Listen to the audio recording of me reading this story HERE: View My Video
I've come to accept the fact that leadership is a double- edged sword.
When I first started out in CoC, way back in December of 2012, my first clan was called Cyber Devils. With a leader named Michael and around 30 people, I was happy in my little clan, thinking it was the true experience of the game.
Now, after more than a year of playing, I look back at Cyber Devils, and I see what it's turned into. After saying goodbye to Michael, I went to another clan called Atom's Core. After a while the leader became inactive and I was left, the only person who was in charge, with only a few of my friends.
One day I decided to go back and visit my very first clan. I typed Cyber Devils into the search bar, and clicked on a clan- a clan that was once my clan, but couldn't even be called a clan anymore. The clan was wide open, with one, leagueless member named 'Gamertagleo' in it, his base in shambles and collectors full. The chat list showed a huge line of red:
Michael has left the clan
George has left the clan
Coolalex has left the clan
Over the months I kept going back to Cyber Devils, leaving little inspirational messages for Gamertagleo, telling him where to find us if he came back on, urging him to join Atom's Core. It was no use. Gamertagleo had up and abandoned his base, and the clan was just a shell, none of the great people, none of the great clan chat, none of the troops to fill the empty donation request.
I tracked down Michael a few weeks after I left Atom's Core. We were now in Atom's Core two, a small but not altogether inactive clan. I hopped off to visit Cyber Devils, and visited my old clan mates. Nothing had changed in the chat since the last time I'd been there, just a bunch of me joining, talking, and leaving. Talking to what? To who? An empty clan, an abandoned base, a broken player who deleted the game.
I visited Michael's base first. He was in a clan called 'Purple Mup'. I joined and said hi, but he barely remembered me. I tried Coolalex next, the summer leader whose last message was still visible in the clan chat 'I'll come back later with some friends'. His base too was smashed, troops wandering around destroyed army camps, no league, no clan.
Life went on in Atom's core 2 until I left, leaving one of my friends as leader. I wandered around a little bit, hopping in and out of clans, and eventually decided to visit Michael again and say hi. This time there was no clan shield on his clan castle. No league in the league shield, no space left in the collectors, no troops in the army camps, no intact village. He had been broken, had given up, thrown away the base and left the game.
'How could he do that?' I asked myself, over and over. 'He was my leader. How can someone just lose hope?'.
I started to lose that hope just a few weeks ago. I wasn't clicking anywhere, and my school clan had kicked me out for telling people not to donate goblins. I hopped onto Bogger's United, said hi to Tim a few times, but nothing that I did really rejuvenated me. I was logging on less and less to the game, and less and less to the forums. I was slowly but surely becoming one of those broken, empty, league less bases that my very first clan mates had become. I wasn't fitting in anywhere. Nowhere I felt I clicked, no real chat, no place to call home.
But now, today as I write this, my situation is the exact opposite that it was in which I just described.
It's one thing to be thrown control of a clan, given leader and told 'Here, take it, I don't care'. You don't really care if a member leaves, or if a troll comes in, and you don't really, truly feel in charge.
With my failing morale I turned to the forums. I lurked more than posted, moping around the clan talk subforum looking at all the shiny, tall, powerful family clans dominated the 'Looking for clanmates' subforum. And that's when a little idea sprang into my head.
I've always understood the forums. From the moment I created my account, something clicked and it felt like a better home than anything else. I belonged here, and I made friends here! I understood my friends, I clicked with the forums, and I thought; 'Why can't clans do the same thing?'.
I had forum friends all over the place, and I talked with them, chatted, played games and talked in groups. They were my clan- my ragtag bunch of friends who would smile and laugh with me, and always had nice things to say. In some ways it's those friends of mine that kept me going, and kept me logging on here every day.
And I suddenly had the idea to transform that wonderful, active, social feeling of the forums into a clan. I opened a thread in clan talk, and somewhat desperately asked for people who would be interested in being part of a forum- only clan family. The responses were slow, but positive.
'Yeah, I'll join'.
'Brilliant idea dude!'
'Sounds good, count me in!'
By the time I decided to actually create the clan, which is now Forum Bound, we had around 14 people signed up. I figured it would be a good attempt, people would join, tell me the clan sucked, and then leave again, and I'd be thrown deeper into the Pit of Despair then before.
To my surprise and utter joy, the clan gained no less than 20 members in it's first 12 hours of activity, all of whom are still with us. Everyone was a former, and we made new friends, being active, friendly, donating, and keeping up the clan recruitment thread, which was the main source of our success and new recruits.
But now there was a new problem that started to emerge. I was the leader of a happy, robust, active, and steadily growing clan with a purely- forum population. So what's wrong with that? What's the problem?
My leadership was a two edged sword. I had gone, overnight, from being a drone- like clasher, logging on every 2 days or so to collect my resources and mope about how many trophies I lost to defense, to an active, inspired and energetic leader of a forum- only clan that was glued to the screen of his iPod from the time he woke up to the time the wifi turned off at 11:00 PM at night. My success was addicting, and I had to have more. My clan mates were great. They built up the clan, attracted members, and were happy the entire way, and the system we had worked out for the clan was spectacular.
My addiction to the clan wasn't just, I began to realize, because of the clan's success, but because of my fear of NON success. It's different when you're just given the reigns of a clan and told to be leader, but I had worked, and my clanmates had worked, to build the clan from the ground up. Dedication and work and so much effort... I feared all for nothing.
I began to realize that my addiction to the clan wasn't only how great my clanmates were, and how active the clan was, but what were to happen if I were to turn off the game. Would all my work be lost? A rogue elder to kick or troll my entire clan while I was offline?
Suddenly when one member left, it became a huge disaster that could mean the end of the clan. My fear of losing the clan is what drove me to stay online so much- and probably what drove the clan itself to constantly greater heights. The danger of leadership lies not only in the power, and having the control, but also- the fear of losing it.
And now we face another hurdle. In preparation for the next clan of the family, Forum Rising, we have to decide on a leader and transfer members between two separate clans. The new issue is knowing what's going on. Will I be biting my nails to see what happens to the new clan or will I be paying rapt attention to Forum Bound, hoping desperately that a member won't out of the blue come and say 'Oh, I'm leaving'.
And the morality of my leadership is so crazy, so insane, so freakish- that it's perfect.
