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Meetup.. the promise of meetup was the organizers pay a fee so the members don’t have too. My partner organized one a decade ago. I’m still a member of a coup

Meetup.. the promise of meetup was the organizers pay a fee so the members don’t have too. My partner organized one a decade ago. I’m still a member of a couple but now they’re really going after group members with ads and upsells. It still works but has become kind of icky. Bending spoons, the name just sends up red flags as parlor trickery.

riffraff 1y ago
I'm pretty sure the name is after the scene in "the matrix" (there is no spoon etc).
- fortran77 1y ago
  I was thinking more Uri Geller
jacobgkau 1y ago
Yeah, I was a paying Meetup member for a short bit back around 2018-2019 when I hosted events with my own group, and have been a very active attendee of others' groups (but no longer an organizer of my own group) since 2020 on. I feel like the payment situation hasn't actually gotten that much worse-- the price for organizers that can be achieved with coupons is similar to what it was before, and attendees don't actually have to pay-- but they've made it feel a lot worse by making organizers dig for coupons and trying to trick attendees into thinking they need to pay. But I think most of those changes happened before Bending Spoons bought Meetup. I don't think it was a situation where everything was great, then Bending Spoons bought them and it started going to crap (which I've heard some people in these groups retroactively claiming recently).
netsharc 1y ago
Meetup now is weird.. they hide everything behind blurs (for example people's last names), but the blurs are CSS, and one could modify the CSS and get the obscured info. I think it also advertises "get premium to see gender ratios"...
- nerdsniper 1y ago
  > I think it also advertises "get premium to see gender ratios"... Eww.
jen729w 1y ago
> Bending spoons, the name just sends up red flags as parlor trickery. 'Spoon bender' was a deep insult in my circle when we were ~18. In honour of the ur-bender, Uri.

riffraff 1y ago

I'm pretty sure the name is after the scene in "the matrix" (there is no spoon etc).

fortran77 1y ago
I was thinking more Uri Geller

jacobgkau 1y ago

Yeah, I was a paying Meetup member for a short bit back around 2018-2019 when I hosted events with my own group, and have been a very active attendee of others' groups (but no longer an organizer of my own group) since 2020 on. I feel like the payment situation hasn't actually gotten that much worse-- the price for organizers that can be achieved with coupons is similar to what it was before, and attendees don't actually have to pay-- but they've made it feel a lot worse by making organizers dig for coupons and trying to trick attendees into thinking they need to pay. But I think most of those changes happened before Bending Spoons bought Meetup. I don't think it was a situation where everything was great, then Bending Spoons bought them and it started going to crap (which I've heard some people in these groups retroactively claiming recently).

netsharc 1y ago

Meetup now is weird.. they hide everything behind blurs (for example people's last names), but the blurs are CSS, and one could modify the CSS and get the obscured info. I think it also advertises "get premium to see gender ratios"...

nerdsniper 1y ago
> I think it also advertises "get premium to see gender ratios"... Eww.

jen729w 1y ago

> Bending spoons, the name just sends up red flags as parlor trickery. 'Spoon bender' was a deep insult in my circle when we were ~18. In honour of the ur-bender, Uri.