The Downfall Of The Lotus Society

Intro:

This post is not about gaming. I know many of my readers aren't gamers but keep reading, it's just the start. I just saw how long my text was and I appreciate everyone that takes time of his day to read it to the end.

Many years ago, there were 5 people gaming as they did almost every afternoon. Those 5 knew each other for quite some time and liked each other.

Competitive gaming started to became a thing for them and so they wanted to start their own clan. Everything they needed was figured out quite fast. Name, Logo, Homepage, all set up and ready to be used. With their new formed clan, they participated in tournaments and cups and did well.

The time came where other players got interested in joining in and suddenly the glorious 5 faced a problem. They never decided on any clan rules or made up a leader or anything an "organization" needed.

It was time to settle this and so they started talking about what kind of people they will let join the clan and maybe expand into other games.

This procedure took a while until they figured something out. The clan worked for them cause all 5 had the same mentality:

• Playing games is about having fun together
• Freedom of speech
• Accepting one and another (no toxicity)
• Help when you are able to help

With this, the rules were born and others were allowed to join the clan.

Time passes and suddenly those 5 became 40 people. Enjoying different games and having fun with each other. Since there was only 1 group text channel to communicate, it was decided to give every game that was played competetive its own channel.

Again a bit more time passes and 40 people became 70. The text channels were filled about different topics and people from all games played different games with each other when there was no practice or other schedule. People got to know each other and discussed many different topics. Therefore the most logical step was to create channels for the different topics so people from all games can join in to discuss certain topics with each other from games they normal don't play.

With this, people started joining those channels that weren't part of the gaming clan but rather enjoyed talking and discussing those topics. It was made sure that those people also accepted the rules.

The members started to get to know each other even better than before and they found out that some didn't even live so far from each other. Community events/parties started to appear and it was all fun.

On those events you saw people from every social subcultre imaginable. Even wedding partys were held with members of the clan. One of the last events I recall was a wedding party. 2 people that belonged to the goth culture held a party and the guests were our members. Metalheads, Punks, Nerds, Office workers, Makeup artists, you name it, came to that party.

Some of you might think: "How is it that such different groups of people were having fun together?". It's quite easy when you have people together that have the same mentality. The rules that were set at the beginning brought a certain mindset with it. Likeminded people are just having fun together, no matter the religion, race, skin color, cloth preferences, and so on.

The gaming clan was no longer a gaming clan, with that it was decided to give this thing that was created a fitting name: "Lotus Society".

If this would be the end of the story, we would all live happily ever after.

Years into the Lotus Society, it was brought to the "leaders" attention that racists might be in the society. People were investigated and talked to and yes, there were racists in the society. Problem was that not one of them ever did something that was against the rules. Yes, they were racists, but they've never done anything racist inside the society.

So how to handle that? People were outrageious when it was decided that no rules were broken directly and therefore nothing would be done. It became heated when a bunch of people started to file reports against the racists to the leaders. The leaders decided to still let it be since no one has done anything wrong but the people that openly hated on those racist people.

This was a clear violation against the rules so they got punished and this started the downfall.

Instead of openly discussing a rule change, people started to get onto each others throats. Temorarly timeouting and even banning was performed but nothing helped and member after member left.

Fast forward to 2 weeks in the past. The Lotus downfall happened moths ago and I thought this chapter of my life was done. I was mistaken when I got 8 E-Mails of 8 Ex-Lotus members that wanted to revive Lotus. They were still talking to each other and knew of at least 30 others that wanted to bring the spirit we had back to life.

They told me that they've asked the other Ex-leaders but everyone of them refused and I was the last to answer. This E-Mail was sent to me in an Inbox that I check like once a month.

I decided to bring all those people into a single chat room and discuss what exactly they were trying to accomplish and I agreed that it would be nice to have Lotus back, but this time managed properly, this time with clear rules of what we think this society should be like.

Since I was the last leader to even discuss this and no one of them thought about it in detail, I set up a list of rules on what I wanted this society to be. Problem was, I did it in a not detailed way so that those people that want to revive it have to think about what they want and come to terms with each other.

This was 2 weeks ago and most of the people that wanted to revive it, left the chat cause of the ongoing discussions. It would be nice to have something like that again, but people need to know what they want out of it. So I will wait patiently and just read what's being discussed. Since the chat was opened, I didn't even texted a single character into it, since I already made my position clear.

If there are people that came so far, let me say: "Thank you". If I sparked any interest in such a "society", you know how to reach me and I will answer any question you have about it.