Arseholes Who've Ruined Groups And Hobbies

[EineReiseDurchDieZeit]

Moved house last year, then COVID happened.

I am CEV and so have done loads of shielding and joining a hobby group I was looking forward to post move hasn't happened but I am on their mailing list. For this specific thing they are my only option locally.

Get emails from the mailing list regularly and having had my interest piqued googled the social media presence of the named sender.

They are clearly an arsehole, a massive, tedious, arsehole with very "set views" which I imagine would need to be agreed with by any incomers, which is not going to happen. (They are a group organiser)

So potentially that's this group out the window...

Which made me think, MNers, were you / have you ever left a group style hobby you really enjoyed because of That One Arsehole and

What did they do? How bad was it?

kept wanting to sit next to me, really close, mat-to-mat, his hands constantly accidentally touching me. Wanting to do all the 2-person stretches with me

Urgh. Shudder.

Even on MN it happens! I was on a read along of a novel, and a couple of posters joined who had already read the book and didn’t they want to tell everyone. Despite constant pleas to desist or start their own thread, they persistently posted spoilers and if someone posted, eg “I do like that Mr Darcy - he seems very nice” one of the posters in the know would sneer, “Obviously when you get to chapter x you’ll find out that he is rude and prejudiced” etc etc.

The readalong fizzled out....

We've recently had a series of talks (on Skype) at work by a trained counsellor/ psychotherapist about a variety of subjects. Really interesting stuff that makes you think. Every single session the same 3 or 4 people feel the need to make "interesting" comments as he talks angry. After the 3rd one I privately asked the organiser (not the speaker) if he could put everyone on mute because it was so frustrating having the flow of the talk interrupted. He was finding it annoying too, muted everyone and asked us to set our status to do not disturb to stop the pinging of messages. Why do the same people think that 200 people who have signed up for a talk are remotely interested in their comments?

Similar-ish, have attended occasional mindfulness sessions via Zoom, over the past year. You pay to attend, and there are people in attendance from all over the world.

So how did I end up in the same group as a guy, twice, who wastes loads of time. By the time he articulates a question, with lots of information thrown in about the subject that fascinates him most, HIM, I'm losing all benefit of practising mindfulness!

The person doing the session is very good, and is adept at handling a group, but this guy has it down to an art.

Mine is a bit dark so used an ancient name.

Many years ago I bought a classic car. Nothing special, just something to use daily for the school run but I did love it.
I joined the local car club for this type of car, mostly because it was a useful source of parts, which were always needed.
The nature of the type of car meant that 95% of club were reasonably elderly people, other than one man who was a similar age to me and for this reason we became, as I thought, friends.

A couple of years went by. I wasn't hugely involved but attended the odd meet and went to the occasional show in the summer months. Things remained friendly and what I'd describe as 'normal' from other man.
One evening he sent me an email, completely out of the blue. The contents of which were seriously disturbing. It described how he'd take days off work to abuse himself, liked young boys as well as women and he thought I should leave DH for him. It was skin crawling stuff.

Within 2 weeks I'd left the club, sold the car and changed my email and phone number. I also forwarded the email to his local police.

I don't know what happened. I did spot him briefly at a car show once and he seemed to be in the same club so clearly nothing had happened there. I feel horribly guilty now I'm older and wiser that I didn't go to the club and just tell them what had happened in the hope no other young woman or even man joined.

I did love that car, but I could never look at it the same again. It was the association.

I used to go to a group exercise class regularly but it became ckwae that the woman running it was... Difficult. She ran the whole thing like some kind of sweaty cult, in which we were also expected to shower her with gifts for xmas/bdays. Individual opinions/feedback was not tolerated. It was pretty poisonous tbh.

@The3rdWatermelon

Not a hobby group, but my masters degree class. My subject (history) attracted a slightly odd mix of people like me, in their early twenties following on from their undergrad, and retired people doing the course for fun. In the first session I had the misfortune to sit next to Roy, and then everyone stayed in the same seat for the rest of the year so I was stuck with him. Roy Was A Social Worker In The Eighties. Everything that ever happened in the history of humankind could be related to how Roy was a social worker in the eighties. Crop rotation in the fourteenth century? Did you know Roy was a social worker in the eighties? Victorian attitudes to death? Roy’s got an anecdote for that too. Did you know he was a social worker in the eighties? Kett’s Rebellion of 1549? Oh here’s Roy again... When he wasn’t holding forth on How Roy Was A Social Worker In The Eighties, Roy punctuated the entire two hour lecture with expressions of approval for the lecturer directed almost entirely into my right ear. “Yes!” “Quite right!” “Correct!” He knows he’s correct, you utter plum, he wrote the sodding course! I absolutely dreaded that class every week for a year, which was a shame because the course itself was really very good.

I loved this! I used to work with somebody (who was a very nice man) but he had a very irritating habit of linking everything that happened in the workplace compared to "when I worked in Pwc" which was several years before. Of course, anything we did at work was never done in the same way or as well as they did it in Pwc. Every single time he would trot out the relentless phrase ..."when I worked in Pwc"

I really love this thread! Thanks OP!

My only experience of this is during my 1st year of my undergrad nursing degree. There was a girl called Rachel who always sat front centre of the fronr row. Rachel always asked about 3 questions, relevant or not, at the end of any lecture pushing everyone over time. Rachel got to the 2nd year and declared to the course leader that because she was a 2nd year nursing student she didnt do 'personal' care anymore. Rachel soon left the course. She was a plonker.

This thread has been really funny read.

Mine is a Wild Swimming Facebook group - thousands of people in the group yet it’s dominated by the same 8 or so men who never miss a day of posting numerous photos and videos of themselves in their budgie smugglers. It’s not like they’re swimming in different places each day either, they’re always at the same spot.

Anyway, I made the mistake of “liking” one mans post about ice water swimming and writing an innocuous comment about how I’d never swam in ice water - within 15 minutes he’d sent me a Facebook friend request (which I ignored) and a message asking if I’d like to meet up for a swim and he could “assist me in popping my ice water cherry”. This is, from what I can make out of his FB profile, a middle aged married man with teenage daughters.

Anyone (woman) that posts about a wild swimming spot, these men will put a photo of themselves in the comments at that same spot and totally take over the whole thread, answering questions that other posters are asking the women that originally posted.

It’s a real shame that such a large group can be completely taken over by a small handful of men.

I got banned from a Chalet School fan site for being mildly critical of a beloved character

Was it Joey? Please say yes.

I love this thread!

For years I took dance classes of a particular type, first beginner and worked my way up to quite advanced.

It was very political. There was an inner clique that included the teacher and everyone not in it was treated with some disdain.
The teacher played favourites to a hideous degree and particularly liked making her current favourite perform an exercise or bit of choreography on their own. As she sometimes asked to provide dancers for events or phot shoots she was especially keen on the young attractive girls whether or not they were particularly talented.
If you fell out of favour then you were basically dead to her in class. Either she would just ignore you or make snidey criticisms or roll her eyes at her "mates".
And yet everyone idolised her and was desperate for her attention and praise 😂 (including me). It was a really fucked up dynamic.

I really want to join a creative writing group but would sooner strip naked than let someone hear my writing - so you see my dilemma. Anyway I think I’ll join lots of groups and write a book based on what I find, a book that no one will ever get to see.

Anyway I think I’ll join lots of groups and write a book based on what I find, a book that no one will ever get to see

Roy Was A Social Worker In The Eighties sounds like a good title for this

@Letsallscreamatthesistene

Anyway I think I’ll join lots of groups and write a book based on what I find, a book that no one will ever get to see

Roy Was A Social Worker In The Eighties sounds like a good title for this

Maybe a series: Roy feels that leeks should only be planted on the edge, Shirley sang at the Albert Hall once, Julies baby was walking at 8 months.

Don't know if this counts but I was blocked/banned by a fb group for my dogs breed.God knows why I'm not sure if you could see my dogs nob on a pic or what but they had very strange views.

@Letsallscreamatthesistene

Anyway I think I’ll join lots of groups and write a book based on what I find, a book that no one will ever get to see

Roy Was A Social Worker In The Eighties sounds like a good title for this

I would absolutely read that.

@WelcomeMarch

I got banned from a Chalet School fan site for being mildly critical of a beloved character

Was it Joey? Please say yes.

Of course it was! I thought it was commonly enough accepted that EBD committed the cardinal sin of falling in love with her own character and thereby transforming her from an ordinary (if prone to near-death experiences) schoolgirl to the most hysterically gruesome Eternal Schoolgirl caricature, accessorised with a weird hairstyle and a bizarrely competitive attitude to having as many children as possible and a habit of bouncing through the hedge into the school carolling 'I'm STILL just a Chalet School GIRL!'

But some people apparently think grown-up smugathon Joey is charming.

It’s the way she lifts up her golden voice, Silurian

@WelcomeMarch

It’s the way she lifts up her golden voice, Silurian

In that great dancefloor-filler 'The Red Sarafan'.

(Maybe she had an autotune hidden under her brown tunic and sounded like Cher...)

@IrmaFayLear

The poster who mentioned church flowers....

I was amused a while ago when I was looking at the notices in the porch of a country church. On the flower rota there was “Betty” by March 3rd. It had been, not crossed out, but scrawled out with what seemed like intense vitriol and “MARJORIE” - in capitals - written instead. Thereby hangs a tale.....

This would have to be included in any book written!

Got bullied out of a group of school mums by THE most self obsessed idiot I've ever met. I couldn't tolerate it any more so now I stand alone, I can hear her big mouth from 15 ft away

Bloody hell, so many dictatorships!!

Years ago, joined local Scrabble club, my God they were a boring bunch. The organiser was a “ rules “ person who spent the first half hour discussing “ domestics “ . Never went again.

So many groups are dominated by people who want to be on committees and create/police rules. I spend my working time with that sort of thing and just want to relax and have fun in my spare time, but it's very difficult indeed to avoid 'politics' whenever a group of people gathers. Because I'm a sort of professional at rules, if I come anywhere near that sort of thing, they want me to join in, so I'm forced to be a constant anarchist to avoid it.

Allotments. Committee a load of bullying toads - particularly one man who moved into the area some years ago. They flout all the rules yet clamp down on others for minor things if they take a dislike.

I've had mine for years and years and I pay my rent and avoid them.

It has all left a bitter taste though for many people.

I left a running group because a very very annoying man turned up and suddenly made himself the centre of attention. He was so odd, so loud and opinionated but seemed to think everyone loved him and he pretended to be everyone's best friend. The oddest thing was it was a women't running group. We didn't advertise ourselves as women only but it sprang up out of a group of school mums going for a run after school drop off in a morning, and quite a few of us liked that nature of the group as we lacked confidence in our running (there were also many beginners). Since the group was all so lovely and uplifting, and a friendship group on the whole, no one had the guts to tell this guy to 'jog on' so to speak. Just his presence made a few of the other members a bit awkward and they started making excuses to not run. I humoured him for a bit (all the while wondering why he didn't join one of the other many running groups in our town that are mixed sex and open to all abilities). Sometimes he used to piss me off so much spouting utter crap he'd read in the Daily Fail, so I would deliberately slow down and run with the beginner group, because he talked such twaddle he made my stress go through the roof. Once before I knew his form, he asked me what my husband did for a job (he didn't introduce himself or ask my name or say hi, that question about my husband was his opener! I can only assume he was trying to find out if I was single). Although I found the question odd, i am polite so I told him briefly what my husband works on, and then told him what I do. He proceeded to lecture me in why my industry is so messed up, based on an experience a friend of a friend of a friend of his had with a totally different company to mine. I just rolled my eyes and pretended to get a stitch.

I now meet up with the running friends socially or for 1-2-1 runs with other ladies, but always check before I meet anyone if they've invited him. He ruined one of my favourite times of the week :(