Glowsticking.com has existed for 6 years now. What kind of a web site is this? Is it a "dance" site? Is it a "rave" site? Is it a "urban" popping and locking type of web site? Is it some sort of performance art specialization site? Just what is glowsticking.com, and who is welcome?

Glowsticking.com has evolved into all of the above and more. Our roots are in the rave culture-- thus we share the values of tolerance, openness, and further progression of the arts. We may be realists and we may be pragmatic, but optimism is our guiding light.

But foremost is the thought that art isn't done alone. It's done with others. To make us smile. To expand our horizons. To laugh, to smile.

The glowstick is a great metaphor. A cheery luminescent light that provides a safe and effective light for soldiers, for fisherman, to protect kids at holloween, a night light, emanating out into the vast expanse of the "real world", or in case of an emergency... A glowstick is an effective tool and intrinsically brings a smile to even a childs face.

Do you remember the first time you cracked a glowstick? No? Perhaps you should. I don't know anyone, not even an adult, who doesn't have a small smile when seeing the soft glow of a glowstick for the first time.

Are we strictly a "rave" site? Of course not. We share influences from many other disciplines and cultures and we pay respect to different ways of thinking. Are we STRICTLY a technically orientated "dance site". No, of course not. Many members of our site don't even glowstick.

So what is glowsticking.com?

Glowsticking.com is... the best I can describe.. an ideal. It's a community in which there are few rules, but the rules are intended to help everyone. Glowsticking.com is a community, made up of all kinds of people from all sorts of backgrounds. We try not to label and we try to be open-minded. Glowsticking.com is about helping each other and helping each other push the art of glowsticking forward. But really... the glowsticking is an afterthought-- it's the community spirit that truly drives us, with meetups held around the world, with friendships and relationships made every day, inching us closer to that ideal of a perfect world...

Because of this ideal, some tenets, such as aggresion, hostility, cheating, arrogance, NEGATIVE competition, are frowned upon. Some people use the term "battling", a word that comes from hip-hop culture, to describe friendly competitions. We do not. We prefer to use terms such as collaborations, sessions, exchanges, and circles. The competetive spirit is strong within humanity, and why not? It has made us push forward the arts and sciences and makes us reward our audiences and our friends. But negative competition, at the expense of others? That's where we draw the line, and that's where we choose to turn our backs from that darkness and into the soft glow that is GS.C.

Glowsticking.com promotes this ideology, and we try to push towards being fair in our every day lives as well.

Our members are some of the most talented, knowledgable, and open-minded people in the world. Glowsticking.com isn't about JUST glowsticking-- it's about interacting with a community of individuals who see the world with all of its inadequecies, turmoil, troubles, wars and battles, and choose to see the life behind it all. Aside from that small commonality of either being a glowsticker or enjoying glowsticking, we are a pretty diverse group of people.

Glowsticking.com is a lot of things. But above all, it's definately one thing: A POSITIVE, active, community, and if you can fit into that, then you will find we have much to offer.

Thank you for reading this.

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