Zack · @Asmongold
9th Feb 2021 from TwitLonger
Clarifications Regarding Jinny, OTK and Covid
Hey guys, wanted to make this post after I saw some threads made and some stuff in chat. Going to try to keep this short and to the point as this isn't a drama post but moreso the opposite. I've been seeing a lot of hate thrown around at multiple people and after talking with everyone involved I thought it would be a good idea to explain what actually happened.
Recently there has been a number of clips made regarding Jinny, her leaving the US, and subsequently OTK's involvement in that happening. To keep things plain and simple--Jinny wanted to leave and we didn't force or compel her to leave.
Going into 2021 we had basically a come to Jesus talk about Covid and quarantining and set hard rules and expectations that we expected everyone to follow which also extended to people in the houses as well. This wasn't necessarily us *forcing* anyone to do anything but it was moreso us deciding that if anyone wanted to be involved with IRL events, they had to follow these rules and only interact with people who followed the same rules. People can do whatever they want but if you want to do IRL events, you have to follow those rules.
I'm not going to go into each rule or anything but it's all the usual stuff that you'd expect from any quarantine agreement that basically everyone is on the same page with.
Jinny at this point thought that she was being a burden to Esfand and offered to leave but Esfand reassured her that she wasn't and she ended up staying so they could keep doing content together and hanging out. By then there was some residual stress but we assumed that after that timeframe is over we'd just resume doing content together and everything would be fine.
Later on, Jinny's brother comes to visit, this was maybe a week ago. Her brother had quarantined in New York and also received a Covid test prior to flying to Texas but he didn't get a subsequent test here in Texas before arriving at Esfand's house. Because of that, we decided it would be best if Esfand and the rest of his house repeated the 7-14 day quarantine or until they we all able to get a new test with negative results (which they did) to be extra cautious.
After Jinny saw that Esfand wasn't able to go to events, she decided that she and Kevin (her brother) would leave as to not cause any more stress for him and also so that she could preserve her Visa time for when things were more open and she didn't feel as much that she was actively being a burden on Esfand as well as the org.
This was a generally amicable solution that everyone was okay with so Jinny went on stream and explained it in a way that I think gave a lot of people the impression that me or OTK effectively kicked her out. This is categorically untrue and it was not only her decision to leave but it was also her idea.
In my opinion, this was a smart idea because not only did it relieve Esfand of the burden of having to worry about extra people but it also preserved her Visa time so that she could come back later and visit when they would have more opportunities to do fun stuff together.
I think that once this information went public people took it and made it into something it wasn't. There's a good chance one reason for that is that we didn't communicate this earlier and honestly it kind of turned into drama and got out of hand before we had a chance to sit down and decide how we were going to approach it. I think that a lot of us, primarily myself and Mizkif, approached it the usual way by memeing and joking about it but after talking with Jinny today I realized how much the situation devastated her at which point I apologized.
To summarize: Basically a miscommunication of quarantine expectations, Jinny offers and decides to go home to take burden off Esfand, announces it on stream, people interpret it as us kicking her out.
Ultimately I think we learned a lot from this situation and while I think it's been a negative for everyone involved, it's shown how important communication is and how fast things can spiral out of control when you don't do it properly. A cautionary tale no doubt.
All in all, we wish Jinny and her brother a safe flight back and look forward to seeing them again when we have more opportunities to do things together!