why I left wona

between a senior & a junior, a senior should get the worse end of the stick when it comes to the power dynamics. a junior should be defiant about their identity as a junior & refuse to conform to the structure’s expectations of their behavior. & a senior should always be extremely overwhelmed, burdened, & confused by their identity & responsibility to actively work against the flow of power.

the title of this is mostly clickbait, but for the most part, i will give as detailed & unbiased a recount as possible of the incidents that led to my leaving wona. then i’ll tell you the standard reason i tell people for why i left. then i’ll tell you the actual reason i left. & then i’ll tell you why i lie about the reason. (this last bit is the only bit that matters, so skip if u will)

fun. ok, so.

events:

30th oct ‘22,

1. watchout publishes an article s & i wrote called- Can Men Write Women? (it’s a p nice article, do read)

31st oct ‘22,

1. weird incoherently misogynistic (it was so incoherent i still can’t be sure if it counts as misogyny) comments pop up on the insta post for the article, & k & i decide to engage in a bit of banter from our personal accounts.

2. wona exec. ed at the time, ay, announces on the group that i’m “not supposed to reply to comments on watch out posts” because that “leads to nowhere” & “watchout has the superiority complex” (the latter was probably a joke- ay was, as i remember, afflicted with making self-deprecating jokes at the expense of watchout). in the middle of this discussion, without meaningfully replying to my responses to this, a goes and deletes all of mine & k’s comments.

3. after solid 10 minutes of me being mad on the group about the tyranny of the lad with the account creds, brother also deletes the misogynistic comments too (because that was the depth of his understanding of the issue “i deleted all brainless comments”)

4. now everyone’s mad at me for getting mad

5. i’m getting mad at everyone for getting mad at me for getting mad instead of being mad at ay for being an authoritarian c-slur. right yes, i call him the c-slur. more madness.

6. left lib. girl is suddenly arguing that my replies were misogynistic (read, how dare you call his mother a feminist?) more madness.

7. chief-eds, kr & c, ask me tell me this needs to be resolved w “discussion” (ie, the thing i was trying to do pehle and ay refused to do before deleting my comments)

8. givesup.jpg

9. group dead, ppl sad cuz i’m a mean lil girl, i apologize because ppl-pleaser genes, and kh, gf of ay, says she feels unsafe.

10. ay, now supported by his gf, tells me that “calling people out and targeting them openly” is bad & that this has to “work like a group”

11. lol.gif

12. insert a lot of long messages. chief-ed, c, engages in the most pacifist, biased way possible, claiming they don’t want to censor me, while at the same time still refusing to take a clear, public stance on ay’s incorrect decision to delete comments & incorrect announcement that “calling out openly” is not the way “the group works”.

13. ay says “if i had to show off my power i would have done that way back” and “aaja let’s talk face to face” on the group.

1st nov ‘22,

1. i leave the group

2. c, kr (cheif-eds) & s (design head) arrange a meeting w me.

3. kr, in the meet, said a lot of fucked up shit- setting “expectations” for my behavior as a wona member from my personal account as well?? & saying she’s not affected by my actions because i’m her “junior”

4. i say i will rage if i see injustice. & clearly, it’s more fucked up that you guys don’t even care about the structures that restrict and decide how we behave as being inherently more violent than my tone. you allow “indecorum” to pass top to bottom in the power hierarchy & forbid dissent the other way round. if you can’t deal w rage, i’m leaving.

5. leavesgrouppt2.jpg

2nd nov, ‘22,

1. ok this day is the comic relief part. i’m gonna quote my favourite quotes by ay from dm banter. my man’s so committed to making zero sense but still sounding like he’s straight out of a 90s flick its bful:

   1. “i have chosen not to react to your tomfoolery. that is enough”

   2. “you’re not jesus bud. what you say isn’t objectively right” (ah, jesus, the all-knowing objective right decider)

   3. “my ego? my ego hasn’t entered yet”

   4. (him & his gf thought i was drunk on 31st for some reason. & in response to me saying i wasn’t, he said:) “that is for you to introspect” (?????)

   5. “aadi jeevaraj. do not make this personal. this will not end well.” (also, this was in response to me calling him & his gf dumb lol. gotta love dudes that only get “personal” when you talk about their gf)

   6. “you weak enough to not face me?” (this man’s in kshitij)

2. his gf also tried to book me on cyber crimes or smth in the middle, idk, i wasn’t really following the plot at this point.

3. ay, a PoR, clearly threatened me multiple times & asked me to show up physically & face him. i brought this up w the chief-ed, c. again, as far as i know, bro was probably talked to & didn’t ever face any consequences

   

   .

so there, had to go find all that again. plis appreciate the stuff i do for the plot. this doesn’t really matter, but i hope it was an engaging read. & hey, if you didn’t know how groups “work”, i hope ay gave you a pretty good idea of how.

so, on paper, i left wona because of inescapably shitty seniors who were either apathetic or power-tripping. i left cinesec for the same reason.

wona is supposed to be the woke one. couple years ago, some of my seniors i really love wrote an article called- Call Me Sire. you don’t use sirs and ma’ams in wona. it’s supposed to be decentralized. but that isn’t really the case.

if you asked me to trace the root of the problem i’d probably say it’s mostly because of this weird need to preserve things the way they’ve been. maybe it’s not a need, just laziness to reinvent the wheel. there are structures in these groups & the way they functioned in the past that simply dropping the titles wouldn’t change. case in point, account creds. unofficially passed around, & it does sound a bit impractical & unnecessary to vote on everything that the group does with its instagram, doesn’t it?

time is the oppressor, not seniors. everyone’s just playing the part they’re told they have to.

all of it needs to go, really.

now, all that’s true, but really, the truth is ay had no power over me. i’m too proud to ever admit that, yes. but also, no, i think it's the truth. i found him too incredibly stupid to ever take him seriously enough to be scared. & that extends to nearly all my seniors. i was the ideal junior, according to the first paragraph of this. defiant & stubborn about rejecting the identity forced on to me.

but then, power-tripping seniors aren’t a good enough reason for me leave, is it? if their power has no influence over me. should i not have stayed & worked to change that for those actually affected or brainwashed by that power? that’s true actually. i lie about my reasons for leaving wona & it’s kinda tied into the second half of that first paragraph. am i the ideal senior?

i left wona because i was an angry, emotional rage machine & wanted to make a point. i was too exhausted to try & explain things to those people. & i could not imagine working with those people. i left wona cuz the way groups work is soaked in sm inertia. articles take forever to be compiled, edited, & published. nobody cares about anything that matters.

but yeah, i wanted to make a point. & i lie because i still do. hell, i always want to make a point. why else would i be writing?

to my juniors, i say i left wona because campus groups suck, power & inertia are insurmountable, do stuff independently & don’t rely on structure. i’m trying to make a point. i’m trying to make a big deal out of the way power defines & dictates the smallest things we do every day. i’m trying to ask them to be defiant in all the smallest & most fundamental ways possible. because i’m trying to actively correct for structure. & that is the task of every “senior”.

that’s why i’m writing this too. when you’ve been around a place longer than the new kids coming in, there’s an undeniable imbalance. it’s a bit like dogs & territory. but it’s also more material. think through your life up until now & the sheer amount of change that you were forced into through your first year of campus. it’s a huge shift. it takes a long while to learn to adjust to everything new around you, from what food you like to what you want the people around you to mean to you. what you value.

i often sound prudish in my group of friends when i say shit like don’t date juniors. but that’s because, purely statistically, there’s more change in your life in that period than there ever has been or will be in the future. you’re meant to be volatile then. you can’t just ignore that difference in attempting to treat them as equals. you have to actively correct for it.

all this is to say i think i’m a pretty good senior lol. mostly, an uninvolved one, but i’m trying to change that. the few juniors i’ve had the pleasure of getting to know better have changed my life, & taught me sm & just in general, i’ve regretted not having gotten closer to so many of the ones that graduated too much to let that happen the other way round too.

life is full of people.