Why We Don't Make New Friends Anymore (Or Creepers Do Creepy Things)

[Auspice]

@Rinel said in Why We Don't Make New Friends Anymore (Or Creepers Do Creepy Things):

@Ghost said in Why We Don't Make New Friends Anymore (Or Creepers Do Creepy Things):

In my estimation you can probably trust people at ACTUAL sex/swinger/bdsm clubs more than some of these people.

You almost certainly can. Kink communities tend to take consent very seriously and proactively warn new members about predatory people in the area.

absolutely, 100%.
I was part of a BDSM group in Ohio for a few years.
They did background checks.
They required you to attend the casual dinners out at least twice before you were allowed to join and the organizers had to approve you doing so meaning they could, absolutely, say 'We're sorry, we don't think you're a fit for our group.'

In addition to that, the age range for the group I was in was 18-35. If you aged out, the current membership had to decide yay or nay (vast majority of the time, because we were all so close and became good friends outside of, y'know, BDSM shit, we would say yes please stay around) as to whether people would stay. The age thing was because they wanted younger people joining to not feel like 'oh uhhhhh this is full of weird older people, newp!'

WHICH I ABSOLUTELY APPRECIATE. Because many BDSM groups I've looked into since have mostly been people 50+ and as a woman under 40? I just did not ever have remotely the same level of comfort. There are guys, sure, in that age range who are more respectful but uh, by and far, not so much.

People are gonna be more comfortable and feel safer in their own age range. Just like, at my age now, I'd totally get if someone 18-22 would be like 'Yeah, I'm not cool with this' if I was in a group.

(If anyone is in the Cincinnati/Columbus area and interested... PM me. I will see about looking up their info, see if they're still extant, and let you know. They were probably the best part about when I lived there.)

[Ghost]

@Ganymede said in Why We Don't Make New Friends Anymore (Or Creepers Do Creepy Things):

@Ghost

I don't want to make it sound trivial, but have you thought about opening up your own safe group?

Not trivial at all. My friend beat me to it so there's definitely an alternative, but its just crazy how common this is.

Its pretty easy these days to create FB groups and just rendezvous to another meet up club. Most gamers who want to play Azul and Catan will show up in a heartbeat. So all is well, but a bunch of drama and some people feeling tired of having to find new game spots that didnt suddenly become fronts for other stuff.

My buddy says it best: "It's totally great to have a Fetlife community have a gamer subgroup, but when you do it the other way around youre always gonna make some people uncomfortable."

[TheOnceler]

@Ghost said in Why We Don't Make New Friends Anymore (Or Creepers Do Creepy Things):

This is the same 16 year old girl who lived with her dad in a "LARP house." Basically a LarpHouse is a crack house (usually minus the drugs) where someone acts as slumlord to 7-10 larpers who pay rent on couches.

This is the most spectacularly fucking bananas thing in this whole goddam thread.

I legitimately do not want to believe that this is real.

[Ghost]

@TheOnceler said in Why We Don't Make New Friends Anymore (Or Creepers Do Creepy Things):

@Ghost said in Why We Don't Make New Friends Anymore (Or Creepers Do Creepy Things):

This is the same 16 year old girl who lived with her dad in a "LARP house." Basically a LarpHouse is a crack house (usually minus the drugs) where someone acts as slumlord to 7-10 larpers who pay rent on couches.

This is the most spectacularly fucking bananas thing in this whole goddam thread.

I legitimately do not want to believe that this is real.

I legitimately guarantee that this is real.

One I knew back in the day had something like 5 bedrooms but up to 10 occupants (approx 6 across 5 rooms then another 4+ on couches). The mortgage couldn't have been more than 1200/month but the owner (who ran a LARP there) charged 300-500 a month across 4 rooms (which were rarely vacant). I also knew of a few people that were paying 200/month + share of utilities to sleep on specific couches at night. Owner took on enough per month to quit his day job. Place had to be bombed a lot for bedbugs.

Another was a smaller 3 bedroom house with I think 4-5 occupants in the bedrooms but another 2-3 (16 year old girl house) in curtained-off sections.

In both cases it was widely understood that despite paying "couch rent" you would not have access to your couch while a LARP or other gaming event was going on.

Very little drugs that I heard of, but it was a whole lot of dirty dishes and pizza boxes, and people covering their bills with 25-hour a week minimum wage part time jobs so that they could afford to be involved in near-constant LARPs and RPG games.

[Auspice]

Honestly, can confirm things like @Ghost 's story happen.
There were a couple 'LARP' houses in Greenville, too.

At one point when I was looking to move, I got offered a place in one and they were like 'It's $500/mo plus an extra $40 if you want the wifi password and you have to chip in X a week on groceries.' (not 'buy your own' but 'One of us goes out and buys food for everyone and you have to pay X amount') and I was like '........lol this is Greenville, I can pay $500/mo total for rent and utilities and split a nice two bedroom with someone, nope.'

But people did it. One guy's mom was so desperate to get him out of her house that she paid his rent.... except he told her his rent was $900/mo so he didn't have to get a job (skeezy ass mofo BRAGGED ABOUT THIS ... I was sorely tempted to find out her phone # so I could tell the poor woman).

I went to a post-LARP party at one of these once and spent the whole night asking my SO if we could leave because the place was just so... ugh. It was gross. I was the only woman there and despite being clearly in-a-relationship I felt insanely uncomfortable.

LARP houses happen.
They are not good.
But people become obsessed with LARP on a really awkward level. It's part of why when we'll be here going 'gosh no one is as bad as MUers we're the worst sort of people that ever existed there's no other sort of hobby that is-'
I introduce LARPers.

Some are fine, totally.
But there are people in LARP who are just..... horrifying.

[hedgehog]

@Auspice

What in the actual fuck were they doing to justify that egregious an overcost on rent? Was it in Mansionland? Did everyone have private en suite rooms? I'm also assuming that the food that they would supply would then be of the ramen/turkey dogs/lentils/rice/potato buds variety, too, not anything actually worth eating.

[Ghost]

@Auspice I knew a few people who were basically homeless LARPers who paid their LARP house rent by doing dishes, mowing the lawn, etc.

To make matters worse, one of the LARP House owners hosted regular LARPs at the place and would get increasingly mad if things didn't go his way. Tenants lived in fear of getting exiled from the house if they did something like kill their landlord's character, so by and large they just gave the guy everything he wanted and let him win.

I listened to a gaming podcast a long time ago, but this girl (who, admittedly was on the prettier end of the spectrum) detailed her attempt at WoD LARP in Missouri, IIRC. She also detailed LARP houses, metric tons of pressure from male RPers, and a general lack of self grooming and cleanliness that matched what I had experienced.

So, my town, Missouri, the town Auspice mentioned. I dont know how prevalent this stuff is now because I stopped larping around 2001, but these stories are common enough across multiple cities that I wouldn't be surprised to see 3-4 other LARPers on this forum add their cities, too.

[Lotherio]

@hedgehog said in Why We Don't Make New Friends Anymore (Or Creepers Do Creepy Things):

ramen/turkey dogs/lentils/rice/potato buds variety, too, not anything actually worth eating

Whoa, lets not get personal, lets keep ramen and Maruchan off the table in discussion of what is not worth eating..

[Ghost]

@hedgehog said in Why We Don't Make New Friends Anymore (Or Creepers Do Creepy Things):

@Auspice

What in the actual fuck were they doing to justify that egregious an overcost on rent? Was it in Mansionland? Did everyone have private en suite rooms? I'm also assuming that the food that they would supply would then be of the ramen/turkey dogs/lentils/rice/potato buds variety, too, not anything actually worth eating.

Nope.

In my cases, these were usually rickety rentals or older builds with uneven floorboards, bed bugs, destroyed furniture, piles of crushed soda cans, piled dishes yet to be cleaned, pizza boxes, overgrown lawns, cockroach problems, etc.

For the owner/landlord, they got to either live more comfortably and cut hours from work OR quit work entirely because they were able to double the mortgage.

For the tenant, they were usually not educationally, socially, or motivationally gifted. Most had very hard times holding jobs, were kicked out of their parent's house or moved specifically to the LARP House to live that way, or seemed to consider that their overhead was less so they got to keep more of their money and spend more time playing. Only, in the end, they really didnt have anything, didn't groom well, didnt have clean clothes, and when the LARP house went away had few options, either.

These places were absolutely alternative housing solutions for people trading quality of housing for low overhead and less stress. These places were also absolutely somewhat predatory by the owner/landlord because they could basically get these people to pay their bills for them and spend all of their extra money on new PCs, furniture, and other comforts that were often locked behind the landlord's bedroom door.

As I understand it, one of the landowners I know of was "removed" from their job and now lives with his mother, and the other I havent heard anything about in years, but IIRC they continued to allow that 16 year old to bang that dude under their roof.

[Auspice]

@hedgehog said in Why We Don't Make New Friends Anymore (Or Creepers Do Creepy Things):

@Auspice

What in the actual fuck were they doing to justify that egregious an overcost on rent? Was it in Mansionland? Did everyone have private en suite rooms? I'm also assuming that the food that they would supply would then be of the ramen/turkey dogs/lentils/rice/potato buds variety, too, not anything actually worth eating.

Because so few of them knew any better.

I was 23, had been living on my own a handful of years already.
Most of these were people around 18-25 who had never lived on their own and had no idea what the market was like. They were being preyed on, plain and simple. Being preyed on isn't always in a sexual manner, sadly.

So you take some kid who is 18-20, has never lived away from their parents, and is impressionable. This kid wants to be popular in his friend group (LARP). His parents tell him it's time to move out. He's got his first job at one of the Popular Places to Work for the nerd crowd (in SC this was the bowling alley run by one of the LARP STs, Teletech, a UPS call center, or LevelOne, an apartments.com call center). He's got money, he's working with his buddies, and he can finally afford to live alone.

But he's still a really anxious kid. He doesn't know what he's doing. So one of these 40-something year old dudes goes: 'Hey man! Why don't you live with us? We'll help you move your shit in, then you can party with us, you'll have a ride (lot of these kids didn't have cars either) to work and game, and spare money for video games still!'

And this kid thinks oh man. I'd be living WITH my friends (maybe one of the STs!), they all have and play the games I like, I'd be one of the IN crowd. If he's underage he gets access to alcohol....

....so he agrees. Because it also plays into the other thing: anxiety. No need to apartment shop. To apply for apartments. To...

Mix in a little of it being the south and rebellion and wanting out from ultra religious mom and dad's thumb and-

voila. That's why people did it. And why the guys running these houses got away with it.

This is why I ended up with Ben, aka Loki, as a roommate for a while. I was renting a 3-bedroom house, $600/mo (you see why those costs were so fucking insane?) right outside downtown. You could walk 1.5mi and be on Main St. Ben was an okay guy. About 22. A little more sane than the others, but rapidly falling into things (see above: calling himself Loki) with the crowd.

But he was living in a LARP house because his parents had kicked him out. And the LARP house was too far away from anywhere for him to find a job. Greenville's bus lines sucked (they stopped at 5pm... can't really find a job on that shit very easily). So these guys had him doing ALL their chores and they took his EBT every month to dictate its use. Plus he only got to sleep on the couch.......unless a friend of theirs was over, then he got told to 'find some space on the floor.'

So I said: come to my house. You'll still have to do the majority of the chores, but your EBT will be yours, at least, and you'll have a whole room to yourself. All I expect is you find a job within 4 months. But I'm walking distance from a shopping center and downtown.

I actually did this a total of three times for people. Ben did get a job (not within the window, but ah well... I had to play MOM FAS and tell him he had a limited amount of time left and then he did get a job), then moved in with some (non-LARP) friends of his that were closer in age to him. J I had to kick out because he kept shorting me on rent once he did have a job. Alex was the best. Alex is someone I STILL want as a roommate. He got a job within a month, paid rent on time, did more than his fair share of chores, was fun to hang out with.... 5/5, best roommate ever.

But yeah, @Ghost saw this stuff around 2000. I saw it around 2009-2012. I'd not be surprised at all if it's still going on.

[Ghost]

Also, to be somewhat fair...

In the punk/metal scene I've known plenty of couch hoppers and party houses that were like this. "Dude we dont have a room and you can crash on the couch for some scrip" In these cases it was a bunch of punks or metalheads all dividing the rent so that they could afford to work less, party more, or spend more of their cash towards the band.

But this is also what crack houses do, so...take it as you will.

I would say only 30% of the people I know who relied on LARPHouses and paid money to live on couches ever got out of the habit and made something of themselves. The rest are a lot of mental disorders, still living in cramped houses, mostly single, no kids, shit job, focusing on their 1st and 3rd friday LARPs or mending their SCA armor.

Oh. And a lot of them moved on to create or are involved heavily in some of the "clubs" here in town that I mentioned earlier. Buncha dudes these days in wrinkled poets shirts at house parties with nicknames like "SwordSaint" and are in some fucked up polycule.

So the LARP House people are also the people recruiting gamers into the poly scene, these days.

[Ganymede]

I'm really glad I did not stay long in LARPing, I really am.

Like, one session. I had a blast, but it really wasn't for me, no matter how many people told me I should continue. I couldn't stand the people.

People ruin everything.

[mietze]

There's a surprising(though not really if you think about it) lot of subgroups of folks that get sucked into bad bad stuff like this. I mean I can think of several in essence gamer geek households that have operated pretty healthfully and smoothly, I know of a few very healthy intentional communities too--but that can go really horribly really quick and many of the people who gravitate to that may not have an easy way to get out of it. Add into it that both predatory people and folks dealing with trauma can also be attracted to some of the "alternative lifestyle" intentional communities or house sharing and it can get real gross real quick.

[Auspice]

@mietze When the 3rd of the people I listed above (Alex) was living with us (my ex-husband and I) it was basically a gamer geek household. We had a ton of nights where we'd make dinner then just hang out and play video games on our respective computers- often multiplayer games (lord there were weekends we'd spend 12 hours on a Terraria server, just ordering pizza).

But it was great. Like, we also kept the house in order, shared chores, turned our backyard into a vegetable garden.

It's about being responsible, finding other responsible people, and making sure you all get along.

Unfortunately, when the person 'at the helm' is not these things (aka responsible or willing to get along in a healthy way)... the rot runs through the whole. And that's how these communities go bad.

I would, absolutely, go into a roommate situation with people I get along with in that way again (minor temptation rn to email Alex and be like HEY WANNA MOVE TO TX RIGHT NOW?!). As I look at moving next month, I wish I COULD. I wanna save money, I wanna cook for other people, I wanna have people to hang out on weekends to play board games. But the timing is really shitty rn.

[Deleted]

@Auspice I'd be down for that sort of environment as well. Heck, I even have a proven track record of not creeping on roommates.

[Lemon Fox]

For years my job involved working almost exclusively with gamers and nerds in person, and this thread depressed me in ways I wasn't prepared for.

[Tinuviel]

@Auspice The best friend I ever had was my roommate just after university. I worked days, he worked nights. We saw each other for maybe ten minutes a day for two years. That is my ideal living situation.

[Auspice]

@Tinuviel said in Why We Don't Make New Friends Anymore (Or Creepers Do Creepy Things):

@Auspice The best friend I ever had was my roommate just after university. I worked days, he worked nights. We saw each other for maybe ten minutes a day for two years. That is my ideal living situation.

I had a roommate like that for a little while

that asshole created Fred

Fred was a broom given a face and arms that he left around the apartment for me to find (I worked third shift) when I came in in the dark at 5am

Fred scared the everliving shit out of me a lot

[Rinel]

@Auspice

I did that in college with a reasonably large and very fake tree who quickly became known as Daphne (I lived in a house full of classics and archaeology undergrads). Daphne would move from people's doors to various stair landings to, in one particularly memorable incident, the inside of a shower.

Whereupon she promptly fell on top of the person who went in bleary-eyed in the morning for his daily ablutions.

He was not amused.

[Tinuviel]

@Rinel said in Why We Don't Make New Friends Anymore (Or Creepers Do Creepy Things):

very fake tree who quickly became known as Daphne