The closest I’ve ever come to joining anything was attending the first of three required meetings to join the boyscouts when I was in 4th grade or so.
Ten minutes into the meeting I knew two things: I would never be a boyscout, and I hate being around large groups of strangers.
Pretty much been my motto ever since.
Generally not a joiner. Online maybe, but on the internet, it’s easier to fall into lurkdom is disappear for periods of time.
Im not really a joiner, although I’ve tried, I usually can’t commit to attending anything very regularly and keep a membership going. My Dad is a joiner, which I mentioned in another thread. If its a church board, or the Stonecutters, or a support group for something, he is there. If there’s an executive, he’s usually on it. Until he sickens of it, quits, and starts casting about for something else to do. Eventually he goes back, usually when the people he disagreed with have left.
My Mom is not a joiner, can’t stand it, and hates hates hates that Dad hooks her up with the Ladies equivilent of whatever his current passion du jour is.
Mom and I attribute Dad’s being a joiner to growing up as an only child without a father. “Your dad just loves being in groups with old men” she’ll say to me. "Still looking for a Daddy, approval, and some brothers. " Mom, who has 9 siblings, and always felt like “another banana on the tree” feels no need for any organization that calls the members “brother” or “sister”, was a secretary, so hates being on the executive, since she ends up doing minutes, and generally is miserable in any group setting.
I have one brother, and he’s even less of a joiner than I.
I’m a joiner. I like groups with a purpose, I like having a common goal, I like feeling that I have backend access to things. When I join I not only join, I try for the board or other leadership postion. Probably makes me insufferable to others but I also get the stuff done that needs getting done, including manning booths in downpours and driving 30 miles out of my way to deliver one small item to someone who needs it at * their* booth.
What is interesting is that no one here is considering the SDMB as a “joiner activity” in itself. I think it is.
I’m the biggest lurker here except for **KlondikeGeoff ** . I don’t post often, here or at the few other communities I belong to, so in an online world I’m not a joiner at all. I think you all are joiners too, just in a diferent medium.
I’m not a joiner per se, but I do like to lead groups that somewhat interest me. However, it isn’t because I have a need to feel loved - I completely and totally can not relate to anyone I’ve met, so far, beyond some common trivialities. Plus, I’m really social, but for no known reason.
Also, I am probably better classified as an over achiever: VP of PTA, CoPres of SGA, CoPres of GSA, and typical underling of NHS and some Art Club thing. Hopefully in the near future I will be the founder and president of SOS, or Save Our Schools, too. We’ll see.
I’m certainly a “Joiner.”
In my youth, I was an active Boy Scout, attaining the rank of Eagle.
In college, I joined and helped found a chapter of Phi Kappa Sigma (U. Mass Lowell), where I am still very active.
I joined this board! 
I do have a hard time with large groups of people that I don’t know, but having a common interest is a big ice-breaker for me. Strange for me, as I can talk to anyone in a grocery line, or on the street, but in a large group situation, I often have a hard time introducing myself.
I don’t know how it happened. I don’t SEE myself as a joiner, but I think I might be. I was active in a few specific clubs during school, but nothing extreme. But the older I get, the more I do, and the more I join, simply because I’ve found that it’s more fun, and more interesting, to share the things that fascinate you with others.
So I’ve found myself taking Japanese classes with a very small group, being an active member of a few car organizations, doing racing with like-minded auto enthusiasts, and becomign a member of a Gothic Lolita group. Crazy, since I’ve always thought of myself as a loner, but I guess I’m not. :shrug:
I think many of you are, in fact, “joiners” - as I see your names posting on the SDMB quite frequently.
I never considered myself a joiner. I was on the rugby team in high school, which was the extent of my extra-curricular activities, and that was only because it was the first few years of the team so I was one of the better players (I had an advantage: height, cyclist thighs, and a boyfriend who played and could coach me on the rules).
For a long time after high school I was hyper-aware of the dismal emptiness of my resume, and kept trying to join things in order to beef it up and also to meet people (and get laid). I quit them all for the same reasons most of you did.
However, I had an interesting experience at one organization I “joined” last year and have since become very heavily involved in. (For the record, it hasn’t helped me get laid but only because I’m already married.) The experience was that one of the first people I met and befrended was a joiner, and I got sucked in despite my intentions. I think that it happened because she was able to penetrate all the stupidness that you all have been referring to, and show me how you can be part of an organization while ignoring/avoiding/addressing/railing against the stupidness. (She also gets laid quite frequently, thanks to having joined this org.)
One important point: most people are really, really bad at chairing meetings. As most groups are based on meetings, this is a huge problem - you go to a meeting, and 90% of the time is spent talking about the pet issues of one or two members, or fruitless arguing, or making plans that never get followed up on, or listening to people drone on pointlessly, etc.
My friend pointed this out to me; without her I would have just left. I really hate pointless meetings. Now, as it stands, I hate attending meetings that I (or three or four other, carefully selected associates) do not chair. (This makes my new job as a civil servant unpleasant at times.) Since then I’ve joined two other organizations: one has a great meeting chair, and the other needs one and its members are practically begging me to become the chair before I get pissed off and abandon them to their pissing matches and endless monologues.
I also have let my membership lapse, through apathy and laziness, and since I’ve only been a member for one year my renewal rate is 0%.
Overall the best part is hanging out with the very small proportion of people there who I really like, and making fun of the rest of them who I don’t.
Oh, and also working towards our shared goals. That part is cool too.
I learned early on that joining wasn’t in the cards for me.
Like most it started with boy scouts. Even at that age I knew I liked hanging out with some friends and not with others. Boy scouts let everyone in. And you had to wear some dumb uniform. And you had to pay for the uniform. And the activities were decided for you. Bah! I had a better time with my friends organizing our own activities and not paying dues.
Same with sports. Loved sports. Baseball, basketball, football, soccer. But then they wanted you to play on organized teams. I had way more fun getting a group together myself for a pick-up game than going to boring practices, having adults decide what position your going to play, and having them tell you what to do. Playing football with friends allowed me to play quarterback, wide-receiver, punter, and play caller all in the same Saturday afternoon.
This carried on into High School where I decided my free time was my time and I would not be put on a schedule of group activities.
I guess it comes down to some people like their freedom of being spontaneous while other like to have their life organized into a schedule of events.
That is a big part of it for me. I want to do what I want to do and have complete responsibility for it.
When I was filling out college applications, they always asked for “clubs, organizations, and extracuricular activities”. They space they left was always a page or more long. I just wrote “N/A” and moved on. It didn’t hurt me in the end.
Hell, I worked thirty hours a week at a job in high school just because I liked it and liked the money even more. You want me to work hard on something for free? No thanks, I will take a look at the next bid.
If it has something to do with airplanes or something that will help my daughter, I will consider it. Other than that, I really just prefer to reap the benefits of people that like to join. Unless I am getting paid good money that is; I am your ho then. There is no way that I am going to bust my ass at work for say, $50 an hour and just give those skills away to any sick little self-serving volunteer group that comes along. That would’t be fair.
No, I’m a splitter.
Stupid People’s Front of Judea …
This has become interesting, so will throw another $0.02 worth in again…
I really hate mobs and mob psychology. My definition of a mob is any more than six people, because then it is impossible to have one conversation, and babble ensues.
It always amuses me when three or four people get together informally for some common interest. Within one or two meetings it becomes essential to elect officers, write bylaws, start a dues structure, and probably write a mission statement. 
Oh, it’s something of an organization, true, but I don’t feel any sense of obligation here. If I wanted to stop posting for good, the majority would never even notice. If I became a moderator, however, I would feel a sense of obligation and I would eventually not want to be here at all.
Honestly, I don’t know. I think it may boil down to simply, “If I hafta do it, I don’t wanna do it.”
“I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member.”
I am now. It’s a way to meet people. I’ve moved several times to cities where I knew no one, and it’s difficult to meet friends as an adult (and I usually don’t care to hang out with people from work).
It has to be the right group. Right now I’m in a couple sports leagues, professional organizations, and a church choir. I tried some others but really didn’t feel any interest in the people there.
As part of senior mgmt within a large corp, I represent our company dozens of times throughout the year and get pelted with tons of invitations. If my staff didn’t winnow them down, I’d be going to various affairs/events every single day, sometimes several times a day. Also, it’s pretty common to be tapped to join these organizations, even if only on some type of board. So, if I want to have any hope of a private life, I have to be an un-joiner, declining invitations right and left.