Flying Birds

The current spiritual bliss I'm experiencing with all the stuff I've been blogging about lately (and then some) apparently doesn't come without a price. I want to grieve a little bit here about the recent minor withering of the Lavender Society for Alternative Sexuality Heroes.

In January, I very naïvely started a beautiful project on one of these game-applications Facebook has. The game was basically a race for hero levels and new hero superpowers, and then using our abilities on each other. In the very beginning of the enormous, fast-growing community around the hero game that was multiplying by the hour, we became one of the pioneer groups, and by far the largest sexuality-related group on the game sub-culture.

Quickly, we got to feature over one thousand very active and very vocal members. Many of them I considered great friends. We became a very important part of each other's lives in the blink of an eye. Together, we managed to take the Lavender Society to Top Eight hero groups (within a universe of tens of thousands of groups) in no time, always faithful to a spirit of camaderie, fun and radical anarchism.

Then in July, after months and months dedicated full-time (about nine hours a day) to making the game environment a more interesting, healthier and richer experience, Facebook deleted my account overnight, and never replied to any of my (very, very polite, given the circumstances) emails, never giving me a reason for that. I was desolated, and decided I deserved some time off, to recover from the blow.

Slowly but still suddenly, a considerable number of our heroes started to jump ship. I understand desertions happen all the time, as they had certainly happened before, and I had no means and no intention to avoid them, but having people leave so incessantly felt a bit like betrayal.

In the heat of the debate, new members became very vocal in a way they initially didn't have the right to. But, true to my anarchist priciples, I gave them that right, so they used it to create an anti-Awen club, specializing in distorting my words and questioning an authority I never really exercised. And now, slowly, most high-level heroes of the Lavender Society are leaving.

If I still had my old Elvenking account, I could restore the Lavender Society to its former glory quick and easy. But because I feel very leery with Facebook these days, and because I know there is malicious propaganda going on under the table, I don't have the heart to get my hands dirty with more shit right now, while I'm harvesting many spiritual blessings. So I've decided to let it all go.

I have no idea how many friends I will have left from the Lavender Society in a few months from now. I know I did make a few good friends there that won't ditch me, or us as a group. But I know that you've got to let go of a bird, let it fly away and check if it will return to you in order to be sure you were meant to be together. Since most of these strayaways aren't probably coming back this time around, they've never been my friend anyway.

So, I move on with my training, my projects and my own life. I really need to compensate for the many months lost investing so irrationally in a Facebook game.

This probably teaches me an important lesson, though, given that it's happening in tandem with Tribe.net's recent major crisis. We are given gifts by pioneers and community leaders. They haven't let us down out of negligency, and it doesn't feel right to turn your back to someone who opened you their door. True bonds and societies, hero or human, are built with tolerance, high times, low times, time on, time off and even time-outs, but definetely not flying by from tree to tree. Time Manipulation and Teleportation at least taught me that.

You are all free to fly, and I am proud that for a many months I managed to create a beautiful community and prove once that gays, lesbians and bisexuals aren't a minority.
And one more thing: the Lavender Society is still standing.

Image: our logo, by Andy Nguyen.