>>17955887She didn't make a scene out of it, it's very much just a case of someone finally speaking up because they were tired of people being unable to take no for an answer (and from what I gather it was less "[x] asked me" and more "[x] knows I'm gonna say no so he bothered my friends to ask me instead") and other people realizing they can agree without being shouted down themselves.
My personal experience is that someone had an event (birthday, I believe? It's been a while) where they read one on-stream and I made an offhand joke in the chat that I wasn't invited. The chuuba actually reached out to me to apologize like I was genuinely upset by it, and while I certainly appreciated the gesture but it really wasn't a big deal or anything. I really didn't care, if I wanted to say happy birthday I coulda just done it in their chat or on twitter or the like. But either way it did make me wonder how many people really did feel left out, and how flawed of a system it must be if someone really did.
I didn't think much of it after that but either way a few months later I started getting DMs to join quite a few boards and while I told them up front I'd only post to a few it started making me wonder about the opposite side of the coin. /wvt/ is big on community, obviously. But where does the line get drawn? If I create something for someone I know and watch regularly, should I do that for every board I participate in? If I'd rather just leave a message, am I allowed to just stay anonymous or will the chuuba and other viewers wonder why I didn't post? And what about the ones I don't post in, is there a reason for that? I mean obviously I know the reason is "I don't watch them often or know them well" but surely I could have taken five seconds to leave a simple message, right?
I just think that turning them from a well-meaning gesture into something you're expected to participate in hurts the premise and can lead to burnout in the long run, and we're just starting to see that in some people voicing their dislike of the entire concept. I'm not really sure what the solution to that is, since you can't really stop doing them either. Everyone has a birthday, everyone has an anniversary, everyone has some other events they want to celebrate. But it's worth discussing and I'm glad people aren't just keeping their opinions to themselves about it now.