Stupidity in your salsa communities?
Question by yungyung
Anyone else have an inordinate amount of drama in their salsa communities? I’m relatively new to the scene and I’ve become really turned off by how hateful, petty, and childish everyone seems to be.
I thought I’d be just enjoying dancing, instead everyone talks shit about each other out of earshot (or sometimes directly to their face). Some cliques will stop dancing with you if you associate with other cliques because of some crap that happened years back. So many people seem so full of themselves and will talk down to their partners for stupid stuff even though they are not particularly skilled themselves.
I really enjoy dancing salsa. I can’t stand the people I have to interact with though.
Its all so foreign to me, and its so much more negative than any of the other groups I’ve encountered (via friends, hobbies, sports, etc.)
Answers
User sillycweed
It’s pretty typical.
What I do is I make it clear I don’t take sides. Unless something bad has happened to me directly, it’s not my business who slept with who’s man or who are exs that hate each other. I’m friends with everyone that is friendly with me. I don’t care about their interactions with each other.
I also don’t care about gossip. Go ahead talk shit about me. I just laugh it off. I really don’t care. Making new friends in salsa is ridiculous easy, if a group of people decides to “ban” me due to some gossip, I just shrug and go make some new friends.
I’m very simply. Be friendly with me, I’ll be friendly with you. If not, that’s ok, I’ll go hang out with that other group that’s friendly with me.
Because I don’t care, it’s not fun to gossip about me.
With that said, there are people in salsa that have very little or no drama. There is the toxic group for sure, but there are also plenty of non-toxic people. It’s just that they all mix together, so no matter what you’ll get some toxicity in your group.
User projektako
It’s because “people suck”… Whenever you put people together, there will be some with egos or insecurities that breed that type of behavior.
F that… If you’re genuine, you’ll find people that are genuine as well. Don’t let other people’s malfunctions ruin what you’ve got.
I’ve found that every single dance community has this problem in varying ways and degrees.
Those that think they are an expert are the people that have most trouble progressing. Status and recognition? It’s definitely not the reason why you got into dancing so why should it become the reason you dance?
User grey_alchemist
I’ve definitely seen people who don’t talk to you for joining “the wrong team” or losers who get mad because you take classes outside of their studio. The salsa world is super cliquey, but people getting mad for dancing with the wrong person sounds wild af lol
User washingmachineblues
I understand your frustration OP. I also live in a smaller community where many people travel to neighboring cities so it makes it hard to just go find somewhere else to hang out. I unfortunately don’t have much advice for you as my solution was to stop going/remove myself from I was no longer feeling happiness from.
Nothing terrible even happened to me, I was pretty friendly with everyone, not super advanced but I think I was an OK follow. My frustration stemmed from an acquaintance who was heavily involved in the scene and watching her experience all kinds of drama, terrible things like being cheated on, watching her do some not so nice things to other people, and hear about the underlying drama was enough to make my stomach turn and I didn’t want to associate with people like that.
I know that’s not very helpful in terms of next steps but I wanted to let you know you’re not alone in feeling put off of dancing.
User LastDanz
There’s stupid people everywhere, in every community. As well as good people ;)
