January 1, 2020 • 44 mins
Welcome to My Year in Mensa, episode final!
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
"Highland, Bagpipe, Joyful Song": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_ZqBSq7_GA
Licensed to YouTube by Epidemic Sound (on behalf of Epidemic Sound); Epidemic Sound Publishing
"Scheming Weasel (faster version)" by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com)
License: CC BY (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
"Clean Soul" by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com)
License: CC BY (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
“Your Call" by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com)
License: CC BY (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
"The Time of My Life" Karaoke (Fair Use): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGAW18eoevk
"Pixelland" by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com)
License: CC BY (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
"Official National Anthem" by Jingle Punks: from the free YouTube Audio Library
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):
Is that smarts. My name is Jamie Loftus, and you
are listening to episode four of My Year in Mensa,
(00:24):
the podcast that is about what the title of the
podcast is. If this is your first time listening, this
is the last episode, so you probably will want to
go back to the beginning and start from there to
understand everything that's going on. And for those of you
that have been on this journey, welcome to the end.
What will happen next? Will we ever reach any manner
(00:46):
of conclusion? All things that we will be finding out today. So,
since this is the last episode, I think I will
go off on a tangent a little bit at the
beginning and just say how nervous I am to release this.
Because I am making a podcast about a very reactionary group.
It stands to reason that there will be a reaction
(01:08):
to the thing that I'm making. A criticism frequently thrown
at me for writing about Mensa and now podding if
you will, is that I'm doing it for reputation or
financial gain. And you know, I'm glad that people find
the writing and reporting interesting. In two critics of that,
I mean, I don't really know what to say. I'm
(01:29):
glad people find it interesting. It's interesting to me too.
I've made a total, I believe, of four hundred dollars
writing about MENSA. Yeah, I wrote four articles and made
a hundred dollars per article, and then proceeded to spend
way more than that in order to attend the MENSA gathering,
to get lodging, to eat, to go to San Pedro,
(01:53):
to have so many things, to pay member registration fees,
which is almost a hundred dollars two times because I
pad asked the year mark and I had to get
I had to renew my membership. I also bought one
of those brain pol t shirts to make myself laugh,
but I guess that's more of a personal expense. All
that to say, I don't I'm not. There's no money
in this story. I don't even know if people want
(02:15):
to hear it. I am trying to finish what I started.
It started as something funny to me and then ended
as this bizarre, sociological what the fuck is this? So
that is why I'm doing this, as I want to
understand what the funk this is, and as frustrated as
it has made many menines towards me, it turns out
there's a fair amount of people that are interested in
(02:36):
what the funk this is who find it confusing. So
I guess I don't know. I mean, I am nervous
to release this, but it's a pot. There's five hundred
million podcasts, so many of which are about things weirder
and worse than this, And so just going into this
last one, if you've been listening the whole time, thank
you so much. And uh and to to mencem who
(02:58):
have been listening, I hope that you feel like I'm
characterizing people fairly. I know that this is a biased account.
It is my account, but I really did try. Nothing's
going to be enough for everyone, but that's enough for me.
And so with that, let us go to July six, nineteen.
This is my third day of the MENSA Annual Gathering.
(03:18):
Time Labs noise. Okay, So I'm at the hospitality cafeteria.
It's two PM, and a man who is already very
drunk is talking to the woman handing out drinks and
he says, you know, no one wants to be the
one to say it, but not all dictators have been bad.
(03:40):
I hate to say it, but Germany was one of them. Okay,
And this man does not have the demeanor of someone
who hates to say anything, and he disappears as quickly
as he got there. I am fucking exhausted, And today
is a particularly rough slate of daytime events from a
thoughtful presentation and on a d h D famously featuring
(04:02):
the quote a little a d h D can be
charmingly quirky, A lot of a d h D can
be a big, giant pain in your life. It was
a good duck. Then there was the sparsely attended MENSA
Awards ceremony and what feels like the millionth lukewarm cafeteria
lunch served in hospitality. And at this point I'm subsisting
mainly on the free peanut Eminem's, and so for old
(04:23):
time's sake, I sit at the pet lover's lunch table
again with mostly the same few people and a few
of the same women, talk about their week and exchange
pictures of their cats. I love it. I am unlucky
enough to have accidentally sat next to yet another very
drunk man. This guy's in his sixties and he's telling
me he has some leftover steak in his hotel fridge
(04:44):
that he loved to show me what When all of
a sudden there's Katie once again wearing her Maga hat,
and she's excited my best friend. She invites me over
to her lunch table, the firehouse table that I described
an episode one that has a cartoon of an owl
with its head on fire to market. And it does
feel weird to be relieved to see someone in a
(05:05):
Maga hat. But this old drunk guy hitting on me
to get stake that he admitted he didn't even buy
is enough to get me to leave. And so the
world is upside down, and Katie too, and myself are
all sitting at the firehouse lunch table together. Katie says
that there's a bar crawl going on later that night
and that I should be in the lobby by six
(05:25):
to go, and I agree to go and continue my afternoon.
And sometime in the afternoon I see Mead Guy in
the hallway. Meat guy, of course, because he is the
guy who makes mead. He at this moment is dressed
head to toe as a pirate and when he spots me,
he literally jogs in the other direction, which is if
a man in a full pirate suit hasn't literally run
(05:48):
away from you? Are you even living? So this is
the purest interaction I've had all week and in my life.
And by early evening, the old drunken fascist is back
at the hospitality bar. This time he's talking to a
different bartender and he's holding out these fake three dollar
bills he's printed that have these over edited caricatures of
(06:09):
Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. It just printed on a
laser jet and willed into reality. And a man with
a Hosier ribbon walks up to him and kind of jokes,
and the old drunken fascist is laughing and laughing, and
he says, only a Republican could joke about Democrats like this.
(06:30):
He proceeds to tip the bartender with the forged bill
of Hillary Clinton and then disappears for what I hope
is forever. I know, this man sounds like a fever
dream cartoon, but he's out there. So I'm trying to
get through the day and I go to the next talk,
which is called the Dysfunction of the American Political System.
It's being given by a very tired looking professor, and
(06:53):
the discourse is cringe e and offensive and terrible. There
was a man who kept raising his hand to insist
that slaves being counted as three five of a person
is what ruined the American South, and the room gets
very riled up at this, rightfully so, and apparently the
speaker doesn't have really the historical knowledge to make a
(07:14):
very strong argument against this clearly wrong point, and they
get into this sparring match. Other people are jumping in
to agree with him or loudly disagree with him, and finally,
after about forty five minutes of this, people just start
to leave. Every person of color and a few others
of us. It's just too painful, and everyone leaves because
(07:37):
in many ways that's where the country is, and also
this is what this event is like. So once everyone's dispersed,
I write down all the details of what happened. And
while this is not the only racist thing I heard
in Phoenix this weekend at the MENA Annual gathering, it
feels very wrong that I am not at all surprised
(07:59):
that there is some one willing to say something so
horrible here, or that they refuse to engage with anyone
in the room in a good faith way. People were
offended and upset, but no one seemed surprised and in
the midst of all this, I had missed the departure
of the bar crawl. Oh no, such are this of
(08:20):
setting talk completely falls apart. I head out to the
front of the hotel to see if maybe the bar
crawl is within my line of sight, when a man
who's holding a few pieces of fruit appears behind me,
and he says, you're the famous Jamie Loftus, and there's
no point in telling him I'm not, so I asked
(08:41):
him if he knows where the bar crawl was headed.
He instead tells me his name is Kevin, and he's
a twelve year MENSA member who was ousted from a
local position by a young woman I've been in contact
with before, who is another popular target of Firehouse and
of Mensa at large. Kevin's handing the armful of fruit.
He has two homeless people in the sweltering Phoenix heat.
(09:03):
As we continue to talk, and at at this point
someone asks me directly, am I going to be writing
about this? And I don't really answer, but Kevin is
kind and he points me in the direction of the
bar crawl, saying he's going to a Diamondbacks game and
he'll catch me another time. When I get to the bar,
I see I've missed the drinking mentions except for one
(09:24):
lone hoser at the entrance, and so I decide, you
know what, maybe this is it. Maybe I have gotten
to know Firehouse as well as I'm going to. I
came here, I've spoken to at least a hundred people
about how they feel about screenshots from nine months ago,
and I am so ready to go home, but just
in case, I messaged to to see whether he's on
(09:45):
the bar crawl as well, and he says no, and
we agree to meet at a ratan trivia event called
Name that Movie so we can watch senior mentions loudly
identify a litany of military movies that I've never heard of.
It's already seven o'clock at night, and I'm considering going
home for a nap when Two leans over and he
points at a message on his phone and says it's
(10:07):
from Katie. She's saying there at the Tilted Kilton to
bring you. I peek over his shoulder to look at
the message, and it does say the ladies would love
to meet her. The sinking feeling of knowing I will
go settles as the five thousand John Goodman movie clip
plays on the name that movie screen and in a
feudal act of resistance, I just say I can't, and
(10:31):
he laughs because he knows that I will and I can,
and he says, I know, but like and yeah, he
finds this a little funny, because like it is a
little funny in a wanting to die kind of way.
But I'm about to go to Scottish Hooters to have
my ass just handed to me for the three thousandth
time in seventy two hours, for for no reason, for
(10:55):
no reason, it just feels like self harm. At this point,
I am exhausted, I look like garbage, and I volunteered
to do this. So on our way over to Scottish Hooters,
I asked too about why he participates in American Mensa
firehouse so consistently when he knows everyone is just going
to pile on him. A typical post from two would
(11:18):
be a news item about something horrifically racist, sexist, classist
happening in the country, captioned with a sarcastic sentence or
two that are directly challenging the right leaning members of
the group, asking them to defend their views against whatever
story He's attached. I think of it as kind of
trolling in the opposite direction. Two does what the rest
(11:39):
of Firehouse does, but with a far left leaning view
rather than the opposite. On the same day that we
have this conversation, he posts a picture of Katie, him
and myself that Katie insisted we take at lunch that day,
with the caption Mensa's Finest and the photos themselves are
another form of trolling. It's just another challenge for people
(12:01):
to be annoyed and engaged with a rivalry that doesn't matter.
And Two gets a little defensive at first and says,
I don't really post that much, but eventually he agrees
that he in fact does, and he admits it does
give him kind of a dopamine hit of sorts. He says,
I just have to find it funny and cites how
comically opposite Katie's views are from his own. I don't know. Katie,
(12:27):
Sam and the aforementioned girls who would love to meet
me wave at Two and I from the entrance to
the restaurant. Their table is covered in glasses and fried appetizers,
and Katie hugs to an eye and once again declares
us her best friends. I actually recognize the woman sitting
beside her, who's friendly but more skeptical. She's a beach
(12:48):
blonde in her forties. Who am going to call Megan
who reminds me a lot of my Trump voting aunt
who I can't get myself to break contact off with.
And this meal ends up being one of the more
productive and confusing few hours in my year in mensa
name of the podcast, A meal with three drunk right
wing women who genuinely want me to know where they're
(13:10):
coming from, not because they liked me, but because they
would like for me to write something nice about them.
Of course that's just speculation. Megan says, I want to
know what you're going to write. And as she says that,
Mead guys still dressed as a pirate, and a few
other people also dressed as pirates enter Scottish hooters. I
guess I should say, to be fair that he was
(13:31):
dressed as a pirate for reason there was some pirate
related then. I don't know if he wasn't just eatn't
just happen to be dressed as a pirate, but it
was very he was dressed as a pirate. I don't know,
but I tell Megan. Honestly, I don't know what I'm
going to write. One of the pirates interjects to ask
me for a selfie, and I say no, I mean
(13:52):
I came here. I'm gonna listen to Firehouse as I
promised Katie and two and Amanda and Maggie and god
knows how many others strangers that I would. And then
I'm going home. But she disregards what I want because
funk what I want, and she takes the selfie with
the entire table. Anyways, somewhere there is a cursed image
of me at Scottish Hooter with a bunch of mens
(14:13):
and pirates, and I hate that for myself. But I'm
helping myself to Katie's fried pickles appetizer as I talked
with her and Megan, And for the first time since
I got here, someone in Firehouse tells me about themselves
instead of asking me how my a G is going.
Who they are is, like many of the people in
this very sticky story, more complicated than I could have
(14:35):
imagined back in the Pasadena testing room a year ago.
Here's a little bit about them. Megan is a married
Canadian Conservative who joined MENSA when she realized her son
is both very intelligent and struggling to fit in at school.
She says her reason for joining was as a supportive
mom looking for a way to make her son feel
(14:57):
like a part of something. And once they signed up,
a on came Firehouse and the secret Facebook group immediately
became a big part of Megan's online life, and she
recalls the group's schism that led to mensa Facebook groups
being separated with moderated and unmoderated factions. In the first place,
she hates socialized medicine, but she backs this thought up
(15:19):
with an anecdote about how she was struggling to get
the surgery she needed under this system for well over
a year, which impeded her quality of life and ability
to work and parent. She identifies as bisexual, libertarian and
as the creator of the boob thread and if you
don't know what the book that is by now, I
honestly can't help you. You've got to go back. But
(15:41):
she and Katie met on the Firehouse board several years
ago and are self described ride or die ever since,
and Megan talks a lot about her beliefs but doesn't
like how she's pigeonholed with labels. She says, I'm not
alt right, but I'm very right. Great, and then there's Katie.
Katie is an American from the East Coast who voted
(16:04):
for Obama in two thousand and eight, then became an
increasingly intense conservative following the recession of the late two thousand's.
She was raised in a poor, often difficult household and
joined MENSA back in the mid nineties when an elementary
school teacher noticed how well she was doing in school,
especially on standardized tests. She originally found it useful to
(16:26):
put MENSA on job resumes to supplement the college education.
Her financial background made it impossible to get, and she
became an increasingly more active member of Firehouse following Trump's election.
She's married now, and in another twist, she's pro choice,
but says she's not extreme and that babies shouldn't be
aborted at nine months, which is not an argument I'm
(16:50):
aware exists. She says that she's actually seen my stand
up online and laughs when she remembers that she was
piste off when she ended up kind of liking it.
Thank you so much. Watch my stand up on line. Anyways,
Megan was the first person to welcome Katie to Firehouse,
and this is the main time they get to spend
together during the year. And while they're telling me this,
(17:10):
Megan seems to be warming up to me a little
bit too, but with more conditions than Katie. She really
wants to know what and if I'm going to write,
and I really don't have an answer for her. I
feel everyone at the table slowly poking holes in my
fragile bubble of remaining patients, and although I avowed to listen,
(17:31):
I find myself speaking up more as the women move
on from their life stories into their opinions on Firehouse
Me and the last thing anyone wants to talk about
the state of America. And anytime I do say something,
they think my annoyance is very funny. Megan says this
at one point when I get frustrated at a comment
(17:52):
at the table, and I will remember it forever. You're
confusing intelligence with education. So I'm getting worked up, and
I'm most of the way through the fried pickles. Talking
to Megan and Katie feels like some of the biggest
contradictions I have ever encountered. Their pro gay rights, but
they're anti fat people, they're sex positive, but they hate feminism.
(18:14):
It's those mentioned contradictions that have it always, all the time,
all over again. And of course, here I was at
Scottish Hooters, realizing that there was more to the people
flooding my comments in my life and anxiety. And yet
I bet I've had sex with more girls than you.
Megan says this to Too, who is a little too
eager to fight back, he says, helping himself to one
(18:37):
of her buffalo wings. And I'm on Megan's side for
this one for a second, but then and you're having
worse six with those man haters. Katie and Megan do
not like feminists. They think that real men respect the
women there with and that most of the discussion around
current feminism amounts to whiney entitlement. They poke at two
(18:58):
for self identifying as a feminist, and they say there's
nothing less sexy than that. I'm not drinking at this meal,
as I need every bit of self control fully with me.
But the ladies at the table, the one who's having
a conversation with Sam, the pianist who's arrived, is too
drunk to really participate. They order one more round before
the boob thread comes up again, Megan tells me that's
(19:22):
one of my big issues, honestly telling people about the
boob thread and the screenshots. As the meal continues, it
gets increasingly tougher to keep the promise to hold my
tongue and simply get to know the medicines. I have
yet to spring to my own defense in any meaningful way,
other than to repeat that I wasn't there to terrorize
the group at nausea, and I believe it was the
(19:44):
thousandth mention of the screenshots that tested me. Katie hears
me out when I remind her that MENSA isn't the
first heaping of online abuse I've received as an entertainer,
and I feel that I need to take every threat seriously,
particularly when I have had no action with the commenter
at all. This seems to resonate with her, and she
(20:04):
repeats that tone is difficult to understand online. Megan is
still more leary of this logic, and she continues to
push back, and this opens a discussion about past quote
unquote problem members of the group, problem members being kind
of this medicine buzz phrase I've been hearing all week.
I mean, there was even a dealing with problem members
(20:25):
session officially on the books, that I did not have
the inner strength to attend, and also going would have
sort of felt like trolling on my part. Anyways, this
is what makes me break. I had assured to on
the walkover that I had already made it three days
without getting in an argument with anyone, and that I
wasn't going to let any Scottish Hooters discourse be the
(20:46):
thing that breaks me. And then Megan and Katie brought
up white supremacy. We've had actual real racists in the
group before. This is Megan, and she describes a Firehouse
member who regularly posted racist screeds in the group. As
she told it, the members found this too racist and
would pile on him for his views, excoriate his arguments,
(21:09):
and tried to make him feel as uncomfortable being a
part of the group as possible. This, she explains, is
why she thinks censorship is not a good tactic for
any forum, her logic being otherwise, how would meant to
know this person was racist at all? And I asked her, well,
did anyone do anything about it? Did he get kicked
out of mensa? And No? This same member somehow managed
(21:34):
to get officially booked as an annual gathering speaker. His
talk was on, per Megan, the Bell Curve, a controversial
parentheses completely disproven book that is constantly cited to justify
racist views. As Megan tells it, Firehouse members, including her,
made a plan to show up at this guy's talk
(21:55):
at the annual gathering and then mass walk out in
the middle of it in order her to humiliate him.
And she says that this worked and he was humiliated.
And she concludes this story by saying he eventually left
American ments of Firehouse after being blocked and humiliated enough times.
She suggests that this and commenting to disagree with his
(22:18):
racist posts instead of removing him or adding a no
white supremacists welcome addition to the group's non policies, was
potentially what prevented this member from becoming fully radicalized and
taking part in a more violent group. And sure, he
eventually left Firehouse after feeling unwelcome enough, but she felt
(22:40):
that this experience had a role in changing him for
the better. And if you could not follow the logic
of that story, we are on the same page. I
am not at all sure I understand what she's trying
to say, and so I asked, but what did that accomplish?
If he left the group, then didn't he probably just
go continue to be a white supremacist somewhere else. My
(23:03):
head is throbbing at this point, and I want to
ask her what any of this has anything to do
with what her argument against me specifically is, but she's
not done speaking. So you see, problem members do leave
the group if they know we don't support what they do,
Katie says, drawing a direct line with how the group
(23:24):
dealt with a white supremacist to how they dealt with
a dealist comedian. And there has been a lot of
false equivalence at this table tonight, but this one is
too much. Two seems genuinely shocked, and he bursts into
laughter at the comparison, while I am struggling to keep
my head attached to my neck, and Two is like,
(23:45):
and Katie kind of catches the comparison she just made
and says, no, No, I didn't mean. I'm obviously not.
We're just talking about problem members. She apologizes, and she
tries to start the anecdote over, but I cannot take this.
Sitting down at Scott Shooters anymore. So I choked down
one last fried pickle, and against every better instinct in
(24:06):
my very tired body, I fucking debate mensa. So stupid. Okay, so,
because I made the critical mistake of debating my own
reply guys, reply, women, reply people, I'll start with what
they get me on the first is the satire itself.
Megan articulated clearly that the group felt this was me
(24:26):
punching down at a group of people who were misfits
their entire lives and have finally found a community. She
also thought I was a little too cutting towards my
test proctor in the first piece, And okay, fair, I
was bullying dorks, and I hadn't considered it from this
point of view, even though I thought of it at
the time as punching up to a group that paid
(24:48):
a fee to declare their superiority over the rest of
the world. So yes, that's a viewpoint that I hadn't
considered point for mensa. Megan leans over to me at
one point and says, you and I were able to
fake it. I mean, we're unusual, but you're smart and
you're pretty, and you're able to be around people and
(25:08):
fake it. Not everyone in mensa is like that. First
of all, thank you so much for calling me pretty.
But Megan makes references to members of the group that
are socially awkward and some who are on the spectrum,
and others who identify as lifelong misfits. And she has
this to say about the guy who issued the now
infamous in group death threat. He's the nicest guy in
(25:29):
the world in person, and that's how he jokes. And
I asked, how was I supposed to know that threatening
a stranger is how he jokes, and Megan says, I understand,
but she continues to defend his right to do so.
Another point they get me on is the group's impression
that I was trying to get them doxed and attacked
with my tweets, something that I have to be sympathetic too,
(25:51):
because the same thing has happened to me, although with
more explicit instructions to harass I was never asking anyone
to find these people in aither them. If you're coming
after my friends, I'm gonna block you, that simple. And
the second you talked about the boob thread, I blocked
you right away because I can't have people posting on
that getting docs again I repeat to her that I
(26:13):
didn't intend to docks people by posting screenshots that were
insults and threats against me, and hadn't done so since
those original tweets, And again I repeat that I felt
that once threats, insults, hate speech come into the equation,
the question of whether someone's identity should be protected becomes
obscured for me. And again we disagree. So they closed
(26:35):
the tab at Scottish Hooters and Megan and I continue
to have a heated debate into the street, at one
point getting so involved that we walked a half a
block away from the main group in the opposite direction.
And it's a respectful conversation for the most part, but
it is very intense. She challenges me, if you felt
so threatened, why didn't you report it to the police
(26:55):
or Facebook? And I say, well, I talked to the
organization that's in charge of Firehouse directly. I thought they
might do something. And Megan shrugs at this, the implication
being that since nothing was done, that's evidence that there
was no harm done in the first place, and not
just systemic not giving a fuck. The subject of our
conversation switches to the unmoderated elements of Firehouse. Megan is,
(27:20):
as expected, a fierce defender of the unmoderated nature of
the group, repeating me, if you can't take the heat,
get out of the kitchen, creed among people who have
expressed frustration at the group's persistence. I don't believe in censorship,
she repeats a number of times. So I pushed back
and say, isn't having everyone in the group block one
person censoring the group though? And at this point we
(27:43):
are all standing in front of a theater complex. Katie
is drunkenly humping a statue, and two is taking pictures
of it, and Megan and I are still trained to
have this conversation, and in another dimension, Two and Katie
are soul mates. Weirdly, but in spite of or may
me because of the humping, I continue the conversation with
Megan and say, the way I see it, the threat
(28:06):
is a threat, and saying that I should have to
read into the tone or personal history of the person
making a threat is kind of asking a lot. And
Megan comes right back with, well, you didn't get to
know us. Kitty is hanging from a statue, and I say,
my introduction to this group was getting tagged and an insult.
Why the funk would I want to know people in
(28:26):
a group that would do that. And Megan considers this
and says that is unfortunate. She then mentions a few
strategies I could employ to have people in Firehouse begin
to unblock me, including a public apology, a public vow
to never release any manner of screenshot ever again with
names blocked or not, and a number of other apologies
(28:49):
I could make in order to participate in this community
that many people have started to assume I am eager
to reconcile with. And I say, besides, you guys are
always talking about free spee when I was making jokes
and being critical and trying to hold people accountable for
shitty things they were saying. And at this point we
have reached an impass and we were finally at the
(29:10):
door of the Sheraton Grand for the final Mensa Official
Great Gatsby nineteen twenties dance. Megan, Katie and the MAGA
crew hugged me goodbye and say they'll see me at
the dance. But I have no intention of staying more
than like ten minutes. My head hurts and my legs hurt.
And I'm dying of heat stroke, and I should not
have come here too, who's a former journalist himself, seems
(29:32):
just as drained by the dinner as I am, and
says he might write something himself. The arguments Megan and
Katie made defending their community felt just as contradictory as
the people themselves. Firehouse was a haven for the socially awkward,
but also a place for the socially awkward to threaten
people freely. Firehouse was uncensored except for the people they
didn't like, who would be censored to the point of
(29:53):
complete silence to those in the group with influence. We
go into the dance for a minute, and it's early hours.
There's a few middle aged couples who danced to celebration
in the center of the room, and a few immaculately
dressed younger couples who are flocked around the photo booth.
Two says, not much of a dance guy, and he
looks down at like the basketball shorts he's wearing. I
(30:14):
say me either, and have him snap a quick picture
and get ready to leave. One of the couples in
gen y who had brought me up to the firehouse,
sweet my first night or there and there once again
wearing matching outfits. You're coming into booth, aren't you, The
guy who's close to my age asks, and he insists
that we get a few shots of them with the
oversized props in the booth. We leave the room, and
(30:34):
my final confrontation of the evening follows me out of
the ballroom and into the hallway. And this is Sarah,
the girlfriend of the hoser who had spoken to the
night my phone got Comma kaze. If you don't remember
who that is, honestly no big deal. She was also
the woman who had I thought the best points on
abortion rights in the debate room that same day, and honestly,
(30:56):
I am too tired for this level of nuance in
a person at this point, And she says, are you leaving?
Are you sure I can make sure your request gets
straight to the DJ. She tells me that she really
hops I had a good time and that I'll come
back the next year. I hug to goodbye, go upstairs
to get my final fist full of free M and m's,
(31:16):
and finally, mercifully I go home. Some final thoughts on
my year in mensa, both the podcast and the reality.
So it was really fucking hard to arrive at anything
conclusive about dare I say my year in mensa? Because
(31:39):
there's a very silly, performative conclusion I could get to,
or there's a more nuanced, kind of overly sympathetic conclusion
I could get to, and I don't want to get
to either, so I'm gonna do my best. I can't
guarantee that my feelings won't change later an either way,
you don't really have to care. Here's as close as
I've gotten to conclusive thoughts. And actually I'm going to
start with a quick appall a g because there is
(32:01):
one apology that I feel I owe sincerely, and that
is to the boob thread. As a militant feminist myself,
it was rude and out of line for me to
disclose the concept of the boob thread to the Internet
at large and to boob thread members past and present.
I regret my condescension and wish all boobs involved health
(32:25):
and happiness. I'm sorry, boob Thread. I never wanted to
feud with the boob thread because at the end of
the day, mensa boob thread and now some actual conclusions.
So the last long form kind of story that I
want to do is something I've seen before, and maybe
you'll recognize it too. It kind of goes like, so
I met these people who have absolutely terrible views on
(32:47):
just about everything, and it turns out they're pretty nice.
This happens weirdly a lot making largely toxic and bad
groups seem very sympathetic, and that's not how I feel
at all. And I feel just as opposed to the
views of a lot of people in Firehouse as I
have from the beginning over a year ago. Many of
(33:09):
these views are actively harmful to people I love, and
are oftentimes actively harmful to me. There's no number of
pleasant civil conversations over fried pickles that can change that reality.
I can't in good conscience participate in a community like that. Also,
I don't really want to. And when I get back
from the mental conference, it takes me about three days
(33:30):
for me to sit down and actually start writing, and
by that time, people have, through some divine intervention, started
unblocking me on Firehouse. This appears to be connected to
the goodwill of Katie, who had been defending me in
the group in a number of long comments in Firehouse
since the annual gathering ended. There's been one meme that
(33:51):
I've been able to see, although I hear there's more,
as well as a few discussions of how the group
felt interactions with me had gone in person. And that
picture of Katie and I from the mead party that
has over three hundred comments talking about me one way
or the other, and hey, I'm addicted to attention. Oh god,
I'm going to describe the meme because it's an audio medium,
(34:12):
but this is gonna sound so fucking lame describing a meme.
It's the scene from the end of Dirty Dancing where
she's Jennifer Gray and Patrick Swayze are all this is
so embar okay, he's lifting her. She's like and so
I'm Jennifer Gray and Katie's Patrick Swayzy. And then the
bottom half of the meme, the description is still going
(34:33):
is Jerry or bog and Susan sarandic or maybe it
just looks like her and they're like you And that's
labeled American Mens of Firehouse. That didn't make any sense.
It's a it's a fine meme, I think, very specific,
very niche really for about a hundred people. Anyways, one
user comments, you're truly twisting the tale of the dragon
(34:55):
by interacting with her at all, and he goes on
to say that he ensured he was never physically near
me for the entire gathering. And with every day that passes,
it looks like I'm able to see more posts from
more users as the great blocking slowly kind of disbands.
The conversation around me has now changed and appears to
(35:17):
be a little more split. Certain members feel that I
am irredeemable after the perceived doxing and disclosure of the
boob thread, and others are willing to as the narrative
has been give me a second chance. It's been speculated
that I will in my eventual writing on the topic.
Quote explained that no one was actually threatening her life
(35:37):
and that she gets it now. Unquote another comment, Realistically,
if she were able to post an apology, the first
thing that would happen is she'd probably get a stream
of posts from people venting. Here's a more sympathetic one. Quote.
Once I got to speak with her and understood her
perspective and that it was an honest misunderstanding, I put
my pitchfork down. Some more comments. We all want to
be loved, understood, and appreciated. So good to see, and
(35:59):
apology would go a long way, as it would demonstrate
an understanding that she should not have done what she did.
So far, it seems like she's just testing the boundaries
of what she can get away with. And this was
interesting to watch because I wasn't expecting any of the
community to put the pitchfork down, and it was kind
of heartening and really confusing, but still most of the
conversation I can see, and as Katie continues to advocate
(36:22):
on my behalf, what I can see has expanded is
a request for a formal apology for screenshotting a number
of insults and threats towards me without redacting names. Last October, Sam,
who I got to know pretty well during the gathering,
post the selfie he took of a freshly cried out
me in the vestibule of the Sheraton on the first
(36:43):
night of the gathering sort of collaged along with images
of Winston Churchill, Steven Spielberg, Van Gogh and and I'm
not getting Katie humping that statue. In the caption, he
explained his own history with MENSA mental illness and his
concern that the group is quote too worried about our
image unquote, he writes, at the end of the day,
(37:06):
people in MENSA or MENSA Materials will do their ships
and change the world, and it's fine we are labeled crazy.
He continues, as for leaking your information using it as
your business, Jamie Loftist, I'd not do it anymore if
I were you. I'm sure someone in here eats eyeballs
and you have beautiful eyes. Yes, another one of those
hilarious jokes. And this post is generally kind, if a
(37:28):
little weirdly threatening at the end. But I can't say
I agree with Sam that MENSA is too worried about
its image, because it absolutely should be worried about how
it presents to other people. And the issues within high
i Q groups go far deeper than the image projected
at one conference in Phoenix. The issues are cooked right
(37:48):
into the history of the organization itself and into the
very idea of a society based on a single biased test.
So listeners, obviously, I did not shut down Firehouse, and
I didn't even successfully require that members of the Planets
Premier High i Q Society do not threaten to kill
each other. But I did meet them like they asked,
(38:11):
and it made me think more about what the root
cause of a group like this could be. And if
you've been listening since the beginning, you've heard this before.
MENSA has three stated purposes in its constitution quote to
identify and foster human intelligence for the benefit of humanity.
To encourage research into the nature, characteristics, and uses of intelligence.
(38:34):
And to provide a stimulating intellectual and social environment to
its members. And after this year, I feel confident in
saying that the group as a whole does not live
up to these three tenants. The most active forum in
the entire organization is essentially a four chand board. Seeing
children who are being told from a very young age
(38:56):
that they are fundamentally smarter and better than the kids
around in a permanent, unchangeable way is deeply unsettling. The
whole group is founded on the idea that taking one
test makes you an unquestionable genius, a fact that has
been repeatedly disproven and wasn't even the intent of the
person who invented the i Q test in the first place.
(39:18):
I think, and trust me, no one and MENSA gives
a funk what I think. But I think that MENSA
could possibly be salvaged as an organization if its leaders
actually committed to this constitution above protecting communities with high
social media engagement that they liked talking shit in, and
instead considering how these communities got so shitty and toxic
(39:41):
to begin with. The first and third tenants of this
constitution feel connected. An emphasis or even a requirement for
more community service and value to people who aren't in
MENSA could yield a lot of positive growth and prioritizing
healthier community options, and the physical safety of existing members
would as well. But what really sticks with me is
(40:04):
men says complete non commitment to its second tenant, to
encourage research into the nature, characteristics, and uses of intelligence.
Firehouse is a symptom of many things in the organization
and in the country, but I believe the failure to
uphold this promise and the insistence of hanging onto a
(40:24):
toxic online community are very connected. Any organization that ascribes
to a fixed i Q model cannot claim it's encouraging
research into the uses of intelligence because its own requirement
intentionally misunderstands the work of the man who created the
i Q quotient to begin with, and resting on this
(40:45):
assumption of superiority without any requirement to demonstrate things like
learning effort or value to others is arrogant at best,
dangerous at worst, and if you're wondering if you should join,
it's way too slippery a slope to be worth participating in.
The creator of the i Q test himself, Alfred Bennet,
would not funk with it, So to literally no one's disappointment,
(41:09):
I'm done with MENSA, I'm logging out of the goddamn group,
and I would not recommend joining a group with a
fixed intelligence model to anyone, especially kids. I do hope
that the community, in real life and online and all
the in between spaces are willing to look at themselves
and consider what could be accomplished if doing literally anything
(41:31):
else was treated with the same passion and intensity of
protecting the right to threaten and harass people. Maybe with
the right leadership, that might be possible. I hear some
of these people are are pretty smart, and I understand
that there's no overstating what a community can do for
someone who, as many members described to me, felt like
misfits in their everyday lives and want to feel that
(41:53):
they belong somewhere. People who feel that they don't belong
absolutely deserved community, but a society with murky gold whose
selling point is superiority is not a healthy place to
find it. And if you don't believe me, I invite
you to google the recruitment techniques of of virtually any
hate group or cult. Bottom line, if you can't reconcile
(42:13):
the person you are online with a person you are
in real life, something in your community has gone wrong.
We've seen it happen more and more frequently, and even
more politicized groups like eight chan. And while this large
portion of MENSA isn't inciting violence, it is inciting politicized
hate that many in the group members lives wouldn't have
(42:34):
been aware of in real life. And I don't claim
to be perfect in this separation. We've all got our
ship to get through when it comes to separating your
internet self from your real self. You know, no one's
as happy as they perform that they are online and
other things you've heard a million times, But to be
unrecognizable to anyone you know and love is something to
(42:56):
be reckoned with. One thing I did feel challenged by
throughout the MENSA disaster was evaluating the satirical slutty character
that wanted to take down MENSA with the person I
actually am, who was then a person standing in a
boiling hot hotel room of angry people from MENSA. And
I'll admit claiming an online persona, even when it's part
(43:18):
of my job, can be a delicate balance when others
don't always know whether to take it at face value
or not. What I know for sure is that I
am never waking up at six am on a Sunday
for a joke ever. Again, So to conclude, if your
group is silencing people they don't agree with or like,
you're not an unmoderated group. If you're a person who's
(43:40):
loved one would not recognize who you are online, that's alarming.
And if you've been told you're superior to other people
forever no follow up or responsibility, that's laying in the
groundwork for some serious, unchecked supremacy. And finally, I can't
stress this enough. If you're ending a summit in Arizona
(44:02):
during July, it's actually very fucking hot there, and you
might not be as smart as you think you are.
It is still kind of funny that I got in though.
All Right, thank you for listening. Thank you to everyone
who helped me put this together. Thank you to Sadie
Dupuy who did our amazing theme song. Voices featured in
this episode are Miles Gray on a hostne Caitlin Durante,
(44:24):
Jaquis Neil, and Robert Evans. Thank you to my friends.
I look forward to never talking with you about this again.
I have a weekly podcast with Caitlin Durante called The
Bechdel Cast. Feel free to listen to that Into Infinity.
It comes out on Thursdays on my Heart Radio. You
can follow me online at at Jamie loftus Help on Twitter,
where I will never be posting a screenshot ever again,
(44:46):
or at Jamie christ Superstar on Instagram. In the meantime,
goodbye forever
Is that smarts. My name is Jamie Loftus, and you
are listening to episode four of My Year in Mensa,
(00:24):
the podcast that is about what the title of the
podcast is. If this is your first time listening, this
is the last episode, so you probably will want to
go back to the beginning and start from there to
understand everything that's going on. And for those of you
that have been on this journey, welcome to the end.
What will happen next? Will we ever reach any manner
(00:46):
of conclusion? All things that we will be finding out today. So,
since this is the last episode, I think I will
go off on a tangent a little bit at the
beginning and just say how nervous I am to release this.
Because I am making a podcast about a very reactionary group.
It stands to reason that there will be a reaction
(01:08):
to the thing that I'm making. A criticism frequently thrown
at me for writing about Mensa and now podding if
you will, is that I'm doing it for reputation or
financial gain. And you know, I'm glad that people find
the writing and reporting interesting. In two critics of that,
I mean, I don't really know what to say. I'm
(01:29):
glad people find it interesting. It's interesting to me too.
I've made a total, I believe, of four hundred dollars
writing about MENSA. Yeah, I wrote four articles and made
a hundred dollars per article, and then proceeded to spend
way more than that in order to attend the MENSA gathering,
to get lodging, to eat, to go to San Pedro,
(01:53):
to have so many things, to pay member registration fees,
which is almost a hundred dollars two times because I
pad asked the year mark and I had to get
I had to renew my membership. I also bought one
of those brain pol t shirts to make myself laugh,
but I guess that's more of a personal expense. All
that to say, I don't I'm not. There's no money
in this story. I don't even know if people want
(02:15):
to hear it. I am trying to finish what I started.
It started as something funny to me and then ended
as this bizarre, sociological what the fuck is this? So
that is why I'm doing this, as I want to
understand what the funk this is, and as frustrated as
it has made many menines towards me, it turns out
there's a fair amount of people that are interested in
(02:36):
what the funk this is who find it confusing. So
I guess I don't know. I mean, I am nervous
to release this, but it's a pot. There's five hundred
million podcasts, so many of which are about things weirder
and worse than this, And so just going into this
last one, if you've been listening the whole time, thank
you so much. And uh and to to mencem who
(02:58):
have been listening, I hope that you feel like I'm
characterizing people fairly. I know that this is a biased account.
It is my account, but I really did try. Nothing's
going to be enough for everyone, but that's enough for me.
And so with that, let us go to July six, nineteen.
This is my third day of the MENSA Annual Gathering.
(03:18):
Time Labs noise. Okay, So I'm at the hospitality cafeteria.
It's two PM, and a man who is already very
drunk is talking to the woman handing out drinks and
he says, you know, no one wants to be the
one to say it, but not all dictators have been bad.
(03:40):
I hate to say it, but Germany was one of them. Okay,
And this man does not have the demeanor of someone
who hates to say anything, and he disappears as quickly
as he got there. I am fucking exhausted, And today
is a particularly rough slate of daytime events from a
thoughtful presentation and on a d h D famously featuring
(04:02):
the quote a little a d h D can be
charmingly quirky, A lot of a d h D can
be a big, giant pain in your life. It was
a good duck. Then there was the sparsely attended MENSA
Awards ceremony and what feels like the millionth lukewarm cafeteria
lunch served in hospitality. And at this point I'm subsisting
mainly on the free peanut Eminem's, and so for old
(04:23):
time's sake, I sit at the pet lover's lunch table
again with mostly the same few people and a few
of the same women, talk about their week and exchange
pictures of their cats. I love it. I am unlucky
enough to have accidentally sat next to yet another very
drunk man. This guy's in his sixties and he's telling
me he has some leftover steak in his hotel fridge
(04:44):
that he loved to show me what When all of
a sudden there's Katie once again wearing her Maga hat,
and she's excited my best friend. She invites me over
to her lunch table, the firehouse table that I described
an episode one that has a cartoon of an owl
with its head on fire to market. And it does
feel weird to be relieved to see someone in a
(05:05):
Maga hat. But this old drunk guy hitting on me
to get stake that he admitted he didn't even buy
is enough to get me to leave. And so the
world is upside down, and Katie too, and myself are
all sitting at the firehouse lunch table together. Katie says
that there's a bar crawl going on later that night
and that I should be in the lobby by six
(05:25):
to go, and I agree to go and continue my afternoon.
And sometime in the afternoon I see Mead Guy in
the hallway. Meat guy, of course, because he is the
guy who makes mead. He at this moment is dressed
head to toe as a pirate and when he spots me,
he literally jogs in the other direction, which is if
a man in a full pirate suit hasn't literally run
(05:48):
away from you? Are you even living? So this is
the purest interaction I've had all week and in my life.
And by early evening, the old drunken fascist is back
at the hospitality bar. This time he's talking to a
different bartender and he's holding out these fake three dollar
bills he's printed that have these over edited caricatures of
(06:09):
Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. It just printed on a
laser jet and willed into reality. And a man with
a Hosier ribbon walks up to him and kind of jokes,
and the old drunken fascist is laughing and laughing, and
he says, only a Republican could joke about Democrats like this.
(06:30):
He proceeds to tip the bartender with the forged bill
of Hillary Clinton and then disappears for what I hope
is forever. I know, this man sounds like a fever
dream cartoon, but he's out there. So I'm trying to
get through the day and I go to the next talk,
which is called the Dysfunction of the American Political System.
It's being given by a very tired looking professor, and
(06:53):
the discourse is cringe e and offensive and terrible. There
was a man who kept raising his hand to insist
that slaves being counted as three five of a person
is what ruined the American South, and the room gets
very riled up at this, rightfully so, and apparently the
speaker doesn't have really the historical knowledge to make a
(07:14):
very strong argument against this clearly wrong point, and they
get into this sparring match. Other people are jumping in
to agree with him or loudly disagree with him, and finally,
after about forty five minutes of this, people just start
to leave. Every person of color and a few others
of us. It's just too painful, and everyone leaves because
(07:37):
in many ways that's where the country is, and also
this is what this event is like. So once everyone's dispersed,
I write down all the details of what happened. And
while this is not the only racist thing I heard
in Phoenix this weekend at the MENA Annual gathering, it
feels very wrong that I am not at all surprised
(07:59):
that there is some one willing to say something so
horrible here, or that they refuse to engage with anyone
in the room in a good faith way. People were
offended and upset, but no one seemed surprised and in
the midst of all this, I had missed the departure
of the bar crawl. Oh no, such are this of
(08:20):
setting talk completely falls apart. I head out to the
front of the hotel to see if maybe the bar
crawl is within my line of sight, when a man
who's holding a few pieces of fruit appears behind me,
and he says, you're the famous Jamie Loftus, and there's
no point in telling him I'm not, so I asked
(08:41):
him if he knows where the bar crawl was headed.
He instead tells me his name is Kevin, and he's
a twelve year MENSA member who was ousted from a
local position by a young woman I've been in contact
with before, who is another popular target of Firehouse and
of Mensa at large. Kevin's handing the armful of fruit.
He has two homeless people in the sweltering Phoenix heat.
(09:03):
As we continue to talk, and at at this point
someone asks me directly, am I going to be writing
about this? And I don't really answer, but Kevin is
kind and he points me in the direction of the
bar crawl, saying he's going to a Diamondbacks game and
he'll catch me another time. When I get to the bar,
I see I've missed the drinking mentions except for one
(09:24):
lone hoser at the entrance, and so I decide, you
know what, maybe this is it. Maybe I have gotten
to know Firehouse as well as I'm going to. I
came here, I've spoken to at least a hundred people
about how they feel about screenshots from nine months ago,
and I am so ready to go home, but just
in case, I messaged to to see whether he's on
(09:45):
the bar crawl as well, and he says no, and
we agree to meet at a ratan trivia event called
Name that Movie so we can watch senior mentions loudly
identify a litany of military movies that I've never heard of.
It's already seven o'clock at night, and I'm considering going
home for a nap when Two leans over and he
points at a message on his phone and says it's
(10:07):
from Katie. She's saying there at the Tilted Kilton to
bring you. I peek over his shoulder to look at
the message, and it does say the ladies would love
to meet her. The sinking feeling of knowing I will
go settles as the five thousand John Goodman movie clip
plays on the name that movie screen and in a
feudal act of resistance, I just say I can't, and
(10:31):
he laughs because he knows that I will and I can,
and he says, I know, but like and yeah, he
finds this a little funny, because like it is a
little funny in a wanting to die kind of way.
But I'm about to go to Scottish Hooters to have
my ass just handed to me for the three thousandth
time in seventy two hours, for for no reason, for
(10:55):
no reason, it just feels like self harm. At this point,
I am exhausted, I look like garbage, and I volunteered
to do this. So on our way over to Scottish Hooters,
I asked too about why he participates in American Mensa
firehouse so consistently when he knows everyone is just going
to pile on him. A typical post from two would
(11:18):
be a news item about something horrifically racist, sexist, classist
happening in the country, captioned with a sarcastic sentence or
two that are directly challenging the right leaning members of
the group, asking them to defend their views against whatever
story He's attached. I think of it as kind of
trolling in the opposite direction. Two does what the rest
(11:39):
of Firehouse does, but with a far left leaning view
rather than the opposite. On the same day that we
have this conversation, he posts a picture of Katie, him
and myself that Katie insisted we take at lunch that day,
with the caption Mensa's Finest and the photos themselves are
another form of trolling. It's just another challenge for people
(12:01):
to be annoyed and engaged with a rivalry that doesn't matter.
And Two gets a little defensive at first and says,
I don't really post that much, but eventually he agrees
that he in fact does, and he admits it does
give him kind of a dopamine hit of sorts. He says,
I just have to find it funny and cites how
comically opposite Katie's views are from his own. I don't know. Katie,
(12:27):
Sam and the aforementioned girls who would love to meet
me wave at Two and I from the entrance to
the restaurant. Their table is covered in glasses and fried appetizers,
and Katie hugs to an eye and once again declares
us her best friends. I actually recognize the woman sitting
beside her, who's friendly but more skeptical. She's a beach
(12:48):
blonde in her forties. Who am going to call Megan
who reminds me a lot of my Trump voting aunt
who I can't get myself to break contact off with.
And this meal ends up being one of the more
productive and confusing few hours in my year in mensa
name of the podcast, A meal with three drunk right
wing women who genuinely want me to know where they're
(13:10):
coming from, not because they liked me, but because they
would like for me to write something nice about them.
Of course that's just speculation. Megan says, I want to
know what you're going to write. And as she says that,
Mead guys still dressed as a pirate, and a few
other people also dressed as pirates enter Scottish hooters. I
guess I should say, to be fair that he was
(13:31):
dressed as a pirate for reason there was some pirate
related then. I don't know if he wasn't just eatn't
just happen to be dressed as a pirate, but it
was very he was dressed as a pirate. I don't know,
but I tell Megan. Honestly, I don't know what I'm
going to write. One of the pirates interjects to ask
me for a selfie, and I say no, I mean
(13:52):
I came here. I'm gonna listen to Firehouse as I
promised Katie and two and Amanda and Maggie and god
knows how many others strangers that I would. And then
I'm going home. But she disregards what I want because
funk what I want, and she takes the selfie with
the entire table. Anyways, somewhere there is a cursed image
of me at Scottish Hooter with a bunch of mens
(14:13):
and pirates, and I hate that for myself. But I'm
helping myself to Katie's fried pickles appetizer as I talked
with her and Megan, And for the first time since
I got here, someone in Firehouse tells me about themselves
instead of asking me how my a G is going.
Who they are is, like many of the people in
this very sticky story, more complicated than I could have
(14:35):
imagined back in the Pasadena testing room a year ago.
Here's a little bit about them. Megan is a married
Canadian Conservative who joined MENSA when she realized her son
is both very intelligent and struggling to fit in at school.
She says her reason for joining was as a supportive
mom looking for a way to make her son feel
(14:57):
like a part of something. And once they signed up,
a on came Firehouse and the secret Facebook group immediately
became a big part of Megan's online life, and she
recalls the group's schism that led to mensa Facebook groups
being separated with moderated and unmoderated factions. In the first place,
she hates socialized medicine, but she backs this thought up
(15:19):
with an anecdote about how she was struggling to get
the surgery she needed under this system for well over
a year, which impeded her quality of life and ability
to work and parent. She identifies as bisexual, libertarian and
as the creator of the boob thread and if you
don't know what the book that is by now, I
honestly can't help you. You've got to go back. But
(15:41):
she and Katie met on the Firehouse board several years
ago and are self described ride or die ever since,
and Megan talks a lot about her beliefs but doesn't
like how she's pigeonholed with labels. She says, I'm not
alt right, but I'm very right. Great, and then there's Katie.
Katie is an American from the East Coast who voted
(16:04):
for Obama in two thousand and eight, then became an
increasingly intense conservative following the recession of the late two thousand's.
She was raised in a poor, often difficult household and
joined MENSA back in the mid nineties when an elementary
school teacher noticed how well she was doing in school,
especially on standardized tests. She originally found it useful to
(16:26):
put MENSA on job resumes to supplement the college education.
Her financial background made it impossible to get, and she
became an increasingly more active member of Firehouse following Trump's election.
She's married now, and in another twist, she's pro choice,
but says she's not extreme and that babies shouldn't be
aborted at nine months, which is not an argument I'm
(16:50):
aware exists. She says that she's actually seen my stand
up online and laughs when she remembers that she was
piste off when she ended up kind of liking it.
Thank you so much. Watch my stand up on line. Anyways,
Megan was the first person to welcome Katie to Firehouse,
and this is the main time they get to spend
together during the year. And while they're telling me this,
(17:10):
Megan seems to be warming up to me a little
bit too, but with more conditions than Katie. She really
wants to know what and if I'm going to write,
and I really don't have an answer for her. I
feel everyone at the table slowly poking holes in my
fragile bubble of remaining patients, and although I avowed to listen,
(17:31):
I find myself speaking up more as the women move
on from their life stories into their opinions on Firehouse
Me and the last thing anyone wants to talk about
the state of America. And anytime I do say something,
they think my annoyance is very funny. Megan says this
at one point when I get frustrated at a comment
(17:52):
at the table, and I will remember it forever. You're
confusing intelligence with education. So I'm getting worked up, and
I'm most of the way through the fried pickles. Talking
to Megan and Katie feels like some of the biggest
contradictions I have ever encountered. Their pro gay rights, but
they're anti fat people, they're sex positive, but they hate feminism.
(18:14):
It's those mentioned contradictions that have it always, all the time,
all over again. And of course, here I was at
Scottish Hooters, realizing that there was more to the people
flooding my comments in my life and anxiety. And yet
I bet I've had sex with more girls than you.
Megan says this to Too, who is a little too
eager to fight back, he says, helping himself to one
(18:37):
of her buffalo wings. And I'm on Megan's side for
this one for a second, but then and you're having
worse six with those man haters. Katie and Megan do
not like feminists. They think that real men respect the
women there with and that most of the discussion around
current feminism amounts to whiney entitlement. They poke at two
(18:58):
for self identifying as a feminist, and they say there's
nothing less sexy than that. I'm not drinking at this meal,
as I need every bit of self control fully with me.
But the ladies at the table, the one who's having
a conversation with Sam, the pianist who's arrived, is too
drunk to really participate. They order one more round before
the boob thread comes up again, Megan tells me that's
(19:22):
one of my big issues, honestly telling people about the
boob thread and the screenshots. As the meal continues, it
gets increasingly tougher to keep the promise to hold my
tongue and simply get to know the medicines. I have
yet to spring to my own defense in any meaningful way,
other than to repeat that I wasn't there to terrorize
the group at nausea, and I believe it was the
(19:44):
thousandth mention of the screenshots that tested me. Katie hears
me out when I remind her that MENSA isn't the
first heaping of online abuse I've received as an entertainer,
and I feel that I need to take every threat seriously,
particularly when I have had no action with the commenter
at all. This seems to resonate with her, and she
(20:04):
repeats that tone is difficult to understand online. Megan is
still more leary of this logic, and she continues to
push back, and this opens a discussion about past quote
unquote problem members of the group, problem members being kind
of this medicine buzz phrase I've been hearing all week.
I mean, there was even a dealing with problem members
(20:25):
session officially on the books, that I did not have
the inner strength to attend, and also going would have
sort of felt like trolling on my part. Anyways, this
is what makes me break. I had assured to on
the walkover that I had already made it three days
without getting in an argument with anyone, and that I
wasn't going to let any Scottish Hooters discourse be the
(20:46):
thing that breaks me. And then Megan and Katie brought
up white supremacy. We've had actual real racists in the
group before. This is Megan, and she describes a Firehouse
member who regularly posted racist screeds in the group. As
she told it, the members found this too racist and
would pile on him for his views, excoriate his arguments,
(21:09):
and tried to make him feel as uncomfortable being a
part of the group as possible. This, she explains, is
why she thinks censorship is not a good tactic for
any forum, her logic being otherwise, how would meant to
know this person was racist at all? And I asked her, well,
did anyone do anything about it? Did he get kicked
out of mensa? And No? This same member somehow managed
(21:34):
to get officially booked as an annual gathering speaker. His
talk was on, per Megan, the Bell Curve, a controversial
parentheses completely disproven book that is constantly cited to justify
racist views. As Megan tells it, Firehouse members, including her,
made a plan to show up at this guy's talk
(21:55):
at the annual gathering and then mass walk out in
the middle of it in order her to humiliate him.
And she says that this worked and he was humiliated.
And she concludes this story by saying he eventually left
American ments of Firehouse after being blocked and humiliated enough times.
She suggests that this and commenting to disagree with his
(22:18):
racist posts instead of removing him or adding a no
white supremacists welcome addition to the group's non policies, was
potentially what prevented this member from becoming fully radicalized and
taking part in a more violent group. And sure, he
eventually left Firehouse after feeling unwelcome enough, but she felt
(22:40):
that this experience had a role in changing him for
the better. And if you could not follow the logic
of that story, we are on the same page. I
am not at all sure I understand what she's trying
to say, and so I asked, but what did that accomplish?
If he left the group, then didn't he probably just
go continue to be a white supremacist somewhere else. My
(23:03):
head is throbbing at this point, and I want to
ask her what any of this has anything to do
with what her argument against me specifically is, but she's
not done speaking. So you see, problem members do leave
the group if they know we don't support what they do,
Katie says, drawing a direct line with how the group
(23:24):
dealt with a white supremacist to how they dealt with
a dealist comedian. And there has been a lot of
false equivalence at this table tonight, but this one is
too much. Two seems genuinely shocked, and he bursts into
laughter at the comparison, while I am struggling to keep
my head attached to my neck, and Two is like,
(23:45):
and Katie kind of catches the comparison she just made
and says, no, No, I didn't mean. I'm obviously not.
We're just talking about problem members. She apologizes, and she
tries to start the anecdote over, but I cannot take this.
Sitting down at Scott Shooters anymore. So I choked down
one last fried pickle, and against every better instinct in
(24:06):
my very tired body, I fucking debate mensa. So stupid. Okay, so,
because I made the critical mistake of debating my own
reply guys, reply, women, reply people, I'll start with what
they get me on the first is the satire itself.
Megan articulated clearly that the group felt this was me
(24:26):
punching down at a group of people who were misfits
their entire lives and have finally found a community. She
also thought I was a little too cutting towards my
test proctor in the first piece, And okay, fair, I
was bullying dorks, and I hadn't considered it from this
point of view, even though I thought of it at
the time as punching up to a group that paid
(24:48):
a fee to declare their superiority over the rest of
the world. So yes, that's a viewpoint that I hadn't
considered point for mensa. Megan leans over to me at
one point and says, you and I were able to
fake it. I mean, we're unusual, but you're smart and
you're pretty, and you're able to be around people and
(25:08):
fake it. Not everyone in mensa is like that. First
of all, thank you so much for calling me pretty.
But Megan makes references to members of the group that
are socially awkward and some who are on the spectrum,
and others who identify as lifelong misfits. And she has
this to say about the guy who issued the now
infamous in group death threat. He's the nicest guy in
(25:29):
the world in person, and that's how he jokes. And
I asked, how was I supposed to know that threatening
a stranger is how he jokes, and Megan says, I understand,
but she continues to defend his right to do so.
Another point they get me on is the group's impression
that I was trying to get them doxed and attacked
with my tweets, something that I have to be sympathetic too,
(25:51):
because the same thing has happened to me, although with
more explicit instructions to harass I was never asking anyone
to find these people in aither them. If you're coming
after my friends, I'm gonna block you, that simple. And
the second you talked about the boob thread, I blocked
you right away because I can't have people posting on
that getting docs again I repeat to her that I
(26:13):
didn't intend to docks people by posting screenshots that were
insults and threats against me, and hadn't done so since
those original tweets, And again I repeat that I felt
that once threats, insults, hate speech come into the equation,
the question of whether someone's identity should be protected becomes
obscured for me. And again we disagree. So they closed
(26:35):
the tab at Scottish Hooters and Megan and I continue
to have a heated debate into the street, at one
point getting so involved that we walked a half a
block away from the main group in the opposite direction.
And it's a respectful conversation for the most part, but
it is very intense. She challenges me, if you felt
so threatened, why didn't you report it to the police
(26:55):
or Facebook? And I say, well, I talked to the
organization that's in charge of Firehouse directly. I thought they
might do something. And Megan shrugs at this, the implication
being that since nothing was done, that's evidence that there
was no harm done in the first place, and not
just systemic not giving a fuck. The subject of our
conversation switches to the unmoderated elements of Firehouse. Megan is,
(27:20):
as expected, a fierce defender of the unmoderated nature of
the group, repeating me, if you can't take the heat,
get out of the kitchen, creed among people who have
expressed frustration at the group's persistence. I don't believe in censorship,
she repeats a number of times. So I pushed back
and say, isn't having everyone in the group block one
person censoring the group though? And at this point we
(27:43):
are all standing in front of a theater complex. Katie
is drunkenly humping a statue, and two is taking pictures
of it, and Megan and I are still trained to
have this conversation, and in another dimension, Two and Katie
are soul mates. Weirdly, but in spite of or may
me because of the humping, I continue the conversation with
Megan and say, the way I see it, the threat
(28:06):
is a threat, and saying that I should have to
read into the tone or personal history of the person
making a threat is kind of asking a lot. And
Megan comes right back with, well, you didn't get to
know us. Kitty is hanging from a statue, and I say,
my introduction to this group was getting tagged and an insult.
Why the funk would I want to know people in
(28:26):
a group that would do that. And Megan considers this
and says that is unfortunate. She then mentions a few
strategies I could employ to have people in Firehouse begin
to unblock me, including a public apology, a public vow
to never release any manner of screenshot ever again with
names blocked or not, and a number of other apologies
(28:49):
I could make in order to participate in this community
that many people have started to assume I am eager
to reconcile with. And I say, besides, you guys are
always talking about free spee when I was making jokes
and being critical and trying to hold people accountable for
shitty things they were saying. And at this point we
have reached an impass and we were finally at the
(29:10):
door of the Sheraton Grand for the final Mensa Official
Great Gatsby nineteen twenties dance. Megan, Katie and the MAGA
crew hugged me goodbye and say they'll see me at
the dance. But I have no intention of staying more
than like ten minutes. My head hurts and my legs hurt.
And I'm dying of heat stroke, and I should not
have come here too, who's a former journalist himself, seems
(29:32):
just as drained by the dinner as I am, and
says he might write something himself. The arguments Megan and
Katie made defending their community felt just as contradictory as
the people themselves. Firehouse was a haven for the socially awkward,
but also a place for the socially awkward to threaten
people freely. Firehouse was uncensored except for the people they
didn't like, who would be censored to the point of
(29:53):
complete silence to those in the group with influence. We
go into the dance for a minute, and it's early hours.
There's a few middle aged couples who danced to celebration
in the center of the room, and a few immaculately
dressed younger couples who are flocked around the photo booth.
Two says, not much of a dance guy, and he
looks down at like the basketball shorts he's wearing. I
(30:14):
say me either, and have him snap a quick picture
and get ready to leave. One of the couples in
gen y who had brought me up to the firehouse,
sweet my first night or there and there once again
wearing matching outfits. You're coming into booth, aren't you, The
guy who's close to my age asks, and he insists
that we get a few shots of them with the
oversized props in the booth. We leave the room, and
(30:34):
my final confrontation of the evening follows me out of
the ballroom and into the hallway. And this is Sarah,
the girlfriend of the hoser who had spoken to the
night my phone got Comma kaze. If you don't remember
who that is, honestly no big deal. She was also
the woman who had I thought the best points on
abortion rights in the debate room that same day, and honestly,
(30:56):
I am too tired for this level of nuance in
a person at this point, And she says, are you leaving?
Are you sure I can make sure your request gets
straight to the DJ. She tells me that she really
hops I had a good time and that I'll come
back the next year. I hug to goodbye, go upstairs
to get my final fist full of free M and m's,
(31:16):
and finally, mercifully I go home. Some final thoughts on
my year in mensa, both the podcast and the reality.
So it was really fucking hard to arrive at anything
conclusive about dare I say my year in mensa? Because
(31:39):
there's a very silly, performative conclusion I could get to,
or there's a more nuanced, kind of overly sympathetic conclusion
I could get to, and I don't want to get
to either, so I'm gonna do my best. I can't
guarantee that my feelings won't change later an either way,
you don't really have to care. Here's as close as
I've gotten to conclusive thoughts. And actually I'm going to
start with a quick appall a g because there is
(32:01):
one apology that I feel I owe sincerely, and that
is to the boob thread. As a militant feminist myself,
it was rude and out of line for me to
disclose the concept of the boob thread to the Internet
at large and to boob thread members past and present.
I regret my condescension and wish all boobs involved health
(32:25):
and happiness. I'm sorry, boob Thread. I never wanted to
feud with the boob thread because at the end of
the day, mensa boob thread and now some actual conclusions.
So the last long form kind of story that I
want to do is something I've seen before, and maybe
you'll recognize it too. It kind of goes like, so
I met these people who have absolutely terrible views on
(32:47):
just about everything, and it turns out they're pretty nice.
This happens weirdly a lot making largely toxic and bad
groups seem very sympathetic, and that's not how I feel
at all. And I feel just as opposed to the
views of a lot of people in Firehouse as I
have from the beginning over a year ago. Many of
(33:09):
these views are actively harmful to people I love, and
are oftentimes actively harmful to me. There's no number of
pleasant civil conversations over fried pickles that can change that reality.
I can't in good conscience participate in a community like that. Also,
I don't really want to. And when I get back
from the mental conference, it takes me about three days
(33:30):
for me to sit down and actually start writing, and
by that time, people have, through some divine intervention, started
unblocking me on Firehouse. This appears to be connected to
the goodwill of Katie, who had been defending me in
the group in a number of long comments in Firehouse
since the annual gathering ended. There's been one meme that
(33:51):
I've been able to see, although I hear there's more,
as well as a few discussions of how the group
felt interactions with me had gone in person. And that
picture of Katie and I from the mead party that
has over three hundred comments talking about me one way
or the other, and hey, I'm addicted to attention. Oh god,
I'm going to describe the meme because it's an audio medium,
(34:12):
but this is gonna sound so fucking lame describing a meme.
It's the scene from the end of Dirty Dancing where
she's Jennifer Gray and Patrick Swayze are all this is
so embar okay, he's lifting her. She's like and so
I'm Jennifer Gray and Katie's Patrick Swayzy. And then the
bottom half of the meme, the description is still going
(34:33):
is Jerry or bog and Susan sarandic or maybe it
just looks like her and they're like you And that's
labeled American Mens of Firehouse. That didn't make any sense.
It's a it's a fine meme, I think, very specific,
very niche really for about a hundred people. Anyways, one
user comments, you're truly twisting the tale of the dragon
(34:55):
by interacting with her at all, and he goes on
to say that he ensured he was never physically near
me for the entire gathering. And with every day that passes,
it looks like I'm able to see more posts from
more users as the great blocking slowly kind of disbands.
The conversation around me has now changed and appears to
(35:17):
be a little more split. Certain members feel that I
am irredeemable after the perceived doxing and disclosure of the
boob thread, and others are willing to as the narrative
has been give me a second chance. It's been speculated
that I will in my eventual writing on the topic.
Quote explained that no one was actually threatening her life
(35:37):
and that she gets it now. Unquote another comment, Realistically,
if she were able to post an apology, the first
thing that would happen is she'd probably get a stream
of posts from people venting. Here's a more sympathetic one. Quote.
Once I got to speak with her and understood her
perspective and that it was an honest misunderstanding, I put
my pitchfork down. Some more comments. We all want to
be loved, understood, and appreciated. So good to see, and
(35:59):
apology would go a long way, as it would demonstrate
an understanding that she should not have done what she did.
So far, it seems like she's just testing the boundaries
of what she can get away with. And this was
interesting to watch because I wasn't expecting any of the
community to put the pitchfork down, and it was kind
of heartening and really confusing, but still most of the
conversation I can see, and as Katie continues to advocate
(36:22):
on my behalf, what I can see has expanded is
a request for a formal apology for screenshotting a number
of insults and threats towards me without redacting names. Last October, Sam,
who I got to know pretty well during the gathering,
post the selfie he took of a freshly cried out
me in the vestibule of the Sheraton on the first
(36:43):
night of the gathering sort of collaged along with images
of Winston Churchill, Steven Spielberg, Van Gogh and and I'm
not getting Katie humping that statue. In the caption, he
explained his own history with MENSA mental illness and his
concern that the group is quote too worried about our
image unquote, he writes, at the end of the day,
(37:06):
people in MENSA or MENSA Materials will do their ships
and change the world, and it's fine we are labeled crazy.
He continues, as for leaking your information using it as
your business, Jamie Loftist, I'd not do it anymore if
I were you. I'm sure someone in here eats eyeballs
and you have beautiful eyes. Yes, another one of those
hilarious jokes. And this post is generally kind, if a
(37:28):
little weirdly threatening at the end. But I can't say
I agree with Sam that MENSA is too worried about
its image, because it absolutely should be worried about how
it presents to other people. And the issues within high
i Q groups go far deeper than the image projected
at one conference in Phoenix. The issues are cooked right
(37:48):
into the history of the organization itself and into the
very idea of a society based on a single biased test.
So listeners, obviously, I did not shut down Firehouse, and
I didn't even successfully require that members of the Planets
Premier High i Q Society do not threaten to kill
each other. But I did meet them like they asked,
(38:11):
and it made me think more about what the root
cause of a group like this could be. And if
you've been listening since the beginning, you've heard this before.
MENSA has three stated purposes in its constitution quote to
identify and foster human intelligence for the benefit of humanity.
To encourage research into the nature, characteristics, and uses of intelligence.
(38:34):
And to provide a stimulating intellectual and social environment to
its members. And after this year, I feel confident in
saying that the group as a whole does not live
up to these three tenants. The most active forum in
the entire organization is essentially a four chand board. Seeing
children who are being told from a very young age
(38:56):
that they are fundamentally smarter and better than the kids
around in a permanent, unchangeable way is deeply unsettling. The
whole group is founded on the idea that taking one
test makes you an unquestionable genius, a fact that has
been repeatedly disproven and wasn't even the intent of the
person who invented the i Q test in the first place.
(39:18):
I think, and trust me, no one and MENSA gives
a funk what I think. But I think that MENSA
could possibly be salvaged as an organization if its leaders
actually committed to this constitution above protecting communities with high
social media engagement that they liked talking shit in, and
instead considering how these communities got so shitty and toxic
(39:41):
to begin with. The first and third tenants of this
constitution feel connected. An emphasis or even a requirement for
more community service and value to people who aren't in
MENSA could yield a lot of positive growth and prioritizing
healthier community options, and the physical safety of existing members
would as well. But what really sticks with me is
(40:04):
men says complete non commitment to its second tenant, to
encourage research into the nature, characteristics, and uses of intelligence.
Firehouse is a symptom of many things in the organization
and in the country, but I believe the failure to
uphold this promise and the insistence of hanging onto a
(40:24):
toxic online community are very connected. Any organization that ascribes
to a fixed i Q model cannot claim it's encouraging
research into the uses of intelligence because its own requirement
intentionally misunderstands the work of the man who created the
i Q quotient to begin with, and resting on this
(40:45):
assumption of superiority without any requirement to demonstrate things like
learning effort or value to others is arrogant at best,
dangerous at worst, and if you're wondering if you should join,
it's way too slippery a slope to be worth participating in.
The creator of the i Q test himself, Alfred Bennet,
would not funk with it, So to literally no one's disappointment,
(41:09):
I'm done with MENSA, I'm logging out of the goddamn group,
and I would not recommend joining a group with a
fixed intelligence model to anyone, especially kids. I do hope
that the community, in real life and online and all
the in between spaces are willing to look at themselves
and consider what could be accomplished if doing literally anything
(41:31):
else was treated with the same passion and intensity of
protecting the right to threaten and harass people. Maybe with
the right leadership, that might be possible. I hear some
of these people are are pretty smart, and I understand
that there's no overstating what a community can do for
someone who, as many members described to me, felt like
misfits in their everyday lives and want to feel that
(41:53):
they belong somewhere. People who feel that they don't belong
absolutely deserved community, but a society with murky gold whose
selling point is superiority is not a healthy place to
find it. And if you don't believe me, I invite
you to google the recruitment techniques of of virtually any
hate group or cult. Bottom line, if you can't reconcile
(42:13):
the person you are online with a person you are
in real life, something in your community has gone wrong.
We've seen it happen more and more frequently, and even
more politicized groups like eight chan. And while this large
portion of MENSA isn't inciting violence, it is inciting politicized
hate that many in the group members lives wouldn't have
(42:34):
been aware of in real life. And I don't claim
to be perfect in this separation. We've all got our
ship to get through when it comes to separating your
internet self from your real self. You know, no one's
as happy as they perform that they are online and
other things you've heard a million times, But to be
unrecognizable to anyone you know and love is something to
(42:56):
be reckoned with. One thing I did feel challenged by
throughout the MENSA disaster was evaluating the satirical slutty character
that wanted to take down MENSA with the person I
actually am, who was then a person standing in a
boiling hot hotel room of angry people from MENSA. And
I'll admit claiming an online persona, even when it's part
(43:18):
of my job, can be a delicate balance when others
don't always know whether to take it at face value
or not. What I know for sure is that I
am never waking up at six am on a Sunday
for a joke ever. Again, So to conclude, if your
group is silencing people they don't agree with or like,
you're not an unmoderated group. If you're a person who's
(43:40):
loved one would not recognize who you are online, that's alarming.
And if you've been told you're superior to other people
forever no follow up or responsibility, that's laying in the
groundwork for some serious, unchecked supremacy. And finally, I can't
stress this enough. If you're ending a summit in Arizona
(44:02):
during July, it's actually very fucking hot there, and you
might not be as smart as you think you are.
It is still kind of funny that I got in though.
All Right, thank you for listening. Thank you to everyone
who helped me put this together. Thank you to Sadie
Dupuy who did our amazing theme song. Voices featured in
this episode are Miles Gray on a hostne Caitlin Durante,
(44:24):
Jaquis Neil, and Robert Evans. Thank you to my friends.
I look forward to never talking with you about this again.
I have a weekly podcast with Caitlin Durante called The
Bechdel Cast. Feel free to listen to that Into Infinity.
It comes out on Thursdays on my Heart Radio. You
can follow me online at at Jamie loftus Help on Twitter,
where I will never be posting a screenshot ever again,
(44:46):
or at Jamie christ Superstar on Instagram. In the meantime,
goodbye forever
Host
Jamie Loftus
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