Motherfuck.  I thought I was done with this shit.  Ok well I’m still on some random email list or something, so whatever.  I’ve spent all day driving a Penske truck to go pick up monitors for my own event, so honestly my interest in MAGFest politics is at an all-time low.  But damned if I don’t start getting phone calls every time some shit goes down, and I do still care about you guys, so lets just call this my parting words.

Like a lot of the people in this thread, I’m fucking _angry_ at Nick.  He has said and done things to me that are not at all fair, empathetic, or showing of any kind of compassion whatsoever.  And I can’t find anyone’s criticism of Nick that isn’t completely fair and reasonable.  But they too, are completely devoid of the empathy, fairness, or compassion they claim (and I agree) Nick should have.  Not that I’m at all surprised by this, I’ve been talking to people left in the path of destruction of Nick for years before I was one of them.

Most of you won’t understand, but it’s gut-wrenchingly hard to be forced out of MAGFest, whether by your own choice or someone else’s.  And when that happens, it’s nearly impossible to look at the people in MAGFest with the same level of compassion and caring that you once did. I’m not any different - you can definitely find conversations where I’ve said most of the things here - and much worse.

In my mind, for the absolutely nothing my opinion is worth these days, it’s painfully obvious that there are serious issues with Nick as Executive Director.  By my count there are two employees fired, three more quit, two event leaders forced out, two more quit.  But, most critically, MAGFest as a whole has slowly lost the compassion that built the community in the first place - and shitting on Nick is both fairly lazy and also furthers the divide and erosion of empathy and compassion that are going to be necessary to fix anything.

Nick has been a part of MAGFest for longer than most of us have.  That doesn’t buy him any special consideration, but it does mean that he is every much the diehard supporter of MAGFest that we all are.  I don’t want anyone else to go through the heartbreak that I did, even the person that caused it and made it about as painful as possible.

If MAGFest is going to get better, it’s gotta start with compassion - at an institutional level as well as an individual one.  That’s where to start.

Or don’t, I’m just gonna be over here having fun playing with Dreamcasts.  Go have fun doing your stuff.  Maybe we’ll all get to have fun together again at some point.  I’d like that.

—Joe