January 1, 2020 • 38 mins
Welcome to My Year in Mensa, episode two!
NOTE: ALL NAMES IN THIS PIECE HAVE BEEN CHANGED. This is a first-person account based on my own writing and experience within the group, and the rest is sourced below. If you have further questions, feel free to reach out at myyearinmensa@gmail.com.
Theme song by Sadie Dupuis (@sad13)
Featuring the voices of Miles Gray, Caitlin Durante, Jacquis Neal, Anna Hossnieh, Danl Goodman, Ify Nwadiwe, Dani Fernandez, Maggie Mae Fish, Shereen Lani-Younes, Isaac Taylor, and Jack O'Brien.
Music used in this episode:
"Through the Crystal" by Jeremy Blake: from the free YouTube Audio Library
"Absolutely Nothing" by Jeremy Blake: from the free YouTube Audio Library
"Lost and Found" by Jeremy Blake: from the free YouTube Audio Library
"Run Amok" by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com)
License: CC BY (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
"Onion Capers" by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com)
License: CC BY (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
"Sightlines" by Jeremy Blake: from the free YouTube Audio Library
"Official National Anthem" by Jingle Punks: from the free YouTube Audio Library
"Pixelland" by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com
License: CC BY (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
"Welcome to HorrorLand Kevin MacLeod" (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
All sources for this series can be found at: http://jamieloftusisinnocent.com/myyearinmensasources
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Smart Welcome back. My name is Jamie Loftus, and this
is my year in Mensa, my limited run podcast series
(00:22):
about what the title is, my year in the American
branch of the High i Q Menta Society. If this
is your first time listening, I strongly encourage you to
go back to episode one. If you don't, that's up
to you. But you might feel a little lost, and
everyone already feels so lost, and I don't want that
for you, so I go back to episode one. If
you listen to episode one, Welcome back, smarty Pants. You
(00:45):
made it. I'll do my little disclaimer as I start
the music. Bed Oh, that's a fun one. Who wrote it?
You'll find out at the end. At the time of
this recording, I haven't picked one yet, But that's just
the magic of production, isn't it? Um? Okay? This is
a true story told from my perspective, based on notes
(01:08):
and writings and interviews that I've done over the past
year plus in this organization, and all of the names
have been changed. And with that, let's get the moving
forward in time page tourney sound effect going, because we're
going back to July four and it is still day
one of the mensa annual gathering. So people at the
(01:33):
annual gathering generally came here to do one of two things.
Go to boring talks about nothing during the day, or
get blackout drunk at night. And I decide I'm here,
I'm going to try to do both. And trying to
find a lunch table to sit at on the first
day of the a g is like as terrible and
traumatizing as freshman year in high school. And I play
(01:54):
it just as safe as I did back then, and
I choose a table called pet lovers. Pet lovers be
mean to me, right right. I meet a couple of
very nice women over the advertised corn chowder and caesar salad. Gross.
I meet a grandmother in a celestial silk shirt who
talks about her granddaughter's interest in science. I mean a
single woman with a cat. I mean mother who is
(02:16):
deeply invested in what she can't repeat enough are extremely
gifted Sons. Sure someone should start a band called the
Extremely Gifted Sons. The food, as mentions are repeating in
hushed tones throughout this weekend, is very bad. But I'm
trying to make conversation, and so I turned to the mother,
who is extremely gifted son is like staring her down
(02:38):
from across the room, and I say, you know, it's funny.
Did you know that mensa means stupid in Spanish? And
she looks at me incredulously, like I've just thrown the
caesar salad up into my hand and baby birded it
back into my own muff And she says, no, it doesn't.
And the grandmother in the celestial silk is like laughing
into her lemonade, and she says, it means table in Latin,
(03:02):
but also it means stupid. As So I look across
the cafeteria, which is affectionately called hospitality in this same
room will eventually have an open bar that is open
well into the night, and I try to figure out
who's here, who am I dealing with? And while yes,
the vast majority of the gathering and the organization is
old and white, there was more diversity in gender and
(03:24):
race and political thought in the younger section of Mensa
than I had expected. There's by no means parody in
the organization. But I will say I found myself to
be initially hated and reviled by a fairly wide array
of people with a wide variety of hug dots. This
is important. The mention hug dot system is one of
the only truly ingenious concepts that I came across at
(03:47):
the annual gathering. Is how it works. Using a colored
dot stuck to your name tag. A menicin is asked
upon registration to select a color based on what they
would like to worthlessly indicate is their level of physical
comfort with strangers. So green dot means all hugs welcome, unhinged,
yellow means ask before hugging the norm, red means no
(04:11):
hugs at all, and blue means I'm single. And aside
from the fact that it's open season on single people
under this system, I do like it. My social anxiety
has gotta hand it to him. It's a damn good system,
the hug dot system. Even though I think single people
should be able to choose whether people look them or not.
(04:33):
I was like, what the blue one just says fun?
Like does that mean fuck me? I don't understand, But
I'm into the system and I choose a yellow dot
because I'm game. I want to be here. But what's
more important to navigating the weekend than the hug dots
are the ribbons that attending medicines hang beneath their name tags,
and some people have a row of ribbons that extend
(04:54):
over a foot long. I only have one. It's a
bright yellow ribbon that says new member beside my yellow
hugg dot. But most of the people who approached me
over the weekend are wearing a red ribbon that has
labeled Hosier, and this indicates that they are an active
member of the Firehouse group, just as a reminder. American
MENSA Firehouse is an unmoderated, closed mental sponsored Facebook group
(05:17):
that has a pretty storied history of targeting, bullying, and
harassing people they disagree with. Coincidentally, it is also the
most active area in all of MENSA. Some additions to
the ribbon that as Hosier are ribbons that say things
like Firehouse, boobs and bacon, and the occasional one that
just says perverse. There's also a designated Firehouse table in
(05:39):
the cafeteria, which is labeled with a cartoon of an
owl with its head on fire. Some people use their
ribbons to announce where they're from or or their preferred pronouns,
but you'll find most ribbons have the comedic limitations of
a clearance rack at Spencer's gift in the mid two thousands,
and as the day goes on, I find myself growing
increasingly paranoid of my interactions with people who have the
(06:02):
hoser red ribbons. I go to a different talk, and
as a lecturer wearing a Bazinga shirt discusses the future
of artificial intelligence, I'm scanning the audience for red ribbons.
And while I sit through a discussion about the various
ways to use your cute children at business meetings to
persuade sales. What I'm looking through the audience for red ribbons.
And as I sit in the debate room watching civil,
(06:25):
if occasionally alarming discussions about hot button issues where the
winner is weirdly voted on by having the best speaker's
face against the wall as if there's a firing squad,
I am scanning the room for red ribbons. In the
debate room, I hear a wide variety of arguments about race,
climate change, and religion, some of which I agree with,
(06:45):
as some of which is some of the most regressive
scary shit I've heard in a while. I go to
a talk called Television humor evolution or devolution. Very old
college professors regaled a packed room with some of the
most incredible misinformation that I have to share with you.
It's not relevant to the podcast, but I would have
to let you know what these people said because it
doesn't make any sense and it made me laugh. Throwing
(07:07):
some goofy music. Okay, television humor evolution or devolution, Okay,
here's one of my favorite ones. For the edginess of
vulgarity of South Park is all the more shocking because
the lines are spoken by quote unquote children. Why quote unquote.
Seth McFarland is known for playing Cartman and many others.
(07:28):
He is not on the show. We have to ask ourselves.
Is n C I G S a comedy as well?
And then a couple of sides later that lab technician
she's goffe and that's a light mooteeth. She's very, very gone.
With Shakespearean comedies, the women can only be uppity in
the first act and by the last act they've been tamed.
(07:48):
There's also this like long meandering argument that Charlie Sheen
was removed from Two and a Half Men for quote
unquote sexual problems. But then one of the professors was like, well,
his character on the show also had sexual problems, so
the show wasn't funny. After he left, there was one
slide that just said www dot Everybody Loves ray dot com,
(08:10):
which you should check it out. It's a really good
Like Angel Fire fans site for Everybody Loves Raymond, Animated
sitcoms automatically create distance. This is why Family Guy two
thousand and twelve is allowed to be so vulgar as
the stories are told about the dysfunctional Griffons. Okay, ending tangent,
but I hope you enjoyed that as much as I did.
(08:31):
So this talk is followed by the equally punishing oh no,
we gotta do different goofy music mensa joke Off, whose
moderator explains that humor is to quote disarmed others unquote,
as well as to reflect quote shared experience where we
are in our development and sexual selection parentheses. Women sell
(08:51):
like men that show wit unquote the most mensa ship
I've ever heard in my life. But the joke off
basically functions as an open mic and since are welcome
to the front of the room to perform in categories
like old people jokes, light bulb jokes, jokes about professions,
and political jokes, a topic that everyone in the room
agrees as best to not even attempt. There are a
(09:13):
number of speakers who throughout the weekend are noticeably jarred
by the political divisions in the room and the joke
off moderator. I hate that I have to say joke off.
The joke off moderator looks genuinely surprised when his kind
of low hanging fruit Trump University joke gets a couple
of groans from the audience, and he says, really, and
(09:34):
another member just shouts out, don't boil the moon, and
others are kind of muttering in agreement, and so the
moderator shrugs and is a little confused, but he says
we'll move on. And by the time the final debate
room I go to that day closes, which is on
reproductive rights that featured an intense, anxiety inducing spar between
a liberal woman and an extremely pro life teenager, it's
(09:58):
already past eleven at night. And two who I will
remind you is the first friend I make at the
MENSA Annual Convention and the second most blocked member of
American MENSA Firehouse, me being the first. Thank you so much.
And two and I ran into each other again at
the final debate, and he knows exactly where all the
parties are on the fourth and fifth floor of the hotel.
(10:18):
It is time to go to the parties now. Because
it's MENSA. The party system is also needlessly complicated. All
of the parties that I go to on this night
are advertised within the Men's Arising Annual Gathering pamphlet that
we're given on our way into the Sheraton on the
first day, and most are divided by s I G
s or special interest groups. So there's the Boomer Suite,
(10:40):
which is next to the Gay s I G Suite,
which is across from the gen X Sweet, which is
across from the gen Y Sweet, and that's where I'll
spend most of my time. And why MENSA does not
recognize the term millennials is unclear to me. They call
it gen y whatever. There's also a Firehouse Suite, and
that's the only party I hear of happening on the
fifth war And that makes sense because there's two thousand
(11:02):
members of the Firehouse Group and their membership comprises a
pretty large amount of people who are in attendance at
the annual gathering. But at first two and I go
to the gen Wy Sweet and and it's honestly pretty fine.
A woman I met in a hotel room under very
confusing circumstances that I will explain to you in a
future episode. She recognizes me and she gives me a
big hog and she and her husband appear to be
(11:23):
the organizers of the suite and they're actually from my area.
So she's quick to introduce me to all the other
youngish medicines, and they're all pretty welcoming and curious as
I'm nervously compulsively refilling my cup with the cheap KEG
beer that's there. And there is this feeling that I'm
like retroactively attending every party I didn't get invited to
when I was a teenager, and no way to source this,
(11:44):
but it doesn't seem like I'm the only one that
feels that way. And it's at this party that I
realized just how many people associate controversy with me, because
at all times I have to wear a badge with
my full name on it, which sucks. At the party,
I'm approached by multiple people who cautiously ask me, how's
your a G going? Is it different than you expected,
(12:07):
how I'm enjoying myself. What maybe decided to come if
I was going to be writing about the experience. And
I get pretty good at answering this question on my
first night, which is lucky because I will have to
answer it several hundred times in the days to come.
And it's here that I kind of give the reflective
reply that I take with me through the rest of
the annual gathering, which is some variation on what people
(12:28):
told me. I wasn't giving mensa a chance in my pieces,
so I took so and so up on the invitation
to come, and here I am. Hi. The organizer's husband
comes up to me and asks me how it's going,
before mentioning we have a mutual friend. He's very friendly,
and I'm later informed that he's had me blocked online
for months. Someone else comes up to me and says, shit,
(12:49):
love this. And I don't know this guy right now,
but he's really going to dominate the toga party tomorrow night.
One man in particular, who holds a high position in
American medicine. Who am going to call? Joey corners me
near the cooler keg where I am still nervously drinking
and Joey is a very gregarious and kind of intense guy, so,
(13:09):
like many other people I meet, he asked me the
standard line of conscious questioning, and I give my standard
cautious answer, and he's repeating that regurgitative defense of the
Firehouse group, which is say it with me. They're the
nicest people in real life, nothing like they are in line.
So this conversation continues for about twenty minutes of intense
eye contact until Two finds me in the dark shuffle
(13:32):
of the gen Y suite and says, dude, what was
Joey talking to you about? For so long? I was
getting worried I have to yell in his ear to
be heard, And I say, I don't know. He asked
me about why I'm here and how nice the Firehouse
people are in real life. I have no idea who
he is, and Two just starts laughing. Joey was one
of the guys leading the charge against you in Firehouse.
(13:52):
He works for MENSA. He knows you don't know who
he is, okay, And like, no, I'm not okay. And
this happens multiple both times in my time and MENSA.
Someone is very nice to my face, and I later
find out that they have said horrible things online and
have blocked me for months. It is a crazy making thing,
and I'm starting to feel a little disoriented and dizzy,
(14:15):
and I'm a little drunk, and I lose track of
two as he goes over to flirt with someone on
the other side of the party. And around this point
I decide I'm going to leave. There's no way I'm
going to go up to the firehouse suite this late
in the night, and the combination of shitty cafeteria food
and for anxiety beers in rapid succession is just making
me feel awful. So I go to the bathroom. I
(14:37):
take a couple of notes, and I text my boyfriend
to let him know that I'm okay, because he wanted
to be at the MENSA Annual Gathering. But it's not
a couple's retreat. It's the MENSA Annual Gathering, bitch, and
I feel positive that going any less than alone would
result in extreme backlash. I leave the bathroom and a
few how's your age goings Later, I emerged from the
(14:58):
gen Y Sweet into the hallway where people are sort
of oscillating between board games and drunken conversations. And unfortunately
for me, and I don't even make it to the
elevator before someone else stops me. This is a guy
in his forties and he approaches me with a smile
as well as blocking my exit. At this point, it's
past midnight and it's still somehow ninety degrees out. He says,
(15:18):
I'm familiar with your work, and I start to brace
myself for what I think is this inevitable direct confrontation
until I look down at his name tag no red ribbon,
and then he kind of laughs a little bit and says, no, no,
I mean I like it. And it's not until I
hear myself like exhale that I realized I look scared.
And this is a fact that is corroborated by several
(15:41):
members of Firehouse and the group after the event is over.
I look scared, and I say really, and he says yeah,
there's a whole hold on and it's becoming clear to
me that I'm not going to be able to leave
anytime soon. And he beckons over a few other people
who are closer to my age and says, this is Jamie.
She came. The others are laughing and drinking their beer,
(16:03):
and one gives me a high five. One of the
guys says, Oh, we've been waiting for something like that
to happen. It's been years of them doing all that.
Are you going up to firehouse? And even hearing it
just makes me tense up a little bit. There's a
few red ribbon guys near the elevators and they're about
to head upstairs, and I say, I don't think tonight.
But the guys who like my articles are kind of
(16:23):
pushing it, and they say, oh, we'll come up with you.
It'll be fine, you'll be safe. I'm kind of thinking, like, no,
I've seen a horror movie before. But the moment he
says that, I know that I'm going to go because
I promised myself that I would give them medicines a chance,
and I wasn't going to take a seven hour greyhound
bus trip to not do that. I mean, and of
(16:45):
course this is just my perspective. I'm sure my best
friend would tell you that I'm addicted to putting myself
in harm's away for reasons that I should speak to
a therapist about. But the point is that I closed
the uber app and I opt in to the firehouse
hang and there's still one lingering red ribbon hoser near
(17:05):
the elevator. When the four so people and I finally
get to the elevator to go the opposite way that
I was planning, I'm going to call this guy Patrick,
and he stops me very gently and says, hey, are
you are the guys in with cuts them off and
says not to bother us because we're going up to firehouse.
Patrick is visibly uncomfortable at this news, and I stumble
over my words, half drunkenly, trying to assure him that
(17:27):
I'm not going to, you know, go up there and
cause a scene. And he raises his eyebrows and he
thinks about that for a second and says it's alliance,
then proceed with caution. And people in horror movies don't
usually get quite this many warnings. That would just be
bad writing. But I'm feeling a little pressure to go
up and I've already sort of steeled myself to do it,
(17:47):
so I say okay, thank you, and the few people
and with seem a little annoyed, and Patrick shrugs and says,
I don't think you've been barred from it, but you know,
I'm just saying it's alliance to and I'm feeling a
little defensive, and I say, well, I feel like the
way I entered the organization was in such a bizarre way,
and and I'm launching into what feels like prepared statements
(18:09):
after only twelve out of my planned sixty hours day
is over. The screenshots is what got people. But it's upstairs.
So we go up to the party slightly drunken, disorganized,
and for your sake, I sincerely hope that you never
know the feeling of walking into a living, breathing, hostile
comments section. And it's at this point, listener, that I
(18:34):
have to take you out of this compelling fourth of
July narrative to take you back in time a little bit,
because we really should talk about the screenshots that Patrick
is referring to and the continued argument for why the
denizens of Firehouse choose not to forgive me. For forgiveness
I never really requested, so page turn effect. Instead of
(18:58):
telling you what the American meant a Firehouse secret Facebook
group is, I will let them tell you what it
is instead. Via and I wish I were kidding. A
short animation that a member of the group had personally
commissioned in order to dunk on me. It was captioned quote,
I think Jamie Left could benefit from this, but alas
she's dead to me unquote honestly high drama Shakespearean I
(19:22):
love it. This is what the animated video states, American
Mensa Firehouse. Many Benson's had ventured into the firehouse. They
expected mind numbingly academic conversations imagine unicorns romping through meadows. Instead,
they discovered that Menson's are well opinionated, rude and rough curmudgeons,
(19:44):
but they are also kind, thoughtful, and generous. Conversations offended, some,
excited others, and in the end we all have the
same false inshore comings as everyone else. With one difference.
We were quicker, video and buddier. I wouldn't trade the
group for any other. Oh and boobs always boobs, Oh
(20:10):
and boobs always boobs. My introduction to this group, as
it pertains to me, was by receiving a notification that
I had been tagged in a post that contained the
link to the story I had written about getting into mensa, which,
and I can't say it enough, was called good news.
They let dumb sluts into mensa now the Slaton question.
Being myself, it was made immediately clear to me that
(20:33):
they did not care for this dumb slut joke I
made at my own expense. I'd like to share some
of the assorted replies that had already been written by
the time I was tagged. They are I agree that
she's a dumb cunt oh slut who's too dumb to
tweeze her eyebrows if she joined this group to cause
trouble for MENSA block her anyone else sent her nudes.
(20:56):
Yet where is national at a time like this that
she won't part dissipate in our boom thread and probably
does not even like bacon. Again, I can't stress enough
menicines are not very funny, and aside from my initial
vetting of some right wing memes, this was the first
that I had seen much of anything in the group,
(21:16):
and after receiving the warnings about Firehouse, I had combed
through some of the posts in the group to confirm
what I had been told. The prominent political leanings described,
and sure enough, what I think are the hallmarks of
far right groups were all there. From the bad photo
shops of Alexandria Acasio Cortez, bad faith arguments about bathroom
rights and race, the occasional feminism is cancer and just
(21:39):
general owning the Libs. And like the annual gathering, the
group is majority white and skewing older, and there is
a fair amount of disagreement and discussion among members in
the comments on more hot button American issues. Also president
the group where some inside jokes, updates about members lives,
requests for advice in certain areas of their lives, and
(22:01):
generally ranging from people in their thirties to people in
their late sixties, which is you hate to say it,
the dreaded parents on Facebook demographic. So screenshot these insulting
replies about my article and I post them to Twitter
without replying to the Facebook thread and without blocking the
names out. So I didn't think at that time, and
(22:23):
I still struggle with the idea that people who are
directly insulting and harassing another person warrants a censure of
their names. And I honestly wasn't thinking about it that
hard at the time I posted it. Because here was
this group that I had been explicitly warrant was toxic
and liked to go after members without prompting going after
me without prompting. And this is a confusing, kind of
(22:44):
difficult thing to talk about because would it have been
more ethical to block those names out? Absolutely, and to
any medicine who is listening to this, I would do
it differently if you were calling me a dumb cunt today,
I really would. And I don't know if that is
personal growth or refusal to engage, and I don't care
which I know. I would block out the names and
the few comments, including the boob thread, which we'll get
(23:06):
to that I I posted without centering the names. That
wasn't fair of me, that wasn't any of my fucking business.
And I took down the tweets that included names that
weren't directly harassing me. The comments directed at me, we're
about par for the course of online harassment I've received
in the past in many a comments section, but the
context for it was very different, because this was online
(23:28):
harassment from people who were supposed to be some of
the smartest people in the world, and most of them
were at least in their thirties, just hurling j V
insults at a stranger in a secret Facebook group. And then,
as promised, there was the bootbread which is a pretty
cool of MENSA famous effort dating back to where a
member posted, I want to see some boobs help me out, ladies,
(23:49):
hashtag boop thread. What followed this comment was twelve hundred
pictures of various members boobs, which has later moved over
to a second thread that had five hundred more boob replies.
And I don't know what else to say about the
Boobgreat other than I think it's the best part of
the group as long as you're posting your own boobs.
I shouldn't have outed the boob thread. I should have
been more thoughtful about that. And I apologize to the
(24:10):
book thread, and I will continue to apologize to the Bootgreat.
I am sorry to the boob thread. I reply to
a few of the comments to let members know that
I've seen what they've been writing, and at this point
I'm kind of still joking about everything. At one point,
I write hello, thank you for reading the piece, and
a special shout out to all the olds and the comments,
calling me ugly have a great day, everyone, and one
(24:30):
user replies, welcome to Firehouse. It doesn't get better. Then
comes the strange death threat that to this day, Firehouse
members insist was intended as a joke. I did not
block out the user's name when posting on Twitter, but
in everything I've written since I have it reads as followers, Hello,
Jamie Loftus. You've met the mild mannered organ repairment of MENSA.
(24:52):
Now you have met our criminal element. There are people
here who can really hurt you. In your world, that
means posting Twitter rents where you're a racist, or fake reviews,
it means something different here. This is serious. We have
men here who have killed, We have those who have
served time, one who did the unmentionable and fugitive felons.
There was a woman here who pissed a lot of
(25:13):
us off a few years ago, and now she's dead. Yeah,
you're welcome here. All dues, paid members are but that's all.
No one is looking out for your safety. And could
this have been a strange joke, sure, But after multiple
warnings about the group and a feel for its attitude
on a lot of subjects, I didn't feel that I
could take this as a joke in good faith. So
(25:35):
I posted it to Twitter without the name redacted, and
woke up the next morning to find that my Twitter
account had been banned for quote violating our rules against
posting violent threats unquote. So just to walk you through
the nightmare that is social media, a band had been
made on my account for posting a threat made against
(25:56):
me the men since we're getting very tricky. So there's
a popular assertion that people, specifically women, are quick to
accuse someone of being whiny or overly sensitive when threatened
with violence online, whether that's as a joke or not.
And as often as these arguments come up, they're difficult
for me to understand based on the empirical evidence that
(26:17):
people follow through on threats like this with with relative frequency.
There has been a disturbing increase in the likelihood of
people taking threats, even ones made ironically or with coded terms,
offline and into the real world. Whether we're talking about
any of the mass shootings that were directly promised and
foreshadowed on online forums, or racial and religious hate crimes
(26:39):
encouraged and carried out like at christ Church in New Zealand,
or the still active gamer Gate harassment campaigns that cause
some women to go into hiding, or the increase in
real life consequences of cyberstalking and cyber bullying. There are
a lot of reasons and examples to treat a threat
made in a private forum as something to be taken seriously,
(26:59):
and based on what I've seen, and based on a
lot of the examples I just provided, the idea of
free speech is a frequently invoked substitute for dangerous or
threatening speech. And Firehouse, While I am not implying that
they are criminals, I am implying that the low rumblings
of this exact model were at this time present in
that group. Okay, So upon logging into Firehouse that morning
(27:24):
to see where the conversation had gone overnight, I found
that I could not see much in the group at all.
And even though I had no Twitter account, if you
searched my name on Twitter, hashtag would pop up called
hashtag mensa responds. Here were some of the hashtag mensa response.
Jamie Loftus has been suspended for attacking our membership without cause.
(27:45):
She'll be back hoping for more publicity. Will be ready
hashtag ments of response and attached to this tweet was
a picture and a quotation from Joseph Grobel's Yes That
Joseph group the Nazi. One Twitter member commented to me
directly in spite of my suspension. I admire your energy
(28:06):
and dedication gee, to have met all medicines in such
a short amount of time. So to recap after writing
a satirical piece calling myself a dump slut and kind
of riffing on the idea of what I thought of
MENSA member was members of the secret MENSA Facebook group
mass insulted then mass blocked me when I shared their
insults on my Twitter viewed this sharing of threats made
(28:29):
towards me as a sinister doxing and sabotage of the
sanctity of an unmoderated group, and in fact, the fact
that my Twitter account was suspended became a commonly cited
piece of evidence that I had in fact done wrong
by not censoring these names, even though while some would
argue it's unethical, it is not illegal. Even though the
service reinstated my account and admitted that it was their
(28:52):
error that I had been banned, and given the trend
of how Twitter suspensions were, my account was most likely
flagged because the same tweet was reported multiple times by
you tell Me. Upon my account being reinstated, I removed
the reference to the MENSA group threat because fair point,
that's not my business and leave all the insults and
(29:12):
threats up. And that was important to be because to
me it was that sweet refrain. Again. Sure, they called
you ugly and stupid and threatened you unprompted, and they
will react harshly if you attached their name to such
a comment, but you really just have to get to
know them. Okay, we're going to jump back into the future.
(29:32):
We're going to July, day two of my time at
the MENSA Annual Gathering. Bring not a bit too fine
a point on it, but I am the Taylor Swift
of being absolutely hated at the Sheridan in Phoenix. I'm
very good, and so when I wake up, I'm very,
(29:52):
very hungover. And I listened back to the audio note
that I recorded upon getting back to my Airbnb the
previous night, which is just a long, blubbering tangent of
what had happened throughout the rest of the night. And
I'm saying things like they wanted to own the libs,
and I let them own the lips, very pathetic, laughed
(30:12):
at my own jokes, then started crying again. And so yes,
on night one, I had let MENSA make me cry,
at least for an hour, and I called my mom
to talk about it, and she says, I think you
should stay as I'm pouring over my notes from the
previous night, calculating exactly how long I could stay in
my bed at the Airbnb before going back the mile
(30:36):
and a half of degree hell weather that lay between
me and the Sheraton, and I tell her I cried
in the game room for forty five minutes last night,
confirming this on the MENSA station area I had bought
at their ill advised on site gift shop, which sold
everything from office applies to truly hideous T shirts. Some
of the graphic to sign let me share a fight
(30:57):
club bar of soap with Mensa carved into the tale
Deadpool caricature with a throbbing brain labeled brain Pool, the
organization's name in the Marvel funt the World of Warcraft fund,
and a comic book hero named Mr Manson. My mom says,
he cried to who. I looked back down at my
notes for the answer, and that is Tall Guy. Tall
(31:19):
Guy was with me in the Firehouse suite the previous
night as well, which was a lucky find in the
gen Y suite because he was just as confused as
why they weren't calling it millennial as I was. Coincidentally,
he lives a few miles away from where I do
in California, and he's kind of a tech bro turned
dad who now dabbles in improv and is very nice
to me in a moment that he doesn't realize that
I really need someone to be nice to me. When
(31:41):
he saw me last night, he said he dressed perfectly
for the luaw because the theme was luow is pointing
to my tied eye shirt and my pink shorts, and
then he said unless that's how normally dressed, which case
I apologize, and he's at the Firehouse party to the
fifth floor of the Sheraton that night was lined with
Firehouse members, some of whom appeared to vaguely recognize me,
(32:01):
and others who were too deep in conversation to care.
The group of people I'd come up with entered the
open Suite, which was as dark as any other party
we've been to that night, except weirdly for the gen
X suite, who apparently value iridescent lighting, which was really nice.
But I can't see in this room that is later
confirmed in photos is a table of drinks, a cardboard
cut out of Donald Trump and about twenty people whose
(32:21):
faces I can't make out. Tall guy is either vaguely
intrigued by why everyone is so interested in someone as
poorly dressed as me, or is a little worried after
I expressed some of the anxiety I felt in the
elevator up and so he kind of hangs near by
me when I'm stopped within ten seconds of entering the room.
The person stopping me in question is a hosier in
his forties with a column of ribbons attached to his lanyard,
(32:43):
a type of person that there is a limitless supply
of at this convention. I'll be honest, I know you are.
We're having the same conversation I've had several times this
night already, but this time we're in the Lions ten.
There's a lot of people who would say, don't talk
to Jamie and she thinks we're loser, dumbasses and all
of that. But my position is going to be based
on our interaction now, and even he will end up
(33:04):
containing more multitudes than I can possibly handle at this moment,
because yes, he will ask me in the hallway the
next day if I was secretly videotaping the entire party,
but he also appears to be dating the woman who
expressed the most pro choice opinions in the reproductive rights
debate I went to that night. Who knows this guy?
And I have a bizarre but civil conversation about my
(33:25):
status in firehouse for about half hour, and I spend
most of my time explaining that my intention was never
to hurt anyone in the group, but to do what
I thought was pretty clear satire, and he explained that
that wasn't how most of the people in the room felt.
Tall Guy was standing beside me throughout most of it,
learning about this schism in real time, and right when
it looked like I would actually get to talk to
(33:45):
some people, I started to get a little exasperated. But
we hear each other out, and tall Guy is looking
kind of amused, and he looks down to me and
is like, what did you even do? And I'm getting
worked up and I'm like nothing, and I feel my
brain started kind of splinter because the man I'm speaking
with remains respectful and continues to explain to me what
has already been explained to me by other men that
(34:07):
night that I come in pre judging medicines and the screenshots,
and that being hateful online next to your own name
didn't mean you were that way in real life. And
I have no issue with him. But I have heard
this already, and we're in the middle of rehashing this
again when the people standing a few feet away with
their backs to me and what I later understand to
be protest, start to kind of stir a little bit,
(34:29):
and one of them breaks away from the pack. This
is a guy who's maybe in his twenties with a
short haircut, and he's the first firehouse member to not
ask me how my ag is going. With wide eyes
and clenched teeth, he just he opts to just cut
straight to yelling. You don't want to drop that phone, huh?
He asks me, and he's reaching out to jostle it
out of my hand. Or you wouldn't want to drop
(34:51):
that phone, huh. He storms across the room to ask
the same thing of the handful of other people who
walked upstairs with me, turns his name tag around so
no one can identif by him, and starts accusing people
that I have just met a videotaping the party on
my behalf. The beers that I had drank downstairs. I
am really starting to feel and the man I've been
talking to for a half hour is pretty apologetic and
(35:13):
says he doesn't know the person who tried to take
my phone, and that he'd been getting a strange feeling
about that guy the entire night, and that he was
in the service, which doesn't really seem like a fair characterization,
but go off. And he says to me, your safety
isn't a question, and I'm pretty close to panicking, but
I'm saying I know, I know you feel myself kind
of starting to cry through the conversation, and tall Guy
(35:36):
asks me if I want to leave, and I nod
and I say yes and and try to hide the
fact that my eyes are full, and he clears a
path for us, and we leave, and the few people
we came with stay there, and I learned the next
day that they were yelled at by the same guy
who tried to take my phone. Tall Guy takes me
downstairs and we spend the next hour at the first
floor games room that stays open extra light, and I
(35:59):
start by sobbing through explaining why the night had gone
the way it had, and Tall Guy was patient with
me to a degree that baffles me to this moment,
and he listens to everything I said through my tears
and phlegm and everything, and he asks why are you
doing this? Where are you getting out of this? And
my answers, from what I can remember, are pretty indecisive,
(36:21):
because in this moment, I don't really know why I
am here, aside from the fact that I bought the
ticket five months ago after meeting a senior Firehouse member
in person for the first time, and I felt like
she had presented me with this challenge, and maybe she
was right, and maybe I had nothing to be nervous about.
But less than a day into this grand idiot experiment,
I really wish I weren't here. I didn't feel like
(36:42):
I was in mensa. I felt like I was the mensa,
the stupid lady who never should have accepted a dare
from a sentient comments section. But I cry my way
through this crisis with Tall Guys guidance, and eventually I
say I need to call an uber. And this makes
me feel so silly now out, But I did have
this paranoid flash through my head that maybe Tall Guy
(37:03):
had been sent by Firehouse to spy on me, and
this was how bad my state of mind was getting.
And tall guy was confused and said, you're not staying
at the hotel and I'm still crying, and I'm like,
I'm not paid enough for that because I'm not being
paid to be here. I'm just hurting myself. So that's
you know, Rittan and ground. It's not in the budget.
So flash forward to the next morning. I'm recapping this
(37:29):
for my mom and she says, you should stay. You
said you get to know them so you'll see it through. Now.
I have found my mother to be terrible with this
sort of advice of the time, but that's also sort
of why I called her, because I know I should stay.
I'm seven hundred dollars in the hole, I'm very hungover,
I'm completely miserable and nervous and scared, but I know
(37:51):
I am staying. And that's episode two of my year
in mensa. I hope you're enjoying AUNT. If you are,
feel free to let people know. Thank you so much
to Sadie Depueve for doing me incredible theme song, and
thank you to the following people for lending your voice
to the mentions. They are Caitlin Durante, iff You, Audi Way,
(38:13):
Miles Gray, Anna Hosnie, Sophie Lichterman, Robert Evans, either Taylor Jacquies,
Neil Daniel Goodman, and Maggie may Fish. My name is
Jamie Loftus. You can find me on them wherever you
want to. Really, we're halfway their baby. See you next
time on my ear and mentum
Smart Welcome back. My name is Jamie Loftus, and this
is my year in Mensa, my limited run podcast series
(00:22):
about what the title is, my year in the American
branch of the High i Q Menta Society. If this
is your first time listening, I strongly encourage you to
go back to episode one. If you don't, that's up
to you. But you might feel a little lost, and
everyone already feels so lost, and I don't want that
for you, so I go back to episode one. If
you listen to episode one, Welcome back, smarty Pants. You
(00:45):
made it. I'll do my little disclaimer as I start
the music. Bed Oh, that's a fun one. Who wrote it?
You'll find out at the end. At the time of
this recording, I haven't picked one yet, But that's just
the magic of production, isn't it? Um? Okay? This is
a true story told from my perspective, based on notes
(01:08):
and writings and interviews that I've done over the past
year plus in this organization, and all of the names
have been changed. And with that, let's get the moving
forward in time page tourney sound effect going, because we're
going back to July four and it is still day
one of the mensa annual gathering. So people at the
(01:33):
annual gathering generally came here to do one of two things.
Go to boring talks about nothing during the day, or
get blackout drunk at night. And I decide I'm here,
I'm going to try to do both. And trying to
find a lunch table to sit at on the first
day of the a g is like as terrible and
traumatizing as freshman year in high school. And I play
(01:54):
it just as safe as I did back then, and
I choose a table called pet lovers. Pet lovers be
mean to me, right right. I meet a couple of
very nice women over the advertised corn chowder and caesar salad. Gross.
I meet a grandmother in a celestial silk shirt who
talks about her granddaughter's interest in science. I mean a
single woman with a cat. I mean mother who is
(02:16):
deeply invested in what she can't repeat enough are extremely
gifted Sons. Sure someone should start a band called the
Extremely Gifted Sons. The food, as mentions are repeating in
hushed tones throughout this weekend, is very bad. But I'm
trying to make conversation, and so I turned to the mother,
who is extremely gifted son is like staring her down
(02:38):
from across the room, and I say, you know, it's funny.
Did you know that mensa means stupid in Spanish? And
she looks at me incredulously, like I've just thrown the
caesar salad up into my hand and baby birded it
back into my own muff And she says, no, it doesn't.
And the grandmother in the celestial silk is like laughing
into her lemonade, and she says, it means table in Latin,
(03:02):
but also it means stupid. As So I look across
the cafeteria, which is affectionately called hospitality in this same
room will eventually have an open bar that is open
well into the night, and I try to figure out
who's here, who am I dealing with? And while yes,
the vast majority of the gathering and the organization is
old and white, there was more diversity in gender and
(03:24):
race and political thought in the younger section of Mensa
than I had expected. There's by no means parody in
the organization. But I will say I found myself to
be initially hated and reviled by a fairly wide array
of people with a wide variety of hug dots. This
is important. The mention hug dot system is one of
the only truly ingenious concepts that I came across at
(03:47):
the annual gathering. Is how it works. Using a colored
dot stuck to your name tag. A menicin is asked
upon registration to select a color based on what they
would like to worthlessly indicate is their level of physical
comfort with strangers. So green dot means all hugs welcome, unhinged,
yellow means ask before hugging the norm, red means no
(04:11):
hugs at all, and blue means I'm single. And aside
from the fact that it's open season on single people
under this system, I do like it. My social anxiety
has gotta hand it to him. It's a damn good system,
the hug dot system. Even though I think single people
should be able to choose whether people look them or not.
(04:33):
I was like, what the blue one just says fun?
Like does that mean fuck me? I don't understand, But
I'm into the system and I choose a yellow dot
because I'm game. I want to be here. But what's
more important to navigating the weekend than the hug dots
are the ribbons that attending medicines hang beneath their name tags,
and some people have a row of ribbons that extend
(04:54):
over a foot long. I only have one. It's a
bright yellow ribbon that says new member beside my yellow
hugg dot. But most of the people who approached me
over the weekend are wearing a red ribbon that has
labeled Hosier, and this indicates that they are an active
member of the Firehouse group, just as a reminder. American
MENSA Firehouse is an unmoderated, closed mental sponsored Facebook group
(05:17):
that has a pretty storied history of targeting, bullying, and
harassing people they disagree with. Coincidentally, it is also the
most active area in all of MENSA. Some additions to
the ribbon that as Hosier are ribbons that say things
like Firehouse, boobs and bacon, and the occasional one that
just says perverse. There's also a designated Firehouse table in
(05:39):
the cafeteria, which is labeled with a cartoon of an
owl with its head on fire. Some people use their
ribbons to announce where they're from or or their preferred pronouns,
but you'll find most ribbons have the comedic limitations of
a clearance rack at Spencer's gift in the mid two thousands,
and as the day goes on, I find myself growing
increasingly paranoid of my interactions with people who have the
(06:02):
hoser red ribbons. I go to a different talk, and
as a lecturer wearing a Bazinga shirt discusses the future
of artificial intelligence, I'm scanning the audience for red ribbons.
And while I sit through a discussion about the various
ways to use your cute children at business meetings to
persuade sales. What I'm looking through the audience for red ribbons.
And as I sit in the debate room watching civil,
(06:25):
if occasionally alarming discussions about hot button issues where the
winner is weirdly voted on by having the best speaker's
face against the wall as if there's a firing squad,
I am scanning the room for red ribbons. In the
debate room, I hear a wide variety of arguments about race,
climate change, and religion, some of which I agree with,
(06:45):
as some of which is some of the most regressive
scary shit I've heard in a while. I go to
a talk called Television humor evolution or devolution. Very old
college professors regaled a packed room with some of the
most incredible misinformation that I have to share with you.
It's not relevant to the podcast, but I would have
to let you know what these people said because it
doesn't make any sense and it made me laugh. Throwing
(07:07):
some goofy music. Okay, television humor evolution or devolution, Okay,
here's one of my favorite ones. For the edginess of
vulgarity of South Park is all the more shocking because
the lines are spoken by quote unquote children. Why quote unquote.
Seth McFarland is known for playing Cartman and many others.
(07:28):
He is not on the show. We have to ask ourselves.
Is n C I G S a comedy as well?
And then a couple of sides later that lab technician
she's goffe and that's a light mooteeth. She's very, very gone.
With Shakespearean comedies, the women can only be uppity in
the first act and by the last act they've been tamed.
(07:48):
There's also this like long meandering argument that Charlie Sheen
was removed from Two and a Half Men for quote
unquote sexual problems. But then one of the professors was like, well,
his character on the show also had sexual problems, so
the show wasn't funny. After he left, there was one
slide that just said www dot Everybody Loves ray dot com,
(08:10):
which you should check it out. It's a really good
Like Angel Fire fans site for Everybody Loves Raymond, Animated
sitcoms automatically create distance. This is why Family Guy two
thousand and twelve is allowed to be so vulgar as
the stories are told about the dysfunctional Griffons. Okay, ending tangent,
but I hope you enjoyed that as much as I did.
(08:31):
So this talk is followed by the equally punishing oh no,
we gotta do different goofy music mensa joke Off, whose
moderator explains that humor is to quote disarmed others unquote,
as well as to reflect quote shared experience where we
are in our development and sexual selection parentheses. Women sell
(08:51):
like men that show wit unquote the most mensa ship
I've ever heard in my life. But the joke off
basically functions as an open mic and since are welcome
to the front of the room to perform in categories
like old people jokes, light bulb jokes, jokes about professions,
and political jokes, a topic that everyone in the room
agrees as best to not even attempt. There are a
(09:13):
number of speakers who throughout the weekend are noticeably jarred
by the political divisions in the room and the joke
off moderator. I hate that I have to say joke off.
The joke off moderator looks genuinely surprised when his kind
of low hanging fruit Trump University joke gets a couple
of groans from the audience, and he says, really, and
(09:34):
another member just shouts out, don't boil the moon, and
others are kind of muttering in agreement, and so the
moderator shrugs and is a little confused, but he says
we'll move on. And by the time the final debate
room I go to that day closes, which is on
reproductive rights that featured an intense, anxiety inducing spar between
a liberal woman and an extremely pro life teenager, it's
(09:58):
already past eleven at night. And two who I will
remind you is the first friend I make at the
MENSA Annual Convention and the second most blocked member of
American MENSA Firehouse, me being the first. Thank you so much.
And two and I ran into each other again at
the final debate, and he knows exactly where all the
parties are on the fourth and fifth floor of the hotel.
(10:18):
It is time to go to the parties now. Because
it's MENSA. The party system is also needlessly complicated. All
of the parties that I go to on this night
are advertised within the Men's Arising Annual Gathering pamphlet that
we're given on our way into the Sheraton on the
first day, and most are divided by s I G
s or special interest groups. So there's the Boomer Suite,
(10:40):
which is next to the Gay s I G Suite,
which is across from the gen X Sweet, which is
across from the gen Y Sweet, and that's where I'll
spend most of my time. And why MENSA does not
recognize the term millennials is unclear to me. They call
it gen y whatever. There's also a Firehouse Suite, and
that's the only party I hear of happening on the
fifth war And that makes sense because there's two thousand
(11:02):
members of the Firehouse Group and their membership comprises a
pretty large amount of people who are in attendance at
the annual gathering. But at first two and I go
to the gen Wy Sweet and and it's honestly pretty fine.
A woman I met in a hotel room under very
confusing circumstances that I will explain to you in a
future episode. She recognizes me and she gives me a
big hog and she and her husband appear to be
(11:23):
the organizers of the suite and they're actually from my area.
So she's quick to introduce me to all the other
youngish medicines, and they're all pretty welcoming and curious as
I'm nervously compulsively refilling my cup with the cheap KEG
beer that's there. And there is this feeling that I'm
like retroactively attending every party I didn't get invited to
when I was a teenager, and no way to source this,
(11:44):
but it doesn't seem like I'm the only one that
feels that way. And it's at this party that I
realized just how many people associate controversy with me, because
at all times I have to wear a badge with
my full name on it, which sucks. At the party,
I'm approached by multiple people who cautiously ask me, how's
your a G going? Is it different than you expected,
(12:07):
how I'm enjoying myself. What maybe decided to come if
I was going to be writing about the experience. And
I get pretty good at answering this question on my
first night, which is lucky because I will have to
answer it several hundred times in the days to come.
And it's here that I kind of give the reflective
reply that I take with me through the rest of
the annual gathering, which is some variation on what people
(12:28):
told me. I wasn't giving mensa a chance in my pieces,
so I took so and so up on the invitation
to come, and here I am. Hi. The organizer's husband
comes up to me and asks me how it's going,
before mentioning we have a mutual friend. He's very friendly,
and I'm later informed that he's had me blocked online
for months. Someone else comes up to me and says, shit,
(12:49):
love this. And I don't know this guy right now,
but he's really going to dominate the toga party tomorrow night.
One man in particular, who holds a high position in
American medicine. Who am going to call? Joey corners me
near the cooler keg where I am still nervously drinking
and Joey is a very gregarious and kind of intense guy, so,
(13:09):
like many other people I meet, he asked me the
standard line of conscious questioning, and I give my standard
cautious answer, and he's repeating that regurgitative defense of the
Firehouse group, which is say it with me. They're the
nicest people in real life, nothing like they are in line.
So this conversation continues for about twenty minutes of intense
eye contact until Two finds me in the dark shuffle
(13:32):
of the gen Y suite and says, dude, what was
Joey talking to you about? For so long? I was
getting worried I have to yell in his ear to
be heard, And I say, I don't know. He asked
me about why I'm here and how nice the Firehouse
people are in real life. I have no idea who
he is, and Two just starts laughing. Joey was one
of the guys leading the charge against you in Firehouse.
(13:52):
He works for MENSA. He knows you don't know who
he is, okay, And like, no, I'm not okay. And
this happens multiple both times in my time and MENSA.
Someone is very nice to my face, and I later
find out that they have said horrible things online and
have blocked me for months. It is a crazy making thing,
and I'm starting to feel a little disoriented and dizzy,
(14:15):
and I'm a little drunk, and I lose track of
two as he goes over to flirt with someone on
the other side of the party. And around this point
I decide I'm going to leave. There's no way I'm
going to go up to the firehouse suite this late
in the night, and the combination of shitty cafeteria food
and for anxiety beers in rapid succession is just making
me feel awful. So I go to the bathroom. I
(14:37):
take a couple of notes, and I text my boyfriend
to let him know that I'm okay, because he wanted
to be at the MENSA Annual Gathering. But it's not
a couple's retreat. It's the MENSA Annual Gathering, bitch, and
I feel positive that going any less than alone would
result in extreme backlash. I leave the bathroom and a
few how's your age goings Later, I emerged from the
(14:58):
gen Y Sweet into the hallway where people are sort
of oscillating between board games and drunken conversations. And unfortunately
for me, and I don't even make it to the
elevator before someone else stops me. This is a guy
in his forties and he approaches me with a smile
as well as blocking my exit. At this point, it's
past midnight and it's still somehow ninety degrees out. He says,
(15:18):
I'm familiar with your work, and I start to brace
myself for what I think is this inevitable direct confrontation
until I look down at his name tag no red ribbon,
and then he kind of laughs a little bit and says, no, no,
I mean I like it. And it's not until I
hear myself like exhale that I realized I look scared.
And this is a fact that is corroborated by several
(15:41):
members of Firehouse and the group after the event is over.
I look scared, and I say really, and he says yeah,
there's a whole hold on and it's becoming clear to
me that I'm not going to be able to leave
anytime soon. And he beckons over a few other people
who are closer to my age and says, this is Jamie.
She came. The others are laughing and drinking their beer,
(16:03):
and one gives me a high five. One of the
guys says, Oh, we've been waiting for something like that
to happen. It's been years of them doing all that.
Are you going up to firehouse? And even hearing it
just makes me tense up a little bit. There's a
few red ribbon guys near the elevators and they're about
to head upstairs, and I say, I don't think tonight.
But the guys who like my articles are kind of
(16:23):
pushing it, and they say, oh, we'll come up with you.
It'll be fine, you'll be safe. I'm kind of thinking, like, no,
I've seen a horror movie before. But the moment he
says that, I know that I'm going to go because
I promised myself that I would give them medicines a chance,
and I wasn't going to take a seven hour greyhound
bus trip to not do that. I mean, and of
(16:45):
course this is just my perspective. I'm sure my best
friend would tell you that I'm addicted to putting myself
in harm's away for reasons that I should speak to
a therapist about. But the point is that I closed
the uber app and I opt in to the firehouse
hang and there's still one lingering red ribbon hoser near
(17:05):
the elevator. When the four so people and I finally
get to the elevator to go the opposite way that
I was planning, I'm going to call this guy Patrick,
and he stops me very gently and says, hey, are
you are the guys in with cuts them off and
says not to bother us because we're going up to firehouse.
Patrick is visibly uncomfortable at this news, and I stumble
over my words, half drunkenly, trying to assure him that
(17:27):
I'm not going to, you know, go up there and
cause a scene. And he raises his eyebrows and he
thinks about that for a second and says it's alliance,
then proceed with caution. And people in horror movies don't
usually get quite this many warnings. That would just be
bad writing. But I'm feeling a little pressure to go
up and I've already sort of steeled myself to do it,
(17:47):
so I say okay, thank you, and the few people
and with seem a little annoyed, and Patrick shrugs and says,
I don't think you've been barred from it, but you know,
I'm just saying it's alliance to and I'm feeling a
little defensive, and I say, well, I feel like the
way I entered the organization was in such a bizarre way,
and and I'm launching into what feels like prepared statements
(18:09):
after only twelve out of my planned sixty hours day
is over. The screenshots is what got people. But it's upstairs.
So we go up to the party slightly drunken, disorganized,
and for your sake, I sincerely hope that you never
know the feeling of walking into a living, breathing, hostile
comments section. And it's at this point, listener, that I
(18:34):
have to take you out of this compelling fourth of
July narrative to take you back in time a little bit,
because we really should talk about the screenshots that Patrick
is referring to and the continued argument for why the
denizens of Firehouse choose not to forgive me. For forgiveness
I never really requested, so page turn effect. Instead of
(18:58):
telling you what the American meant a Firehouse secret Facebook
group is, I will let them tell you what it
is instead. Via and I wish I were kidding. A
short animation that a member of the group had personally
commissioned in order to dunk on me. It was captioned quote,
I think Jamie Left could benefit from this, but alas
she's dead to me unquote honestly high drama Shakespearean I
(19:22):
love it. This is what the animated video states, American
Mensa Firehouse. Many Benson's had ventured into the firehouse. They
expected mind numbingly academic conversations imagine unicorns romping through meadows. Instead,
they discovered that Menson's are well opinionated, rude and rough curmudgeons,
(19:44):
but they are also kind, thoughtful, and generous. Conversations offended, some,
excited others, and in the end we all have the
same false inshore comings as everyone else. With one difference.
We were quicker, video and buddier. I wouldn't trade the
group for any other. Oh and boobs always boobs, Oh
(20:10):
and boobs always boobs. My introduction to this group, as
it pertains to me, was by receiving a notification that
I had been tagged in a post that contained the
link to the story I had written about getting into mensa, which,
and I can't say it enough, was called good news.
They let dumb sluts into mensa now the Slaton question.
Being myself, it was made immediately clear to me that
(20:33):
they did not care for this dumb slut joke I
made at my own expense. I'd like to share some
of the assorted replies that had already been written by
the time I was tagged. They are I agree that
she's a dumb cunt oh slut who's too dumb to
tweeze her eyebrows if she joined this group to cause
trouble for MENSA block her anyone else sent her nudes.
(20:56):
Yet where is national at a time like this that
she won't part dissipate in our boom thread and probably
does not even like bacon. Again, I can't stress enough
menicines are not very funny, and aside from my initial
vetting of some right wing memes, this was the first
that I had seen much of anything in the group,
(21:16):
and after receiving the warnings about Firehouse, I had combed
through some of the posts in the group to confirm
what I had been told. The prominent political leanings described,
and sure enough, what I think are the hallmarks of
far right groups were all there. From the bad photo
shops of Alexandria Acasio Cortez, bad faith arguments about bathroom
rights and race, the occasional feminism is cancer and just
(21:39):
general owning the Libs. And like the annual gathering, the
group is majority white and skewing older, and there is
a fair amount of disagreement and discussion among members in
the comments on more hot button American issues. Also president
the group where some inside jokes, updates about members lives,
requests for advice in certain areas of their lives, and
(22:01):
generally ranging from people in their thirties to people in
their late sixties, which is you hate to say it,
the dreaded parents on Facebook demographic. So screenshot these insulting
replies about my article and I post them to Twitter
without replying to the Facebook thread and without blocking the
names out. So I didn't think at that time, and
(22:23):
I still struggle with the idea that people who are
directly insulting and harassing another person warrants a censure of
their names. And I honestly wasn't thinking about it that
hard at the time I posted it. Because here was
this group that I had been explicitly warrant was toxic
and liked to go after members without prompting going after
me without prompting. And this is a confusing, kind of
(22:44):
difficult thing to talk about because would it have been
more ethical to block those names out? Absolutely, and to
any medicine who is listening to this, I would do
it differently if you were calling me a dumb cunt today,
I really would. And I don't know if that is
personal growth or refusal to engage, and I don't care
which I know. I would block out the names and
the few comments, including the boob thread, which we'll get
(23:06):
to that I I posted without centering the names. That
wasn't fair of me, that wasn't any of my fucking business.
And I took down the tweets that included names that
weren't directly harassing me. The comments directed at me, we're
about par for the course of online harassment I've received
in the past in many a comments section, but the
context for it was very different, because this was online
(23:28):
harassment from people who were supposed to be some of
the smartest people in the world, and most of them
were at least in their thirties, just hurling j V
insults at a stranger in a secret Facebook group. And then,
as promised, there was the bootbread which is a pretty
cool of MENSA famous effort dating back to where a
member posted, I want to see some boobs help me out, ladies,
(23:49):
hashtag boop thread. What followed this comment was twelve hundred
pictures of various members boobs, which has later moved over
to a second thread that had five hundred more boob replies.
And I don't know what else to say about the
Boobgreat other than I think it's the best part of
the group as long as you're posting your own boobs.
I shouldn't have outed the boob thread. I should have
been more thoughtful about that. And I apologize to the
(24:10):
book thread, and I will continue to apologize to the Bootgreat.
I am sorry to the boob thread. I reply to
a few of the comments to let members know that
I've seen what they've been writing, and at this point
I'm kind of still joking about everything. At one point,
I write hello, thank you for reading the piece, and
a special shout out to all the olds and the comments,
calling me ugly have a great day, everyone, and one
(24:30):
user replies, welcome to Firehouse. It doesn't get better. Then
comes the strange death threat that to this day, Firehouse
members insist was intended as a joke. I did not
block out the user's name when posting on Twitter, but
in everything I've written since I have it reads as followers, Hello,
Jamie Loftus. You've met the mild mannered organ repairment of MENSA.
(24:52):
Now you have met our criminal element. There are people
here who can really hurt you. In your world, that
means posting Twitter rents where you're a racist, or fake reviews,
it means something different here. This is serious. We have
men here who have killed, We have those who have
served time, one who did the unmentionable and fugitive felons.
There was a woman here who pissed a lot of
(25:13):
us off a few years ago, and now she's dead. Yeah,
you're welcome here. All dues, paid members are but that's all.
No one is looking out for your safety. And could
this have been a strange joke, sure, But after multiple
warnings about the group and a feel for its attitude
on a lot of subjects, I didn't feel that I
could take this as a joke in good faith. So
(25:35):
I posted it to Twitter without the name redacted, and
woke up the next morning to find that my Twitter
account had been banned for quote violating our rules against
posting violent threats unquote. So just to walk you through
the nightmare that is social media, a band had been
made on my account for posting a threat made against
(25:56):
me the men since we're getting very tricky. So there's
a popular assertion that people, specifically women, are quick to
accuse someone of being whiny or overly sensitive when threatened
with violence online, whether that's as a joke or not.
And as often as these arguments come up, they're difficult
for me to understand based on the empirical evidence that
(26:17):
people follow through on threats like this with with relative frequency.
There has been a disturbing increase in the likelihood of
people taking threats, even ones made ironically or with coded terms,
offline and into the real world. Whether we're talking about
any of the mass shootings that were directly promised and
foreshadowed on online forums, or racial and religious hate crimes
(26:39):
encouraged and carried out like at christ Church in New Zealand,
or the still active gamer Gate harassment campaigns that cause
some women to go into hiding, or the increase in
real life consequences of cyberstalking and cyber bullying. There are
a lot of reasons and examples to treat a threat
made in a private forum as something to be taken seriously,
(26:59):
and based on what I've seen, and based on a
lot of the examples I just provided, the idea of
free speech is a frequently invoked substitute for dangerous or
threatening speech. And Firehouse, While I am not implying that
they are criminals, I am implying that the low rumblings
of this exact model were at this time present in
that group. Okay, So upon logging into Firehouse that morning
(27:24):
to see where the conversation had gone overnight, I found
that I could not see much in the group at all.
And even though I had no Twitter account, if you
searched my name on Twitter, hashtag would pop up called
hashtag mensa responds. Here were some of the hashtag mensa response.
Jamie Loftus has been suspended for attacking our membership without cause.
(27:45):
She'll be back hoping for more publicity. Will be ready
hashtag ments of response and attached to this tweet was
a picture and a quotation from Joseph Grobel's Yes That
Joseph group the Nazi. One Twitter member commented to me
directly in spite of my suspension. I admire your energy
(28:06):
and dedication gee, to have met all medicines in such
a short amount of time. So to recap after writing
a satirical piece calling myself a dump slut and kind
of riffing on the idea of what I thought of
MENSA member was members of the secret MENSA Facebook group
mass insulted then mass blocked me when I shared their
insults on my Twitter viewed this sharing of threats made
(28:29):
towards me as a sinister doxing and sabotage of the
sanctity of an unmoderated group, and in fact, the fact
that my Twitter account was suspended became a commonly cited
piece of evidence that I had in fact done wrong
by not censoring these names, even though while some would
argue it's unethical, it is not illegal. Even though the
service reinstated my account and admitted that it was their
(28:52):
error that I had been banned, and given the trend
of how Twitter suspensions were, my account was most likely
flagged because the same tweet was reported multiple times by
you tell Me. Upon my account being reinstated, I removed
the reference to the MENSA group threat because fair point,
that's not my business and leave all the insults and
(29:12):
threats up. And that was important to be because to
me it was that sweet refrain. Again. Sure, they called
you ugly and stupid and threatened you unprompted, and they
will react harshly if you attached their name to such
a comment, but you really just have to get to
know them. Okay, we're going to jump back into the future.
(29:32):
We're going to July, day two of my time at
the MENSA Annual Gathering. Bring not a bit too fine
a point on it, but I am the Taylor Swift
of being absolutely hated at the Sheridan in Phoenix. I'm
very good, and so when I wake up, I'm very,
(29:52):
very hungover. And I listened back to the audio note
that I recorded upon getting back to my Airbnb the
previous night, which is just a long, blubbering tangent of
what had happened throughout the rest of the night. And
I'm saying things like they wanted to own the libs,
and I let them own the lips, very pathetic, laughed
(30:12):
at my own jokes, then started crying again. And so yes,
on night one, I had let MENSA make me cry,
at least for an hour, and I called my mom
to talk about it, and she says, I think you
should stay as I'm pouring over my notes from the
previous night, calculating exactly how long I could stay in
my bed at the Airbnb before going back the mile
(30:36):
and a half of degree hell weather that lay between
me and the Sheraton, and I tell her I cried
in the game room for forty five minutes last night,
confirming this on the MENSA station area I had bought
at their ill advised on site gift shop, which sold
everything from office applies to truly hideous T shirts. Some
of the graphic to sign let me share a fight
(30:57):
club bar of soap with Mensa carved into the tale
Deadpool caricature with a throbbing brain labeled brain Pool, the
organization's name in the Marvel funt the World of Warcraft fund,
and a comic book hero named Mr Manson. My mom says,
he cried to who. I looked back down at my
notes for the answer, and that is Tall Guy. Tall
(31:19):
Guy was with me in the Firehouse suite the previous
night as well, which was a lucky find in the
gen Y suite because he was just as confused as
why they weren't calling it millennial as I was. Coincidentally,
he lives a few miles away from where I do
in California, and he's kind of a tech bro turned
dad who now dabbles in improv and is very nice
to me in a moment that he doesn't realize that
I really need someone to be nice to me. When
(31:41):
he saw me last night, he said he dressed perfectly
for the luaw because the theme was luow is pointing
to my tied eye shirt and my pink shorts, and
then he said unless that's how normally dressed, which case
I apologize, and he's at the Firehouse party to the
fifth floor of the Sheraton that night was lined with
Firehouse members, some of whom appeared to vaguely recognize me,
(32:01):
and others who were too deep in conversation to care.
The group of people I'd come up with entered the
open Suite, which was as dark as any other party
we've been to that night, except weirdly for the gen
X suite, who apparently value iridescent lighting, which was really nice.
But I can't see in this room that is later
confirmed in photos is a table of drinks, a cardboard
cut out of Donald Trump and about twenty people whose
(32:21):
faces I can't make out. Tall guy is either vaguely
intrigued by why everyone is so interested in someone as
poorly dressed as me, or is a little worried after
I expressed some of the anxiety I felt in the
elevator up and so he kind of hangs near by
me when I'm stopped within ten seconds of entering the room.
The person stopping me in question is a hosier in
his forties with a column of ribbons attached to his lanyard,
(32:43):
a type of person that there is a limitless supply
of at this convention. I'll be honest, I know you are.
We're having the same conversation I've had several times this
night already, but this time we're in the Lions ten.
There's a lot of people who would say, don't talk
to Jamie and she thinks we're loser, dumbasses and all
of that. But my position is going to be based
on our interaction now, and even he will end up
(33:04):
containing more multitudes than I can possibly handle at this moment,
because yes, he will ask me in the hallway the
next day if I was secretly videotaping the entire party,
but he also appears to be dating the woman who
expressed the most pro choice opinions in the reproductive rights
debate I went to that night. Who knows this guy?
And I have a bizarre but civil conversation about my
(33:25):
status in firehouse for about half hour, and I spend
most of my time explaining that my intention was never
to hurt anyone in the group, but to do what
I thought was pretty clear satire, and he explained that
that wasn't how most of the people in the room felt.
Tall Guy was standing beside me throughout most of it,
learning about this schism in real time, and right when
it looked like I would actually get to talk to
(33:45):
some people, I started to get a little exasperated. But
we hear each other out, and tall Guy is looking
kind of amused, and he looks down to me and
is like, what did you even do? And I'm getting
worked up and I'm like nothing, and I feel my
brain started kind of splinter because the man I'm speaking
with remains respectful and continues to explain to me what
has already been explained to me by other men that
(34:07):
night that I come in pre judging medicines and the screenshots,
and that being hateful online next to your own name
didn't mean you were that way in real life. And
I have no issue with him. But I have heard
this already, and we're in the middle of rehashing this
again when the people standing a few feet away with
their backs to me and what I later understand to
be protest, start to kind of stir a little bit,
(34:29):
and one of them breaks away from the pack. This
is a guy who's maybe in his twenties with a
short haircut, and he's the first firehouse member to not
ask me how my ag is going. With wide eyes
and clenched teeth, he just he opts to just cut
straight to yelling. You don't want to drop that phone, huh?
He asks me, and he's reaching out to jostle it
out of my hand. Or you wouldn't want to drop
(34:51):
that phone, huh. He storms across the room to ask
the same thing of the handful of other people who
walked upstairs with me, turns his name tag around so
no one can identif by him, and starts accusing people
that I have just met a videotaping the party on
my behalf. The beers that I had drank downstairs. I
am really starting to feel and the man I've been
talking to for a half hour is pretty apologetic and
(35:13):
says he doesn't know the person who tried to take
my phone, and that he'd been getting a strange feeling
about that guy the entire night, and that he was
in the service, which doesn't really seem like a fair characterization,
but go off. And he says to me, your safety
isn't a question, and I'm pretty close to panicking, but
I'm saying I know, I know you feel myself kind
of starting to cry through the conversation, and tall Guy
(35:36):
asks me if I want to leave, and I nod
and I say yes and and try to hide the
fact that my eyes are full, and he clears a
path for us, and we leave, and the few people
we came with stay there, and I learned the next
day that they were yelled at by the same guy
who tried to take my phone. Tall Guy takes me
downstairs and we spend the next hour at the first
floor games room that stays open extra light, and I
(35:59):
start by sobbing through explaining why the night had gone
the way it had, and Tall Guy was patient with
me to a degree that baffles me to this moment,
and he listens to everything I said through my tears
and phlegm and everything, and he asks why are you
doing this? Where are you getting out of this? And
my answers, from what I can remember, are pretty indecisive,
(36:21):
because in this moment, I don't really know why I
am here, aside from the fact that I bought the
ticket five months ago after meeting a senior Firehouse member
in person for the first time, and I felt like
she had presented me with this challenge, and maybe she
was right, and maybe I had nothing to be nervous about.
But less than a day into this grand idiot experiment,
I really wish I weren't here. I didn't feel like
(36:42):
I was in mensa. I felt like I was the mensa,
the stupid lady who never should have accepted a dare
from a sentient comments section. But I cry my way
through this crisis with Tall Guys guidance, and eventually I
say I need to call an uber. And this makes
me feel so silly now out, But I did have
this paranoid flash through my head that maybe Tall Guy
(37:03):
had been sent by Firehouse to spy on me, and
this was how bad my state of mind was getting.
And tall guy was confused and said, you're not staying
at the hotel and I'm still crying, and I'm like,
I'm not paid enough for that because I'm not being
paid to be here. I'm just hurting myself. So that's
you know, Rittan and ground. It's not in the budget.
So flash forward to the next morning. I'm recapping this
(37:29):
for my mom and she says, you should stay. You
said you get to know them so you'll see it through. Now.
I have found my mother to be terrible with this
sort of advice of the time, but that's also sort
of why I called her, because I know I should stay.
I'm seven hundred dollars in the hole, I'm very hungover,
I'm completely miserable and nervous and scared, but I know
(37:51):
I am staying. And that's episode two of my year
in mensa. I hope you're enjoying AUNT. If you are,
feel free to let people know. Thank you so much
to Sadie Depueve for doing me incredible theme song, and
thank you to the following people for lending your voice
to the mentions. They are Caitlin Durante, iff You, Audi Way,
(38:13):
Miles Gray, Anna Hosnie, Sophie Lichterman, Robert Evans, either Taylor Jacquies,
Neil Daniel Goodman, and Maggie may Fish. My name is
Jamie Loftus. You can find me on them wherever you
want to. Really, we're halfway their baby. See you next
time on my ear and mentum
Host
Jamie Loftus
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