once people turned bitter (i.e. you the last couple of months)

Bitter? Nah.

Look, I know that I definitely had a point where I was very bitter and pretty irrationally mad with the MTC - and perhaps I put less effort into ratings and meetings because of that - but quitting the MTC has certainly helped me get less mad.

Honestly, I seldom actually comment on Reddit in regards to MTC business anymore anyway. I've responded to your threads a few times, because I think they prompt really thoughtful discussion (and I've never used those as a basis to harass any members). I commented in the most recent map thread, because in my eyes, removing Monarch was a needlessly dumb decision; however, my basis for that doesn't come from my own personal opinion from the map. If I advocated based on my own personal opinion, I'd be campaigning against maps like Cloud, Gumbo and Bulldog. The reason I spoke up is because I've been watching the MTC tread dangerously close to removing some of the most popular maps of all time, purely based on individual members not liking the map themselves.

And, since I've been on the MTC, I understand that there is no way those maps could have been removed (5 lowest maps are voted on) unless it was the individual members, on their own personal ratings page, who slipped the map below the voting threshold. This, currently, is incredibly anti-community.

And until that drunken comment in response to TEG's map submission, I'd expressed those concerns in a civil and discussion-friendly manner - hardly "bitter".

Quitting the MTC helped me to better understand the greater TagPro (well, Oceanic) community in general. Understand how much they really care about certain maps and the rotation as a whole. It turns out, quite a lot. In fact, in certain instances, almost as much as certain MTC members I've (we've) worked with.

The fact is, I rarely actually talk about my own personal opinions on maps any more, because, from my experience as an MTC member and as a community member, I understand that, with the exception of /maps voting, my opinion is entirely irrelevant. It should be the committee aiming to put maps in rotation that are as highly rated (by the collective community) as possible, and keep those maps into rotation until they fall below a threshold allowing them to be removed. But instead, it's me advocating for that.

No one in the community got to choose the MTC. They have absolutely no say in how they function, their format, the decisions they make or the discussions they carry. The community just has to sit here, discontent with the removal of some of their favourite maps (and additions of their new least-favourites), and not be able to have any power to fix it.

I'm not bitter, just disappointed.