I've been delaying writing this thread for almost as much as I've been wanting to write it, which has been for over a month now, so I apologize for its lateness after having mentioned it several times. Regardless, I'll be addressing Community Nights as a whole and the evolution of both myself and them, as well as the changing role "we" also serve in the community. I'll also talk briefly on my own feelings of all of this, which as a person who is very deeply closed off to others in that regard, is a rare sight to see from me.
A """""Short""""" History
I'll begin the short history of the Community Nights etc., starting off with when I started hosting events. In a similar likeness to how the guy who made Netflix made it because he had a $40 late fee from Blockbuster, I hosted what I'm going to call the first community night of the "new generation of xG" due to my pestering Lithium and Virr, who were both busy, so I took it upon myself. From the unexpectedly wild success of that, which I only planned to be a one time thing that I would then remain satisfied with having done it, I decided to continue hosting events, as I was experiencing a personal and subconscious change in how I should give back to the community who has put up with me for several years. This then evolved into becoming an "event host" of sorts, which both the community and I passively accepted. Sometime after this hypothetical prospect of being an event host, I announced the GMod Community Night, which erupted with success and enjoyment despite its makeshift workings of finding empty community servers. It was also around this time that @Aegean posted a thread summarizing one of the beliefs, which before the thread, I had previously attempted to make the spearhead of events; anyone can host events. Having the co-leader say this brought much more impact with it, which proved to be very helpful. I began to think about hosting more seriously.
Change in Feelings
As I said, I would touch on my own feelings, so here's one of the rare occasions where I share them: I was starting to realize, more so than any point in my few years of having been here, that not only trying to create the best experience possible from nothing for events was stressful, but also that I really needed to have a self-analysis. Looking at one's own actions is such a difficult thing to do with full honesty towards yourself and others, but also extremely important. I was realizing that in trying to solve my own issues and step up to something larger than myself, I was seeing both the problem in us as a community's lack of self-assessment (and subsequent toxicity) and the answer to this in bringing others together with events. To expand on the statement of toxicity, I've talked about it only once before in public in the past, but it's so incredibly easy to become toxic, to be the one who thinks they're in the right and the other person is undeniably wrong. Having been surrounded, and formerly being a part of, hate for the other "friend groups" within the community, I also began to look at the past through a different lens. I was seeing my own faults as a person, and needed to fix them. Part of being able to fix this was, as mentioned, becoming a part of something bigger than my personal gain, which was the gain of others. I sought this through becoming a discord moderator, which became Community Host through my actions and improvement after advice from multiple friends, like @virr and Aegean. I'll tie this chunk of text up in my closing statement, but for now here's some insight on my still-changing past, present, and future expectations and, very importantly, my beliefs for hosting events.
Thoughts and Core Beliefs
As the second-to-last chunk of text, I'm starting this exposition off by extrapolating on my endings in the previous two. These were just two of many ideals I hope to achieve in creating the environments that I do. First and foremost, one of the most important values that I uphold above all others is that I host events purely for people to have fun. That has always been, and always will be the primary goal of both this clan as a whole and its events. Secondly, after having been affected by my own toxicity and reformation, I hope to restore the "purest version" of this community, for people to shed all predispositions, like the stigmas and dramas of the divisions or friend groups they belong to, and exist simply as people playing games with each other. We get wrapped up in our own small scope of things that we forget how to have fun. The third principle (more-so a goal than anything) is to inspire the people who play my events to give back to the community in some way, not just through hosting. As a quick F.Y.I., the first MC CN, despite the unfortunate incident of the host server going offline, also served an important purpose. I hosted it to see two things: one being if the community was ready to play a singular game for an extended period of time, rather than a lobby of minigames for the same amount of time, and the other, if higherups were prepared to cooperate with me in order to enhance the experience. Both of these things were proven true to me, so regardless of the mixed feedback, I was overjoyed in that regard.
To sum up all three of these core values, I hope to use events to revive what xG used to regard as its most important goal, which is to have fun.
Closing This Up
TL;DR - The history of CNs have evolved from something I hosted because nobody else would to something I host with a purpose and meaning behind it. It has matured me, also, by creating a gap of something bigger than myself that I needed to step up to fill the responsibility of, which at first was going for discord moderator, and turned into being a Community Organizer. I will always continue hosting events so long as the interest and time is there, and my policies of making the experience as fun as possible (and suiting the greatest number of peoples needs to fulfill that as well, i.e. changing the times of events so more people show up), trying to make it an entirely separate part of xG with more of a pure sense of a common experience, and lastly to inspire others, as I was inspired myself, whether it be assessing their own words and actions, hosting, or even just showing up to events once in a while.
I'd lastly like to thank everyone who has given continued support and advice on how to improve myself as a person and the events I host. Thank you both @virr and @Aegean for both having given me invaluable guidance and help, as well as the higherups collaborating with me, and finally, an amazingly large number of other people who all give me the resolve and incentive to keep on doing what I do. I'm glad to continue representing the community as a whole and being able to play with so many fantastic individuals on a regular basis.
