Car News

I'm deeply embarrassed to report on this. A Meetup.com group that operates out of Edmonton, Alberta recently decided to charge a small membership fee in order to offset the operating costs for the website. In the past, the original organizer for the group chose to pay the whole cost himself, but chose to step down recently. Some concern had been raised within the group over this change, and the group's organizer chose to openly speak about it during a meetup on Friday.

A group of members, appearing to be upset by the change, chose to attend the event with the clear intent of starting a fight with the organizer. One member stated that she was writing a story for her blog and interviewed the organizer, while the rest of her group interrupted everyone else and tried to control the table so they could continually attack the Meetup's organizer. She then posted a very offensive post on her blog, stating that this organizer was trying to destroy the community and that she was taking up arms to do battle. She literally did so, coming to the event with a fake sword and dressing like she was attending a LARP event. She makes note of this in her blog, which includes photos of armor and weapons.

Her blog post can be found here (https://shareenayoub.wordpress.com/2013/06/15/role-playing-gone-wrong/).

I am deeply embarrassed by this. This kind of behaviour does nothing to help our hobby, and is doing a great deal of harm to the Meetup group. Having been at this meetup event, I personally believe that this group of people came with the intent of staging a coup, and then threw a temper tantrum when their coup failed. There is a lot of background information leading up to this meetup and my opinion on the matter, including one person in that group attempting to pay for the Meetup hosting and then verbally attacking the Meetup's organizer for choosing to go with a membership fee rather than having one person shoulder the cost of the group again. Many of the Meetup group's member have happily paid dues, with some contributing a much larger sum of money. Others, like the author of this blog, have tried to threaten and grand stand within the group.

It saddens me that, regardless of where I go for hobby activities and public events, there are those that feel the need to start problems for personal gain instead of just work together or move on. This Meetup group is now left to try and pick up the ashes from this and other attacks, rather than move on and develop events and a stronger community. I'm disappointed that someone would willingly commit so much harm upon their own hobby. I don't know what their intentions were, but they have done far more harm than they can ever know.

Bryan Campbell