Wow, some of this escalated really quickly. Mad props to the mods and team leader Rad for keeping it together!
Yes, it's Jak here. I couldn't keep quiet on this when a student reached out to me via text and told me about this forum. I made a new account for this because there's a A LOT I want to say...
First of all, the people who matter most know the EXACT reason why I left the school, and [USER=513]@Calvin Phillips[/USER] is actually correct for part of it. Secondly, [USER=13676]@Radu-Cristian Perde[/USER] a lot of students tell me how great of a job you're doing as the new leader, and I can tell that's 100000% accurate! It feels good to be able to place this onto someone else as a student and not as a site leader anymore. So I thank you for that. This is a lot to unpack for me here so please bear with me.
Firstly, I want to come back and make my voice heard BECAUSE I care about this site, the students, and my learning ability here. So that's why I'm here. And it's the only reason why I'm here. I miss it here, but so much had changed that I didn't really like the way things were going. I don't even know where to start. But I'll try.
A lot of my friends stopped posting riffs and they essentially left. [USER=59877]@Kat the metalhead[/USER] and [USER=15432]@RoaringRowanThunderBender[/USER] left and even though I still had friends here, it started to get slimmer and slimmer. I also started to see an influx of the same shit over and over again on the riff page. It's like, "Here's the 50th Nightmare cover this week" or these professionally edited videos where clearly the person knows they're good. It's like, I have nothing to say to you except a pat on the back.
Students who really needed help stopped posting. The riff page was where I loved everything. The CORRECT people know I was not on board with the rebranding at all. And as it stands, I believe the rebranding shouldn't have happened until all troops were set in place: the SynTV was up, the app was ready for launch, the A7X lessons from Hector were ready, and the top secret group from owning one of those beautiful guitars was established. None of this has happened. I have been told when I was on the inside the reason for some of the delays and I 100% respect that. But as Alicia and some others so wonderfully promised there will be more transparency going forward as to why.
I was BLESSED with those guitars as gifts, but there was promised a special perk for those purchasing these guitars and we're 3 years in nearly with no sign of what that was or what it is.
But back to the school. It makes me happy to see some students miss the IG page. I hope the dashing Mr. London doesn't mind my saying so but he and I were the ones that operated that. I had so much fun doing that for you guys. But it was pulled for a reasonable reason that I had to respect. But it brings up another point that Iris and Calvin have made and that's the fact that the focus is 99.99% on the clothing and the community and not the guitar side. When the rebranding happened, a huge chunk was taken out of why people signed up. It's a social media site now. And some students have expressed a cliquey vibe here. I personally think the IG chats ruined that. There was some seriously rude shit said about other students in those "off-site" chats, and they allowed some students to get TOO personal and then everyone slowly started to hate each other and they left, or they stopped supporting each other.
I know some of this can't be controlled here, like the IG group chats. And I don't know how to bring the "old school" vibe back. It bothered me to hell that it took years for CJ to get his Rockstar student award badge for the SIX MONTHS of hard ass work he did, but I got wind of a meme contest being dished out a while ago? That was all I cared about when I left. I didn't care about emojis, I didn't care about clothes, I didn't care about anything except I was so sad that a guitar student worked so hard and didn't get that little simple badge I wanted him to have.
This school IS about community. It IS about friendship. It IS 'SYNNER'; bold, abrasive, unapologetic, unique and edgy. But we are more than just clothing. We are a bunch of kids and adults that have shitty lives that find solace in one another's dopey guitar mistakes and horrible jokes. We were that ONCE, and we will ALWAYS be that.
But the guitar side is gone. We haven't had any new lessons but there's new merch. I'll gladly comment on people's videos. I'll gladly offer help if I can. And if I offended anyone I'm sorry. It just had to be said. I didn't support the rebranding on a personal level but I have no choice but to accept it moving forward, and I will.
We just need to figure out how to get both sides to come back together.
Love you all.
