I need to vent a bit.
I have been a member of the Camarilla for many years. I have (mostly) enjoyed playing in the game. The two characters I have created and played in the game have been a lot of fun, and have drawn many compliments. My tenure as local Mage storyteller was well received.
On the other hand, I have often hated the stupid, petty, niggling administratrivia that cause no end of frustration when it comes to dealing with most of the larger aspects of the organization.
Case in point… I was the administrator for the Cam’s Northeast Regional e-mail list. It is a position that I as given back in 2004. It was a position that I had until yesterday.
It was a position that, in the end, I got no credit for.
History lesson… back in the first half of 2004, all of the Camarilla list moderation — national, regional, and domain level — was overseen by a national officer in the coordinator chain (one of the ANC-Techs), and the list moderators reported to that individual.
In the latter half of 2004, the List mod overseer changed how it all worked, consolidating the national lists among a smaller group of moderators and passing oversight of the regional and domain level lists to the appropriate coordinator levels: a domain-level list was overseen by the domain coordinator, etc.
I was given administrative control of the NE-Regional list in the first half of 2004. When the changeover happened, I contacted the NE Regional Coordinator at the time, explained the changes that were taking place, and asking what she wanted to see from me in terms of reports and the like. I got a response indicating that she had no problem with me continuing to moderate the list, and that I would continue to receive prestige (the Camarilla’s administrative ‘currency’) for the job.
That was the last successful contact I had with the RC staff for nearly four years. I sent multiple e-mails to the RC trying to get some kind of response, with no luck. I didn’t consider it a big deal — it was a pretty easy job, wasn’t worth much prestige, and I wasn’t in it for the prestige anyhow.
Then, at the tail end of last week, one of the current ARCs posted a message to the regional list asking for information about the active regional lists, who was in charge of them, and so forth. I contacted her, telling basically the same story I just related above, and got the following answer:
I spoke with… our current RC, and unfortunately he has no record of you as the list mod or your hiring. Therefore, he cannot validate your claim. I’m sorry.
This was the beginning of the end. Mildly annoyed, since anybody who had been paying any attention the past three and a half years would know I’m the list mod, and a simple check of the administrative info for the list (available to any member of the list) would show that I was the admin, I replied with several pieces of information that supported my claim, stating that the lack of administrative record on the RC’s part didn’t mean I wasn’t the mod, and hadn’t been doing the job since 2004.
To make a long story short, I was not only told that I was out of luck, but it was implied that I was making the whole thing up, and fabricating evidence (in the form of multiple emails I had on record) to support my claim that I had been trying to get this whole stupid mess sorted out with regional for the past four years.
It is precisely this kind of tin-hat emperor attitude that always bugged me about the Cam. The insular buddy-buddy nepotism that so often taints the relationships in the game, and drives otherwise rational people to react with such heightened emotion that everything gets blown way out of proportion to its actual importance (I mean, it’s a game, people).
So anyhow, this whole affair has soured me on the Cam (at least, for the foreseeable future). I haven’t been to a game since last April as it is, but my membership is set to expire in March, and I have no interest in renewing, because returning to game, ultimately, means having to deal with all the administrative crap and out-of-game interpersonal politics that I have no interest in.
Anyhow, there’s my first post for the year. How about those Patriots, huh?