American Mensa Firehouse
American Mensa Firehouse is one of the two official American Mensa Facebook groups, with the other one being American Mensa Hospitality. The two groups got their start in 2014 as a result of a rather acrimonious split of the original American Mensa Facebook group, with some demanding a moderated, family-friendly group and others insisting on a free speech venue without censorship. The result was that the original group was split in two, with Firehouse being the uncensored group and Hospitality being moderated.
Bickering has continued after the split, with both groups accusing members of the other of intentionally disrupting their group. This alleged disruption typically takes the form of Hospitality members coming to Firehouse for the purpose of becoming offended and complaining to Mensa and/or Facebook about it to try to get Firehouse censored, or Firehouse members coming to Hospitality and trolling by being provocative in ways that tiptoe around the limits of its rules, sometimes getting banned for it. It's a point of contention that a ban from either of the groups results in the member being banned from both. There was a proposal to require that no member be a member of both groups at once, but this was not enacted. Contention between the groups has at times gotten so heated that members have actually threatened litigation, or to quit Mensa altogether.
In 2018, comedian Jamie Loftus cited this very Mpedia article in her own article complaining about how she was treated on Firehouse and how that forum is full of "hateful, racist, misogynist, homophobic" stuff (she had previously gotten into some controversy by screenshotting some Firehouse content elsewhere, which is considered "doxing" and against the norms of that group, which has a Las-Vegas-style attitude of "what happens here stays here").
