I have written and rewritten this post so many times after taking time to really gather my thoughts and sit with everything that has transpired in the last two weeks. If I'm being honest.. what has transpired the last three years of running the FindRPs server. Under the cut if you want to read. Warning: it's really fucking long. Sorry about it.
God I don't even know where to start, okay.
I have always tried to do my best to remain neutral in most situations and show a face of calm collection when it came to matters in the server. As a leader there, I believed that being anything other than that would only show instability of myself and on the rest of the staff. I always tried to make it known that I was willing to hear people out, and ready to enact changes if it felt like the right thing to do for the collective.
I don't know if that was the right choice to make, but it certainly felt like it for me, so that's how I ran things.. that's how I encouraged the rest of staff to run things. I've already said this to the former staff, but I have nothing but the highest respect for the hard work they put into that server. All of us were running that place for free, but it felt like a full time job with the way people treated us both on the server and here on tumblr.
Our goal was to provide a space for various platforms to advertise their rp groups, post 1x1s, post their resources, ask for help from their community, and more. FindRPs all started because tumblr tags became notoriously unreliable, group rps weren't able to mass fill their queues, sideblogs were being shadowbanned and deleted left and right. Why not streamline it into one easy hub? Why not make a place for a community? I've seen it said a few times now that we should have learned our lesson and not had any general chat or allow conversation at all. How fucking sad is that? In a hobby where the whole purpose is writing a story together... collaborating.... and you all can't even handle or have the civility to have a general chat.
I don't claim to have made all the right decisions, or to have said the right thing in a moments time. But things could so very quickly go from zero to one hundred there. Within minutes people would be at each other's throats and god forbid anyone on staff have a real life and not take care of it within seconds. I can't count how many times I was at work, or a family function, or a doctors office, and I get the ping that something happened but I can't deal with it right then and there. The anxiety of knowing that it will be talked about in the tags, and that if I or another staff member isn't online to take care of it right that second, we will get shit for letting it happen.
Isn't that insane? That I couldn't go about my daily life and do normal things without thinking about you all having no decorum and going after one another like children?
I was getting anxiety from not looking at the server for more than an hour or two. I don't know how in the world I thought I was going to be able to handle having a newborn and focusing on something that is going to be one of the most amazing experiences of my life, knowing that all of this would be in the back of my mind. It wouldn't be fair to my kid... to my family. And yeah... maybe that's me taking it too seriously. But when you dedicate three years of your life to this, and have been in this community on tumblr for as long as I have.. you fear the loss of it.
Don't even get me started on the lack of communication. Any blog that decided to let anons and rumors come into play and pass judgement on us with lies or half the story over the course of the server's activity... you all are complicit. No one ever came to us with their opinions and issues — the first thing that was on anyone's mind was which rpt blog can I go to. So instead of handling things like adults, you all hid behind anon and let someone else post it for you.
Because why attempt to make an actual change by speaking to us when you can just judge and bully us instead? No one ever said maybe they need some help and I should offer to join the team. But why would you... when you could see how we were being treated. When you were the one treating us that way.
Anytime something happened in that server, my inbox would fill with anon messages of death threats or otherwise inflammatory and cruel statements against me. I always deleted them and gave them no merit because what is some fucking anon going to do to me in my real life? Nothing.
This time though.. I was simply done with it. I was looking at the server, at my own happiness, at my own life and where I was being led, and decided that it simply wasn't worth it to subject myself and the rest of the staff to it any longer. All of us were preparing major life changes and were having conversations about possibly stepping down and handing the server off. I'm sorry that a few people decided to ruin it for the rest of you who never did anything wrong. I would have loved to hand over the reins to someone else and let FindRPs live on as the needed resource it was, but you all can make your own servers as you've said many times that you want to do. You can spend three years growing it to nearly 3k members of all rp backgrounds and life backgrounds and you can make your rules exactly how you want them and to deal with things exactly how you want to deal with them... I sincerely hope it thrives for you.
I'm going to call out a few specific blogs from this situation because you are directly complicit in the spreading of this. JJ (galitzined), Nan (nanschman), Xan (jimiin), Jas (snoopdoggs), Veda (nosyrpt), and fluoresceins. All of you decided that it was okay to bully. Several of you decided to say that I was subjecting Hermie, a Palestinian mod, to coexisting with zionists knowingly.. when it has always been the case that if they made themselves known we would ban them and Hermie would be the one to do it. We realized too late that we missed one glaringly obvious one and Hermie got the satisfaction of banning them before FindRPs was deleted for good.
All of us in our real lives are putting in the work to make change, you know, where it matters the most. Personally for myself, I involve myself in local and state politics and actively ensure that I am voting for representatives that align with Palestine or at the very least is not interested in supporting Israel. I donate to fundraisers when I am able. Not that I ever owed any of you a list of what I am doing... but I have always stood with Palestine. I fucking hate JKR, and was a moderator who voted to ban it in the initial rule change. (Love that some of you are trying to say I've been extremely active in the HP RPC and have proof because.... bitch where?) But you know... you all will spin anything to fit your narrative.
I said it many times that everyone on staff, every single one of us, was part of a marginalized group one way or another. Half of us were trans, more than half were people of color, I think literally all of us are queer. So you all decided that the best thing to do was to hurt members of your own communities, hurt the people that you claim to stand up for... that's incredibly telling about the kind of people you are.
Mar made a post recently that I think all of you need to read and take to heart. Many of us are so disheartened by the lack of change that we are seeing in the real world that going hard within a small community like the one here is where you can get your satisfaction — because it seems simple in a smaller space where you can watch change happen in real time. Mar put it really well, better than I ever could, so here is a link for you to read it yourself.
We are actively driving people away from this community. Some of them are warranted, but a majority of it is over the most petty bullshit that could be solved if we weren't so catty and quick to jump to conclusions.
Shadow, I do want to apologize to you. You did not lead to the downfall of this server, it was a long time coming. And I agreed with all of the resources you gave, I agree with wanting to educate someone. What I failed to communicate effectively, and I do take responsibility for this, is that you didn't need to do it publicly. You could have DM'd Lumos and taken care of it outside of the server, which is really all we were trying to say in that statement we made: why in the world are we having these conversations in the general chat of a rp advertisement server when you can just... talk to the person directly. Or I don't know... use the block button. All of you need to learn how to use that more. And you did already apologize for necro-ing it... but I believe you knew what you were doing there. Even on a laptop you had to scroll up to see the interaction with Lumos and there was no way you missed the timestamps. It was not the first time you decided to use a public space in the server to be mean to someone, so, I don't believe that you didn't know what you were doing there. Regardless of being correct in the information you were spreading, you were an asshole. We gave you a warning that the behavior wouldn't be tolerated and yet you continued to harass Lumos so consequences of your actions were to be banned. Not because of what you said or how you went about it, but because you didn't know when to stop.
I don't think Lumos has tumblr to see all of this, and I literally deleted everything from the server — I have no logs of anything that happened anymore. But we did rail into them. We told them that what they were saying was fucked up and they should read into the resources. All of us were talking about banning them anyways, but we wanted to take the time to think things through, to step away and sit with it and decide. Once again, God Forbid we handle things like adults and have real lives and think before acting, especially with all of you shouting into the tags about how we were handling it. They were getting death threats, both in their dms and out in the open in the general chat. Like what the fuck. Who in their right mind thinks that's an okay thing to do?
Anyway, we tended to handle things there privately. We preferred it that way because no one needs their dirty laundry aired out in front of 3k people, and have them weigh in on it while we're trying to handle things. Just because you didn't see anything happening on your end, doesn't mean things weren't happening behind the scenes. And screenshots are always a thing; we have never feared someone taking them for their records. I sent the screenshots to JJ because Shadow left out an entire part of the conversation. I didn't send it to "make ourselves look better" as Nan so lovingly put it. I did it for transparency.
Maybe we could have been more transparent over certain things, I don't know. But also.. some situations are simply none of anyone's business.
Anyway. It's gone now. I mourn the loss of something that I truly put my heart, soul, and tears into. I helped to provide a resource for the community who does not deserve it for free for three years of my life. I met some of the most amazing writers in there that I never would have crossed paths with if not for the server.
It's time to move on from the greater rpc for me though. I don't know if I am going to continue to be on this blog. I really don't have a desire to at this time. I do know I will be writing with my rp group and continue keeping in touch with others on discord. That's really why I'm not afraid to post all of this and let you all pick it apart. I simply don't care anymore. I'm a week away from my due date, and ready to take the step into motherhood. I'm so excited for it. My blood pressure certainly thanks me.
I urge you all to take a good hard look at how you interact with this community. I want you all to take a look at the complaints that are made all the time and have been for years now — of groups not surviving, of no one writing, of people feeling hopeless, or judged. You actively create this space. You truly want to be the change? Do better for the rpc then. Be kind, and if you can't do that, block and move on. The people you don't like and you don't agree with are going to be around for as long as they want to be anyway.
Best, Maeve.
