My book club hit 100 members and it ruined everything

I started a book club on a whim three years ago, just me and two friends arguing over To Kill a Mockingbird in a coffee shop. Last month we crossed 100 members on our Discord server and I honestly wish we hadn't. Now every pick turns into a fight about trigger warnings or genre snobbery, and half the people never even finish the book. We used to have real debates about themes and character choices, but now it's all about who can post the longest hot take first. I tried splitting us into smaller groups but people got offended they weren't in the "right" one. Has anyone else seen a club fall apart when it got too big?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_christopher7d agoMost Upvoted

who can post the longest hot take first" hits different when you realize half those wall-of-text people never even finished the book @ray136 lol. i bet some of em just skimmed the wikipedia summary and called it a day.

mila_murphy217d ago

Who can post the longest hot take first" - isn't that just what happens when you go from a small group where everyone knows each other to a big anonymous server? Sounds like growing pains, not a sign the club is ruined. 100 people means more perspectives, not fewer. If trigger warnings are a fight now, maybe they should have been a conversation three years ago when the club was small enough to actually set ground rules. Splitting into groups is fine but you can't make everyone happy, that's just life in a big organization.

ray1367d ago

@mila_murphy21 actually that's not quite how it went down. The trigger warning thing started like a year ago when someone posted heavy personal stuff without warning and a mod got blasted for not removing it fast enough. The fight was already happening back then with like 30 people. Still agree on the growing pains part though.