The End Of A Pandemic Social Group (or No More Regular Movie Nights)

Just over 3 years ago, at the start of the pandemic, I posted something in a dating Facebook group that I’m in about ideas for virtual dates. One of those ideas was virtual movie nights through a service called Netflix Party (which has since been renamed Teleparty). Someone in the group suggested that we organize movie nights within the Facebook group, and Movie Club was born out of that. And about 3 years ago, we had our first movie night together.

Movie Club started as just a part of that Facebook group and eventually, we became our own group. We also started with just one movie a week, then we went up to 2 movies a week, and then we switched to movies on weekends and tv shows on Wednesdays. We’ve watched hundreds of movies virtually together and we are about to finish our 4th tv series. We’ve watched one-off movies and we’ve gone through movie series (like watching all the MCU and Star Wars movies).

I know I’ve written this before, but I feel like Movie Club really helped me survive the pandemic. When I was experiencing the most severe isolation, I knew every week I’d have somewhat regular interaction with others. Our chats in Movie Club were different from texting because we were all experiencing the same thing at the same time. And it helped me not feel like I was on my own little planet. When I was not working, having these on my calendar gave me something to look forward to and helped me have things to do other than just sit and be alone.

And for a while, we had a lot of people joining in every week. We could have 8 or 9 people in a movie or tv show and the chat was so lively and fun! And while I didn’t know any of the other people in Movie Club in real life, we all got to know about each other’s lives and would always be checking in with each other. There are people from that group that I do honestly consider friends now and I know we wouldn’t have come together without these movie nights.

But recently, Movie Club hasn’t been as active. We used to do movies every single Friday or Saturday, and for the last few months, I have been doing polls just to see what days people would be interested in watching something. We could go a few weeks without a movie due to everyone’s schedules and also possibly a lack of interest. And with the recent tv series we’ve been watching, most weeks it’s just me and one other person. I’ve still been enjoying watching a show with someone else, but it’s not what it used to be. We are almost done with the current series, so I put out a poll to see what the interest would be in starting a 5th series. And the poll was clear, there wasn’t really any interest in having regular tv or movie nights.

I knew this was coming. When Movie Club started, most of us had nothing to do. We weren’t going out with friends for dinners and many of us were either working from home or not working at all, so our evenings were pretty free. And things have been opening up more and more, so everyone is starting to get busy again. I have always made sure I kept the evenings we watched things free just in case we’d be watching something, but lately I’ve had to work around other things that could have been on those evenings. One of the issues I’ve had with finding an acting class is finding one that works around the Movie Club schedule.

So I posted this week in our Facebook group that once we finished the tv series we were currently watching in a few weeks, we wouldn’t have any more regular Movie Club nights. I am not going to get rid of the group and I said I’d be happy to run a random movie night if there is a movie people want to watch, but I think if those happen they will be only a few times a year.

I remember when I started Movie Club I thought I’d be sad when one day the group would be ending. I knew it wouldn’t be forever, and when it started it really was a big part of my life. So thinking about the end was depressing. But now that I’ve announced that things will be ending, I’m not as sad as I thought I’d be. The reason this group was created was to help us not feel alone when the world seemed to be shut down. I know that not everything is normal and open again, but it’s getting closer and closer to that. And it’s a good thing that we all have been able to resume the social lives that we had before the pandemic. I think that’s a positive thing. And I’m happy for all of us in the group.

I’m sure that I’ll miss the group from time to time or I’ll hope that someone wants to watch a movie, but I also know that I’m working on being more social in real life so I might not miss it as much as I think. I might be busy with other things and not realize that it’s Wednesday and I’m not watching a tv show with the group. But I’m choosing to look at the end of this era as the start of something else that is good and I’m looking forward to seeing what adventures my life will have for me coming up.

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