Me getting off track on day 2 is probably my personal record.

When I saw the word stature yesterday, something specific and somewhat personal came to mind. I’ve been trying to think of something else all day, and now it’s almost midnight, so I just surrendered, and I’m going to get off track and stretch the prompt a bit.

Within a community, as time goes by, there will be some people whose voices may carry a bit more weight. The reason doesn’t really matter. It could be that they’ve been there for a long time, or that they have a lot to say. This is not a privilege; it’s quite the opposite, especially when you end up representing that community. And things become even more complicated when there are multiple similar communities in the same space.

You shouldn’t use that extra power your voice has to harm the other communities. And to be clear, this is a personal thing happening locally to small communities and has nothing to do with grand meanings or something like that. But if it can happen at this level, when you basically have close to no power due to scale, it can (and does, especially online) happen and be catastrophic.

I am being a bit too vague here, but it’s just me trying to vent some frustration because of people acting inconsiderate (I am trying to keep this thing civilised, so I decided to go with “inconsiderate”). We are talking about a “wishing for the neighbour’s goat to die” situation because a tabletop community I’m part of is having a ton of fun and getting new members, while another one doesn’t. Both share the same space but have very different values and focus. And because the one is much more relaxed while the other is much more competitive, the former is getting a huge influx of new people who want to have fun. It came to my attention that one of the more vocal members of the other community complained to a local event organiser because we are getting different, let’s say, deals for the events we participate in. That didn’t improve their situation but, instead, changed ours. I have no idea if they are happy with the result, but this is simply idiotic. And it’s not that this change has caused any damage. It’s the principle of the matter.

So yeah, your stature in a community plays a big role both internally and externally. And you shouldn’t act like an idiot. In fact, “you shouldn’t act like an idiot” is such a solid piece of advice for every situation.

I think I will leave it here. I can just continue rambling, but I’m just going to make myself angrier and you more bored. Tomorrow’s prompt is Poise. Let’s see if I can be a bit closer to the theme this time.

And until next time, have fun!