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meetin.org - good bad unhealthy?


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Have you tried meetin.org?

 

At first I thought it was an alternative to meetup.com.

 

But now I've found it's something completely different.

 

My most positive evaluation of the site is that it discourages direct bar style pickups of dates at events.

 

My most negative evaluation would include statements about "incredibly unhealthy muzzling and micromanaging in ways that will hurt people," and double-talk and double-think. My history with micro-managing controlling and shaming religion makes we wary of similar control elsewhere.

 

If you went to a party would you accept being told by the host "you're not allowed to ask anyone here for a date?" It's odd and it's something I've never encountered before.

 

People have gotten married who have gone to their events. But who is going to accept a muzzle when they walk out the door and go to a social event? Can you ask a person out on a date at your church, or your pottery class, in the grocery store, or at a card game with your apartment complex neighbors, or at an Obama rally, or at a volunteering event? Which of these events have organizers who find it necessary to state that dating pickups don't normally happen there, or even that "dating is not allowed at our events?"

 

Here's a related blog entry:

 

http://toomuchcoffeelady.blogspot.com/2006/04/unhealthy-social-interaction-check.html

 

And here's a relevant quote: "...why create an organization where people are discouraged from something so common? It's just unnatural. A group that strove to be a truly healthy and welcoming social environment wouldn't try to tell its members not to date one another if they wanted. They're adults! Get over it!..."

 

What is your evaluation of meetin.org? Am I off base?

 

There's an orientation later this week that I've thought about going to. But I'm now wary of going for fear that it will be something akin to a Sunday School class where we're told about the dangers of necking and petting. Or where everyone has to sign a chastity pledge. I hope I'm wrong. But because of my history with religion I'm wary of other people trying to micro-manage core issues at a given social event.

 

I don't normally go to parties with friends where's there's an implicit muzzle present. I normally wouldn't call such people real friends. They'd be rather something like cardboard automatons who are afraid to talk about the full spectrum of human relations, or to let people be who they naturally feel inclined to be - a person with sexual organs which are never left at home.

 

And a friend wouldn't come up to me and tell me I was forbidden from asking anyone out at a given social event. So as far as I can tell the gatherings are are about "playing as if you are a friend" without actually being real ones.

 

Anyway...

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