First Loops: Underground Hoopers

As the philosopher Ian Hacking has observed, people “are aware of what they are called, adapt accordingly,and so change, leading to revisions in facts and then knowledge about them.”

This is what he calls a ``looping effect.'' It begins, of course, when people are successfully persuaded that they belong to some category they hadn't thought existed.

I'm keeping an eye out for these attempts, serious, whimsical or in-between, to create new human kinds.

So, ladies and gentlemen, I give you: the underground hooping community.