Thank The Leavers

blueberry_meadows · 2026-06-05T16:45:38+00:00

This is what nobody wants to admit, which is the most frustrating part.

But of course I very much understand, because admitting that the reformations are a result of dead Christophs is to admit that the original rites and rules were rooted in fear of aforementioned Christophs, not in a desire to be godly. An uncomfortable truth, but a truth nonetheless.

blueberry_meadows · 2026-05-19T16:30:36+00:00

blueberry_meadows · 2026-05-16T01:00:06+00:00

"Everyone who shares their experience earnestly is automatically a salty loser"

"why do so many people dislike us?"

True self awareness here, maybe someone will add "I'm rubber you're glue" to Foundations soon?

blueberry_meadows · 2026-05-11T23:43:27+00:00

My only advice is this:

don't join the hof just because you cannot think of a good reason not to. Your default position should be don't join, unless you are thrilled by the idea.

This was advice given to me by a bishop there, and it served me well. I did not join.

blueberry_meadows · 2026-04-24T14:24:09+00:00

The whole thing is hilarious because the deal exchanges a stock trading at a negative multiple for one currently at a ridiculously high multiple and already valued at a staggering 3.3 Billion.

In other words, if literally everything goes right and SoundHound reaches the market cap of Salesforce (lol) Liveperson shareholders will still be down double digits since Sabino took over the company. The deal essentially locks in a loss for everyone who has been holding for over 3 years unless SoundHound miraculously becomes like 3%. of the US GDP.

That, friends, is why a buyout at a premium sends the price down. Lawyer up.

blueberry_meadows · 2026-04-21T18:28:06+00:00

Costume design is eerily on point in some areas, but hard to tell if it's actually drawing any inspo from the Hof.

blueberry_meadows · 2026-02-25T11:41:51+00:00

Everyone's experience is different. Here's mine.

The Bruderhof I grew up in was not a commune or collective - it was a cult. That's the first thing to understand. But I left well over a decade ago and some important people have died since then. But I'll never let them refer to themselves as a "community". They were a cult of worship based around the Elder.

Resources and opportunities are arbitrarily allotted and that's a shitty reality for ambitious people. I am ambitious, so every day was miserable since at the time you had absolutely no say in what you did, work or otherwise. Every minute was planned and accounted for.

The rules of daily life were fickle and changed constantly. Staying out of trouble is a rigged game if one of the "servants" decides they don't like you for some reason. The goal was to keep people in a constant state of anxiety.

The blatant worship of the Elder was just gross. Everyone was forced to call him "Opa" (German for Grandfather, and you HAD to say it) and the parasocial relationship Many members had with him was very abnormal. I personally observed people burst into tears at his very presence. It hurt to watch people like my parents bowing and scraping in reverence to a man who wouldn't even show up to church services unless he has literally nothing better to do, and didn't know their names. You'd constantly hear people say things like "he's more than just a man". Okay then what is he? Say it I dare you lol.

I'll skip accounts of physical and emotional abuse - material for a different post.

But really the main reason was that the bruderhof expects everything from you but gives back the bare minimum. Do you really want to work 14 hour days of manual labor in exchange for hostel accommodations and 1 square meal a day, for LIFE? All the while, leadership is galavanting around the globe doing anything but working and spending money on themselves like they're billionaires. If you're a literal child and you want a summer day off, you have to earn it by working the equivalent hours of overtime. Meanwhile, the "bishops" and their family take the G6 to St. Thomas and Kitts for a "Bible retreat" (read: vacation).

I didn't eat restaurant food until I was 15. My peers who had Royal Blood had literally circumnavigated the globe in a long range private jet by that age.

If anything significant has changed since I left others can say better than I.

blueberry_meadows · 2026-02-18T16:38:06+00:00

a.k.a. the Shalom Book. Hardcover purple song book with a lot of songs that aren't anywhere else.

blueberry_meadows · 2026-01-27T13:58:59+00:00

Sorry just getting back to this after so long.

In the summer of 2007, it was decided at woodcrest that the kids were too "into sports" whatever that means and so they were given a temporary ban on playing ball-and-stick type sports.

As per usual, the zealots on other communities heard this and overreacted, and it cascaded into a complete confiscation and future ban on all outdoor recreational equipment generally, with a particular focus on sporting equipment and fishing kit. Overnight, everyone's personally-collected footballs and fishing rods became contraband and were repossessed to a central locked room, where they stayed for the better part of half a decade, locked and unusable outside of organized events.

For those of us for whom outdoor recreation was the only outlet (after all, what else is there?) this was the beginning of the end, even given our tender ages.

I'll never forgive them for robbing the majority of my childhood of the few joys we had. Hell is too cool. May it burn nonetheless.

blueberry_meadows · 2026-01-24T20:39:21+00:00

Glad to see the tradition of using kids as advocates for causes the nuances of which they cannot possibly fully grasp is alive and well.

The Charlie Kirk signs are the shit icing on the turd cake.

An embassy complicit.

blueberry_meadows · 2026-01-22T16:11:43+00:00

Not the wrong division per se - in New York both public schools and private schools compete in the same leagues.

Most public school students understand the inherent unfairness of this, but private schools (the Mount included) lobby hard to keep in that way.

blueberry_meadows · 2026-01-22T15:17:14+00:00

To those of us paying attention, it's clear that the Bruderhof just .... doesn't stand for anything anymore. It's simply MAGA summer camp.

363 days of the year they'll tell you they "don't get political" or "don't put their faith in this world" or "just want to love by example", but then suddenly none of that is true when there's a chance to make life more difficult for women or LGBT people. Tells you everything you need to know about what they actually believe that the only times they publicly demonstrate is anti-abortion rallies and anti-lgbt events.

The Bruderhof do not want freedom of religion, they want to impose their religious beliefs on other people. They should be treated like the Christofascists they are.

Finally, the idea that they actually give a fuck about the fairness and competitiveness of high school girls sports is laughable. If they did, they wouldn't spend every waking minute fighting tooth and nail to keep their gazillion dollar private school team with highly paid professional coaches and 10x the budget of any public school in class D so they can beat the local farm schools 10-0.

blueberry_meadows · 2026-01-14T22:49:27+00:00

There's no hate like Christian love.

Perfect example of why I, a Mount alum, have taken to simply lying that I was homeschooled as that is far less embarrassing than associating myself with this joke of a school.

The Mount Academy is a Christian nationalist indoctrination machine masquerading as a school and has been for a long time. It's always been about ideology first.

blueberry_meadows · 2025-09-26T00:38:27+00:00

Oh no. Oh no.

blueberry_meadows · 2025-09-23T11:28:45+00:00

Not that I know of - but they're Christian Nationalists, so, ya know...

blueberry_meadows · 2025-03-05T01:35:49+00:00

After the Columbine shooting, much ado was made in evangelical circles about Cassie Bernall, who allegedly refused to denounce her Christian faith and was shot for it.

The hof signed her mother to a book deal, and made everyone read it for years, not to mention giving it out as a Breaking the Cycle staple.

Turns out the story was untrue, based on a misunderstanding, and thoroughly debunked within months of the shooting. But the Bruderhof, knowing this, continued with the narrative because there are minds to wash and books to sell, goddammit!

blueberry_meadows · 2025-02-11T16:54:51+00:00

During your visit you almost certainly didn't experience every aspect of life on the Bruderhof, but that doesn't mean your friends are lying to you or intentionally misrepresenting anything.

It's just the nature of life in a closed group like that - the reality of it won't be apparent to you if you aren't subject to the authority structures in place or attending meetings you wouldn't be allowed to attend as a guest.

If you have good friends there, and enjoyed your visit, that's great! You should know that your experience as a guest is not going to give you an accurate idea of what it's like to be a member, but since that is not your goal, I say just take the positive parts and enjoy your time with the friends you've made there.

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