hehehe :)
Mensa has many ways to get admitted, and I believe more than half the population could get through in at least one way, particularly if they worked at it. Certainly waaaaaaay more than 2%.
Of course, most of us are not dumb enough to actually pay membership fees, and most of us do not need to brag about imaginary IQs for validation. I lurk on a message board that prides itself for intelligent people--after a time I found that the biggest IQ braggarts were unemployed people living in mama's basements.
Sort of off-topic, but when I was in college, I had a very close friend. He was supposed to come over for dinner one night, but he appeared at my door a few hours early. He told me that he would have to cancel, and that he had to go home to take care of an "urgent" matter.
As it turned out, his "urgent" matter had to do with going back to his high school and getting information about his IQ. I discovered, in short order, that he was going off the deep end. Shortly after that, he was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic. Very sad. I never did find out what pushed him over the edge, but I remember his sudden obsession with his IQ as being a particularly bizarre symptom.
The first half of the meeting (the "socializing") was spent with most members talking just as these DUmmies are posting....victims and unappreciated for their intellect because the rest of the world was jealous or intimidated by it (so they had convinced themselves.)They'd also talk about their frustrating encounters with the stupid people of the world. Which, by the way, included everyone except the 50 or so people standing in the room.
The second half of the meeting (the "entertainment") would be spent listening to a guest speaker do a presentation on various topics. No matter the topic, when the speaker was finished and the floor was opened for questions, the members would "what if", and "but, if" the speaker to death with hypothetical questions that were so far out in left field the speaker, I'm sure, thought this was some sort of sick prank, a Candid Camera episode, or he'd been kidnapped by some mental ward patients and there was no escaping the situation. It was the Hotel MENSA. After attempting to answer the questions as completely and politely as possible, the questions would eventually get so bizarre, the perplexed speaker(remember, he thought he was speaking to people with supposed superior intellect) had no option but to simply answer, "I don't know", or, "You've got me, there". YES! JACKPOT!!! He doesn't know the answer! This would be followed by the members' deep sighs and rolling of the eyes.
Once again, the speaker didn't know enough about his own topic to be able to adequately answer their "simple questions". One who somehow managed to get the title of "expert" in his field, that obviously any MENSA member is more qualified to have....if it weren't for the fact the world of normal people was conspiring to hold them back. Another disappointing encounter with an "average" person.
Except, it wasn't really disappointing at all. No, in fact, the badgering of the speaker to the point where he couldn't answer their "questions" was when the real fun began. It didn't matter if the members agreed with what the speaker had to say or not. In fact, I doubt many of them had formed an opinion either way or were even interested in the topic. This was not about learning about or debating an issue, it was about verbally torturing the speaker of "normal" intelligence to the breaking point for two hours no matter how idiotic they had to get in their questioning to do so. Of course, their success in doing this, and thus proving their superior intellect, was in their minds only.
I got the impression that, with the exception of these monthly meetings, most of these people rarely left their homes or enjoyed much social interaction. That is, if they had a home to leave in the first place. Many appeared to be homeless and/or had no regular bathing facilities available to them.
This was just my impression of this one chapter, of course, and I mean no offense to all MENSA members or the organization as a whole. I'm sure not all chapters are like this one . I've heard the one in this particular area has difficulty getting/keeping new members even though there are many qualifying candidates.