Is it 42% less fun in 2009?

The mysterious Mustache Commander, of StreetWars and Rental Car Rally fame, just published a post on his blog about whether people are having less fun in 2009.  He thinks it all has to do with the slumping economy, causing people to lose their financial ability to go out and have fun.

He jokingly said that it is 42% less fun in 2009.  The numbers (obviously from a very small sample and not to be taken too literally) were derived from calculating the drop-off in percentage of sign ups for his 2009 StreetWars and Rental Car Rally events, which was "an unprecedented decrease in our five years of operation".

It's so hard to measure things like fun factors.  Personally, I think it is less fun in 2009 than 1999, than 1989, than 1979, and so on and so forth.  In my opinion, it has to do with our stay-at-home culture, where we are spending more time on our gadgets and socializing on Facebook, Twitter, then on actual face-to-face human interactions.  

It wasn't even that long ago that face-to-face was the only option way back in time before computers and telephones were invented.  We're talking about a period when people's sole option of long distance communication was through sending letters or through messengers.