Fellow Ehellions: this is Miss Vertigo, member for four years in good standing, who never broke a rule (unless you consider stating that I’d written slash fiction in the past as breaking the ‘no sexual discussion’ rule), and was never warned or even approached by a mod apart from the time I myself approached EHD to give her a headsup about an outside person – someone who I’d posted for advice about – who’d tracked me down to EH with the intent of trashing me/causing grief on the forum. My one and only experience of mod contact did not go well; for my trouble in trying to anticipate and prevent trouble on the boards, EHD was hideously rude to me via PM in return. It was a long time ago now, but from memory: “You WILL never mention that woman on MY forum EVER again” among other delightful gems. (For my own amusement, I imagined her diatribe as bellowed by Ross Gellar in the manner of “MYYYYYYYY sandwich!!?!?!?!!”, while pigeons frantically flutter off in all directions to escape the din.)
I, along with many others, was banned yesterday with no reason given, but presumably for two things: being a former member of the Facebook group under discussion and for questioning EHD’s stance on outside activities in the sensei thread. My opinion on that stands: she has no jurisdiction whatsoever over what I can do away from school; I already have a mother, and guess what? She doesn’t get to tell me what to do either.
Since EHD is so fond of judging peoples’ moral character by their online activities, she would do well to apply that same logic to herself, lest she come out of this smelling of far fewer roses than anyone who was ever involved in the Facebook group, even the alleged ‘troublemakers’. Ironically, in this disagreement, it is they who are mostly holding their own far more classily than she, in the face of some hideous provocation to boot. (Changing someone’s username to mock her – after banning her and leaving her no avenue of recourse to change it back? Outrageous abuse of power and a sad display of the retaliatory rudeness that the mods take such pleasure in smacking down members for; this from an alleged etiquette ‘expert’).
The unbelievably petty crap going down on the forum now, when you boil it down to its component parts, is basically the result of people finding out about a party to which they were not invited. Rainha’s banning in particular is ludicrous, and a mistake which EHD should, off her own back, be publicly apologising for without *any* need for Rainha to get in touch to plead her innocence. I, too, was a member of that group in its early days, and am happy to go on record as saying that she did indeed speak out immediately against some of the very limited ‘mean girl’ antics, and left the group because she didn’t agree with that aspect of it. Yet she was banned by association without even a cursory attempt to find out, y’know, the truth. As were many of us, I expect.
~
So, then. What exactly *is* the truth, from someone who was actually there, and not gaining false information via hearsay, rumour and people who have their noses put out of joint and some kind of axe to grind because they weren’t invited?
Well, there’s really not that much to say about the Facebook group itself, so if you’re hoping for some kind of dishable dirt, I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed. It was formed simply as a way for some Ehellions who liked some other Ehellions to hang out together in a setting away from the forum without being constrained by the restrictions of forum rules and policy. Things were discussed there that were out of bounds on the forum. Relationship issues, personal things, sex, politics, religion – although the latter two not so much. We were free to express ourselves using language that wasn’t permitted on the forum and automatically butchered by the forum filter, for one thing. We could say ‘Oh my god!’ without having our words changed to something infantile like ‘crud monkeys!’. We could express views on more controversial subjects with people whose company and opinions we enjoyed without the fear of attracting the bannhammer for something ridiculous.
One very important aspect of the group that cannot be overlooked was that international members felt free to discus matters relating both to etiquette and to life in general without the threat of being labelled uncivilised boors simply because they choose to follow the accepted etiquette of their own cultures instead of US culture. Why exactly EHD thinks I should bow down and comply with US etiquette when I don’t live there is beyond me; while the server on which EH lives may be based in the US, the internet and therefore her user base/source of revenue stream is global, and I respectfully suggest that if she’s that militant about only US etiquette being discussed or correct, she should restrict non-US posters from joining based on their IP address. (As an aside, if she thinks we’re all so dreadfully uncivilised, perhaps she should also stop referring to herself using a name derived from the British honours system, the irony of which is not lost on me.)
But that’s a discussion for a whole other post; back to the Facebook group.
Of course, there was a degree of discussion of the way threads were going, because it was a common interest that all of us shared, much in the way that one might discuss a TV show with other fans of that show, or the results of a football match in the pub after the screening, or the events of the day’s news around the water cooler. But to suggest that the purpose of the group was to badmouth EH, or troll the forum, or to bully, is ludicrous and paranoid. Because that simply is not the case.
So, what is the case? Here are the answers to some of the questions that have been floating around over the last couple of days.
Why was it a ‘secret’ group?
Because Facebook groups have two settings, ‘open’ or ‘secret’; it’s the terminology used by Facebook, nothing more or nothing less. A ‘secret’ group the setting you select to make it one that does not show up in search results. ‘Closed’ may be more appropriate, but since that’s the descriptor used by Facebook for a group of that status, there’s nothing we could do about that.
Why wasn’t an open invite issued on EH?
Because 1) there’s already an open and sanctioned EH Facebook group for such purposes, here and 2) the world does not work that way and the ‘invite all or none at all’ line of thinking is unrealistic at best and places unnecessary restrictions on peoples’ social choices at worst; why on earth should people be forced to socialise with people they don’t like?
Why wasn’t the group openly discussed, in a ‘if you’re not doing anything wrong then you’ve got nothing to hide’ way?
Because it’s rude to talk about a party in front of people who aren’t invited, a stance EHD, being the etiquette expert that she allegedly is, has taken herself on many an occasion.
Why wasn’t the group opened up to ‘prove’ it was innocent when moderator Cass, followed by several disgruntled posters, asked for it to be so?
I am not the group admin nor do I play her on TV, but I should imagine it was because what they were doing was essentially hammering on the door of a house where a gathering to which they were not invited was taking place, yelling through the letterbox and demanding like petulant children to be let in so they could see what the partygoers were up to. Or approaching a group of people in a pub who have been quite happily having a conversation and minding their own business, and interjecting “Well? Are you going to tell us what you were talking about or not? If you weren’t talking about us, then you’ve got nothing to hide. Tell us, tell us, tell us!” Rude, rude, rude. As upstanding bastions of etiquette and politeness, should they not have known better?
Why wasn’t EHD invited to peruse the group?
Because, put in as simple terms as possible whilst still being polite: generally, people didn’t want to socialise with her, I’m afraid. It’s that simple. And because it was none of her business.
The story behind peoples’ participation in the group is no different to that of those who don’t want to hang out with their boss or certain colleagues outside a work setting, and in that situation, the accepted etiquette is to quietly go about your social activities without bragging about it in the office. And that’s exactly what we did.
And that, in all seriousness, is really all there is to tell.
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The root of the current problems on EH, and they are many and varied, seem mainly to stem from EHD’s rather overinflated sense of her own importance and the fact that she seems to be labouring under a couple of strange delusions: 1) that she has the right to dictate what members of her forum do away from that setting and 2) that membership of her forum is some kind of great honour; that those of us who fell victim to the bannhammer yesterday should be hanging our heads in shame and embarrassment and crawling back to her with our tails between our legs and a grovelling apology of some kind to plead for ‘clemency’. In doing so, she conveniently forgets that it is the membership who provide the advertising clicks which in turn provide her with income. Not so much of an ‘honour’, really, when you look at it like that, is it? She is not ‘graciously opening up her home’ to the membership as she, and many members are so fond of pointing out; she’s running a business, the membership mere end users to fund her advertising revenue, to the point where she requests that they do not install ad blockers on their computers (thank you, but no. I, and I alone, get to choose how I operate my own computer in my own home; she does not). It’s a business which, had I not been banned, I would have chosen to no longer patronise after the revelations of late. Of course, the manager of a business can refuse service to whomever he or she chooses. But in doing so, that person may well get themselves a reputation as someone who turns away customers because she doesn’t like their lifestyle choices, or disapproves of where and with whom else they choose to socialise, or simply because she does not like the cut of their jib.
Listen. I don’t have a dog in this fight any more. I’m not even a member of the Facebook group; like several others before me, I left when it became more of a place for family discussion, which isn’t my thing, and when the flow of posts began to clutter up my feed too much (this was before Facebook gave an option to not have group posts show up in your news feed, now rectified). But in the interests of fairness and balance, I felt it my duty to point out the other side of the story. A lot of people have been unfairly banned from a place they enjoyed, simply for being a part of a group that may, or may not, have contained one or two bad apples. Since I don’t have any recourse on EH any more, being one of those people, and certainly will not be appealing for ‘clemency’, because I don’t agree with the methods EHD employs to run her business and choose to no longer contribute to her revenue stream, the other side of the story is posted here. Do with it whatever you will, but now it’s out there.
All this aside, I enjoyed my time on the forum and I’ll miss the nicer people and the interesting discussion, and I’ve made some lovely friends through my time there. I’m signed off work long term sick right now, and the high flow-rate of discussion provided a nice distraction – there was always something new to read. On the other hand, while it did provide me with an eye-roll of amusement from time to time, I certainly won’t miss the irony of the owner of an etiquette forum and several of her moderators being some of the rudest and most classless people I’ve ever had the misfortune to encounter.
Finally, a newsflash. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with organising your own birthday party. Do it and enjoy it, kids. Let your hair down – you might even enjoy it.
UPDATE, 1/11/11 As of yesterday, the public Facebook group where some 200+ Ehellions past and present congregated to socialise, and which had been in existence and sanctioned for more than 2 years (EHD herself was a member until this week, I believe), was closed down by Facebook after it was reported to them for ‘copyright infringement’.
Funny, that.
