Page 12 | Arseholes Who've Ruined Groups And Hobbies

WorldsStupidestBottomBurp · 10/03/2021 18:05

A socialclub I belong to almost folded due to the agro it caused when a committee member decided helpers at events (i.e. people giving up thier free time and in some cases lending equipment, in order to help) should pay a membership fee.
Luckily the chairman didn't back this but some people were on the brink of walking out over it.

Mrssheppard18 · 10/03/2021 18:06

Not a group or hobby but I left group therapy after the doctor told me I was embarrassing myself by not agreeing with what he said. He told me I was abused as a child and that’s why I’m ill even though I was 100% never abused as a child and when I defended my family tried to belittle me infront of a room full of people and said I just couldn’t remember it. I walked out and never went back as there are lots of known factors that cause bpd.

KisstheTeapot14 · 10/03/2021 18:11

Ps. I strongly suspect one of them is called Roy.

I think a good counter meme to the Karen ones would be a set of Roy memes.

A subtle bit of disruption to the patriarchy? A blow for all of us who just want to do a nice relaxing hobby sans Roy?

The yoga man sounds bloody awful!

Mummyyyyyyyyyy · 10/03/2021 18:14

What a shame, she sounds like my sister in law!

BeagleEagle · 10/03/2021 18:18

@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?

Do tell! what are the set views. Identity politics per chance?

BeagleEagle · 10/03/2021 18:22

@BadgertheBodger

Oh god what is it about allotments? We’ve got Barry, who isn’t exactly unpleasant but likes to hover about passing judgement on what you’re doing. “Ooh I always turn my compost 4 times a year, ooh you’re not putting that there are you, ooooh leeks have never done well in this soil” and I end up wanting to fling manure at him while laughing like a maniac and shouting PISS OFF BARRY I DON’T CARE

It's always a Barru

ERFFER · 10/03/2021 18:22

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

GoldenOmber · 10/03/2021 18:26

I was in an online group years and years ago for religious feminists. Was usually a really good mix of women from different religious backgrounds, not agreeing on everything but having interesting, supportive conversations.

And then there was ‘Dave’.

Dave had strong feelings about how religions excluded ‘the feminine’. Dave, in contrast, felt strongly about ‘the feminine’, by which Dave meant long hair and floaty dresses and being all soft and sweet and lovely. Dave spoke a lot about “Godde, as I call Her” and would post long musings about how sad it was that we humans loved fighting wars more than ribbons or whatever, and how much he’d learned since embracing the feminine in his spiritual journey.

Dave noticed fairly swiftly that the rest of us weren’t having this sort of conversation and didn’t really care about his spiritual journey. This made Dave sad.

So there we’d be, talking about modesty discourse or inclusive language in prayer or ordination of women, or some news article about women being barred from doing something somewhere, or what that fuckwit said to someone’s sister when she left her church, and then HERE COMES DAVE.

“I’m sad to see everyone in here being so scathing about dresses. Don’t we think that’s an internalisation of the masculine? Godde (as I call Her) loves us just as much in dresses as in jeans!” Dave, we’re talking about a repressive sect that has strict dress codes for women but not for men, we’re not being mean to dresses. “But why must we feel a need to denigrate the feminine? :( For me, as part of my spiritual journey it’s been so nourishing to embrace the spirit of...” on and on and on.

I reckon it’s 50/50 whether Dave’s spiritual journey led him to discover he was truly a woman deep inside, or whether he converted to some fundamentalist movement and went to join ISIS.

BeagleEagle · 10/03/2021 18:28

@YourWurstNightmare

Every online group moderated by Americans I've been in for the past year descends into a purity spiral of identity politics.

Ugh don't I know it. I just had to leave one because they wouldn't stop going on about "TERFS" and cultural appropriation and any old shite they wanted to virtue signal about. I kept low key for a bit but I couldn't stick around because I don't agree with their views and don't like being around people who would cast me out if they knew 'the real me'

mamaduckbone · 10/03/2021 18:28

I haven't left the group because of this but there is one guy in my music group who is a mighty bore, calls his wife 'the missus' (pet peeve) and at the last Christmas party we managed to have, which was bring a bottle, proceeded to fill his glass copiously and often from everyone else's bottle (oh, and 'the missus's' glass, who wasn't even invited) without having contributed a thing, whilst holding court and getting steadily more drunk and obnoxious.
My friend and I were silently stabbing him with little tiny daggers for the whole evening, (and hid the nice wine)

ArcheryAnnie · 10/03/2021 18:31

The answer to all of these is organise your own group in secret, and invite along anyone else you see rolling their eyes. If Problem Person tries to join, explain that, sadly, alas and alack, the numbers are full, and there's a waiting list.

Dacquoise · 10/03/2021 18:33

School mums trip to New York for someone's birthday. Grew from a pleasant 6 to an unruly 13 of mismatched personalities. Should have bailed then. Mrs Control Freak Professional Committee Member and chewing on a wasp misery appointed herself as Organiser. Hence:

Limo booked to pick us up from the airport. No one wanted it or to pay for it on top of expense of trip which was a lot. It didn't turn up and we spent two hours hanging around like lemons waiting for it.

Bought bobble hats and t-shirts for skating in Central Park, again no one wanted it. All a bit old to risk injury. Didn't happen as we managed to dodge it.

Organised an itinerary without consulting anyone and made you feel like Judas for daring to go anywhere without the 'group'.

Chose all the restaurants including the empty one with the atmosphere of a morgue. Any suggestions like the chi chi little number in Soho with live guitar music were cut off at the knees.

Not enough rooms at the hotel for an odd number. Poor victim told she was sleeping on the camp bed for the trip although she'd paid the same as everyone else.

Same poor soul lost her passport and was ignored and then ostracised by the rest of the group ( not me I might add)for accepting a flight upgrade by the airport staff. Apparently she should have given it to the birthday girl who went along with the bullying of her.

Has put me off groups for life. Breeding grounds for certain people's psychosis!

Claudia84 · 10/03/2021 18:36

@GoldenOmber you need to track Dave down. It’s important that we know what became of him.

BlueLikeASmurf · 10/03/2021 18:38

@Grace58

It didn’t ruin my hobby for me as it’s quite individual and I’m very passionate about it anyway, but I’m in a lot of genealogy groups and used to be on a mailing list back when they were a thing. On one particular group there was a professional researcher who was an absolute dick, so argumentative, condescending and generally unpleasant especially to less experienced folk. I’m pretty confident at genealogy research so it didn’t discourage me (I just thought he was a huge twat and ignored him!) but I’m fairly sure he probably put some new people to the group off, which is a real shame. He later cropped up on a genealogy Facebook group I’m on doing the same thing!

I just googled him and he died last year, his obituary is delightful and talks all about how he helped people in local history groups

If his initials were RS I also came across him on genealogy groups. He could be incredibly helpful but never let anybody forget how supremely experienced and far more knowledgeable he was than anybody else. He was extremely patronising to newbies just starting out with their research and asking very reasonable questions.

NotFabulousDarling · 10/03/2021 18:44

I had to leave a writing group after an argument broke out amongst Americans about whether "Christmas" was an offensive term. They just couldn't see other British-speaking countries' points of view at all and kept accusing this poor Kiwi woman of being "racist" (they were all white Americans so this was hypothetical racism) for simply asking what was wrong with saying "Happy Christmas". Because, like many identity politics people, they expected you to Just Know.

sneakysnoopysniper · 10/03/2021 18:45

I joined a forum which is for pensioners and its like communicating with (very young) children in the playground. They do say that older people go back to a second childhood.

You are only allowed to discuss:

The weather
Your ailments
Your pets
Dead/dying relatives and pets
Baking and cookery
Shopping/DIY
Sport

You are supposed to sit on your ass and watch TV or Netflix when not doing any of the above. If you are doing anything so dreadful as working (Im self employed) then you dare not mention it because you get accused of being boring.

There are a few "queen bees" of both sexes. Well according to the membership there ARE only two genders and people who have had gender reassignments are evil. So are lesbians and gays.

One day there was quite an interesting discussion between several members on science fiction. One of the queen bees got bored with the thread so she published a picture of a particularly ugly looking baby. I asked if that was her grandchild.

Its one of those forums where many of the members are quite incapable of following the subject of a thread. A makes a posting. Instead of following up B takes a word or sentence they object to, de-contextualises it, and then begins trolling. Or they pull out some point A made on some other thread days or maybe even weeks ago.

Its like a forum for the "spittin image" puppets

Dailyhandtowelwash · 10/03/2021 18:47

@sneakysnoopysniper

I joined a forum which is for pensioners and its like communicating with (very young) children in the playground. They do say that older people go back to a second childhood.

You are only allowed to discuss:

The weather
Your ailments
Your pets
Dead/dying relatives and pets
Baking and cookery
Shopping/DIY
Sport

You are supposed to sit on your ass and watch TV or Netflix when not doing any of the above. If you are doing anything so dreadful as working (Im self employed) then you dare not mention it because you get accused of being boring.

There are a few "queen bees" of both sexes. Well according to the membership there ARE only two genders and people who have had gender reassignments are evil. So are lesbians and gays.

One day there was quite an interesting discussion between several members on science fiction. One of the queen bees got bored with the thread so she published a picture of a particularly ugly looking baby. I asked if that was her grandchild.

Its one of those forums where many of the members are quite incapable of following the subject of a thread. A makes a posting. Instead of following up B takes a word or sentence they object to, de-contextualises it, and then begins trolling. Or they pull out some point A made on some other thread days or maybe even weeks ago.

Its like a forum for the "spittin image" puppets

Why are you on it?!

airsealengineer · 10/03/2021 18:52

I decided not to join a philosophy discussion group on meetup as the man running it said on the meetup page, ' this is an invitation from me to you and that invitation comes with conditions..' there then followed a huge list of conditions - you had to do the homework he set before the group, you were only allowed to discuss the questions that he sent around in advance of that weeks' topic, - you had to attend all groups, if you missed a group, you still had to have done the homework for that group, you were never allowed to be late, you got kicked out if you broke any of the rules.

In a stunning display of lack of self-awareness, he then had a picture of James Dean with the tagline, 'with rebellion, awareness is born.'

Zwerty · 10/03/2021 18:54

I had to leave a meditation group once. We’d been building up to longer meditations and most people closed their eyes.

Half way through a 30 minute meditation someone trumped, loudly, in the silent echoe-y church hall.

No one else laughed or acknowledged it and I think I almost exploded trying to keep the hysterics in.

Zwerty · 10/03/2021 18:55

....So quite literally an arsehole ruined my hobby.

Changeforchangessake · 10/03/2021 18:57

@VintageDiamonds

I’m in a Downtown Abbey Facebook group where one of the admins regularly swiftly bans members who dare to criticise her favourite character. She then announces the banishing to the group in a brutal post outlining the persons previous crimes and character flaws and finishes off with a reminder that it’s only TV, folks.

Would you be able to send me a PM with the groups details?

FrenchFancie · 10/03/2021 18:58

Choir. I had been a member of a lovely choir for four years then this new woman appeared, very loud, very opinionated, very ‘well we will do it my way because I know best’.
I left because she would never fucking shut up. I believe most of the other members have left and pre Covid it was sort of limping along like a dying duck...

sherrystrull · 10/03/2021 18:59

I joined a local church baby group. Lots of lovely people. I met some people who have become good friends. Sadly I almost stopped going after the first week as a lady clearly resented my presence as 'an outsider' gave me constant bitchy looks, ignored me and talked loudly about herself constantly. Luckily I rose above and carried on going! But as a new mum it really knocked me

Bluenightowl · 10/03/2021 18:59

A school group because another mum (also a teacher in another school) decided to set out rules about what was/was not appropriate to discuss. The teacher in the children's class was one of the subjects were not allowed discuss. That group died a death within the week.

airsealengineer · 10/03/2021 19:00

@Zwerty

....So quite literally an arsehole ruined my hobby.