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hilsNever imagined I would find myself in this situation but I have a bit of a negative Misha post that I need to get out of my system.
Now, reports are coming in that he was in quite a snarky mood at LA yesterday so it's possible he was just having a bad day.
So, the basic backstory of it is this. As I'm sure a lot of you are aware that Misha tweeted a while back that the WB had promised him a live rhino if SPN got onto the cover of TV guide and that he'd share it with us if he won.
Well, we won, and Misha asked people to send in an SASE which a lot of us did. What came back was part of a puzzle. Misha had sent puzzle pieces to everyone and written on the back of each piece. The idea was to find everyone in the same puzzle team as us and put together the puzzle to reveal a written email address. I thought this was fantastic! It got us working together and meeting people from all over the world who we would never have crossed paths with otherwise. To me it was very Misha.
Unfortunately after we all solved the puzzle the next stage came. A scavenger hunt. On the list was 22 extremely weird and random items (a child in bathtub of cranberries etc) again very Misha and my first inclination was to bow out there and then. I didn't think there was anything on the list I could do. But the rest of my team got really excited and started working out ways to get all the items on the list.
Now, one of the rules specified that duplicates would be discarded but that the winning team would only include those who actually submitted an item. Since there were 22 items on the list and 61 people in each team we just assumed that we would be counted as participating for sending in a duplicate but that we wouldn't get any points for the extra items.
Wrong.
Someone asked Misha for clarification at the con yesterday and he said he hadn't really thought about the fact that he'd requested fewer items than there were team members but that he was sticking by the rule that anyone sending in a duplicate wouldn't count as being on the winning team. When asked what about the people who could only do something someone else has submitted his response was allegedly 'fuck them'.
So, naturally, the team members are now falling over themselves making sure they're the one to find whatever it is and not giving a shit about anyone else on the team. I've already had one girl jump in and submit the item I was supposed to be doing (giving me pretty much a 'fuck you' response when I called her on it). It's incredibly divisive and causing a lot of friction amongst people who were getting along just fine two days ago.
Sadly this just reeks of a social experiment to me. I'm just imagining Misha watching us all turning on each other and knowing that he made it happen with just a few words. It's just really disappointed me. I thought he was better than that.
I think the reason this is rubbing me up the wrong way so much is that it's just reminding me all too much of the popular boy I went to school with who used to love getting girls to do random shit because he had the power to. It's just making me really uncomfortable and quite sad really.
I've pretty much said I'm going to drop out unless the team absolutely desperately needs me to do something. I was working on something this afternoon and have now scrapped it because I felt like I was a performing monkey for Misha's amusement. This is just not something I feel comfortable being a part of. I'd rather be a loser than a backstabber.
It possible (and indeed likely) that he simply didn't think this through but can't or is unwilling to alter the rules he's imposed. Either way the point of this post isn't for me to announce a big flounce and say I'm done with the Misha side of fandom. I just think this could have been handled better. I still have a lot of respect for Misha and what he does for this fandom. I'm just a little disappointed at the way this has unfolded.
Now, reports are coming in that he was in quite a snarky mood at LA yesterday so it's possible he was just having a bad day.
So, the basic backstory of it is this. As I'm sure a lot of you are aware that Misha tweeted a while back that the WB had promised him a live rhino if SPN got onto the cover of TV guide and that he'd share it with us if he won.
Well, we won, and Misha asked people to send in an SASE which a lot of us did. What came back was part of a puzzle. Misha had sent puzzle pieces to everyone and written on the back of each piece. The idea was to find everyone in the same puzzle team as us and put together the puzzle to reveal a written email address. I thought this was fantastic! It got us working together and meeting people from all over the world who we would never have crossed paths with otherwise. To me it was very Misha.
Unfortunately after we all solved the puzzle the next stage came. A scavenger hunt. On the list was 22 extremely weird and random items (a child in bathtub of cranberries etc) again very Misha and my first inclination was to bow out there and then. I didn't think there was anything on the list I could do. But the rest of my team got really excited and started working out ways to get all the items on the list.
Now, one of the rules specified that duplicates would be discarded but that the winning team would only include those who actually submitted an item. Since there were 22 items on the list and 61 people in each team we just assumed that we would be counted as participating for sending in a duplicate but that we wouldn't get any points for the extra items.
Wrong.
Someone asked Misha for clarification at the con yesterday and he said he hadn't really thought about the fact that he'd requested fewer items than there were team members but that he was sticking by the rule that anyone sending in a duplicate wouldn't count as being on the winning team. When asked what about the people who could only do something someone else has submitted his response was allegedly 'fuck them'.
So, naturally, the team members are now falling over themselves making sure they're the one to find whatever it is and not giving a shit about anyone else on the team. I've already had one girl jump in and submit the item I was supposed to be doing (giving me pretty much a 'fuck you' response when I called her on it). It's incredibly divisive and causing a lot of friction amongst people who were getting along just fine two days ago.
Sadly this just reeks of a social experiment to me. I'm just imagining Misha watching us all turning on each other and knowing that he made it happen with just a few words. It's just really disappointed me. I thought he was better than that.
I think the reason this is rubbing me up the wrong way so much is that it's just reminding me all too much of the popular boy I went to school with who used to love getting girls to do random shit because he had the power to. It's just making me really uncomfortable and quite sad really.
I've pretty much said I'm going to drop out unless the team absolutely desperately needs me to do something. I was working on something this afternoon and have now scrapped it because I felt like I was a performing monkey for Misha's amusement. This is just not something I feel comfortable being a part of. I'd rather be a loser than a backstabber.
It possible (and indeed likely) that he simply didn't think this through but can't or is unwilling to alter the rules he's imposed. Either way the point of this post isn't for me to announce a big flounce and say I'm done with the Misha side of fandom. I just think this could have been handled better. I still have a lot of respect for Misha and what he does for this fandom. I'm just a little disappointed at the way this has unfolded.
