The Elitists

In the past I accused people of elitist’s behavior. I saw the slaughter of new members (newbies or noobs or even more popular: n00bs), because they didn’t live up to unwritten rules of speech and behavior. Easily the older members attacked them for not knowing nor living by those unwritten rules. It seemed unfair to me, which is was, so I fought my battle for the ones who didn’t dare to speak up, or were too weak to defend themselves. These days belong to my past.

First I joined the Dutch equivalent of that community and later I even quite visiting the American (official) community. With that, a new era started.

Now, about 2 years since I joined the Dutch community and about 6 months since I left the American community, I realized something.

The Dutch community, young and innocent and still searching for its identity at the end of 2007 when the forum was born, grew into its own. As of today we count 400 members and a shitload (there goes the classy tone of this blog) of posts.

We had some falling outs, though never as hard and tough as the ones on the American community (watch me dodging the term ‘official’). Still, we are a group of people, members if you will, with our own book of unwritten rules. We do measure new members to these rules and we won’t cut you any slack. As a matter of fact, if you don’t get through the tests, you won’t ever be a real part of us.

I consciously described it as harsh as I did. We’re actually quite a nice group of people with not that tight of rules as the ones on RKOP. Fact is, not everyone will feel right at home. Fact is also that we defend our unwritten rules whenever we see fit. We’re everything a normal, real life, European community would be; kind and welcoming, but judging and kind of liberal.