Which, at that point, becomes little more than your friend group enjoying media together.
At that point, you have to wonder why you're trying to make a formal club at all. I suppose you perhaps want to meet new people, but if you're also someone who is very specific about who they befriend, it stands to reason there's easier ways to meet new folk.
There's other reasons to run a club, to be sure (Wanting to educate people, wanting legitimacy, not wanting/being able to use your own private space to host things), so you just have to figure out what it is you want and if it's worth getting through all that. In my experience, it is not. Finding groups to game or enjoy media together is almost an entirely separate venture than starting a club, and joining clubs hasn't helped me do that since High School.
I guess if you're a High School student it might help bring people out of the woodworks who you don't get to meet while you're in class?
Anyways, at the end of the day, if you have an open club, terrible people will show up. Full stop. And to respond to that, I can only point to xkcd: "Turns out, people are complicated."
You can have a large club that is invite only. I'm a member of one in New York City. They put on events around the city, but only to people on their invite-only mailing list. Thousands of people. But not all people. You can't get invited unless someone already on the list vouches for you.
I would say our goal is socialization with other nerds. This is an area where it is kind of hard to just go out and do that. If it wasn't for this club I don't know if I would have made any friends in the area. I don't like bars and outside of magic events (which seem to be their own kind of drama) there isn't much else going on here in the nerdish realm.
So, I do think the club has helped a lot of us in that regard. Now, I have more friends then I really thought I ever would.
Which is part of why I think everyone would like to keep the club as open as possible. Quite a few of us were randos that just showed up one day and ended up making great friends.
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Honestly, the main reason why I never got too involved in my Uni's anime club was because of people like that. It was basically full of them.
At that point, you have to wonder why you're trying to make a formal club at all. I suppose you perhaps want to meet new people, but if you're also someone who is very specific about who they befriend, it stands to reason there's easier ways to meet new folk.
There's other reasons to run a club, to be sure (Wanting to educate people, wanting legitimacy, not wanting/being able to use your own private space to host things), so you just have to figure out what it is you want and if it's worth getting through all that. In my experience, it is not. Finding groups to game or enjoy media together is almost an entirely separate venture than starting a club, and joining clubs hasn't helped me do that since High School.
I guess if you're a High School student it might help bring people out of the woodworks who you don't get to meet while you're in class?
Anyways, at the end of the day, if you have an open club, terrible people will show up. Full stop. And to respond to that, I can only point to xkcd: "Turns out, people are complicated."
So, I do think the club has helped a lot of us in that regard. Now, I have more friends then I really thought I ever would.
Which is part of why I think everyone would like to keep the club as open as possible. Quite a few of us were randos that just showed up one day and ended up making great friends.