2002. Currently, we approve 100 new members each week. The group’s natural growth has sustained that number for quite a few months now.

As leadership, we are constantly astonished at what we’ve accomplished so far. When this all began, who would have ever thought it would grow like this? We knew it was “possible” but didn’t know it would really do all of this.

Our membership is extremely diverse too.

Of course we have many members who Raved in the 80s, 90s and 2000s. But, we also have a huge number of members who only recently discovered our music and our scene. Plus, we have some huge names in the industry as members. I hope that, one day, we have many of the legends of our beloved Rave scene as members.

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Our little alien friend is old like us. He was big in the Rave scene during the 80s and 90’s, typically wearing a pair of JNCOs, dancing in Adidas, with his arms covered in Kandi. Like many of us, he hasn’t been out dancing for a long time while doing the adulting thing.

Now that his littles have grown up and are flying around the cosmos, he’s back and dancing away at local events and festivals. He’s always been hilarious and comes up with all sorts of funny ideas. Please don’t take offense to his humor, he’s just a Gen-Xer who laughs at about anything and tries to put a smile on people’s faces.

While he loves to laugh, even about “favors”, and have fun, he has a serious side depicted in his “Test It b4u Take It” slogan. After getting back into the scene, he realized how dangerous some things can be today and wants to do his part to help promote safety.

The post Our Alien appeared first on 40up Testing.

40+ Ravers, later rebranded to 40up Ravers, started in the comment thread of a Lost Lands group in June or July of 2021.

Of course someone posted one of the “over 30” memes so young and old alike were commenting and I noticed something in that thread., There seemed to be a lot of older Ravers there who were active in the scene. Like most “seasoned” Ravers, you always think you’re the only one your age still doing this.

You could tell a distinct difference between the older and younger commenters. There was a different demeanor and experience level between the two. So, I posted a comment and asked if anyone older would like to have our own group to chat with our peers. A few people said “that would be cool”. So 40+ was born.

As I’ve had to emphasize in our Facebook group on a few occasions, 40 is not a hard cutoff for us. It never has been and never will be. In those initial moments of naming the group, I realized that 40ish seemed like a reasonable break point between old school vibes and new school vibes. So it was named 40+ Ravers – Aged And Raving People [AARP].

By September(ish), we had less than 75 members. But, we were an incredibly close group of new found friends. We had no idea if or how our little group would grow but we enjoyed it as it was.

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