Message from Designer Stubble to the former JWR members

by Designer Stubble 123 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  TallaulahB

  I am not in any way privy to all or any of the details, but I have to say, people are reading FAR more into this from a very myopic perspective. When Moxie went away, JWR almost bit the dust. It almost didn't make it. Rifter stepped in and made it happen--I don't know why or what his motivations were, only that he did. We had the site for a few more years, even when it was financially not very easy for him. He stuck with it. He kept making it happen.

  The bottom line is, even though YES, for sure, we are/were a community--and the commiseration and understanding that comes from shared life experiences is not to be dismissed--JWR could not ever completely replace the services of a qualified therapist. I know people are not going to agree with me on this; hate me all you want, I get it, but all the same, our words and support, however helpful, can't replace the efficacy of a licensed professional.

  So, now, I ask you to put yourself back in Rifter's shoes. You have a few dedicated people like the Helen T's of the site, who try very hard to be welcoming and understanding, even though they are obviously well along in their journey. You have a few dedicated members who just want to stir up shit and act like little petty punks whom you feel obligated to babysit and micromanage, CONSTANTLY shit disturbing in obnoxious, fractious ways, and you realize that not only do you have a life that you'd like to focus on, but you realize that there are several outlets (like reddit and JWD) for people to visit, plus, overall greater awareness in the psychiatric community and oh, yeah, you are not a licensed therapist. You can only give/do/share so much.

  What do you do? Walk away, knowing there will be people who are bummed, people who are pissed off, judgmental STRANGERS who never even used your site castigating your choices, sad folks, naysayers, conspiracy theorists, and everybody in between, throwing shade and using inflammatory language just to stir the pot. Meanwhile, you've given much ground for people to vent, share, cry and lament the shitshow that is the JW existence, all while wanting to just drink a decent cup of coffee, watch a sunrise and live your fucking life.

  Give it a fucking rest. When someone reaches their tether, you have to let it the fuck go. Personally, yeah, I want my fucking posts back. I want my words. But, obviously, I didn't cherish them enough to save them anywhere else, and that is on ME, nobody fucking else.

  I can say with almost 100% certainty, I will not be frequenting any more ex-JW shit. This pisses me off. We have so many resources. Use them.
• 

  TimeBandit

  Damn Tallulah, I bet you could fry an egg on your head right now. I think you know what it's like to be cut off from people you care about.

  Who do you think you are talking to us like that? No need to be angry at those of us who have reacted negatively about the sudden closing of JWR. They knew we would be upset about it. Don't freak out on us. If you keep doing it I'm going to go make some popcorn. What's been going on since they cut us off goes with the territory.

  TB-

  P.S. "put yourself back in Rifter's shoes"..................Screw Rifter's shoes.
• 

  MacSwan

  I guess there are two or three camps.

  1. Those that hero worship anybody that makes a name for themselves doing anything ex-jw that puts them in the spotlight. This camp will stick by their heroes no matter what. They seem to be blinded easily by their awe and could just as easily still be following the governing body. In fact, they have just replaced one set of leaders with another. Of course, they help and get helped, but damn anybody that does not toe the party line.

  2. Those that are willing to question things, even if it puts a big fat target on their backs. They participate in the ex-jw community, either by helping others or getting the help they need. They realise that we don't live in a black and white world and that people have ups and downs and are willing to forgive transgressions.

  Yes, any site will have trolls, upstarts, people who cause problems. Jeez, that's a microcosm of life. It's also the view of the controlling mindset at the time - doesn't mean the trolls, upstarts, shit stirrers are always actually that.

  Don't want to deal with it? Pull the frikken plug. Thing is, don't frikken claim you are carrying the weight of the frikken world on your shoulders when you knowingly signed up for it. Also, don't build something up, which is a movement, and is bigger than you and than say "I'm the boss, I can do what I want, and I'm sick of this shizzle, so I'm going to pull the plug, because I'm the only one who can run this thing". Really?

  I peered behind the curtain at JWR. What did I see? Well, having a chat with Rifter in JWR chat a couple of years back, I voiced why I was unhappy about something and listed a bunch a people that supported me. What was his response? "Don't come on to MY site and try and turn MY members against me". I wasn't talking behind his back, I was talking directly to him. I wasn't organising a revolution. I wasn't trying to turn things upside down. I was merely voicing why I was unhappy about something directly to him. The response floored me. It was like a cornered animal. Yes, he ran the site. But surely the site had become bigger than him? After all, he inherited it. Why couldn't he just hand the keys on to someone else. Pay it forward?

  I knew then, that it is dangerous for any movement to have a single figurehead as the status quo of that movement could be compromised at their whim. It needs to be owned and run by several people with a plan for passing on the baton. A person should never be bigger than the movement.

  I don't think the site had run it's course. Why? As long as there are people who leave JW.org there will be a place for something like that. What had run it's course were the current custodians. They should have been enlightened enough to pass on the baton, instead of thinking only they could do what they had done.
• 

  Mickey mouse

  If Rifter has any seconds thoughts about the way he closed the forum then if he read some of these posts those doubts would be quashed.

  I guess haters gonna hate.
• 

  TaterSalad

  Sounds like an upheavel for sure. My sympathy to those who were affected..

  Tater
  
• 

  TimeBandit

  "I guess haters gonna hate."

  I guess groupies gonna group....

  TB-
• 

  TallaulahB

  Uh, yeah. NOPE.

  I don't have a figurehead. I run my own shit. I can personally guarantee that at least one moderator wished I would disappear off the face of the planet, even though I still supported (most) of what they said, just not all the time. You, Mr. Mac, are in no position to talk about the curtain you peered behind. You were part of the reason the site almost derailed a while back, because of a silly megalomaniacal desire to boost your post count. Nobody had time for that shit then and I certainly don't now.

  So, like I said, we have plenty of resources now. We have some dedicated folks who are in a position to make new resources, if there really is no longer access to the old.

  As for me being hot, I'm not even at a sizzle. And even if I were burning mad, any suggestions that I simmer down come off as paternalistic, which I'm sure you didn't intend, TB, but that's how it comes off as. There are plenty of folks who've come on the last couple of days screaming bloody murder and spouting a lot of incredibly stupid shit, who have been allowed to have their feelings validated. There is nothing wrong for me doing the same and again, let me point out, we still have a forum to do so. No, it's not laid out the same way. No, we don't have real access to our old stuff (btw, Wayback Machine FAILS MISERABLY for anything not on a front page, so yeah, SOL on that front). And, yeah, like I said, I'm pissed that my words are gone. I take pride in what I write; I fucked up. I should have saved it all, I didn't. 1000's of my posts have disappeared into the ether and I'm not happy about it, especially because JWR helped me through a really tough case of writer's block. It helped me get back to writing. It's gone. All fucking gone. But I refuse to make Rifter into the image of some evil, selfish puppet master. I certainly will not paint him with the brush of "oh, just like an elder... blah blah blah" which is the same shit people pulled on JWR every time they were reminded to act like decent human beings and grown ups.

  EVERY. SINGLE. DAMNED. TIME.

  The movement, as Mac calls it, is far bigger than JWR could ever be. Think about it. For the few thousand (active) members on there, how many actually overlapped here? And on reddit? Yuku? The Broad Road? How many awake and aware ex-JW's never bother to go to a meet-up or contribute on any forum, online, ever? More than we will ever know. It is dangerous (and frankly, part of the JW mindset) to attribute far greater import to a situation than reality actually dictates. Everything becomes a big fucking tsunami when you're sitting in a kiddie wading pool and the dog decides to jump in. JWR, as beautiful as it was, inhabited a very small corner of a sandbox of a yard of a neighborhood of a city and so on and so forth.

  There is an ocean, much more vast. There is a world, far greater. There is a universe, stretching ever outward, unknowable and unseeable. We typed away on our keyboards and cried in our cups. We have many places to turn to, even now. Call Rifter selfish if you like, but don't forget to look at your own reflection in the mirror while you're at it.

  And while everybody is here bickering, just remember, the point of all this is that regardless of JWR, the ranks of ex-JW's grows every day. That was the point, wasn't it? To watch that shit whither away? It's happening, so while I may never get over what happened to my family and is happening still, I can rest easy knowing that every day, the true death is happening in Brooklyn and Walkill and in every k-hole around the world. Their days are numbered, JWR contributed to that. Kudos.
• 

  Mickey mouse

  If I could like your post twice TallaulahB I would.

  And groupie? Moi? Bwahhahahaha!
• 

  notsurewheretogo

  No hate for Rifter...I don't hate him...I don't know him...

  I dislike what he did with the site, I dislike closing it without prior warning. I've lost a lot a good posts that I had bookmarked...the reason why I never copied it to anywhere was because I assumed the site was still up and if it ever was going to shut down then I assumed the basic decency that notice would be given.

  This thread is not about Rifter, Designer Stubble etc...it is not about people...I couldn't give two shits what Rifter is doing with his life or why he though it was a good idea to shut down abruptly but he was wrong...

  And he was wrong for reasons that have nothing to do with people, it is to do with the support people relied upon on that site and the wealth of informative posts that have been taken away from us.

  The fact Rifter is not unwilling to even open it back up for a while, sell it on etc is piss poor...

  It is exactly the attitude of the Watchtower, the very attitude we all fled from and flocked to JWR in the first place.

  I don't hate Rifter, I'm disgusted at what he has done to the people who used the site...it's unacceptable.
• 

  MacSwan

  Um says Tallullah who was given her own "badass" badge by the site owner. No special treatment there, right? Whatever. Obviously you are still going to toe the line.

  The "thanks" abuse thing was long after the conversation I had with Rifter. So not even connected. Tar me with the one and same brush just shows how unwilling you are to look beyond your viewpoint once you have made up your mind. I didn't boost my own thanks count - I thanked someone else - all legitimately, nor did I ask them to do in return. If anything, I exposed a foible of the site. It all went a bit wrong and I apologised for it. I messed up. I'm human. Go figure. Doesn't mean I can't or don't have an opinion.

  Thankfully I'm done with all this crap. People who know me, really know me and value me. That's what counts. It seems once certain people make their minds up, thats it. It's like being "marked".

  I had fun doing well in the 2016 rap battle with Fugue. And the wins on Mafia.