freakofnurture
Platinum Member
I may have mentioned some time ago that I 'am' an administrator of an internet forum. That's a thing of the past entirely now. I have fallen from grace in a five years long, painful process. Since I finally asked my account to be deleted three days ago, I haven't slept. I am just too angry, disappointed and sad.
I know that it is useless to chew on this; there's nothing I can do and, really, I don't want to go back without some profound changes having been made - changes that will not happen.
But maybe it will be helpful for me to work through the emotions and find out what it is that makes them so strong.
If you're bored and want to read a loooooong, very typical story of internet drama and group behaviour, here comes. I'm telling it all how I understand in currently. I'll try to be non-judging so this doesn't become a self-righteous blaming fest, but I have no idea if I'll succeed. Rest assured that I will beat myself up throughly for every bit of self-righteousness that I'll spot later.
The people involved (all of them in their early to mid-twenties):
I - me - tiny
C - ex-friend, ex-writing colleague, Super Admin
R, O - two of the moderators
P - ex-mod and arch enemy with her own forum
S - The User Who Hates Me, C's best friend
Beach, Blue - 'enemy' fora
UGL - 'our' forum
- The first stage: Friendship and Cooperation -
C and I wrote a story and two novels together with each of us 'playing' a fixed set of characters in a kind of RPG via Skype and ICQ. The story had 13 chapters, the first novel had 40, the third was a trilogy with a total number of 100 chapters. We did all this in around nine month and it was a great time. I enjoyed it tremendously, we worked great together, kicked each other's creativity to produce more and more wonderful ideas. We laughed and cried over our characters, did all-nighters and basically cohabited in a digital way.
We barely knew each other before our writing experiment. Writing and our deep interest in the various novel-, movie-, musical- and 'other' versions of the 'Phantom of the Opera' myth (which we explored, expanded, twisted, reduced and questioned within our writing) was the glue that had us sticking together.
Parallel to the writing I studied for my Zwischenpruefung in psychology. My second depression started. C always had an open ear for me. She knew depression herself (I think she might also suffer from trauma because she was left and betrayed by her m*ther and then had to live utterly alone in an unknown city), but unlike me she didn't take it too seriously and never went to therapy. I suggested it more than once but she said it was unnecessary because she only had to wait until she could change the situation that made her feel depressed.
Our next writing project died half way through because I was too ill to work, so C turned to a solo project which she seemed to enjoy. I did some beta reading but was in no condition to be really helpful, and on top of that found the story not particularly engaging. Since I don't give even a fleeting shadow of a shit if people read my stories or not, I refused to force myself into reading a story that I seriously don't find interesting.
During our writing together the most beta work was done by me. I read both our passages, corrected mine, made suggestions for hers, she applied them, done. She barely ever suggested changes to my parts and this annoyed me because it meant that I was doing most of the work in this phase of the projects and was getting no input from her at all.
Later she felt left out of my solo work, but I don't see why I should take her in when she doesn't give any feedback aside from 'It's okay.' 'It's okay' doesn't help me to get better and, as I said, I don't care about readers.
While all this went on, there was some internet drama in the forum both of us were members of - the Beach. The topic of the forum was The Phantom of the Opera. There was some bullshit being spread by the staff - claims about seances and being reborn characters of the Leroux novel - whose rejection by many members finally led to the dissolution and shutting down of the forum.
To replace the Beach C set up a forum of her own. She invited the exilants and refugees and after the death of the Beach 'we' became the big new thing.
There was still a lot of butthurt going on, occasional fights when the Beach was re-opened, closed again, opened again etc. Allthewhile my husband and I provieded the webspace, software, know-how and tech support to help C transform her forum from a standard little ad powered thing to a powerful, ad-free, fully customisable and - initially - cost free forum that really was hers to develop. I was the First User, the Super Admin, and when she asked for it, I handed that 'title' over to C so she could have full control over 'her baby'. Thus the UGL was born.
I was still Admin yet mostly stayed out of the creation process of the forum since C wanted to make it her own thing. I had no real desire to leave my mark but volunteered ideas, time and know-how where they were wanted and in some cases where I felt they were needed.
I do not recall any conflicts that went beyond an exchange of pros and cons concerning a certain course of action.
- The second stage: The UGL and The End of Writing -
We put together a team of moderators, people who seemed engaged, intelligent and trustworthy. I was very happy with our group. I felt welcome, accepted, valued, respected, and my occasional little acts of rebellion against The (Society) Man were tolerated with mildness and friendly amusement. We were all self-reflecting and critical, tried to be transparent, fair and balanced in out assessment of user behaviours etc. We tried to measure ourselfs by the same standards we measured users by. We admitted our mistakes and apologised to users. We were a great bunch.
Then one of the team - P - turned out to be a 'spy' and a 'traitor'. She had stayed in contact with the staff of the Beach and did some things to insult/hurt UGL and its reputation. She was consequently banned but re-registered numerous times under different nick names; part of the Beach staff did that, too. A security panic ensued, access to UGL was restricted, IPs were monitored, email adresses and nicks were googled, activity here and in other places was compared to find out if user A here was identical with known user B somewhere else and thus identified as person X etc. UGL staff opened a thread (it was actually I, I think) to talk about users whose language seemed 'off' or reminded of a previously banned Beachist.
I don't remember much about how the situation made me feel. The disruption of the forum life by UGL's 'enemies' was annoying, but it was fun, too, to analyse other user's behaviours and find patterns etc.
While trying to get back in, P opened her own forum, Blue. She then did what I think is normal accepted practice amongst fora, and was practiced by UGL staff as well: She took thread ideas from the UGL forum to the Blue one. The only difference was that UGL staff usually gave credit and source links.
Oh the backlash. C was furious, the other moderators were angered. UGL sent spies to the Blues. Gossip galore.
I didn't care. I didn't like P for her lies, but I still don't get why it's a problem that she took UGL thread topics. We had way more active users and a lot more output than Blue; all the taken topics died off quickly over there. Still it took a long time until the outraged reaction was reduced to mere expressions of annoyance.
Aside from 'stealing' she also tried to hurt the UGL's reputation which didn't work since she was preaching to a very small choir against a big, stable opponent.
The end of the writing cooperation of C and myself came during that time. And when we stopped writing together, the quality of our friendship began to decline.
When we were still writing, and even the next three years after that, we went camping together and enoyed it a lot. We had a lot of fun on these trips, but everyday life 'together', at home, on ICQ and Skype, was basically just us being annoyed by each other.
It took me a while to realise that C and I had nothing in common, except for an interest in writing and The Phantom. In every other aspect we were as different as we could be.
The lack of commonality made a couple of her behaviours stand out even more; behaviours I had trouble dealing with. In general I felt harassed, and it seemed to me as if she took it personally that I am different from her. If this impression is justified, I don't know.
Here are some examples of behaviours by C that I recall:
-- I'll try to merely describe them and the emotions that I subsequently felt, but I don't know how good of a job I'll do. Feel free to point out places where I judge/interpret; it might be helpful for me. --
* When I came online and didn't immediately write to her, she used to greet me with the question "Do you ignore me or do I appear offline to you?" or "Don't you talk to me anymore?"
* One day she developed a new colour layout for the UGL. It was green and I personally would have preferred a blue one; so I went and made one - and a red one and a yellow, one so the UGL had a lot of colours to choose from. C's reaction (she definitely said this, albeit maybe in differen words): "How can you go and make three layouts just like that? It took me a lot of time and effort to make one and you just go and make three!" I don't know 100% if she stated the following as explicitly, but I recall a gist of: "You just did this to make me feel inferior." I didn't understand her problem and after a while I just retracted and deleted my layouts because I was angry and tired of her scolding. That seemed to offend her even more.
* When I didn't come online in the morning/early afternoon, I was asked where I had been, but in a tone that, to me, didn't sound like friendly interest, but like a demand for an explanation. I sometimes said I had to study just to get away from her.
* When I tried to share my excitement over a yt video about cosmology, a philosophical concept, a medical procedure or something like that, she got quiet and dismissive. One day she explicitly told me that she wasn't interested in any of these things and doesn't want me to bore her with them anymore. I was sad and angry about that, because she practically dismissed every single serious interest I have ever had, aside from The Phantom and writing. I can deal with disinterest, and I grant people some disinterest concerning my life. But that was over the top and expressed in a really hurtful way. I didn't find her solo novel intersting, but I had always tried to inquire about the TV series she was watching, and in the videos she made. To me, friendship means to make an effort and find compromise. With C, it felt like it was her way or conflict.
* When I was offline for extended periods because I was too unwell to be wanting to deal with her she told me that she felt left out and reminded me of how I told her everything about my first depression when it happened. When I then made an effort to include her and talked to her about how bad I was feeling she snapped at me that my shitty mood was getting her down and that I shouldn't come online to ruin her day by complaining. Then (and I kid you not; I didn't believe what happened myself), then, pissed as I was about what she said, I replied: "Oh, right, let me just switch on my good mood. - Here we go. - Now, how was you day?" I thought the sarkasm would anger her enough to go away, but she just started to chat amicably. Seriously. I then said: "Sorry, I have to get out of here." and went offline. It was surreal.
* When it came to the posting of the stories we had written, C was always hunting for comments. She counted the views of the thread and calculated how many people had read the new chapter compared to how many people had written a comment. She got angry and said that people shouldn't just go and read our stories without saying something about them. I couldn't care less about comments from a 'broad' audience, but I tried to be empathic and validate her. She set a rule that the number of updates per week would depend on the number of comments per new chapter. In my head I called her a dictator.
* This name for her established further when she changed the forum settings so that every user was forced to use the color scheme she wanted. Before that we had about two or three to choose from, that were designed or installed some time after the layout argument.
- The third stage: The Loss of Integrity and My Fatal Mistake -
P's status as arch enemy of the UGL was very much established now and I had made a thread to monitor 'creepy' users. There was another thread where information about behaviour of the Blue's staff and users was collected, together with outrage about their 'crimes' and amusement about their 'stupidity'. From my perspective the drama was kept alive only by those two threads. The other staff and C could have just started to ignore the Blue forum for all the effect their talk about it had. I now think that common enemies and annoyances were and still are the only thing keeping the staff together.
One day P took some pages of translation C and some others had made and claimed that she had participated in its translation. She had in fact been part of the bigger translation project to which these pages belonged, but it turned out that she could barely speak English and she never turned in the chapters she was assigned to work on. After much cursing and outrage the host of P's forum was contacted. The pages disappeared from the Blue forum but were reposted some time later.
P was never forgiven for that. The anger went so far that C and other UGL staff searched the net some more to find out what P was doing elsewhere. It turned out that P is a user of hard drugs and that there are scantily clad photos of her online, offering her services as a 'photo model'.
My instinct was to stop right there and leave that woman alone. Whatever uncool things she did 'against' the UGL, her life appeared to be an explanation as well as enough punishment already.
C, R, O and H however, rejoiced in their findings. There was a relentless stream of badmouthing, insults, speculations etc. I partook in it in the form of frowning over P's life and shaking my head that she was such a miserable person. But the badmouthing of the rest of the staff got to me. I began to withdraw from the thread, only occasionally reading it to see if, maybe they found another topic.
They found other topics - in addition to P: UGL users. Sure, we had annoying users, and I agree that it's okay to vent about them in the staff area and to discuss how to deal with them. But the level to which my colleagues stooped in their venting was undignified. They also ganged up on users that were perceived as worthless for the forum and chased them away. I found it appalling to watch.
Finally I made a post stating my dislike and concern about these behaviours, and explaining that I explicitly did not partake in them. I said that I didn't accuse anyone, and that maybe they weren't conscious of what they were doing. I said that I didn't want to discuss it, but just speak my mind.
This was my one fatal mistake.
The reply was that I shouldn't hold sermons about morals.
From then on I was outgroup. The resentment was subtle, but it was there.
- The fourth stage: Accused of Lies And Magic -
I got a drawing tablet, you know, where you have a special pencil instead of a mouse and can draw directly into a graphic program. This tablet was perceived by UGL staff as a thing of magic, apparently, because I was forbidden to use it in the production of pictures for contests. As if a tool could suddenly create the ability to draw well where there were only stickmen before.
I felt harshly rejected.
My contest history is that I tried to partake in every one to ensure it would happen. I usually scored high in writing contests (being third or last never bothered me, though) and always failed miserably when it came to drawing contests (I enjoyed them nontheless). So, I played to play, not to win, and this was known.
Then there was this drawing contest for which I worked really hard. I was happy with the result.
After the placing had been made official and commenting was opened, three people - R, O and S - stated that my submission looked like it was heavily edited by means of a graphic program, which would be unfair and against a certain contest rule (that was installed solely for me and my drawing tablet).
What's most insulting about this whole affair is that they not only made a public fuss about their suspicion, but that they still made it after my drawing landed on the last place.
They could have excluded my submission from the contest. They could have asked me via PM after the placing. They could have just let it slide since my supposed cheating gained me nothing. But no, they accused me publicly.
"I apologise if I'm wrong, but… I still want everybody here to know that I think that our forum admin cheats at contests."
When I talked about that to C, she told me R, O and S surely didn't mean it in a malicious way.
My resignation from staff happened quietly; none of the normal users ever got to see any reaction to the accusations against me. I posted an explanation in the staff area of the forum - that I had been withdrawing from the group because of my discomfort with the ongoing badmouthing and ganging up on users, and that I wasn't willing to take this last insult; I said that I hoped I would still be welcome as a normal user.
Then I went offline for two weeks to avoid arguments. When I came on again there was no email for me, no apology, no 'please don't go'. I had been demoted to normal user and that was the end of it.
Partly I was relieved. Partly I felt like the UGL staff was glad to have gotten rid of me.
- The fifth stage: My Pet Peeve and Leaving -
There are some religious kids at the UGL and I made the mistake to discuss Christianity with them. Whatever I said, however carefully, they - and my fellow atheists C and R - felt offended. C and R scolded me publicly. I tried to comply and be even more careful, but it wasn't enough. Open dissent with religious opinion was always an insult.
There were four or five incidents over my five years in the UGL, where I discussed recent religious scandals on the forum. I was held in contempt for that.
This spring solstice I made an avatar commemorating the famous Zombie Riot in 30 CE and a post (in an already existing thread named 'What I'm doing right now') saying that I was reading the passage in Matt 27 that said that Jesus wasn't the first to be reanimated.
I got a scolding from C that made me angry; still I changed my avatar to a pic of Willem Defoe, indicating that, at best, she fed a troll. Then R replied: "*yawn* Isn't it boring when people get wound up about the same thing all the time?"
In German this is the most explicitly passive aggressive thing you can do. And being talked about like that means that you're not worthy of being spoken to anymore; the statment made serves only to inform others about what the speaker thinks about scum like you. You have ceased to be a person.
I took this as the signal that my social descent from Admin to garbage had been completed.
I left saying: "Make yourselfs happy and delete my account."
Here's where I definitely stop trying to be non-judgemental.
I did a lot for the UGL and I tolerated tons of shit from C and the other staff. There were so many moments when I wanted to throw it all away, my ailing friendship with C, the novels we had written together, the forum, the discussions about Phantom stuff, but I always took a deep breath, abused a wall, then pulled myself together and went on.
See where it got me. I was still bitched out of the one group that I trusted to accept me. I mean, we were all fans of The Phantom - Erik - a story about an outcast who's too different and maladjusted to live amongst humans. They all take Erik's side, accept his being different, his dissent from social norms, they empathise with him and they'd take shit from him to no end. But he's the one exception. In Real Life they're just ordinary stupid bitches who bite you out of their midst as soon as you dare to not conform and to not partake in their little group rituals.
I am so pissed and hurt and insulted and disappointed and angry! Why are they so ordinary?Why are they like everybody else? Why do they crawl up each other's asses and gang up on outsiders as if that were the only way to keep a group together? They disgust me to no end.
I know that it is useless to chew on this; there's nothing I can do and, really, I don't want to go back without some profound changes having been made - changes that will not happen.
But maybe it will be helpful for me to work through the emotions and find out what it is that makes them so strong.
If you're bored and want to read a loooooong, very typical story of internet drama and group behaviour, here comes. I'm telling it all how I understand in currently. I'll try to be non-judging so this doesn't become a self-righteous blaming fest, but I have no idea if I'll succeed. Rest assured that I will beat myself up throughly for every bit of self-righteousness that I'll spot later.
The people involved (all of them in their early to mid-twenties):
I - me - tiny
C - ex-friend, ex-writing colleague, Super Admin
R, O - two of the moderators
P - ex-mod and arch enemy with her own forum
S - The User Who Hates Me, C's best friend
Beach, Blue - 'enemy' fora
UGL - 'our' forum
- The first stage: Friendship and Cooperation -
C and I wrote a story and two novels together with each of us 'playing' a fixed set of characters in a kind of RPG via Skype and ICQ. The story had 13 chapters, the first novel had 40, the third was a trilogy with a total number of 100 chapters. We did all this in around nine month and it was a great time. I enjoyed it tremendously, we worked great together, kicked each other's creativity to produce more and more wonderful ideas. We laughed and cried over our characters, did all-nighters and basically cohabited in a digital way.
We barely knew each other before our writing experiment. Writing and our deep interest in the various novel-, movie-, musical- and 'other' versions of the 'Phantom of the Opera' myth (which we explored, expanded, twisted, reduced and questioned within our writing) was the glue that had us sticking together.
Parallel to the writing I studied for my Zwischenpruefung in psychology. My second depression started. C always had an open ear for me. She knew depression herself (I think she might also suffer from trauma because she was left and betrayed by her m*ther and then had to live utterly alone in an unknown city), but unlike me she didn't take it too seriously and never went to therapy. I suggested it more than once but she said it was unnecessary because she only had to wait until she could change the situation that made her feel depressed.
Our next writing project died half way through because I was too ill to work, so C turned to a solo project which she seemed to enjoy. I did some beta reading but was in no condition to be really helpful, and on top of that found the story not particularly engaging. Since I don't give even a fleeting shadow of a shit if people read my stories or not, I refused to force myself into reading a story that I seriously don't find interesting.
During our writing together the most beta work was done by me. I read both our passages, corrected mine, made suggestions for hers, she applied them, done. She barely ever suggested changes to my parts and this annoyed me because it meant that I was doing most of the work in this phase of the projects and was getting no input from her at all.
Later she felt left out of my solo work, but I don't see why I should take her in when she doesn't give any feedback aside from 'It's okay.' 'It's okay' doesn't help me to get better and, as I said, I don't care about readers.
While all this went on, there was some internet drama in the forum both of us were members of - the Beach. The topic of the forum was The Phantom of the Opera. There was some bullshit being spread by the staff - claims about seances and being reborn characters of the Leroux novel - whose rejection by many members finally led to the dissolution and shutting down of the forum.
To replace the Beach C set up a forum of her own. She invited the exilants and refugees and after the death of the Beach 'we' became the big new thing.
There was still a lot of butthurt going on, occasional fights when the Beach was re-opened, closed again, opened again etc. Allthewhile my husband and I provieded the webspace, software, know-how and tech support to help C transform her forum from a standard little ad powered thing to a powerful, ad-free, fully customisable and - initially - cost free forum that really was hers to develop. I was the First User, the Super Admin, and when she asked for it, I handed that 'title' over to C so she could have full control over 'her baby'. Thus the UGL was born.
I was still Admin yet mostly stayed out of the creation process of the forum since C wanted to make it her own thing. I had no real desire to leave my mark but volunteered ideas, time and know-how where they were wanted and in some cases where I felt they were needed.
I do not recall any conflicts that went beyond an exchange of pros and cons concerning a certain course of action.
- The second stage: The UGL and The End of Writing -
We put together a team of moderators, people who seemed engaged, intelligent and trustworthy. I was very happy with our group. I felt welcome, accepted, valued, respected, and my occasional little acts of rebellion against The (Society) Man were tolerated with mildness and friendly amusement. We were all self-reflecting and critical, tried to be transparent, fair and balanced in out assessment of user behaviours etc. We tried to measure ourselfs by the same standards we measured users by. We admitted our mistakes and apologised to users. We were a great bunch.
Then one of the team - P - turned out to be a 'spy' and a 'traitor'. She had stayed in contact with the staff of the Beach and did some things to insult/hurt UGL and its reputation. She was consequently banned but re-registered numerous times under different nick names; part of the Beach staff did that, too. A security panic ensued, access to UGL was restricted, IPs were monitored, email adresses and nicks were googled, activity here and in other places was compared to find out if user A here was identical with known user B somewhere else and thus identified as person X etc. UGL staff opened a thread (it was actually I, I think) to talk about users whose language seemed 'off' or reminded of a previously banned Beachist.
I don't remember much about how the situation made me feel. The disruption of the forum life by UGL's 'enemies' was annoying, but it was fun, too, to analyse other user's behaviours and find patterns etc.
While trying to get back in, P opened her own forum, Blue. She then did what I think is normal accepted practice amongst fora, and was practiced by UGL staff as well: She took thread ideas from the UGL forum to the Blue one. The only difference was that UGL staff usually gave credit and source links.
Oh the backlash. C was furious, the other moderators were angered. UGL sent spies to the Blues. Gossip galore.
I didn't care. I didn't like P for her lies, but I still don't get why it's a problem that she took UGL thread topics. We had way more active users and a lot more output than Blue; all the taken topics died off quickly over there. Still it took a long time until the outraged reaction was reduced to mere expressions of annoyance.
Aside from 'stealing' she also tried to hurt the UGL's reputation which didn't work since she was preaching to a very small choir against a big, stable opponent.
The end of the writing cooperation of C and myself came during that time. And when we stopped writing together, the quality of our friendship began to decline.
When we were still writing, and even the next three years after that, we went camping together and enoyed it a lot. We had a lot of fun on these trips, but everyday life 'together', at home, on ICQ and Skype, was basically just us being annoyed by each other.
It took me a while to realise that C and I had nothing in common, except for an interest in writing and The Phantom. In every other aspect we were as different as we could be.
The lack of commonality made a couple of her behaviours stand out even more; behaviours I had trouble dealing with. In general I felt harassed, and it seemed to me as if she took it personally that I am different from her. If this impression is justified, I don't know.
Here are some examples of behaviours by C that I recall:
-- I'll try to merely describe them and the emotions that I subsequently felt, but I don't know how good of a job I'll do. Feel free to point out places where I judge/interpret; it might be helpful for me. --
* When I came online and didn't immediately write to her, she used to greet me with the question "Do you ignore me or do I appear offline to you?" or "Don't you talk to me anymore?"
* One day she developed a new colour layout for the UGL. It was green and I personally would have preferred a blue one; so I went and made one - and a red one and a yellow, one so the UGL had a lot of colours to choose from. C's reaction (she definitely said this, albeit maybe in differen words): "How can you go and make three layouts just like that? It took me a lot of time and effort to make one and you just go and make three!" I don't know 100% if she stated the following as explicitly, but I recall a gist of: "You just did this to make me feel inferior." I didn't understand her problem and after a while I just retracted and deleted my layouts because I was angry and tired of her scolding. That seemed to offend her even more.
* When I didn't come online in the morning/early afternoon, I was asked where I had been, but in a tone that, to me, didn't sound like friendly interest, but like a demand for an explanation. I sometimes said I had to study just to get away from her.
* When I tried to share my excitement over a yt video about cosmology, a philosophical concept, a medical procedure or something like that, she got quiet and dismissive. One day she explicitly told me that she wasn't interested in any of these things and doesn't want me to bore her with them anymore. I was sad and angry about that, because she practically dismissed every single serious interest I have ever had, aside from The Phantom and writing. I can deal with disinterest, and I grant people some disinterest concerning my life. But that was over the top and expressed in a really hurtful way. I didn't find her solo novel intersting, but I had always tried to inquire about the TV series she was watching, and in the videos she made. To me, friendship means to make an effort and find compromise. With C, it felt like it was her way or conflict.
* When I was offline for extended periods because I was too unwell to be wanting to deal with her she told me that she felt left out and reminded me of how I told her everything about my first depression when it happened. When I then made an effort to include her and talked to her about how bad I was feeling she snapped at me that my shitty mood was getting her down and that I shouldn't come online to ruin her day by complaining. Then (and I kid you not; I didn't believe what happened myself), then, pissed as I was about what she said, I replied: "Oh, right, let me just switch on my good mood. - Here we go. - Now, how was you day?" I thought the sarkasm would anger her enough to go away, but she just started to chat amicably. Seriously. I then said: "Sorry, I have to get out of here." and went offline. It was surreal.
* When it came to the posting of the stories we had written, C was always hunting for comments. She counted the views of the thread and calculated how many people had read the new chapter compared to how many people had written a comment. She got angry and said that people shouldn't just go and read our stories without saying something about them. I couldn't care less about comments from a 'broad' audience, but I tried to be empathic and validate her. She set a rule that the number of updates per week would depend on the number of comments per new chapter. In my head I called her a dictator.
* This name for her established further when she changed the forum settings so that every user was forced to use the color scheme she wanted. Before that we had about two or three to choose from, that were designed or installed some time after the layout argument.
- The third stage: The Loss of Integrity and My Fatal Mistake -
P's status as arch enemy of the UGL was very much established now and I had made a thread to monitor 'creepy' users. There was another thread where information about behaviour of the Blue's staff and users was collected, together with outrage about their 'crimes' and amusement about their 'stupidity'. From my perspective the drama was kept alive only by those two threads. The other staff and C could have just started to ignore the Blue forum for all the effect their talk about it had. I now think that common enemies and annoyances were and still are the only thing keeping the staff together.
One day P took some pages of translation C and some others had made and claimed that she had participated in its translation. She had in fact been part of the bigger translation project to which these pages belonged, but it turned out that she could barely speak English and she never turned in the chapters she was assigned to work on. After much cursing and outrage the host of P's forum was contacted. The pages disappeared from the Blue forum but were reposted some time later.
P was never forgiven for that. The anger went so far that C and other UGL staff searched the net some more to find out what P was doing elsewhere. It turned out that P is a user of hard drugs and that there are scantily clad photos of her online, offering her services as a 'photo model'.
My instinct was to stop right there and leave that woman alone. Whatever uncool things she did 'against' the UGL, her life appeared to be an explanation as well as enough punishment already.
C, R, O and H however, rejoiced in their findings. There was a relentless stream of badmouthing, insults, speculations etc. I partook in it in the form of frowning over P's life and shaking my head that she was such a miserable person. But the badmouthing of the rest of the staff got to me. I began to withdraw from the thread, only occasionally reading it to see if, maybe they found another topic.
They found other topics - in addition to P: UGL users. Sure, we had annoying users, and I agree that it's okay to vent about them in the staff area and to discuss how to deal with them. But the level to which my colleagues stooped in their venting was undignified. They also ganged up on users that were perceived as worthless for the forum and chased them away. I found it appalling to watch.
Finally I made a post stating my dislike and concern about these behaviours, and explaining that I explicitly did not partake in them. I said that I didn't accuse anyone, and that maybe they weren't conscious of what they were doing. I said that I didn't want to discuss it, but just speak my mind.
This was my one fatal mistake.
The reply was that I shouldn't hold sermons about morals.
From then on I was outgroup. The resentment was subtle, but it was there.
- The fourth stage: Accused of Lies And Magic -
I got a drawing tablet, you know, where you have a special pencil instead of a mouse and can draw directly into a graphic program. This tablet was perceived by UGL staff as a thing of magic, apparently, because I was forbidden to use it in the production of pictures for contests. As if a tool could suddenly create the ability to draw well where there were only stickmen before.
I felt harshly rejected.
My contest history is that I tried to partake in every one to ensure it would happen. I usually scored high in writing contests (being third or last never bothered me, though) and always failed miserably when it came to drawing contests (I enjoyed them nontheless). So, I played to play, not to win, and this was known.
Then there was this drawing contest for which I worked really hard. I was happy with the result.
After the placing had been made official and commenting was opened, three people - R, O and S - stated that my submission looked like it was heavily edited by means of a graphic program, which would be unfair and against a certain contest rule (that was installed solely for me and my drawing tablet).
What's most insulting about this whole affair is that they not only made a public fuss about their suspicion, but that they still made it after my drawing landed on the last place.
They could have excluded my submission from the contest. They could have asked me via PM after the placing. They could have just let it slide since my supposed cheating gained me nothing. But no, they accused me publicly.
"I apologise if I'm wrong, but… I still want everybody here to know that I think that our forum admin cheats at contests."
When I talked about that to C, she told me R, O and S surely didn't mean it in a malicious way.
My resignation from staff happened quietly; none of the normal users ever got to see any reaction to the accusations against me. I posted an explanation in the staff area of the forum - that I had been withdrawing from the group because of my discomfort with the ongoing badmouthing and ganging up on users, and that I wasn't willing to take this last insult; I said that I hoped I would still be welcome as a normal user.
Then I went offline for two weeks to avoid arguments. When I came on again there was no email for me, no apology, no 'please don't go'. I had been demoted to normal user and that was the end of it.
Partly I was relieved. Partly I felt like the UGL staff was glad to have gotten rid of me.
- The fifth stage: My Pet Peeve and Leaving -
There are some religious kids at the UGL and I made the mistake to discuss Christianity with them. Whatever I said, however carefully, they - and my fellow atheists C and R - felt offended. C and R scolded me publicly. I tried to comply and be even more careful, but it wasn't enough. Open dissent with religious opinion was always an insult.
There were four or five incidents over my five years in the UGL, where I discussed recent religious scandals on the forum. I was held in contempt for that.
This spring solstice I made an avatar commemorating the famous Zombie Riot in 30 CE and a post (in an already existing thread named 'What I'm doing right now') saying that I was reading the passage in Matt 27 that said that Jesus wasn't the first to be reanimated.
I got a scolding from C that made me angry; still I changed my avatar to a pic of Willem Defoe, indicating that, at best, she fed a troll. Then R replied: "*yawn* Isn't it boring when people get wound up about the same thing all the time?"
In German this is the most explicitly passive aggressive thing you can do. And being talked about like that means that you're not worthy of being spoken to anymore; the statment made serves only to inform others about what the speaker thinks about scum like you. You have ceased to be a person.
I took this as the signal that my social descent from Admin to garbage had been completed.
I left saying: "Make yourselfs happy and delete my account."
Here's where I definitely stop trying to be non-judgemental.
I did a lot for the UGL and I tolerated tons of shit from C and the other staff. There were so many moments when I wanted to throw it all away, my ailing friendship with C, the novels we had written together, the forum, the discussions about Phantom stuff, but I always took a deep breath, abused a wall, then pulled myself together and went on.
See where it got me. I was still bitched out of the one group that I trusted to accept me. I mean, we were all fans of The Phantom - Erik - a story about an outcast who's too different and maladjusted to live amongst humans. They all take Erik's side, accept his being different, his dissent from social norms, they empathise with him and they'd take shit from him to no end. But he's the one exception. In Real Life they're just ordinary stupid bitches who bite you out of their midst as soon as you dare to not conform and to not partake in their little group rituals.
I am so pissed and hurt and insulted and disappointed and angry! Why are they so ordinary?Why are they like everybody else? Why do they crawl up each other's asses and gang up on outsiders as if that were the only way to keep a group together? They disgust me to no end.
