I found this comment amusing:
Finally, [Megan McArdle] as an approximately 6’ tall, moderately attractive woman — who likes guns — libertarian, objectivist, and conservative fan-bois glommed on to her like a million sperm all trying to fertilize the same egg, which provides its own kind of mockworthy spectacle
The college I went to had a 6:1 guy:girl ratio at the time. Being an institute full of socially stunted nerds just like me, they had their own word for when multiple guys talking to or associating with a single girl: “glomming.” While it has morphed beyond its original meaning—it is short for “agglomeration”—it has become part of our urban dictionary, and the above example shows it in its original definition.
One day during Rotation, I was hanging out on the Triple on the second floor, and watched “glom pools” forming around the night’s new batch of Freshman girls in the dorm’s courtyard below. The image of “a million sperm all trying to fertilize the same egg” is an especially apt description. I can trace a direct line to my intense shyness around women to that singular and instructive moment.
- glom v.t. to accost a girl who is already surrounded by multiple guys
- glommer n a male who gloms serially
- glom pool n an aggregation of many guys around a single girl
Oh yeah, if any Techers at the time are wondering about all the hacked copies of CrystalCaltech Quest on campus—the one where ResEdit to add Caltechisms like the infamous and indestructable “glom monster” toward the end? That was me.






