Pinned Post 30:46

Hey everyone, it's Trevor. Welcome to Season 2 of Mayfair Watcher Society. We're so excited to be back and we can't wait for you to hear what we've got in store for you this season. Up next, a word from our sponsors.

Get started with Greenlight today and get your first month free at greenlight.com slash Spotify.

This episode is brought to you by Shopify. Whether you're selling a little or a lot, Shopify helps you do your thing however you cha-ching. From the launch your online shop stage all the way to the we just hit a million orders stage. No matter what stage you're in, Shopify's there to help you grow. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at shopify.com slash special offer all lowercase. That's shopify.com slash special offer.

Making everyone happy on vacation isn't easy, but you know what is? Going to Aruba. All you have to do is walk out your door to find pristine pools, relaxing white sand beaches, and an island teeming with outdoor activities that'll put a smile on any face. You won't just feel great, you'll all feel great, filled with a calmer, more peaceful vibe that radiates Aruba's warmth. And the best part is, it never fades. That's the Aruba effect. Plan your family trip at aruba.com.

And now, this week's episode. We are the Watchers, observers of the strange, paranormal, and occult. The spiritual, mystical, and magic. The whole world, all language, and gruesome. The unseen and secret. The revealed. Welcome to the Mayfair Watcher Society. Hello. For those of you who may not be familiar with me, my name is Ina Cho. I'm one of the moderators of this message board.

We have seen a lot of new activity here over the past few weeks. A lot of new users responding to old posts and asking questions about things most of us take for granted. And as a community, our response to this has been less hospitable than it could have been. Regardless of whether or not someone was born here, we all live here now. So to those of you who found your way to us in the recent months, welcome. Welcome to Mayfair.

While I cannot speak for everyone in saying that you are welcome here among us, I will speak for everyone when I say that the Watchers are always very happy to receive new members. Especially those taking a strong interest in understanding the town's culture and contributing to its well-being. And as new members, I understand that the amount of information available can be intimidating.

If you would like somewhere to start, I would highly recommend reading Q's "Mayfair through the Ages" post. You can find it pinned under "Resources." It will give you a fairly comprehensive background on the town's history as it relates to our relationship with the other entities which have occupied this space, as well as the formation and evolution of the Watchers as a community initiative. This video will be pinned at the top of the page for the foreseeable future. For reasons I hope will become obvious.

I'm getting very tired of the way we're all ignoring the elephant in the room. Yes, Pancontinental's operations have been disruptive, and I mean that in more than one way. Despite the mayor's insistence to the contrary, I believe it's become quite obvious to us all that fracking has had an adverse effect on both the natural population of wildlife and the creatures we share this town with. Anyone who's been keeping up with the posts on this message board will have noticed a pattern.

The familiar is becoming unfamiliar. Entities we thought we understood implicitly are behaving in ways we have never observed before. And there is an urge to blame the employees of Pancontinental for these developments. However,

I think sometimes my fellow watchers forget that we all have bills to pay, and that antagonizing and vilifying someone based on their employer is a reactive behavior which achieves nothing except to discourage people from taking any interest in what it is we have to say.

I would even go so far as to say that it makes all of us look like exactly the sort of narrow-minded, conspiratorial, backwards yokels we complain about people thinking we are. If the goal is to be taken seriously by employees of Pancontinental, this has to stop. So from now on, excessive hostility directed towards New Forms members will be met with an immediate seven-day suspension.

Appeals will not be considered. In the event of multiple infractions, permanent removal from the forums is a possibility. You have been warned. To those of you just joining us, welcome to the Mayfair Watchers Society. Under normal circumstances, I promise you, it is easier to believe that our goal as a community is coexistence whenever possible. This is a grassroots movement.

We are a collection of like-minded individuals, not members of any stratified institution. This is not a cult or secret society. It's a community message board. As a result, you may find it difficult sometimes to put our ethos into exact terms. There are very few opinions which are universal among us. We all agree that attempting to destroy the unfamiliar without making any effort to understand it is unconscionable.

But what exactly should be done during an encounter varies depending on who you're speaking to. You will encounter a wide range of opinions here. But most of us will tell you that there's one golden rule. Come to the Watchers first. If you encounter something unfamiliar and frightening, bring what you've seen to the Watchers. Don't call the hotline. Come to the Watchers. Together, we'll discuss what your next steps should be.

I know that sounds very strange to you. I know it feels unnatural. We grow up being told that if you see something strange, you get away from it as fast as you can, and then you call the exterminators. If you moved here from the city, you may never have had to do that. But chances are good that either you or someone in your family still has the number for the hotline, save to your contacts. It's not something most of us ever think to question.

But "unfamiliar" does not always mean dangerous. Not everything we don't recognize needs to be destroyed. And unfortunately, exterminators behave in exactly the way their name would lead you to expect. They're not like animal control. They don't trap or relocate creatures that are harmless but frightening. They exterminate them.

If you call the exterminators, they will destroy whatever entity you encountered before any of us have had the opportunity to understand it or to assess if it was ever really a threat. There are a lot of reasons not to want that outcome. There are reasons to want to coexist with your more unusual neighbors, which have nothing to do with ethics or ideology. As I mentioned before, there are patterns to the way these creatures behave. They can be understood to a degree.

And sometimes they have relationships to one another that we don't expect. Which can mean that destroying one because it is inconvenient or unsettling can have the effect of inviting in another. And that other creature will not always be as harmless or as easy to live with as the first. There are personal reasons to be in support of the Watchers. This is not just a matter of what's morally correct.

Sometimes this is a matter of what is best for the safety and well-being of the community in which you live. A lot of people, myself included, believe that there's a balance and that upsetting that balance will only make things worse for everyone. And with that said, I'm going to say something that needs to be said, even if it makes a lot of my fellow watchers very upset with me. Sometimes you do call the exterminators.

there will be moments in which that is the only acceptable option. Not every creature, or being, or entity, or... Not everything in Mayfair comes with the option of coexistence. To pretend otherwise is incredibly naive. To make a mission of convincing others to hold that same opinion is irresponsible to the point of being completely unforgivable. Those of you who know me will have noticed that I don't seem to be recording from my home.

That is unusual for me. I'd like to keep my life as a moderator of the Mayfair Watchers Society message board separate from my day-to-day. But that isn't an option for me right now. This is my workplace. This is my desk. My supervisor was kind enough to allow me to stay after hours and use my work computer for this. I'd like to tell you a story. It begins with the death of an old woman. Her name was Mrs. Vikrov, and she was my neighbor.

We lived next door to another for almost five years. She was a very lonely woman. While I believe her children paid someone to bring her groceries and clean up around the house, outside of holidays I very rarely saw her receiving visitors. On the few occasions I managed to make time to have dinner with her, I got the strong impression that it was the most human contact she had had in weeks.

And when she passed, we were very fortunate that it didn't take long for someone to find her. That's something I find myself very grateful for. She very easily could have gone days before anyone thought to check in on her. And that's a very sobering thought. And because this is Mayfair and there have always been more houses than there are people, at least until quite recently, Mrs. Vikrov's home sat empty for months. Almost a year.

My new neighbors moved in about eight or nine months ago. A young couple, moving out of an apartment downtown to a home in the suburbs because they were hoping to start a family. I didn't see them very often. The young woman worked overnight at some sort of stock redistribution center, and her husband worked from home as a transcriptionist. They seemed very kind, but they kept odd hours, so I didn't have many opportunities to speak to them.

The last time I can remember speaking to either of them was about a week after they'd moved in. The young man approached me on my way in from the car and asked if our neighborhood had any particular issues he should know about. I said no, not as far as I was aware of, and he thanked me for my time and went back inside. I saw him a handful of other times after that, but we never spoke again.

And as much as I regret that, there's nothing I can do about it now. Some of you might remember a post that went up a few weeks ago. The writer had just moved into a new home and was having some difficulty adapting. They wanted confirmation as to whether or not what they were experiencing was normal, or just a natural response to moving into a very different environment than they were used to.

They described being suddenly overcome with a sense of intense nostalgia or melancholy, only to discover that they had spent hours lost in thought about something they couldn't seem to remember. Once they described the sensation as something not unlike the feeling of grief or mourning,

people started asking questions. And it was discovered that they had seen something in the back garden that looked to them like a pair of pantyhose running around on their own. A pair of legs without a body or feet. It was determined that the house they had moved into was the dwelling place of a walker or a griever, whatever term you prefer.

If you're not familiar with walkers, I suggest you take the time to look up the exterminators training video we have in our archive. I know it's the subject of a lot of jokes these days. A lot of watchers are reluctant to treat the exterminators with any sort of seriousness or respect. But the information in it is good. I know, logically, I had no way of knowing that it was my neighbor who had made that post, but I still feel responsible.

If I had known. Hey everyone, it's Trevor here with a quick ad break. If you like the show, consider supporting us on Supporting Cast. You can get access to an ad-free version of Mayfair Watches Society and five other bloody FM podcasts for just $5 a month. Learn more at bit.ly slash supportmayfair. That's bit.ly slash supportmayfair. And now, a quick message from our sponsors.

This episode is brought to you by Shopify. Whether you're selling a little or a lot, Shopify helps you do your thing, however you cha-ching. From the launch your online shop stage, all the way to the we just hit a million orders stage. No matter what stage you're in, Shopify's there to help you grow. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at shopify.com slash special offer, all lowercase. That's shopify.com slash special offer.

My dad works in B2B marketing. He came by my school for career day and said he was a big ROAS man. Then he told everyone how much he loved calculating his return on ad spend. My friend's still laughing me to this day. Not everyone gets B2B, but with LinkedIn, you'll be able to reach people who do. Get $100 credit on your next ad campaign. Go to linkedin.com slash results to claim your credit. That's linkedin.com slash results. Terms and conditions apply. LinkedIn.com slash results.

LinkedIn, the place to be, to be. Storms a-brewin'? Crocs EchoStorm, that is. It's their most striking sneaker that is the perfect blend of form and function. From a sink-in soft feel to a seamless slip-on design, the Storm will help you build your streetwear style while supporting you wherever the day takes you. Plus, there are brand new colorways you won't want to miss. Shop Crocs EchoStorm on crocs.com today. Thanks for listening, and now, back to the show.

Walkers are incredibly dangerous. They may not have huge gnashing teeth or grasping arms or bristling claws, but it is because they do not have these things that they are dangerous. Walkers look silly. They look harmless.

And it is very difficult for people to accept that such a small, strange, innocuous-looking thing could mean it is necessary for them to not only abandon their home, but have it destroyed down to the deepest roots of its foundation. Walkers are a threat that is dangerous precisely because you do not feel any need to run from them. There's a temptation to ignore the problem and to hope that it goes away on its own.

To give my neighbors credit where it is due, from what I understand, they did try to seek help. The young man reached out to the Watchers and someone in the Watchers got in contact with him directly. Unfortunately, the person they made contact with was a very devout believer in the idea that coexistence is always an option.

that accidents and tragedies only happen because of the hostile intentions of those involved. And this person convinced my neighbor and his wife that there was a way to make peace with the thing in their garden. I don't know what he told them, what he promised them, or what exactly he did. What I do know is that it took me longer than I'm proud of to realize that the young woman's car never seemed to leave the driveway anymore.

that the only person who seemed to come and go from their house anymore was the gentleman who'd begun visiting them. I had my suspicions at that point. I didn't suspect walkers. I suspected blackmail, extortion, or fraud. Something very human in nature. And when I finally took it upon myself to speak to him,

I found myself waiting for a person who had already stepped through the last door you would ever enter. He never came back. I had missed my opportunity. Three people are dead. Thus, it could have been prevented if we as a community were united in understanding that sometimes there is no good solution.

There is no kind or pleasant answer. That a destroyed home which takes with it all of its dreams and memories is still preferable to the loss of people who wanted to build a future in it. If you, like the man they spoke to, have been telling people that there is always a better way, this is your fault. Their blood is on your hands.

We need to accept that Mayfair is not well. Things are changing. The familiar is becoming unfamiliar. This is not the time to be reckless or self-indulgent. People are dead, and lives have been ruined. One of the few things we know about walkers is they rarely stray far from the place they're attached to. It's a large part of why they're so easy to overlook. You may not be able to avoid the mental and emotional effects of being near one,

But if you don't want to see it with your eyes, all you have to do is avoid the place where it resides. You don't want to see the thing in the garden? Just don't go out the back door. Well, for as long as you can prevent yourself from going outside and standing in the garden. I saw one of the walkers. I saw it because I woke up this morning to realize that there was something strange standing by my mailbox. That shouldn't happen. In some ways, I'm glad it did.

Because it allowed me to finally realize what exactly had happened and what I needed to do about it. But it's also why I'm here and not at home. It's why I won't be going home tonight. Why I might never be going home again. This sort of behavior is unprecedented. And because it is unprecedented, we can no longer be sure the walker nest is confined to my neighbor's home and garden.

We can't be sure it doesn't extend to my home, or the home of the person on the other side, or to the homes of the people in the adjacent lots. They're still deciding where the line falls when it comes to acceptable risk. But one side of that line is a future in which I lose my home because someone completely unrelated to me decided that his personal ideals were more important than my safety or well-being.

That they were more important than the safety and well-being of any of us. Three people are dead, and twelve more could be homeless by the end of the night. I called the exterminators this morning. The woman on the phone told me to take whatever was too important to bear losing. Whatever I could carry in a purse or a backpack, and stand in the middle of the street until they arrived. Before today, I'd never met the people in the adjacent lots.

The woman whose backyard faces mine lives with her elderly parents. Her father has severe dementia. If the exterminators decide that the only option is to tear everything down, we're not going to be given the chance to pack our things and put them into storage. We're going to lose everything. How is she going to explain that to her father in a way that he could understand?

How is she going to cope with having to explain it to him over and over and over again until she's found a way to make a new space familiar to him? How could anyone have ever thought this was acceptable? How can so many of you think this is in any way acceptable?

That you have the right to risk other people's safety and well-being in the name of your own self-righteous ideology. Don't you dare blame this on me. Don't you dare blame this on my decision to call the exterminators. Even if we're all homeless tomorrow, we'll be alive. I will be alive. My neighbors will be alive. That woman and her husband will not be.

That poor, stupid soul who got them killed will not be. And nothing will convince me that we as a community are not responsible for their deaths. We turned a blind eye to the childish whims of those among us who wanted to believe that certain things must be true because it wouldn't be fair if they weren't. They aren't true. It isn't fair.

And say what you will about them, but I don't think the exterminators have ever gotten someone killed by doing nothing. We don't get the moral high ground here. We don't get to pretend we're the heroes to their villains. None of this had to happen. None of this would have happened if more of us had been willing to tell that young man to call the exterminators. This wouldn't have happened in the city. This wouldn't happen anywhere but Mayfair.

That's why they lurk on the forums, you know. Because they know we're like this. That there are people among us who would rather die than prove them right. They watch these threads because they know it's their only option if they want to stop things like this happening. You know that's not their job, right? They don't have to do that. No one tells them to. I don't think they even get paid for it.

Their job is to be available, to be thorough, and to come when they're called. So when they forge a call from your address to give themselves the excuse to come and save you, I don't think you automatically have the right to complain about it being an abuse of power. Them doing that is not a symptom of corruption in the Exterminators. It's a symptom of the disease in us. The problem with the Watchers.

This is an amazing community. We have discovered and achieved amazing things! There are things about the Watchers that I wouldn't trade for anything. But this? This isn't one of them. Because the Exterminators wouldn't have to do these things in the first place if we would all just grow up and stop feeding into this stupid fucking feud. Nothing I've seen has ever suggested they feel the same way about us as we do about them.

Maybe some of them think we're hippy-dippy, tree-hugging idiots, but at the end of the day, these people are our neighbors, and they care about us. We just made up this whole rivalry in our minds and started treating it like it was real. And it's...pathetic. It's embarrassing! Are there exterminators who watch the forums because they like trophy hunting and like to see how hard it is to kill that exciting new creature you've encountered? Probably. Yes.

But there are also non-exterminators who do the same thing. And we know that. Whether or not you want to admit it, we know those people exist. It's a risk. It was always a risk. It will always be a risk. And to be honest with you, I don't give a fuck about that risk right now. Three people are dead. They're dead. And nothing will change that. I'm going to say something that's going to make a lot of people very angry.

Yes, come to the Watchers first. But if the answers we give you seem too good to be true, and you can't find any evidence that they've worked for anybody else, call the Exterminators. And don't apologize for it. Here's the thing about having people hate you: You have to be alive for that to be upsetting. We are not more deserving of this space than the other things that live here are. But we do deserve to live.

We deserve to have the right to defend ourselves when necessary. We deserve to feel safe in our own homes. We deserve to make the best decisions for ourselves, even if they aren't the decisions the people around us like. Welcome to Mayfair. I would promise you it's not always like this, but honestly, that might be a lie. Have a good night, everyone. If the other moderators don't ban me, I'll see you all in the morning. Thank you for listening, neighbor.

The Bloody FM Show.

For more information, visit bloody.fm.