Remember, remember the 5th of November

So today for my knowledge we have at least two events that are celebrated every 5^th of November: the Guy Fawkes Night and the Grey-shirt Day. I think that the former event is pretty well known all around the globe - or at least well known in Europe - and even if we don't really know what happened on 5 November 1605 and why Englishmen are burning effigies of a certain Guy this particular day, we certainly do know at least the first phrase of a famous ditty which starts with: ''Remember, remember the 5^th of November''. Since the Guy Fawkes Night is a too mainstream event and this blog is consecrated to more bizarre ones, I'll focus on the Grey-shirt Day.

The Grey-shirt Day is a pretty recent event. I don't know the exact date of its foundation, but it was established like three years ago. The idea was born on a site called 9gag - a page that back then I used to fun myself (its motto says: ''Go fun yourself''), but the site quickly became my main source of procrastination - besides facebook and youtube - and today I spend one hour on 9gag on average. The main purpose of the site is to gather fun content dispersed all over the web in one place, but honestly, this page is more than that. 9gag is like an autonomic community: it has its own language (memes), its own scale (a banana) and its king and queen. The reason why I love this site is not only its funny content but also this feeling of community, of making part of something bigger all over the world. The site has also a pedagogical aspect, i.e. 9gagers like to share things proper to their culture (view example here).

But 9gag has also a big problem with its users. The active community (persons who create and comment posts) is often of an introverted nature and it's not a rare problem that a 9gager has some difficulties with socialising in real life. 9gagers love to share their thoughts and knowledge in the comment section where they can find out that many people all around the globe have a similar view. But on a daily basis, it's extremely difficult for 9gagers to recognise members of the community in real life as they don't wear any distinguishing mark. So one day, someone came with an idea, that all members should wear a grey T-shirt on a particular day, for example on 5^th of November and this way they could recognise other members of the community offline, in real life. So from this day 9gagers try not to forget to wear a grey T-shirt on this particular day.

Ps. I know that the title of the post is a little misleading but trust me, it was done on purpose :P