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My boyfriend and I were driving the other day, casually spit-balling ideas for a low-stakes hide and seek competition. Like, what if we just recruited 10 freinds, everyone chips in $20, we play seriously, and honourably, and winner takes all.
And then I caught myself thinking: why does this feel revolutionary? Why does the idea of adults playing hide and seek for no reason other than it's fun feel like some kind of radical act?
Turns out, I'm not alone in my strange thoughts and feelings. And turns out, it's not just hide and seek. There's a whole movement brewing, in different subcultures all around. People are carving out niche spaces for unstructured, physical, gloriously offline play. And it might be the antidote to digital exhaustion we didn't know we needed.
Think about it: when do we (adults) get to actually just… play?
I don’t mean painful "networking happy hours” or even more painful "team building exercises". I certainly don’t mean gamified fitness apps or productivity challenges. Just unstructured, low-stakes, no-purpose-other-than-joy play.
The answer is basically never. Once you're out of school and organised sports, play gets productised or disappears entirely. Everything has to serve a purpose; wellness, networking, self-optimisation. Fun for fun's sake? Baby, that’s not even in the adult handbook.
But people are starting to reject that, and they're doing it in increasingly creative, physical, and chaotic ways.
Dazed recently covered singles wrestling events in Brooklyn. No I’m serious: actual wrestling matches as an alternative to dating apps. People are so exhausted by the gamification and commodification of connection. To the point that they'd rather literally grapple with sweaty strangers in a low lit underground club.
It's absurd, maybe, but it’s also fucking genius. Because at least when you're wrestling someone, you're present. You have to be engaged in a way that's impossible when you're half-scrolling Hinge while watching Netflix and downing Ben and Jerry’s.
This is the "touch grass" movement made literal. Get offline, get physical like Olivia Newton John, and connect through bodies in space, not through screens and algorithms.
Death To Stock posted a video about combat rings occupying dance floors at parties and events. I mean literal fighting pits where you can "fight your evil situationship". Pillow fights are popping up in fashion shoots and brand design.
Chaos (albeit controlled) is becoming aesthetic. I see this as catharsis disguised as entertainment. When everything in your life is optimised, polished and LinkedIn-approved, sometimes you just need to hit something with a pillow (so that it’s not a pillowcase full of bars of soap.)
The physicality matters, but so does the lack of purpose. Because the temporary suspension of being a serious adult is what we all really need right now.
I shit you not, there's actually a framework for this. Mikhail Bakhtin's Carnivalesque theory analyses how medieval carnivals created a "world upside down". Temporary spaces where social hierarchies inverted. Authority was mocked, and people got to live a "second life" outside of strict social norms.
That's what's happening here. Singles wrestling, hide and seek tournaments, combat rings at parties. Think about it. These are totally modern carnivals. Spaces where the rules suspend and you don't have to be professional or productive or fkn optimised. A space where you can be messy… and human.
We've been living in such rigid, digitally mediated structures for so long. Just the act of rolling around on a mat with a stranger or hiding behind a dumpster feels like a revolution. And it kind of is tbh.
Here's what ties this all together: these activities are explicitly, deliberately offline. They can't be done through a screen. They require presence, physicality and spontaneity - all the things digital life has stripped away. The fact that we have "touch grass" as an insult/reminder shows how divorced from physical reality we've become.
And now, people are organizing IRL chaos events as rebellion against that. They're creating niche communities around activities that have no productivity or networking value. They're just simply play.
This connects to everything else we're seeing. The romanticization of mundane life. The doomerism antidote. The fractured virality of niche communities. People are desperate for experiences that feel real, unmediated and joyful. All for no reason other than joy itself.
So yeah, my boyfriend and I are absolutely starting that hide and seek competition. Who’s in?
-Sophie Randell, Writer
