Try to fill it, and they will come?

The massive sinkhole in a Merrimon Avenue parking lot has made a big splash in Asheville (and we don't just mean in the Beaver Lake Bird Sanctuary). Over its many openings and reopenings, the sinkhole has gathered a social media following to make Asheville's self-styled influencers blush.

The "Asheville Sinkhole Group" boasts over 1,400 members on Facebook. It's the people's platform to share their sinkhole musings, whatever their medium of choice — whether that's bawdy poetry, impressionistic gouache paintings or Photoshop wizardry. As a giant, gaping hole, it's ripe for pretty much any kind of symbolism you can imagine, including topical social commentary (see #sinkhole2020, Sinkhotel, etc).

Perusing the memes in the group, the collective obsession with the sinkhole can seem tongue-in-cheek, but for some in Asheville it's a real fixation.

City: Stop refilling Merrimon Avenue sinkhole. Questions remain for Beaver Lake wetlands

Some sinkhole fans say they've spent hours in the Early Girl parking lot (or, occasionally, trespassing on 1010 Merrimon Ave. itself) waiting for chunks of dirt and asphalt to calve off the sides. Others claim they swing by to check its progress at least once a day.

The group analyzes the probability of rain nearly every week (heavy rains have heralded each of the sinkhole's grand reopenings over the last month) and celebrated the birth of the Freshole, the small sinkhole that made its debut in the Fresh Market parking lot not long after flood waters receded on July 11.

@greatbigoldhole

The group's administrator is actually the sinkhole itself — that is, Asheville Sinkhole the page (handle: @greatbigoldhole), a Facebook account that adopts the perspective of the sinkhole and leaves us with more questions than answers. It has an absurdist vibe that doesn't always translate as satire — the sinkhole was allegedly thinking about having shrimp and grits for brunch on July 7 (if you understand that, please DM us). But since it's literally the absence of dirt, we can't be too critical about its sense of humor.

1,683 Facebook users like the page, while 1,714 follow it — to the shy 31 of you, we say, be not ashamed! Sinkhole news concerns all!

When asked to comment, the Sinkhole described itself as "an instant Asheville icon" that people connect with in "a deeply profound way."

"I may not be the hole they want," the Asheville Sinkhole page said in a message to the Citizen Times. "But I am the hole they need."

The Sinkhole had this to say to Asheville residents: "Respect the hole be kind to one another and take care of the bird sanctuary."

The Asheville Sinkhole Society

An entrepreneurial local is printing T-shirts for the Asheville Sinkhole Society — we'll leave you to work out the acronym on your own.

Norma Amron offers Asheville Sinkhole Society shirts for $20 a pop. The Society's motto appears to be "for the love of all things hole-y," judging by the shirt.

People have preordered over 50 shirts to date, she said, adding that some sinkhole fans "aren't even locals!"

"Get one so we can know our kin," she wrote.