| Discussion Forum: Thread 356285 |
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| | | Author: | dursagon  | | Posted: | Apr 10, 2024 11:10 | | Subject: | LUGs | | Viewed: | 148 times | | Topic: | Off Topic | |
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| To whom it may concern,
I wanted to check in and see if anyone was interested in a story about the ugly
side of LUGs and Lego communities that are RLUGs and receive perks from Lego.
I was a member of a Texas LUG until in 2022 I was physically attacked at their
convention by someone thinking I was in a place where I wasn't supposed to
be but was asked by another member to volunteer to retrieve something for them
as they had to stay at the location they were at. I was upset by the hostile
interaction, and I reported it as well as told my wife about the incident, but
I was blown off and my complaint dismissed.
I tried to get along with my abuser for a year after that but the abuse and the
abuser acting like nothing happened bothered me more and more. Then in 2023 I
reported the incident again to the group Ambassador who blew me off and told
me they didn't want to deal with it and I needed to confront my attacker.
I explained to them my past experiences and that I would be too intimidated to
do that, and nothing was done. To explain, I'm Neurodivergent and a victim
of extreme childhood abuse which is why I've collected Lego since 1975 to
help me get past the abuse with creativity.
With nothing being done, I then went to another member of the group who had a
lead role in the group and reported everything to them. They dismissed my complaint
by telling me they'd investigate it and get back with me but never did. At
this point, my attacker has gained more power in the group by giving a meeting
space to the group and inserting themselves into the leadership of the group.
With nothing being done behind the scenes in secret, I made the incident public
for everyone to see. With the leadership of the group now upset about it going
public, they attacked me in posts and verbally in an attempt to protect my abuser.
After they made me feel very unwelcomed, I tried going to other local clubs only
to find out that I had been blacklisted for filing a complaint about how the
group handled my incident.
As a whistleblower, I was abused further and called every ugly thing in the book
including being called crazy and needing to be on meds which is the classic American
abuser thing to say about their victim. Things got ugly and in one of the other
groups, a contestant from Lego Masters prejudged the situation and listened to
the negative blacklisting and began to play mind games by blocking me in group
chats and then unblocking me when I complained only to wait a little while and
then reblock me. All I ever did in the group is respond to requests for parts
and showed what MOCs I was working on. They even went so far as to try and instigate
a confrontation in a thread where I was fulfilling a parts request.
I know part of this is these people are abusers. But another part of this is
the greed with the people in these LUGs. Because Lego gives only so much loot
to RLUGs, these RLUGs hoard what they can get out of Lego and even go so far
as to abuse the Lego LUGBulk program as well as Project Support programs. They
fiercely defend their territories, and they attack anyone who would or could
disrupt their access to the Lego loot. I think blowing the whistle on the group's
activities to forcefully and abusively exclude someone because they were not
as influential as their abuser/attacker.
I am just trying to get the information about the ugly side of Lego collecting
can be out there so that people can be more informed and cautious about some
of the LUGs out there who are not as nice and clean as Lego would want.
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USA, Texas
