Our Covenant of Right Recreations

Here are the extended versions of the “Rules” that we have in the UU Hysterical Society Facebook group….

We are not all UUs.

You don’t have to be UU to be in this group.  We’ve had people be members for months thinking it was a joke religion made up for the purposes of the group. It isn’t—it’s a real religion… But you can engage with it or not as you choose.  We welcome anyone who is willing to move alongside us as we work to build a world that is more just and more loving for all… And wants to laugh on the way.

We don’t want everyone to join our religion.  We think everybody being the same religion would be boring.  So if you are just here for the memes, and laughing is the only form of worship you need right now… know that Goddess/God/God(s)/TheUniverse/NoneOfTheAbove/Dunno is fine with that, as are we.  You will not go to Hell, we promise.

By the same token, we will occasionally post links to amazing stuff like services or podcasts for those who want to go a little deeper.  Please live and let live, and scroll like the wind past whatever doesn’t interest you.

We all believe different things, AND WE ARE FINE WITH THAT. 

It would be boring if we all believed the same thing.  This is a space where we don’t just tolerate other journeys, we support them.  Period.  

We all believe different things Regarding Goddess/God/God(s)/TheUniverse/NoneOfTheAbove/Dunno…. But to be a part of this group, you need to be comfortable with respecting all religious journeys.  Period.  Because part of You Do You is the corollary Others Do Them.  

So, if your religious path is going to cause you to spend a lot of time telling people they’re going to hell, this isn’t the place for you.  Conversely, if you love to make fun of people for believing in “invisible sky daddy” or what have you, this is probably not the place for you either.  Being here doesn’t just mean tolerating other beliefs, it means being willing to actively support the journeys of others.  Someone else’s spirituality may not make sense to you, but so long as it’s not harming anyone, hooray!

This is a Canadian group—can we please not focus too much on US politics?  Please and sorry?

Although Americans are VERY WELCOME TO BE HERE, a big point of why it was created was to have a non-American-centric space.  Too much American political talk shuts out people from other places, and also tends to turn into Energy Sucking Vortexes of Moderating Nightmare Doom.  Because of this, we wish to steer clear of American political comment threads and debates.  Downside:  Limited freedom of political expression with regards to American politics.  Upside:  Limited freedom of political expression with regards to American politics.

Grammar ain’t a virtue. 

This comes up with pronouns a lot.  If “they” feels weird to you for grammar reasons, we encourage you to remember that “they” is a word that makes some very vulnerable people feel at home in a hostile world.  Please weigh that value against the value of your grammar preferences.  And please do it mostly on your own, as people who use “they” have already guided a lot of people in their lives through this process and they are often tired of that conversation.

A similar thing is true of other phrases that might feel strange to your ears, such as “Where you at”, “y’all”, and so on.  “Proper” English actually means English of a Certain Group With Much Power.  Telling people that they shouldn’t use the language they’re comfortable with because it doesn’t match The Queen’s English excludes them—and we want to make space for all cultures, English proficiencies, and levels of education here.  Anything less is an asshole move.

Also, we swear.  For the same reason.  You don’t have to swear, but please don’t lecture others about it.

We want to be screen reader friendly.

A screen reader is a piece of software that reads text to people who don’t see well.  Images are useless to that software, which is why you’ll see people write “for screen readers” and then describe an image.  In a perfect world, the 700 people (statistically speaking) that use screen readers in this group would have a description with every image.  Also, in a perfect world, instead of addressing the software with “for screen readers” we would say “dear robot overlords”.  But that would be confusing.  So we’ll stick with “for screen readers”, and hope the robot overlords forgive us when the time comes.

We believe in putting self-care before perfection:  

This especially applies to the people who put in time to run the group.  There are hundreds of posts a day, and only about 10% of those make it through.  The ones that don’t are either not funny, not remotely on topic (“topic” being “vaguely-religion-meaning-of-life-hope-kinda-oriented”), or have been repeated a lot lately.  Or, they just give the person doing the approval a Gut Feeling of Impending Moderating Doom which is hard to explain and hard to quantify.  

Part of asking our leaders to take good care of themselves is asking them to trust their gut feelings, and also asking them to let go of explaining every decision to each person (we would love to write 90 messages each day explaining why the turned down posts don’t get through, but there just isn’t time).  It’s also telling them it’s okay to delete a conversation or freeze it if they just don’t have the ability to put in the work that day.

We want to be mistake friendly. 

It is important to speak up when we see something hurtful (often unintentionally so), but sometimes this can get kind of anti-opression-olympics unpleasant.  Remember, the difference between "You" and "Someone Making a Mistake" is not that you are more enlightened or anti-oppressive than they are.  The difference between you and them is that this week is their turn and your turn is coming later.  If you point out painful things in a granolier-than-thou manner, remember that you are making it very hard for the person you are talking to to have their listening ears on.  We are all walking embodiments of all the “isms” we are taught, and telling us what insensitive clods we are is surprisingly ineffective at bringing down the “ism” level in the world.

That said, this advice is much easier in theory than practice.

Particularly for people who are forced to constantly shape their words to be comfortable for the ears of others, this kind of gentleness can be exhausting.  Especially if they are explaining something they have explained hundreds of times already.  When this happens, calling them the PC police is surprisingly ineffective at renewing their energy.

We are not for everybody. 

If you feel like we can’t take a joke, or like we are overrun with PC police, this might not be the group for you.  There is a huge internet out there to serve your Freedom of Speech needs, and if you find yourself using up a lot of the moderators’ time, it’s probably better if you find another group.  This sounds like I am being passive aggressive, and I am being about 10% passive aggressive…  But the other 90% is a genuine desire to see you part of a community that is a better fit for you.

Also, if you are someone who is a part of a minority or persecuted group, know that a humour page with so many people on it is an inherently risky space.  We do our best, and your continued presence helps us get better every day.  But we do not want to get better on the back of your pain.  Please, pay attention to your own exhaustion level and vulnerability level, and only engage at the level that works for you.

We are not trying to be everything to everyone.  We have our vision for the little corner of the internet and the culture we want here, but that doesn’t mean that other capacities or priorities or balances are wrong—they’re just not what we are doing.  We don’t see people leaving as a sign of failure, we see it as them demonstrating enough care and respect for themselves and for us to want to make sure things are a good fit for everyone.

Do not feed trolls.

When someone says something awful, responding in a comment interacts with the Facebook algorithm to push what they said to more people.  Responding “where are the moderators?” is particularly unhelpful, as the moderators can’t possibly get to all the comments every day.  Also, it throws the mods under the bus (usually for having a healthy relationship with technology, which we support).

Think of your argument with the troll and comments calling for the mods as a “voting up” of the comment into more peoples’ feed.  Also, it’s exciting for the troll.

By contrast, you can say nothing and use the “report comment” function.  This instantly draws mod attention (though there might not be one online at that moment), and it’s very effective at addressing the issue.  Think of that as the way to vote something down.  Also, it’s super boring for the trolls.