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?

This thread is gold. 😂

I am a tabletop RPer and have zero, nil, nada tolerance for arseholes at the gaming table any more. Most table top geeks are lovely, if a bit nerdy, but a few are absolutely flaming deranged. I've also left a couple of online gaming groups due to overbearing, viscious, queen bee behaviour from female gamers.

Currently my social life consists of the church flower arrangers and that seems Perfectly Fine. I just got lucky didn't I... 😶

I used to be in a small local choir. It had some members who had been there since the choir was formed, and had very bad cases of Founders Syndrome - and woe betide anyone who what’d to change something.

We had to change rehearsal venues, whilst our usual place had some renovations done, and the new place we went to was so much more convenient - plenty of parking, spacious, good lighting, and we didn’t have to haul any furniture into place beforehand or away afterwards. Plus it was cheaper.

Some of us wanted to discuss the possibility of making the move permanent - all we wanted was a reasonable discussion and a vote - if it went against us, we’d have accepted it and got on with things, but the clique got really nasty. One member was left in tears after a verbal attack, and I had my head bitten off by someone else.

At that point, we had a week or so left until the next concert, so I stayed for that, so as not to let anyone down, but then I left.

The feeling of relief at not having to go any more, was amazing - and made me realise how stressed I’d been for some time.

On the flip side, though, I’ve been in a couple of knitting groups that were both really friendly, welcoming and lovely to be part of, and a library book group that was equally nice. So hobby groups can be nice.

@OhWhatFuckeryIsThisNow

I fucked off out of the WI as the clique started just inviting their mates to deliver (and get paid for) the meetings. Anyone left fb groups because they get taken over by people with their own agendas? Sewing groups are really prone to it. Though my heart sank on my fountain pen group when a member started on about his particular hobby horse. And everyone saying how brave and stunning he was. Again, fuck all to do with pen and ink.

I'm in Durham and am now glad I've resisted my mum's nudges to join the WI!

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.

I home schooled one of my children for a while and tried to attend one of the meet up groups for home schoolers.

Both dc and I struggled with the cliques at our local group. We attended 4 or 5 different sessions but neither dc or myself could find anything we liked about any of the people there. I was looked down on and for the first time ever and my parenting was questioned.
We joined a group 50 miles away and turned up only to find the clique all there.
I was then telephoned to not come back by the woman who ran the group
It was the first time dc felt comfortable as the normal group were the smaller group and the other children they got along with and they wanted to return.

Complete bitches and I hope they get the children they deserve

@PacificState

Oh no *@CharityDingle* maybe it's the same guy taking all the counselling courses in the country sequentially as some sort of psych experiment...

I was in a craft class with a woman who dominated the teacher's time: everyone hated her doing it but the tutor just went along with it.

This woman would bring tiny children to e.g. exhibition setting up sessions & let them wander around, getting in the way & ruining it for everyone. I remember one putting his drink down next to a fragile piece of work I was about to display, so I took the drink & plonked it down next to a piece of HER work.

And she would burst into tears when we were having a happy moment & declare that we were all luckier than her.

Another class, another pain in the arse...

She stuck out like a sore thumb in our happy art class. Whenever the tutor spoke to us all, instead of being quiet & listening, she'd suddenly start making lots of noise - until the tutor finished speaking, at which point she stopped at once. Every damn week.

She took all her own equipment, but always insisted on borrowing things from other students, even though she had the exact thing she wanted to borrow, right there next to her. She couldn't be reasoned out of this by the rest of us who, naturally, didn't want to lend her our stuff when she had her own with her.

Once I asked if anyone minded if I turned off the radiator behind my chair; no-one said anything so I turned it off. PITA was the only other person near it. At some point I moved elsewhere in the room & when I came back the radiator was blazing again & my handbag on the back of the chair next to it was one step away from melting. PITA said nothing, but it had to have been her.

I used to be the treasurer for a gaming group. Until Bob decided he wanted to be the treasurer. If he’d asked me I’d have said cool, the job is yours, I only stepped up because they had nobody. But he didn’t. Instead he got his cronies together and they started saying CM shouldn’t be treasurer because she’s got DC, she’s too busy, Bob has more time to commit to being treasurer. CM isn’t a nice person, Bob is much nicer and deserves it more. Then Bob requested a vote of him against me as treasurer. I heard his cronies going round the room and whispering in ears: Remember what we talked about, you need to vote for Bob not CM. So basically they had been coercing people. I was saddened that people I thought were friends had gone to so much effort to push me out.

Then Bob had a change of heart and said I’ve been a shit about this, I don’t want to stand for the post of treasurer after all. He put his coat on and went home. Everyone was like wtf? His cronies were visibly furious. So I remained as treasurer by default.

Two hours later Bob submitted a formal complaint about me to the group and also to the UK governing body, saying I had cheated on the election to keep the post of treasurer. How had I cheated? Because when Bob withdrew as a candidate I accepted it and remained as treasurer - and that was cheating, because I should have insisted “no Bob can’t withdraw, the rules don’t permit that, an election has been called and we must have one according to the rules”. Bob said he should not have been permitted to withdraw, I had cheated by permitting him to withdraw, all he wanted was a fair vote and he had been deprived of it by my cheating.

I though even if I win a subsequent vote, can I really continue to socialise with these people who obviously hate me so much? People who talk shit about me, who coerce others behind my back and make official complaints about me when I haven’t done anything wrong. So I just resigned and never went back. Bob is treasurer now. I haven’t played since.

Men have ruined the gym for me.

Mansplaining equipment I've been using since they were in nappies. This happens a lot.

Not wiping down their machinery EVER so it becomes a woman's job because that's better than sitting in arse sweat (I call them out on it now though)

Hogging weights. I like to weight train, and a man using, for example, kettlebells for what should be 5 minutes turns it into 30 as they huff and puff in between lifting, check their phone, check their reflection in the mirror, chat to a mate etc.

Generally being intimidating especially in the weights area - staring, being load, making stupid fucking noises.

Basically if you want to see a live action example of misogyny and disparity between the sexes, go to any mixed gym.

My town's only female-only gym closed a while ago which I was devastated about. I've petitioned my own gym for female only areas to be told sorry it's pointless our sister gyms have done it and men go in anyway

I honestly feel like men ruin everything that should be nice

My DH is our allotment committee secretary. He spends most of our visits having to listen to moaning allotmenteers and refereeing childish fall outs. One bloke had a go at me because the plot next to him is overgrown ....but we know he wants it as well as his plot. His current plot is overgrown though....and he doesn't understand why the committee is reluctant to let him have a second.
I did all the work today whilst DH got dragged round by disgruntled folk....they are like fucking kids! They are told not to dump rubbish....they don't fucking listen...

Also the amount of baby groups I've been to with patronising rules and control freak organisers used to send me crackers. Thank god mine are a bit older now.

It would be things like

• mums can only eat healthy snacks (I once got told to put a Mars bar away I said no)
• no going on your phones - there used to be signs up saying "look at your baby not your phone". How patronising!
• the requirement that EVERYONE sings at the end
• HAVING to join in on a certain task
• everyone having a job to do - I didn't mind at all helping out but some groups would be so arsey about ensuring you made your own drinks, put chairs away at the end, tidied toys - I remember DS screaming his head of when he was a baby (turns out he had an ear infection), me being close to tears and being told by the bossy leader "It's the end now and everybody has to help out!". I thought she could have sensed that this week I could have a break. I didn't go back to that one.
• NO TALKING. My friend and I went to a baby singing class whereby mums would spend an hour squawking their way through the class and shaking musical instruments at their offspring wondering where their life had gone. A friend who was suffering greatly from depression felt a little teary so I took her to the side so we could chat about the issue that was exacerbating her depression. It was well away from the singing group, and a woman (not the leader, who was lovely) marched over and told my crying friend and I to "be quiet, we are trying to sing" sorry didn't realise this was the X Factor love. You're singing Tiny Turtle to a 6 month old 20 feet away, not training with Lesley Garrett

@TheCrowening

Creative writing always seems to attract that one person - usually working on a memoir of their oh-so-interesting life - who dominates and monopolises any conversation, managing to somehow turn any topic back to Their Incredible Memoir and, of course, Themselves. Which is nearly always pretty boring.

Yes!!!! This is SO true.

I write short stories in my spare time and am part of a few Facebook groups. I've noticed that so many men come on with shit ideas, or post chapters saying "what do you think" where the SPAG is awful and or the perspective changes, or it simply is badly written. And they go ape shit if you constructively point this out.

The best one though was the man who couldn't understand why his self published book on Amazon had only sold 10 copies. It turns out that the book consisted of a 3 page prologue, nothing else. The prologue was to the actual novel he was writing, which would be published at a later date. He was charging £1.99 for 3 pages!! And thought 10 copies was low. Ha He was utterly adamant that his work was such a work of monumental genius that £1.99 for the prologue was simply a bargain. Arrogant, stupid feck that he was

Yes. My knitting group had been running happily once a week for 4 years, about 6-10 of us depending on who was at work, etc all got on well etc etc. Until one new lady arrived.
Amazing how a person can completely upset the equilibrium.
If any of us had a black cat she had a blacker one.

yes, I am penguin wool lady. But now I write books.

About penguins.

Yer gorra problem with that? There's the door...

they have to be about penguins, though. You like penguins..?

I was a member of an athletic club for years, very uncliquey, supportive and competitive only if you wanted. Met some lovely running buddies. I attended some road cycling for beginners sessions that the club held, again lovely set of people. I didn't know a lot of them but over the weeks we started to have a bit of a giggle. A new lady joined and as above just altered the whole atmosphere. Clearly didn’t approve of some of us, snubbed myself and another lady quite blatantly but made a beeline for other people. It was sad because I’d never experienced that behaviour at the club before and it’s not as if I’m loud and opinionated, far from it. I eventually stopped going to that session, it just felt awkward.

Community FB group. The admin was a weird guy, would complain about people's posts and post political stuff which, according to his rules, was not allowed. He complained about neighbours doing too much laundry, he could see it hung out - the neighbours were in the group!

Some of s decided we wanted to have a community picnic, and there was some discussion about where to hold it. He didn't like the place that the majority chose and accused us of being in a conspiracy and trying to become the most popular people in the community (an older slightly run down suburban development not some high falutin' place.)

Then he kicked us all out! Membership had been dwindling for a while anyway and it went down to almost nothing not long after.

The baby groups were a nightmare. I was blanked at a couple of places and was quite upset. A friend I had met at the NCT class suggested we go to a new one together.
It didn’t start well and ended even worse.
When the other mums discovered we had CS’s There was an audible gasp of horror.

Equestrian club at uni. I joined when I was doing my foundation year. I found it OK and made a friend. We were both advanced riders. The following year the club had a new chair and cliquey wasn't in it. This woman had decided who was going to be on the team before Freshers week. Me and my friend were both told via fb messenger that, after the first lesson, she'd spoken to the instructor and, we really weren't all that advanced as riders and would be dropped down to intermediate. We contacted the instructor for clarification and he told us that he'd had no such discussion with cliquey chair. When we queried her decision, she got all her friends on the board of the club to agree that we had been very rude about the group, made a fake screenshot of me complaining about the club and booted us out. Their year of competition did not go well.
The only other one who has ruined a group is on fb. It's a dressage group and, OMG, the guy who runs it really thinks he is THE be all end all of how dressage should be. No one is allowed to question him. Every so often a video of him riding turns up on youtube and, if anyone posts it on the group, that post or comment is swiftly deleted. He refuses to post photos of him riding and the moment anyone questions his riding or methods, comments are shut down on that thread. The same if anyone asks him for photos of what he actually considers to be "correct" for reference. I only stay because there are some very knowledgeable people whose opinions I value (though they are also in other groups I'm in).

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've been in many German classes over the years and for the UK a surprisingly small number of German class attendees are obsessed with WW2 but the ones that are are great value. We had a bloke in one once that was so fascinated by the Enigma machine that he had invented a simplified mechanical copy of it and brought it to our class to show it off for two hours. Even when it wasn't about Enigma, you know it was meant to be a conversation class so very informal, you basically just chatted away about anything... as long as it was in German. This bloke would start an anecdote in German and then switch to English about 30% of the way through. He really thought his stories were so interesting that we we would all like to pay 20 quid a class to then sit there and just listen to him talking English!

Mandy Harris ruined BookClub

@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.

God, this has just reminded me I got banned from a Chalet School fan site for being mildly critical of a beloved character AND for pointing out (when an obsessive poster kept talking with complete seriousness about all the wondrous things that character ‘did offstage’) that as the character only exists in the words on the page, there is no ‘offstage’, and she only does what the reader ‘sees’).

I'm part of a geeky FB group with quite a broad interest range: cosplay, gaming, Disney, crafting, tv, cute stuff. It's meant to be a place to share your interests and a lighthearted space of the internet.

One guy keeps putting up these really long posts chronicling his cross dressing journey. He does not identify as trans but has an alter ego called Jessica who loves 'coming out to play'. He details the clothes he's trying on and how his very supportive wife took Jessica on her first outing to a mall so that Jessica could have some outdoor photos.

Each post is accompanied by about 10 photos of Jessica in miniskirts and has 200 comments of praise and admiration.

It's not really got anything to do with geeky interests and there's something about the whole thing that makes me feel uncomfortable. Especially when he talks about his wife as this dear little mousy person who has to give him continual moral support and be his photographer. It just seems off to me.