Speaker 1: Smart Welcome back. My name is Jamie Loftus, and this
Speaker 1: is my year in Mensa, my limited run podcast series
Speaker 1: about what the title is, my year in the American
Speaker 1: branch of the High i Q Menta Society. If this
Speaker 1: is your first time listening, I strongly encourage you to
Speaker 1: go back to episode one. If you don't, that's up
Speaker 1: to you. But you might feel a little lost, and
Speaker 1: everyone already feels so lost, and I don't want that
Speaker 1: for you, so I go back to episode one. If
Speaker 1: you listen to episode one, Welcome back, smarty Pants. You
Speaker 1: made it. I'll do my little disclaimer as I start
Speaker 1: the music. Bed Oh, that's a fun one. Who wrote it?
Speaker 1: You'll find out at the end. At the time of
Speaker 1: this recording, I haven't picked one yet, But that's just
Speaker 1: the magic of production, isn't it? Um? Okay? This is
Speaker 1: a true story told from my perspective, based on notes
Speaker 1: and writings and interviews that I've done over the past
Speaker 1: year plus in this organization, and all of the names
Speaker 1: have been changed. And with that, let's get the moving
Speaker 1: forward in time page tourney sound effect going, because we're
Speaker 1: going back to July four and it is still day
Speaker 1: one of the mensa annual gathering. So people at the
Speaker 1: annual gathering generally came here to do one of two things.
Speaker 1: Go to boring talks about nothing during the day, or
Speaker 1: get blackout drunk at night. And I decide I'm here,
Speaker 1: I'm going to try to do both. And trying to
Speaker 1: find a lunch table to sit at on the first
Speaker 1: day of the a g is like as terrible and
Speaker 1: traumatizing as freshman year in high school. And I play
Speaker 1: it just as safe as I did back then, and
Speaker 1: I choose a table called pet lovers. Pet lovers be
Speaker 1: mean to me, right right. I meet a couple of
Speaker 1: very nice women over the advertised corn chowder and caesar salad. Gross.
Speaker 1: I meet a grandmother in a celestial silk shirt who
Speaker 1: talks about her granddaughter's interest in science. I mean a
Speaker 1: single woman with a cat. I mean mother who is
Speaker 1: deeply invested in what she can't repeat enough are extremely
Speaker 1: gifted Sons. Sure someone should start a band called the
Speaker 1: Extremely Gifted Sons. The food, as mentions are repeating in
Speaker 1: hushed tones throughout this weekend, is very bad. But I'm
Speaker 1: trying to make conversation, and so I turned to the mother,
Speaker 1: who is extremely gifted son is like staring her down
Speaker 1: from across the room, and I say, you know, it's funny.
Speaker 1: Did you know that mensa means stupid in Spanish? And
Speaker 1: she looks at me incredulously, like I've just thrown the
Speaker 1: caesar salad up into my hand and baby birded it
Speaker 1: back into my own muff And she says, no, it doesn't.
Speaker 1: And the grandmother in the celestial silk is like laughing
Speaker 1: into her lemonade, and she says, it means table in Latin,
Speaker 1: but also it means stupid. As So I look across
Speaker 1: the cafeteria, which is affectionately called hospitality in this same
Speaker 1: room will eventually have an open bar that is open
Speaker 1: well into the night, and I try to figure out
Speaker 1: who's here, who am I dealing with? And while yes,
Speaker 1: the vast majority of the gathering and the organization is
Speaker 1: old and white, there was more diversity in gender and
Speaker 1: race and political thought in the younger section of Mensa
Speaker 1: than I had expected. There's by no means parody in
Speaker 1: the organization. But I will say I found myself to
Speaker 1: be initially hated and reviled by a fairly wide array
Speaker 1: of people with a wide variety of hug dots. This
Speaker 1: is important. The mention hug dot system is one of
Speaker 1: the only truly ingenious concepts that I came across at
Speaker 1: the annual gathering. Is how it works. Using a colored
Speaker 1: dot stuck to your name tag. A menicin is asked
Speaker 1: upon registration to select a color based on what they
Speaker 1: would like to worthlessly indicate is their level of physical
Speaker 1: comfort with strangers. So green dot means all hugs welcome, unhinged,
Speaker 1: yellow means ask before hugging the norm, red means no
Speaker 1: hugs at all, and blue means I'm single. And aside
Speaker 1: from the fact that it's open season on single people
Speaker 1: under this system, I do like it. My social anxiety
Speaker 1: has gotta hand it to him. It's a damn good system,
Speaker 1: the hug dot system. Even though I think single people
Speaker 1: should be able to choose whether people look them or not.
Speaker 1: I was like, what the blue one just says fun?
Speaker 1: Like does that mean fuck me? I don't understand, But
Speaker 1: I'm into the system and I choose a yellow dot
Speaker 1: because I'm game. I want to be here. But what's
Speaker 1: more important to navigating the weekend than the hug dots
Speaker 1: are the ribbons that attending medicines hang beneath their name tags,
Speaker 1: and some people have a row of ribbons that extend
Speaker 1: over a foot long. I only have one. It's a
Speaker 1: bright yellow ribbon that says new member beside my yellow
Speaker 1: hugg dot. But most of the people who approached me
Speaker 1: over the weekend are wearing a red ribbon that has
Speaker 1: labeled Hosier, and this indicates that they are an active
Speaker 1: member of the Firehouse group, just as a reminder. American
Speaker 1: MENSA Firehouse is an unmoderated, closed mental sponsored Facebook group
Speaker 1: that has a pretty storied history of targeting, bullying, and
Speaker 1: harassing people they disagree with. Coincidentally, it is also the
Speaker 1: most active area in all of MENSA. Some additions to
Speaker 1: the ribbon that as Hosier are ribbons that say things
Speaker 1: like Firehouse, boobs and bacon, and the occasional one that
Speaker 1: just says perverse. There's also a designated Firehouse table in
Speaker 1: the cafeteria, which is labeled with a cartoon of an
Speaker 1: owl with its head on fire. Some people use their
Speaker 1: ribbons to announce where they're from or or their preferred pronouns,
Speaker 1: but you'll find most ribbons have the comedic limitations of
Speaker 1: a clearance rack at Spencer's gift in the mid two thousands,
Speaker 1: and as the day goes on, I find myself growing
Speaker 1: increasingly paranoid of my interactions with people who have the
Speaker 1: hoser red ribbons. I go to a different talk, and
Speaker 1: as a lecturer wearing a Bazinga shirt discusses the future
Speaker 1: of artificial intelligence, I'm scanning the audience for red ribbons.
Speaker 1: And while I sit through a discussion about the various
Speaker 1: ways to use your cute children at business meetings to
Speaker 1: persuade sales. What I'm looking through the audience for red ribbons.
Speaker 1: And as I sit in the debate room watching civil,
Speaker 1: if occasionally alarming discussions about hot button issues where the
Speaker 1: winner is weirdly voted on by having the best speaker's
Speaker 1: face against the wall as if there's a firing squad,
Speaker 1: I am scanning the room for red ribbons. In the
Speaker 1: debate room, I hear a wide variety of arguments about race,
Speaker 1: climate change, and religion, some of which I agree with,
Speaker 1: as some of which is some of the most regressive
Speaker 1: scary shit I've heard in a while. I go to
Speaker 1: a talk called Television humor evolution or devolution. Very old
Speaker 1: college professors regaled a packed room with some of the
Speaker 1: most incredible misinformation that I have to share with you.
Speaker 1: It's not relevant to the podcast, but I would have
Speaker 1: to let you know what these people said because it
Speaker 1: doesn't make any sense and it made me laugh. Throwing
Speaker 1: some goofy music. Okay, television humor evolution or devolution, Okay,
Speaker 1: here's one of my favorite ones. For the edginess of
Speaker 1: vulgarity of South Park is all the more shocking because
Speaker 1: the lines are spoken by quote unquote children. Why quote unquote.
Speaker 1: Seth McFarland is known for playing Cartman and many others.
Speaker 1: He is not on the show. We have to ask ourselves.
Speaker 1: Is n C I G S a comedy as well?
Speaker 1: And then a couple of sides later that lab technician
Speaker 1: she's goffe and that's a light mooteeth. She's very, very gone.
Speaker 1: With Shakespearean comedies, the women can only be uppity in
Speaker 1: the first act and by the last act they've been tamed.
Speaker 1: There's also this like long meandering argument that Charlie Sheen
Speaker 1: was removed from Two and a Half Men for quote
Speaker 1: unquote sexual problems. But then one of the professors was like, well,
Speaker 1: his character on the show also had sexual problems, so
Speaker 1: the show wasn't funny. After he left, there was one
Speaker 1: slide that just said www dot Everybody Loves ray dot com,
Speaker 1: which you should check it out. It's a really good
Speaker 1: Like Angel Fire fans site for Everybody Loves Raymond, Animated
Speaker 1: sitcoms automatically create distance. This is why Family Guy two
Speaker 1: thousand and twelve is allowed to be so vulgar as
Speaker 1: the stories are told about the dysfunctional Griffons. Okay, ending tangent,
Speaker 1: but I hope you enjoyed that as much as I did.
Speaker 1: So this talk is followed by the equally punishing oh no,
Speaker 1: we gotta do different goofy music mensa joke Off, whose
Speaker 1: moderator explains that humor is to quote disarmed others unquote,
Speaker 1: as well as to reflect quote shared experience where we
Speaker 1: are in our development and sexual selection parentheses. Women sell
Speaker 1: like men that show wit unquote the most mensa ship
Speaker 1: I've ever heard in my life. But the joke off
Speaker 1: basically functions as an open mic and since are welcome
Speaker 1: to the front of the room to perform in categories
Speaker 1: like old people jokes, light bulb jokes, jokes about professions,
Speaker 1: and political jokes, a topic that everyone in the room
Speaker 1: agrees as best to not even attempt. There are a
Speaker 1: number of speakers who throughout the weekend are noticeably jarred
Speaker 1: by the political divisions in the room and the joke
Speaker 1: off moderator. I hate that I have to say joke off.
Speaker 1: The joke off moderator looks genuinely surprised when his kind
Speaker 1: of low hanging fruit Trump University joke gets a couple
Speaker 1: of groans from the audience, and he says, really, and
Speaker 1: another member just shouts out, don't boil the moon, and
Speaker 1: others are kind of muttering in agreement, and so the
Speaker 1: moderator shrugs and is a little confused, but he says
Speaker 1: we'll move on. And by the time the final debate
Speaker 1: room I go to that day closes, which is on
Speaker 1: reproductive rights that featured an intense, anxiety inducing spar between
Speaker 1: a liberal woman and an extremely pro life teenager, it's
Speaker 1: already past eleven at night. And two who I will
Speaker 1: remind you is the first friend I make at the
Speaker 1: MENSA Annual Convention and the second most blocked member of
Speaker 1: American MENSA Firehouse, me being the first. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1: And two and I ran into each other again at
Speaker 1: the final debate, and he knows exactly where all the
Speaker 1: parties are on the fourth and fifth floor of the hotel.
Speaker 1: It is time to go to the parties now. Because
Speaker 1: it's MENSA. The party system is also needlessly complicated. All
Speaker 1: of the parties that I go to on this night
Speaker 1: are advertised within the Men's Arising Annual Gathering pamphlet that
Speaker 1: we're given on our way into the Sheraton on the
Speaker 1: first day, and most are divided by s I G
Speaker 1: s or special interest groups. So there's the Boomer Suite,
Speaker 1: which is next to the Gay s I G Suite,
Speaker 1: which is across from the gen X Sweet, which is
Speaker 1: across from the gen Y Sweet, and that's where I'll
Speaker 1: spend most of my time. And why MENSA does not
Speaker 1: recognize the term millennials is unclear to me. They call
Speaker 1: it gen y whatever. There's also a Firehouse Suite, and
Speaker 1: that's the only party I hear of happening on the
Speaker 1: fifth war And that makes sense because there's two thousand
Speaker 1: members of the Firehouse Group and their membership comprises a
Speaker 1: pretty large amount of people who are in attendance at
Speaker 1: the annual gathering. But at first two and I go
Speaker 1: to the gen Wy Sweet and and it's honestly pretty fine.
Speaker 1: A woman I met in a hotel room under very
Speaker 1: confusing circumstances that I will explain to you in a
Speaker 1: future episode. She recognizes me and she gives me a
Speaker 1: big hog and she and her husband appear to be
Speaker 1: the organizers of the suite and they're actually from my area.
Speaker 1: So she's quick to introduce me to all the other
Speaker 1: youngish medicines, and they're all pretty welcoming and curious as
Speaker 1: I'm nervously compulsively refilling my cup with the cheap KEG
Speaker 1: beer that's there. And there is this feeling that I'm
Speaker 1: like retroactively attending every party I didn't get invited to
Speaker 1: when I was a teenager, and no way to source this,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't seem like I'm the only one that
Speaker 1: feels that way. And it's at this party that I
Speaker 1: realized just how many people associate controversy with me, because
Speaker 1: at all times I have to wear a badge with
Speaker 1: my full name on it, which sucks. At the party,
Speaker 1: I'm approached by multiple people who cautiously ask me, how's
Speaker 1: your a G going? Is it different than you expected,
Speaker 1: how I'm enjoying myself. What maybe decided to come if
Speaker 1: I was going to be writing about the experience. And
Speaker 1: I get pretty good at answering this question on my
Speaker 1: first night, which is lucky because I will have to
Speaker 1: answer it several hundred times in the days to come.
Speaker 1: And it's here that I kind of give the reflective
Speaker 1: reply that I take with me through the rest of
Speaker 1: the annual gathering, which is some variation on what people
Speaker 1: told me. I wasn't giving mensa a chance in my pieces,
Speaker 1: so I took so and so up on the invitation
Speaker 1: to come, and here I am. Hi. The organizer's husband
Speaker 1: comes up to me and asks me how it's going,
Speaker 1: before mentioning we have a mutual friend. He's very friendly,
Speaker 1: and I'm later informed that he's had me blocked online
Speaker 1: for months. Someone else comes up to me and says, shit,
Speaker 1: love this. And I don't know this guy right now,
Speaker 1: but he's really going to dominate the toga party tomorrow night.
Speaker 1: One man in particular, who holds a high position in
Speaker 1: American medicine. Who am going to call? Joey corners me
Speaker 1: near the cooler keg where I am still nervously drinking
Speaker 1: and Joey is a very gregarious and kind of intense guy, so,
Speaker 1: like many other people I meet, he asked me the
Speaker 1: standard line of conscious questioning, and I give my standard
Speaker 1: cautious answer, and he's repeating that regurgitative defense of the
Speaker 1: Firehouse group, which is say it with me. They're the
Speaker 1: nicest people in real life, nothing like they are in line.
Speaker 1: So this conversation continues for about twenty minutes of intense
Speaker 1: eye contact until Two finds me in the dark shuffle
Speaker 1: of the gen Y suite and says, dude, what was
Speaker 1: Joey talking to you about? For so long? I was
Speaker 1: getting worried I have to yell in his ear to
Speaker 1: be heard, And I say, I don't know. He asked
Speaker 1: me about why I'm here and how nice the Firehouse
Speaker 1: people are in real life. I have no idea who
Speaker 1: he is, and Two just starts laughing. Joey was one
Speaker 1: of the guys leading the charge against you in Firehouse.
Speaker 1: He works for MENSA. He knows you don't know who
Speaker 1: he is, okay, And like, no, I'm not okay. And
Speaker 1: this happens multiple both times in my time and MENSA.
Speaker 1: Someone is very nice to my face, and I later
Speaker 1: find out that they have said horrible things online and
Speaker 1: have blocked me for months. It is a crazy making thing,
Speaker 1: and I'm starting to feel a little disoriented and dizzy,
Speaker 1: and I'm a little drunk, and I lose track of
Speaker 1: two as he goes over to flirt with someone on
Speaker 1: the other side of the party. And around this point
Speaker 1: I decide I'm going to leave. There's no way I'm
Speaker 1: going to go up to the firehouse suite this late
Speaker 1: in the night, and the combination of shitty cafeteria food
Speaker 1: and for anxiety beers in rapid succession is just making
Speaker 1: me feel awful. So I go to the bathroom. I
Speaker 1: take a couple of notes, and I text my boyfriend
Speaker 1: to let him know that I'm okay, because he wanted
Speaker 1: to be at the MENSA Annual Gathering. But it's not
Speaker 1: a couple's retreat. It's the MENSA Annual Gathering, bitch, and
Speaker 1: I feel positive that going any less than alone would
Speaker 1: result in extreme backlash. I leave the bathroom and a
Speaker 1: few how's your age goings Later, I emerged from the
Speaker 1: gen Y Sweet into the hallway where people are sort
Speaker 1: of oscillating between board games and drunken conversations. And unfortunately
Speaker 1: for me, and I don't even make it to the
Speaker 1: elevator before someone else stops me. This is a guy
Speaker 1: in his forties and he approaches me with a smile
Speaker 1: as well as blocking my exit. At this point, it's
Speaker 1: past midnight and it's still somehow ninety degrees out. He says,
Speaker 1: I'm familiar with your work, and I start to brace
Speaker 1: myself for what I think is this inevitable direct confrontation
Speaker 1: until I look down at his name tag no red ribbon,
Speaker 1: and then he kind of laughs a little bit and says, no, no,
Speaker 1: I mean I like it. And it's not until I
Speaker 1: hear myself like exhale that I realized I look scared.
Speaker 1: And this is a fact that is corroborated by several
Speaker 1: members of Firehouse and the group after the event is over.
Speaker 1: I look scared, and I say really, and he says yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a whole hold on and it's becoming clear to
Speaker 1: me that I'm not going to be able to leave
Speaker 1: anytime soon. And he beckons over a few other people
Speaker 1: who are closer to my age and says, this is Jamie.
Speaker 1: She came. The others are laughing and drinking their beer,
Speaker 1: and one gives me a high five. One of the
Speaker 1: guys says, Oh, we've been waiting for something like that
Speaker 1: to happen. It's been years of them doing all that.
Speaker 1: Are you going up to firehouse? And even hearing it
Speaker 1: just makes me tense up a little bit. There's a
Speaker 1: few red ribbon guys near the elevators and they're about
Speaker 1: to head upstairs, and I say, I don't think tonight.
Speaker 1: But the guys who like my articles are kind of
Speaker 1: pushing it, and they say, oh, we'll come up with you.
Speaker 1: It'll be fine, you'll be safe. I'm kind of thinking, like, no,
Speaker 1: I've seen a horror movie before. But the moment he
Speaker 1: says that, I know that I'm going to go because
Speaker 1: I promised myself that I would give them medicines a chance,
Speaker 1: and I wasn't going to take a seven hour greyhound
Speaker 1: bus trip to not do that. I mean, and of
Speaker 1: course this is just my perspective. I'm sure my best
Speaker 1: friend would tell you that I'm addicted to putting myself
Speaker 1: in harm's away for reasons that I should speak to
Speaker 1: a therapist about. But the point is that I closed
Speaker 1: the uber app and I opt in to the firehouse
Speaker 1: hang and there's still one lingering red ribbon hoser near
Speaker 1: the elevator. When the four so people and I finally
Speaker 1: get to the elevator to go the opposite way that
Speaker 1: I was planning, I'm going to call this guy Patrick,
Speaker 1: and he stops me very gently and says, hey, are
Speaker 1: you are the guys in with cuts them off and
Speaker 1: says not to bother us because we're going up to firehouse.
Speaker 1: Patrick is visibly uncomfortable at this news, and I stumble
Speaker 1: over my words, half drunkenly, trying to assure him that
Speaker 1: I'm not going to, you know, go up there and
Speaker 1: cause a scene. And he raises his eyebrows and he
Speaker 1: thinks about that for a second and says it's alliance,
Speaker 1: then proceed with caution. And people in horror movies don't
Speaker 1: usually get quite this many warnings. That would just be
Speaker 1: bad writing. But I'm feeling a little pressure to go
Speaker 1: up and I've already sort of steeled myself to do it,
Speaker 1: so I say okay, thank you, and the few people
Speaker 1: and with seem a little annoyed, and Patrick shrugs and says,
Speaker 1: I don't think you've been barred from it, but you know,
Speaker 1: I'm just saying it's alliance to and I'm feeling a
Speaker 1: little defensive, and I say, well, I feel like the
Speaker 1: way I entered the organization was in such a bizarre way,
Speaker 1: and and I'm launching into what feels like prepared statements
Speaker 1: after only twelve out of my planned sixty hours day
Speaker 1: is over. The screenshots is what got people. But it's upstairs.
Speaker 1: So we go up to the party slightly drunken, disorganized,
Speaker 1: and for your sake, I sincerely hope that you never
Speaker 1: know the feeling of walking into a living, breathing, hostile
Speaker 1: comments section. And it's at this point, listener, that I
Speaker 1: have to take you out of this compelling fourth of
Speaker 1: July narrative to take you back in time a little bit,
Speaker 1: because we really should talk about the screenshots that Patrick
Speaker 1: is referring to and the continued argument for why the
Speaker 1: denizens of Firehouse choose not to forgive me. For forgiveness
Speaker 1: I never really requested, so page turn effect. Instead of
Speaker 1: telling you what the American meant a Firehouse secret Facebook
Speaker 1: group is, I will let them tell you what it
Speaker 1: is instead. Via and I wish I were kidding. A
Speaker 1: short animation that a member of the group had personally
Speaker 1: commissioned in order to dunk on me. It was captioned quote,
Speaker 1: I think Jamie Left could benefit from this, but alas
Speaker 1: she's dead to me unquote honestly high drama Shakespearean I
Speaker 1: love it. This is what the animated video states, American
Speaker 1: Mensa Firehouse. Many Benson's had ventured into the firehouse. They
Speaker 1: expected mind numbingly academic conversations imagine unicorns romping through meadows. Instead,
Speaker 1: they discovered that Menson's are well opinionated, rude and rough curmudgeons,
Speaker 1: but they are also kind, thoughtful, and generous. Conversations offended, some,
Speaker 1: excited others, and in the end we all have the
Speaker 1: same false inshore comings as everyone else. With one difference.
Speaker 1: We were quicker, video and buddier. I wouldn't trade the
Speaker 1: group for any other. Oh and boobs always boobs, Oh
Speaker 1: and boobs always boobs. My introduction to this group, as
Speaker 1: it pertains to me, was by receiving a notification that
Speaker 1: I had been tagged in a post that contained the
Speaker 1: link to the story I had written about getting into mensa, which,
Speaker 1: and I can't say it enough, was called good news.
Speaker 1: They let dumb sluts into mensa now the Slaton question.
Speaker 1: Being myself, it was made immediately clear to me that
Speaker 1: they did not care for this dumb slut joke I
Speaker 1: made at my own expense. I'd like to share some
Speaker 1: of the assorted replies that had already been written by
Speaker 1: the time I was tagged. They are I agree that
Speaker 1: she's a dumb cunt oh slut who's too dumb to
Speaker 1: tweeze her eyebrows if she joined this group to cause
Speaker 1: trouble for MENSA block her anyone else sent her nudes.
Speaker 1: Yet where is national at a time like this that
Speaker 1: she won't part dissipate in our boom thread and probably
Speaker 1: does not even like bacon. Again, I can't stress enough
Speaker 1: menicines are not very funny, and aside from my initial
Speaker 1: vetting of some right wing memes, this was the first
Speaker 1: that I had seen much of anything in the group,
Speaker 1: and after receiving the warnings about Firehouse, I had combed
Speaker 1: through some of the posts in the group to confirm
Speaker 1: what I had been told. The prominent political leanings described,
Speaker 1: and sure enough, what I think are the hallmarks of
Speaker 1: far right groups were all there. From the bad photo
Speaker 1: shops of Alexandria Acasio Cortez, bad faith arguments about bathroom
Speaker 1: rights and race, the occasional feminism is cancer and just
Speaker 1: general owning the Libs. And like the annual gathering, the
Speaker 1: group is majority white and skewing older, and there is
Speaker 1: a fair amount of disagreement and discussion among members in
Speaker 1: the comments on more hot button American issues. Also president
Speaker 1: the group where some inside jokes, updates about members lives,
Speaker 1: requests for advice in certain areas of their lives, and
Speaker 1: generally ranging from people in their thirties to people in
Speaker 1: their late sixties, which is you hate to say it,
Speaker 1: the dreaded parents on Facebook demographic. So screenshot these insulting
Speaker 1: replies about my article and I post them to Twitter
Speaker 1: without replying to the Facebook thread and without blocking the
Speaker 1: names out. So I didn't think at that time, and
Speaker 1: I still struggle with the idea that people who are
Speaker 1: directly insulting and harassing another person warrants a censure of
Speaker 1: their names. And I honestly wasn't thinking about it that
Speaker 1: hard at the time I posted it. Because here was
Speaker 1: this group that I had been explicitly warrant was toxic
Speaker 1: and liked to go after members without prompting going after
Speaker 1: me without prompting. And this is a confusing, kind of
Speaker 1: difficult thing to talk about because would it have been
Speaker 1: more ethical to block those names out? Absolutely, and to
Speaker 1: any medicine who is listening to this, I would do
Speaker 1: it differently if you were calling me a dumb cunt today,
Speaker 1: I really would. And I don't know if that is
Speaker 1: personal growth or refusal to engage, and I don't care
Speaker 1: which I know. I would block out the names and
Speaker 1: the few comments, including the boob thread, which we'll get
Speaker 1: to that I I posted without centering the names. That
Speaker 1: wasn't fair of me, that wasn't any of my fucking business.
Speaker 1: And I took down the tweets that included names that
Speaker 1: weren't directly harassing me. The comments directed at me, we're
Speaker 1: about par for the course of online harassment I've received
Speaker 1: in the past in many a comments section, but the
Speaker 1: context for it was very different, because this was online
Speaker 1: harassment from people who were supposed to be some of
Speaker 1: the smartest people in the world, and most of them
Speaker 1: were at least in their thirties, just hurling j V
Speaker 1: insults at a stranger in a secret Facebook group. And then,
Speaker 1: as promised, there was the bootbread which is a pretty
Speaker 1: cool of MENSA famous effort dating back to where a
Speaker 1: member posted, I want to see some boobs help me out, ladies,
Speaker 1: hashtag boop thread. What followed this comment was twelve hundred
Speaker 1: pictures of various members boobs, which has later moved over
Speaker 1: to a second thread that had five hundred more boob replies.
Speaker 1: And I don't know what else to say about the
Speaker 1: Boobgreat other than I think it's the best part of
Speaker 1: the group as long as you're posting your own boobs.
Speaker 1: I shouldn't have outed the boob thread. I should have
Speaker 1: been more thoughtful about that. And I apologize to the
Speaker 1: book thread, and I will continue to apologize to the Bootgreat.
Speaker 1: I am sorry to the boob thread. I reply to
Speaker 1: a few of the comments to let members know that
Speaker 1: I've seen what they've been writing, and at this point
Speaker 1: I'm kind of still joking about everything. At one point,
Speaker 1: I write hello, thank you for reading the piece, and
Speaker 1: a special shout out to all the olds and the comments,
Speaker 1: calling me ugly have a great day, everyone, and one
Speaker 1: user replies, welcome to Firehouse. It doesn't get better. Then
Speaker 1: comes the strange death threat that to this day, Firehouse
Speaker 1: members insist was intended as a joke. I did not
Speaker 1: block out the user's name when posting on Twitter, but
Speaker 1: in everything I've written since I have it reads as followers, Hello,
Speaker 1: Jamie Loftus. You've met the mild mannered organ repairment of MENSA.
Speaker 1: Now you have met our criminal element. There are people
Speaker 1: here who can really hurt you. In your world, that
Speaker 1: means posting Twitter rents where you're a racist, or fake reviews,
Speaker 1: it means something different here. This is serious. We have
Speaker 1: men here who have killed, We have those who have
Speaker 1: served time, one who did the unmentionable and fugitive felons.
Speaker 1: There was a woman here who pissed a lot of
Speaker 1: us off a few years ago, and now she's dead. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're welcome here. All dues, paid members are but that's all.
Speaker 1: No one is looking out for your safety. And could
Speaker 1: this have been a strange joke, sure, But after multiple
Speaker 1: warnings about the group and a feel for its attitude
Speaker 1: on a lot of subjects, I didn't feel that I
Speaker 1: could take this as a joke in good faith. So
Speaker 1: I posted it to Twitter without the name redacted, and
Speaker 1: woke up the next morning to find that my Twitter
Speaker 1: account had been banned for quote violating our rules against
Speaker 1: posting violent threats unquote. So just to walk you through
Speaker 1: the nightmare that is social media, a band had been
Speaker 1: made on my account for posting a threat made against
Speaker 1: me the men since we're getting very tricky. So there's
Speaker 1: a popular assertion that people, specifically women, are quick to
Speaker 1: accuse someone of being whiny or overly sensitive when threatened
Speaker 1: with violence online, whether that's as a joke or not.
Speaker 1: And as often as these arguments come up, they're difficult
Speaker 1: for me to understand based on the empirical evidence that
Speaker 1: people follow through on threats like this with with relative frequency.
Speaker 1: There has been a disturbing increase in the likelihood of
Speaker 1: people taking threats, even ones made ironically or with coded terms,
Speaker 1: offline and into the real world. Whether we're talking about
Speaker 1: any of the mass shootings that were directly promised and
Speaker 1: foreshadowed on online forums, or racial and religious hate crimes
Speaker 1: encouraged and carried out like at christ Church in New Zealand,
Speaker 1: or the still active gamer Gate harassment campaigns that cause
Speaker 1: some women to go into hiding, or the increase in
Speaker 1: real life consequences of cyberstalking and cyber bullying. There are
Speaker 1: a lot of reasons and examples to treat a threat
Speaker 1: made in a private forum as something to be taken seriously,
Speaker 1: and based on what I've seen, and based on a
Speaker 1: lot of the examples I just provided, the idea of
Speaker 1: free speech is a frequently invoked substitute for dangerous or
Speaker 1: threatening speech. And Firehouse, While I am not implying that
Speaker 1: they are criminals, I am implying that the low rumblings
Speaker 1: of this exact model were at this time present in
Speaker 1: that group. Okay, So upon logging into Firehouse that morning
Speaker 1: to see where the conversation had gone overnight, I found
Speaker 1: that I could not see much in the group at all.
Speaker 1: And even though I had no Twitter account, if you
Speaker 1: searched my name on Twitter, hashtag would pop up called
Speaker 1: hashtag mensa responds. Here were some of the hashtag mensa response.
Speaker 1: Jamie Loftus has been suspended for attacking our membership without cause.
Speaker 1: She'll be back hoping for more publicity. Will be ready
Speaker 1: hashtag ments of response and attached to this tweet was
Speaker 1: a picture and a quotation from Joseph Grobel's Yes That
Speaker 1: Joseph group the Nazi. One Twitter member commented to me
Speaker 1: directly in spite of my suspension. I admire your energy
Speaker 1: and dedication gee, to have met all medicines in such
Speaker 1: a short amount of time. So to recap after writing
Speaker 1: a satirical piece calling myself a dump slut and kind
Speaker 1: of riffing on the idea of what I thought of
Speaker 1: MENSA member was members of the secret MENSA Facebook group
Speaker 1: mass insulted then mass blocked me when I shared their
Speaker 1: insults on my Twitter viewed this sharing of threats made
Speaker 1: towards me as a sinister doxing and sabotage of the
Speaker 1: sanctity of an unmoderated group, and in fact, the fact
Speaker 1: that my Twitter account was suspended became a commonly cited
Speaker 1: piece of evidence that I had in fact done wrong
Speaker 1: by not censoring these names, even though while some would
Speaker 1: argue it's unethical, it is not illegal. Even though the
Speaker 1: service reinstated my account and admitted that it was their
Speaker 1: error that I had been banned, and given the trend
Speaker 1: of how Twitter suspensions were, my account was most likely
Speaker 1: flagged because the same tweet was reported multiple times by
Speaker 1: you tell Me. Upon my account being reinstated, I removed
Speaker 1: the reference to the MENSA group threat because fair point,
Speaker 1: that's not my business and leave all the insults and
Speaker 1: threats up. And that was important to be because to
Speaker 1: me it was that sweet refrain. Again. Sure, they called
Speaker 1: you ugly and stupid and threatened you unprompted, and they
Speaker 1: will react harshly if you attached their name to such
Speaker 1: a comment, but you really just have to get to
Speaker 1: know them. Okay, we're going to jump back into the future.
Speaker 1: We're going to July, day two of my time at
Speaker 1: the MENSA Annual Gathering. Bring not a bit too fine
Speaker 1: a point on it, but I am the Taylor Swift
Speaker 1: of being absolutely hated at the Sheridan in Phoenix. I'm
Speaker 1: very good, and so when I wake up, I'm very,
Speaker 1: very hungover. And I listened back to the audio note
Speaker 1: that I recorded upon getting back to my Airbnb the
Speaker 1: previous night, which is just a long, blubbering tangent of
Speaker 1: what had happened throughout the rest of the night. And
Speaker 1: I'm saying things like they wanted to own the libs,
Speaker 1: and I let them own the lips, very pathetic, laughed
Speaker 1: at my own jokes, then started crying again. And so yes,
Speaker 1: on night one, I had let MENSA make me cry,
Speaker 1: at least for an hour, and I called my mom
Speaker 1: to talk about it, and she says, I think you
Speaker 1: should stay as I'm pouring over my notes from the
Speaker 1: previous night, calculating exactly how long I could stay in
Speaker 1: my bed at the Airbnb before going back the mile
Speaker 1: and a half of degree hell weather that lay between
Speaker 1: me and the Sheraton, and I tell her I cried
Speaker 1: in the game room for forty five minutes last night,
Speaker 1: confirming this on the MENSA station area I had bought
Speaker 1: at their ill advised on site gift shop, which sold
Speaker 1: everything from office applies to truly hideous T shirts. Some
Speaker 1: of the graphic to sign let me share a fight
Speaker 1: club bar of soap with Mensa carved into the tale
Speaker 1: Deadpool caricature with a throbbing brain labeled brain Pool, the
Speaker 1: organization's name in the Marvel funt the World of Warcraft fund,
Speaker 1: and a comic book hero named Mr Manson. My mom says,
Speaker 1: he cried to who. I looked back down at my
Speaker 1: notes for the answer, and that is Tall Guy. Tall
Speaker 1: Guy was with me in the Firehouse suite the previous
Speaker 1: night as well, which was a lucky find in the
Speaker 1: gen Y suite because he was just as confused as
Speaker 1: why they weren't calling it millennial as I was. Coincidentally,
Speaker 1: he lives a few miles away from where I do
Speaker 1: in California, and he's kind of a tech bro turned
Speaker 1: dad who now dabbles in improv and is very nice
Speaker 1: to me in a moment that he doesn't realize that
Speaker 1: I really need someone to be nice to me. When
Speaker 1: he saw me last night, he said he dressed perfectly
Speaker 1: for the luaw because the theme was luow is pointing
Speaker 1: to my tied eye shirt and my pink shorts, and
Speaker 1: then he said unless that's how normally dressed, which case
Speaker 1: I apologize, and he's at the Firehouse party to the
Speaker 1: fifth floor of the Sheraton that night was lined with
Speaker 1: Firehouse members, some of whom appeared to vaguely recognize me,
Speaker 1: and others who were too deep in conversation to care.
Speaker 1: The group of people I'd come up with entered the
Speaker 1: open Suite, which was as dark as any other party
Speaker 1: we've been to that night, except weirdly for the gen
Speaker 1: X suite, who apparently value iridescent lighting, which was really nice.
Speaker 1: But I can't see in this room that is later
Speaker 1: confirmed in photos is a table of drinks, a cardboard
Speaker 1: cut out of Donald Trump and about twenty people whose
Speaker 1: faces I can't make out. Tall guy is either vaguely
Speaker 1: intrigued by why everyone is so interested in someone as
Speaker 1: poorly dressed as me, or is a little worried after
Speaker 1: I expressed some of the anxiety I felt in the
Speaker 1: elevator up and so he kind of hangs near by
Speaker 1: me when I'm stopped within ten seconds of entering the room.
Speaker 1: The person stopping me in question is a hosier in
Speaker 1: his forties with a column of ribbons attached to his lanyard,
Speaker 1: a type of person that there is a limitless supply
Speaker 1: of at this convention. I'll be honest, I know you are.
Speaker 1: We're having the same conversation I've had several times this
Speaker 1: night already, but this time we're in the Lions ten.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of people who would say, don't talk
Speaker 1: to Jamie and she thinks we're loser, dumbasses and all
Speaker 1: of that. But my position is going to be based
Speaker 1: on our interaction now, and even he will end up
Speaker 1: containing more multitudes than I can possibly handle at this moment,
Speaker 1: because yes, he will ask me in the hallway the
Speaker 1: next day if I was secretly videotaping the entire party,
Speaker 1: but he also appears to be dating the woman who
Speaker 1: expressed the most pro choice opinions in the reproductive rights
Speaker 1: debate I went to that night. Who knows this guy?
Speaker 1: And I have a bizarre but civil conversation about my
Speaker 1: status in firehouse for about half hour, and I spend
Speaker 1: most of my time explaining that my intention was never
Speaker 1: to hurt anyone in the group, but to do what
Speaker 1: I thought was pretty clear satire, and he explained that
Speaker 1: that wasn't how most of the people in the room felt.
Speaker 1: Tall Guy was standing beside me throughout most of it,
Speaker 1: learning about this schism in real time, and right when
Speaker 1: it looked like I would actually get to talk to
Speaker 1: some people, I started to get a little exasperated. But
Speaker 1: we hear each other out, and tall Guy is looking
Speaker 1: kind of amused, and he looks down to me and
Speaker 1: is like, what did you even do? And I'm getting
Speaker 1: worked up and I'm like nothing, and I feel my
Speaker 1: brain started kind of splinter because the man I'm speaking
Speaker 1: with remains respectful and continues to explain to me what
Speaker 1: has already been explained to me by other men that
Speaker 1: night that I come in pre judging medicines and the screenshots,
Speaker 1: and that being hateful online next to your own name
Speaker 1: didn't mean you were that way in real life. And
Speaker 1: I have no issue with him. But I have heard
Speaker 1: this already, and we're in the middle of rehashing this
Speaker 1: again when the people standing a few feet away with
Speaker 1: their backs to me and what I later understand to
Speaker 1: be protest, start to kind of stir a little bit,
Speaker 1: and one of them breaks away from the pack. This
Speaker 1: is a guy who's maybe in his twenties with a
Speaker 1: short haircut, and he's the first firehouse member to not
Speaker 1: ask me how my ag is going. With wide eyes
Speaker 1: and clenched teeth, he just he opts to just cut
Speaker 1: straight to yelling. You don't want to drop that phone, huh?
Speaker 1: He asks me, and he's reaching out to jostle it
Speaker 1: out of my hand. Or you wouldn't want to drop
Speaker 1: that phone, huh. He storms across the room to ask
Speaker 1: the same thing of the handful of other people who
Speaker 1: walked upstairs with me, turns his name tag around so
Speaker 1: no one can identif by him, and starts accusing people
Speaker 1: that I have just met a videotaping the party on
Speaker 1: my behalf. The beers that I had drank downstairs. I
Speaker 1: am really starting to feel and the man I've been
Speaker 1: talking to for a half hour is pretty apologetic and
Speaker 1: says he doesn't know the person who tried to take
Speaker 1: my phone, and that he'd been getting a strange feeling
Speaker 1: about that guy the entire night, and that he was
Speaker 1: in the service, which doesn't really seem like a fair characterization,
Speaker 1: but go off. And he says to me, your safety
Speaker 1: isn't a question, and I'm pretty close to panicking, but
Speaker 1: I'm saying I know, I know you feel myself kind
Speaker 1: of starting to cry through the conversation, and tall Guy
Speaker 1: asks me if I want to leave, and I nod
Speaker 1: and I say yes and and try to hide the
Speaker 1: fact that my eyes are full, and he clears a
Speaker 1: path for us, and we leave, and the few people
Speaker 1: we came with stay there, and I learned the next
Speaker 1: day that they were yelled at by the same guy
Speaker 1: who tried to take my phone. Tall Guy takes me
Speaker 1: downstairs and we spend the next hour at the first
Speaker 1: floor games room that stays open extra light, and I
Speaker 1: start by sobbing through explaining why the night had gone
Speaker 1: the way it had, and Tall Guy was patient with
Speaker 1: me to a degree that baffles me to this moment,
Speaker 1: and he listens to everything I said through my tears
Speaker 1: and phlegm and everything, and he asks why are you
Speaker 1: doing this? Where are you getting out of this? And
Speaker 1: my answers, from what I can remember, are pretty indecisive,
Speaker 1: because in this moment, I don't really know why I
Speaker 1: am here, aside from the fact that I bought the
Speaker 1: ticket five months ago after meeting a senior Firehouse member
Speaker 1: in person for the first time, and I felt like
Speaker 1: she had presented me with this challenge, and maybe she
Speaker 1: was right, and maybe I had nothing to be nervous about.
Speaker 1: But less than a day into this grand idiot experiment,
Speaker 1: I really wish I weren't here. I didn't feel like
Speaker 1: I was in mensa. I felt like I was the mensa,
Speaker 1: the stupid lady who never should have accepted a dare
Speaker 1: from a sentient comments section. But I cry my way
Speaker 1: through this crisis with Tall Guys guidance, and eventually I
Speaker 1: say I need to call an uber. And this makes
Speaker 1: me feel so silly now out, But I did have
Speaker 1: this paranoid flash through my head that maybe Tall Guy
Speaker 1: had been sent by Firehouse to spy on me, and
Speaker 1: this was how bad my state of mind was getting.
Speaker 1: And tall guy was confused and said, you're not staying
Speaker 1: at the hotel and I'm still crying, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: I'm not paid enough for that because I'm not being
Speaker 1: paid to be here. I'm just hurting myself. So that's
Speaker 1: you know, Rittan and ground. It's not in the budget.
Speaker 1: So flash forward to the next morning. I'm recapping this
Speaker 1: for my mom and she says, you should stay. You
Speaker 1: said you get to know them so you'll see it through. Now.
Speaker 1: I have found my mother to be terrible with this
Speaker 1: sort of advice of the time, but that's also sort
Speaker 1: of why I called her, because I know I should stay.
Speaker 1: I'm seven hundred dollars in the hole, I'm very hungover,
Speaker 1: I'm completely miserable and nervous and scared, but I know
Speaker 1: I am staying. And that's episode two of my year
Speaker 1: in mensa. I hope you're enjoying AUNT. If you are,
Speaker 1: feel free to let people know. Thank you so much
Speaker 1: to Sadie Depueve for doing me incredible theme song, and
Speaker 1: thank you to the following people for lending your voice
Speaker 1: to the mentions. They are Caitlin Durante, iff You, Audi Way,
Speaker 1: Miles Gray, Anna Hosnie, Sophie Lichterman, Robert Evans, either Taylor Jacquies,
Speaker 1: Neil Daniel Goodman, and Maggie may Fish. My name is
Speaker 1: Jamie Loftus. You can find me on them wherever you
Speaker 1: want to. Really, we're halfway their baby. See you next
Speaker 1: time on my ear and mentum