Encyclopaedia of Tiny Facts

Known derisively as the “Illuminati for hipsters,” the “Society for Concerned Indifference” is an infamous, secret organization whose existence is unconfirmed; popular legend has it that the Society—nicknamed SCI—was formed at Brown University in the early 1980’s; SCI’s members are rumored to include many young leaders of the business, publishing, entertainment, and political world; the Society for Concerned Indifference was formed in reaction to the preppy chic that became popular in the 1980’s and was personified by Princeton’s eating clubs as well as the secret societies at Yale; SCI and its members were vehemently anti-authoritarian, participating in acts of “intellectual terrorism” and “commonplace surrealism”; as its founders graduated and moved to New York City and Washington D.C., the group set roots in both cities; members of SCI are each allowed to “tap” three new members in their lifetime, and while there is no age requirement, most new members are invited in their late-20’s to mid-30’s, as they rise in their respective field; while it can not be confirmed, I have known two people that were rumored to be members of SCI; one of these people was an ex-girlfriend, though we only dated for two months, and she never spoke of SCI; after we broke up, friends of mine told me that she was supposedly a member of the Society for Concerned Indifference; they assumed that I knew and was keeping the secret; I always wondered if my ex-girlfriend thought I was unworthy of SCI membership, or of the knowledge that she was a member; the other person I know who may be a member of SCI is a former classmate from college; two years ago, I ran into him in Barcelona and we went out for drinks; after five hours of drinking Cava and absinthe, my friend referred to a party in Wainscott where the guests included numerous magazine editors and politicos; there was skinny-dipping and spouse-sharing at this party; we parted ways that night, and while we swapped e-mail addresses, I e-mailed him a week later but never heard back from him; I have since lost touch with my old classmate; SCI is known for hosting tri-annual meetings of all its membership in the Hamptons, Newport, and the Chesapeake Bay town of St. Michaels, Maryland; supposedly, members of SCI correspond with each other through encoded messages in articles in major newspapers and magazines of which their members are editors (including “The New York Times,” “The Washington Post,” “TIME,” and “Better Homes and Gardens”); John F. Kennedy Jr. was reportedly a founding member of the Society for Concerned Indifference; once, while shopping in a pet store, I encountered two women, probably a mother and daughter, examining aquariums; the mother-figure was lecturing the daughter, saying something like, “You don’t know loss. Losing J.F.K. was a tragedy, and I remember that day.”; the daughter-figure replied by saying something along the lines of, “When I found out that J.F.K. Jr. died I was plucking my eyebrows like the models in “Vogue” magazine and when the man on the radio said that John-John and his wife had both died in a plane crash I tore all my eyebrow hairs clean off my face”; the mother-figure grabbed the daughter-figure hard by her shoulder and dragged her out of the store; I was left questioning if it is possible to quantify pain, and why parents bother with pets; perhaps it is morbid and insensitive, but recently I have been wondering why celebrities that die in plane crashes tend to be so attractive; the Society for Concerned Indifference takes its name from the grave of the photographer/Dadaist, Man Ray, whose Parisian grave has an epitaph reading, “Unconcerned but not indifferent.”