Oy vey, how do I keep getting involved with self-destructive social groups?
Ages ago, I wrote an entry about the highs and lows of being part of nonreligious college group. Well, this time, at least religion wasn't involved.
As a fan of bad movies and riffing (think Mystery Science Theater 3000), I fell in with an online riffing group I'll just call "Jokes n' Java. I discovered via online personality The Cinema Snob. When I first began attending their events, it took time to get noticed due to being in such a crowded environment. I tried putting out things that would come off as odd (I let it be known that I'm black and liked riffing) but I just learned to point out something humorous about the bad movie go from there. Through time, I began seeing myself the "straight man" of the group. Whenever someone said something EXTREMELY off color, I would be the "really, guys?"...guy. Not sure if I'm correctly describing a straight man in comedy.
It was fun to being a part of the community, finding people who shared a likeness in interests (even found some of the members are fans of tokusatsu) and interacting with some of them outside of the website JnJ was on. Through time, known online personalities joined and the site became bigger, but a few things happened that led to what felt like a odd change in the group.
1. One of the founders, I'll just call him guy 1, left the group. They were dealing with their lives and it led to one of the few good things to come from the group, the saying that "Real life comes first". This is absolutely correct when it comes to anything online.
2. Guy B became solely in charge of JnJ and while I originally had no qualms with him, it felt like he began changing. He came up with another motto, "agree to disagree". I'm sure he didn't actually say that but still. I don't knock this because there have been several disagreements between group member, myself included, so I guess he saw that tensions were running within the group.
The 3rd thing, however... this will take a moment. Well, CTC happened. If you are curious of what that is, let's just call it... a clusterfuck. A LARGE group of content creators vented about their time at a larger internet base they were affiliated with. Well, Guy B was ever so slightly connected to the event, via Cinema Snob, who stuck with site. It felt like Guy B made it his life's duty to shit on those who left. Do I believe that there were some exaggerations? One or two BUT I am also of the belief of "where there's smoke..." .
Movie riffs would stop suddenly for him to just vent about how soft those affected by CTC were. Sadly, he had a LOT of people that agreed with him and soon JnJ went from "agree to disagree" to "agree to disagree...unless you disagree with me. Then, you're a...". I slowly became disillusioned and began not attending as much. On top of this, I felt a little left out when I contributed quite a bit. I will admit that I was angry for this. I did the one thing I shouldn't have done, I made the group my life. Thankfully, I wasn't the only one. There was no uprising, we just didn't attend as much.
I'm older and the drama going on was very childish and when someone I know feels threatened to the point to quit the internet with the drama being a factor (not the largest factor but still) and disappearing, it's time for me to just not be there anymore. I stayed friends with a few people who talked about how in shambles JnJ was. Guy B and another contributor had a HUGE falling out and that person went back to their own projects and Guy B is still running JnJ. He's got new fans now who hang on his every word and the old ones who stick by his side and I always want to ask them what keeps them doing the same.
Maybe they got so involved, they did what I did and make it their lives.
