On Being Expelled from Peterson Academy – Part 1

NOTE: This account is fairly ~~boring~~ exhaustive because I wanted to be thorough in my documentation. If you’re interested in an abbreviated version of what happened, you can check out the one my friend Dusty wrote on her blog:

I Was Expelled from Peterson Academy

ADDITIONAL NOTE: I have done my best to give this account as accurately as possible from my own perspective. There may be minor errors due to my not having much thought to catelogue this stuff until after my expulsion. If you were a part of these events and see any errors, please consider reaching out and letting me know so I can amend them.

FINAL NOTE: I think that in writing this there is a chance I will put off people who are both fans and critics of Jordan Peterson. If you happen to fall into one of these camps, or find anything in the following account off-putting, please consider reaching out to discuss. I always welcome a good-faith discussion with people who disagree with my own thoughts on things because I usually learn something in the process.

ADDENDUM: This blog got so long (sorry 😅) that I decided to split it into two posts for readability and the sake of browser cache. This part outlines a little bit of everything leading up to and including Expulsion Day. The second part covers what’s happened since and can be found here:

On Being Expelled from Peterson Academy – Part 2

Some Background & Intro Thoughts on Jordan Peterson

The summer of 2023 was a challenging one.

I had just left the church I’d grown up in and shaped my whole life around, and was floundering to find meaning in my everyday existence that had once been full of ways to keep busy and feel very fulfilled.

I had enjoyed books in the self-help/improvement genre before and so decided to check out an audiobook copy of Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life to see if it was any good.

I thought it was fascinating.

From the lobsters in the first chapter to the skateboarding kids in the last, it held my attention and I found his lessons to be relevant and largely applicable.

I immediately followed that by reading Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life and began listening to some of his podcasts more regularly, enjoying the various perspectives of the guests he had on.

One that I remember in particular was about alternative schooling methods:

Podcast Exploring Concepts of Alternate Education Models to Foster Leadership & Management Skills

In various episodes of his podcasts, Peterson mentioned his vision of an online academy where students could get a classical general-education degree for a fraction of the cost of a traditional university.

The idea intrigued me.

I assumed when this came out it would be still more expensive than I’d be willing to shell out, but I enjoyed listening to him talk about it and thinking what opportunities it could afford people if he were to succeed in his endeavor.

What I Thought Peterson Academy Was & Why I Enrolled

Let’s start with what I thought Peterson Academy was.

First, I thought it was a noble endeavor: bringing a top-notch education to those who couldn’t afford to go to a university.

Cool.

Second, I liked the promise of a lack of progressive ideology in the courses.

When I was an English major for a semester in 2012, I thought that a lot of the “progressive” stuff being pushed by more left-leaning professors was actually regressive and divisive, and I didn’t like what those ideologies would do if taken to their logical conclusions.

/begin minor rant about modern feminism and diversity quotas

To provide a brief example of where I find some of these ideologies problematic:

Although I am a woman I don’t feel that I’ve been held back by “the patriarchy” or anything like that.

In fact, I’ve had the opposite problem.

I’ve had the unfortunate experience of being told that a company wanted to hire me because I’m a woman small-business owner.

I was like, “Man, if you’re not hiring me to do this job ’cause I’m the person best qualified to do it, you’re doing me and all your customers a disservice.”

I hate that kinda stuff. 🤮

In cases where being male or female doesn’t matter in the slightest (and I think technical aptitude is one of those cases), I’d prefer to be judged by my merits.

And I want to have confidence when I’m working with someone else who’s considered part of a minority group that they, too, have been picked because they’re the best at what they do, not for physical characteristics beyond their control that have nothing to do with competency in a field.

Anything else breeds distrust, which is actually sexist or racist, and is divisive for no good reason.

I also find a lot of feminist rhetoric against men to be unfortunate because it seems to create unnecessary division between the sexes.

I’d rather see the possibility of progress via innovation through mutual collaboration when we put our brightest minds together regardless of who possesses which kind of chromosomes.

/end minor rant about modern feminism and diversity quotas

I was hoping that in some way this would be a nice counter-balance to some of those things I found distasteful-but-prevalent in academia, and increasingly in the business world.

Third, I figured that I might meet some peers who were similarly aimed at being better than they were.

If we got there from Jordan Peterson’s stuff, we likely shared aspirations of having clean rooms, getting our acts together more, and overall trying to be better individual citizens in our respective societies.

Finally, I thought it was a given that Peterson Academy would be a bastion of free speech.

If we were to have an education that really was top-notch, we should be able to cover controversial topics in a productive way so that we could draw better conclusions overall.

After all, when I was in college that is what my professors told me.

And, in a way, it was Peterson’s attempt to do this at the University of Toronto that gave him the larger audience he has today.

A Favorite Jordan Peterson Quote

When I got an email in July of 2024 saying that Peterson Academy was finally available for pre-enrollment, I was surprised.

I originally thought it was going to cost $1,000, and that would have been too frivolous for what I’d’ve been willing to pay at that time.

Instead, the email said that pre-enrolled students got a rate of $450 for the year.

It was a no-brainer to me.

The trailers for the classes were compelling, and the topics being offered looked promising:

A sample of some of the courses offered when Peterson Academy started.

At the time I’d been spending a lot of free time playing video games as a form of semi-unhealthy escapism, and this seemed like a promise of some actual self-improvement that I knew was necessary and craved.

I thought it would be nice to have something more productive to spend my evenings on.

So, I signed up and then waited for almost a whole month between the announcement and when the platform was finally available for beta testing.

I watched a bunch of Peterson’s YouTube lectures to stave off an excitement that was manifesting as impatience.

I worked on getting my house in order so I’d be ready to dive in when the classes became available.

Then, at 4 PM on August 21, 2024, after waiting all day for that link…

My Hogwarts letter arrived:

21 August 2024 Welcome Email from Peterson Academy
I could make a dumb joke here about how “driven” and “ambitious” were foreshadowing,

as they could be taken as Slytherin traits, but I’ll refrain.

Early Days & The Creative Renaissance that Ensued

How can I convey to you how great the first months of Peterson Academy were?

Let me start with the first day.

First Day & Memery

When I logged in, I was asked for my full name.

I hesitated here because I had never used my full name on the internet before (except in official, work-related documents) since I was raised with a certain caution regarding interactions on social media and elsewhere.

Here I decided two things:

I trusted Jordan Peterson and appreciated his talk of courage enough that I was willing to put my name out there and own whatever I said.
I wanted to go back to using my old nickname of “Frankie” on here as a bit of a symbolic fresh start of waking myself up and taking back control of my life.

(Jordan Peterson talks a lot about symbolism, and I was trying out some of his principles to see how they fit.)

So, I typed in my full name:

Frankie Joy Bailer 🦞

I added the lobster for fun as a reference to JBP’s first rule in his 12 Rules for Life book.

Jordan Peterson Lecture for How To: Academy Explaining the Lobsters Referenced
in Chapter 1 of His Book 12 Rules for Life
(Note: The volume cuts out for a little at the beginning of this video; it’s not your speakers.)

Once I signed up, I started poking around the platform to see what all was there and how I could get involved.

Everyone in the social feed was excited.

I asked if anyone had a tip on how to pick my first class.

Ultimately, I decided to go with The Greatest Leaders in History because that one stood out to me as the most interesting.

(There was no syllabus at this time, a thing I found a smidge disappointing since syllabus day was always one of my favorites in college classes, but this was a very small matter in comparison to what value I was getting from having a new social group…and I figured the structure would be put into place eventually.)

The first full day of classes I made a meme.

To my surprise, both Jordan Peterson’s daughter Mikhaila (and I think her husband Jordan Fuller, although I don’t remember for sure) reposted it on the Peterson Academy Social feed.

They also posted this (without my knowledge) on their Instagram stories:

Screenshots of Mikhaila and Jordan Fuller’s Instagram Posts Using My Full Name without Permission

Ordinarily I would have considered this a problem.

I’ve been incredibly careful about not being political online and, although this wasn’t a political affiliation, per se, I understand how controversial JBP is in some circles and was a bit disappointed they had done this without asking.

Surely, they–of all people–understand what putting one’s name out there attached to anything semi-controversial can do.

But I put aside those misgivings and decided that it was probably not such a big deal.

I’m not famous.

To most people I’m just another face in the crowd.

My professional colleagues know me as “Joy” and it was highly unlikely any of them would ever see that post and make the connection.

And I’d already committed to standing by what I posted, right?

I still thought the cheaper-education idea was cool and I didn’t mind standing behind that.

So, I let it slide.

It was nice to know that I’d made something that the people heading up this endeavor appreciated.

And then I had an idea.

I decided that going forward I would make a meme every day and post it on the Peterson Academy social feed.

On the one hand, I thought this would be a fun way to engage with the new community.

On the other, it was a bit of a silly-but-symbolic personal promise to myself that if I could be consistent in this one thing I could develop consistency in other parts of my life that I felt I’d regressed in and had been lacking over the past couple years.

Classes, Contributions, & Culture

The next few weeks were the “Beta” period before the public launch.

We got to help find bugs and suggest improvements.

Cool.

I started to put time aside to take the Greatest Leaders course.

I wanted to do really well, and took copious notes.

It would usually take me about 3 hours to get through a 1-hour lecture, between pausing and rewinding to take better notes.

I didn’t want to get side-tracked with too many classes, but I couldn’t resist taking more than one and so also listened to Max Lugavere’s course on Nutrition while I was doing food prep some days.

My diet improved.

I was grateful for the benefits I was getting from the platform, so I took extra time to submit bugs and feature requests.

Apparently I did this quite a lot because I actually got a thank-you email back from Support about it once:

Email from Peterson Academy Support Stating that My Contributions were Helpful

I found myself drawn to the social side a lot, too, because great conversations were happening.

There were people asking deep questions about theology and ethics, sharing art and aspirations, and generally helping and encouraging fellow students.

Even Jordan Peterson, The Man himself, would hop in on the feed some evenings.

He seemed to be having the same kind of fun we were having, playfully engaging with the students, offering encouragement to some, and throwing in his two cents on various posts.

Example of Jordan Peterson’s Participation on Peterson Academy Social

As the weeks went on, we saw less of Jordan Peterson, but the community was taking on a life of its own.

A guy from one of the Scandinavian countries started “Poetry Sundays” where people would post either a poem of their own or one that they liked and wanted to discuss.

Later, “Bob Ross Mondays” became a thing as well, with people sharing their artwork or pieces of art they appreciated.

One guy rented out an art studio.

Others shared their music.

In many ways students were inspiring one another to improve and those improvements were palpable.

Trends popped up here and there, too.

Early on, a number of students took the Big 5 test on understandmyself.com and posted their results.

Games started spontaneously, such as stories where one person would write a sentence or two and leave it to the next person to continue.

Or that time that one of the guys decided to speak in Ye Olde Englisshe until his protest of a missing software feature proved successful.

Where the software was lacking in features, the students filled gaps.

A Discord server was built to provide instant and direct messaging.

Debates were held.

An essay club was formed.

A book club started.

A public-speaking group began regular meetups.

Virtual mixers were scheduled for students around the world who wanted to get to know one another better via Zoom.

People began PA-themed projects.

One student launched a podcast where he interviewed other students.

Another started a nightly Gazette to recap all the highlights of the social feed for those who didn’t have time to read through everything that had been posted throughout the day.

That Weird Marketing Incident

September 9th was the public launch of Peterson Academy, and I received an email from Mikhaila Fuller’s husband Jordan asking if he could use one of my comments in a paid ad.

I thought this was neat, and–admittedly–at the time I thought he meant they were going to pay me to use the quote, so I agreed.

Jordan Fuller’s Original Email Requesting the Use of a Comment for an Ad
(Does the wording about its being a “paid ad” on this seem ambiguous to anyone else?)

But, I pointed out, there was just one problem:

The comment they attributed to me was not what I had said at all.

In fact, I went back and found the original conversation, and nobody had said what their ad indicated.

I pointed this out to Jordan, provided a screenshot of my original quote, and told him he was welcome to use it.

He told me in follow-up emails that they were going to anonymize my comment so my name wouldn’t be on it (weird, since they hadn’t done that when they reposted my meme) and assured me that they, “never alter testimonies and personally approve every advertisement that goes out.”

I figured it was a mistake and took him at his word.

I saw the ad on Instagram and can verify that they both anonymized what I said and used my original quote.

13 September 2024 Screenshot of the Instagram Ad

But I never heard back about getting paid…

I chalked this up to my mistake, having misunderstood his original request and figuring that it was probably worth it anyway to help out the Academy since things were going very well there otherwise.

Public-Launch Clarity & Missing Features

The initial sign-up email I received from Peterson Academy seemed to imply that the “beta” phase of the project would last until the public launch.

I drew this from the following text:

“As part of our beta phase, we’re counting on you, our pre-enrolled students, to explore the platform and report any bugs or inconsistencies you encounter before our public launch on September 9th.”

This appeared to imply that these things would be fixed before the public launch or (presumably, depending on the amount of development work required) shortly thereafter.

During the weeks that followed the public launch, it became clear that this wasn’t the case.

Features were still missing, including some that were advertised on the sign-up page of the academy as already existing (such as exams, which I understand were partially rolled out in January, shortly after my expulsion).

For example, this is what the website was advertising for months before the exams feature was rolled out:

Screenshot of the Peterson Academy Sign-Up Page from 9 January 2025
where Testing was Advertised when Final Exams for Courses were Not yet Implemented

At this point I didn’t really care about what was missing.

I have worked with companies that have software-development lifecycles that take longer than they anticipate, and I understand that’s just part of the process.

I figured that since this was a new endeavor, the administration at PA might not have realized how big a task they’d taken on, and it might be a while before we got everything they offered.

Fine.

No problem.

Not for me, anyway.

I was just glad I had a social community to work with, and I wasn’t taking the classes super quickly because I was just doing those for fun.

Other students–some of whom had not had the opportunity of a university education and so the missing features were much more impacting to them–began voicing concerns about the lack of Final Exams.

They said they thought this feature would be available by now and that they worried they’d have to take the classes all over again to remember everything they’d already studied.

I made a joke about this to try to lighten the mood a little.

Meme from 13 October 2024 Expressing Student Frustration at the Lack of Final Exams

I remember being a bit nervous about it, because it was the first time I’d low-key critiqued Peterson Academy.

But it was met with a surprising amount of approval, and Mikhaila herself commented on it, saying:

“Soon!!”

13 October 2024 Screenshot of Mikhaila’s Response to a Semi-Critical Meme

(Ah, the ambiguous “Soon!!”)

But in the meantime, other new features rolled out slowly.

We got a notifications feature so we’d be alerted when people responded to our posts fairly early on. (I want to say this was implemented sometime in September.)

Direct messages were available around November 4th-ish.

Tagging people with “@” became possible around November 15th or so.

Things were moving, and I still didn’t see any reason not to give them the benefit of the doubt on the other features we were still waiting on.

TROLLS

I think it’s important to discuss the few trolls that popped up on Peterson Academy.

The context will help you to understand why being expelled without warning was such an absurdity.

The first troll became a problem around early September. I think it was Labor Day weekend.

This was a man who posted in ALL CAPITAL LETTERS, used much profanity, posted crass pictures in the feed, and was harassing other students with his comments.

A number of us jumped in to try to help.

We gave the guy the benefit of the doubt.

I looked up his YouTube interview that he recommended to us to try to understand him better.

We wrote posts trying civilly to address some of his points that could be discussed, while also explaining why his current behavior wasn’t acceptable and why he should stop.

When he didn’t listen to reason, some (myself included, I believe) resorted to reporting his account.

In my case, this was largely because he had begun to verbally attack other students and was generally upsetting the otherwise-decent discussions that people were trying to have.

Within about two or three days of this, the user was removed.

The second troll came right on the heels of the first.

This one seemed to have been inspired by what had just happened and began quarreling with other students within a day or so of when the original troll was removed.

We tried the same tactics of giving him the benefit of the doubt, but it quickly became clear that he wanted to create chaos rather than engage in productive discourse.

Actual Footage of PA Students Trying to Help Trolls

He was also removed fairly swiftly–again, maybe within a day or two–but only after it became very clear that he did not have good intentions in his interactions on the platform.

The third troll was actually a frequent participant in the Peterson Academy social feed, and his becoming a troll surprised me a bit.

I didn’t pay a ton of attention to his posts originally.

They usually had a picture of Peanuts cartoons or some other innocuous subject, along with a famous quote or a semi-nonsensical one of his own.

He sometimes got into squabbles with other students, but I hadn’t personally noticed anything…noteworthy…until around maybe late September.

This was when he started to get kinda belligerent.

He mocked and harassed other students.

Some of us tried to be kind at first and help him to see why what he was doing was hurtful and not great.

We tried to understand him and engage productively.

At one point, I think around early October, he said he was leaving the social feed.

He deleted all his posts and disappeared for a couple weeks.

Order was restored and people were free again to go back to working on classes and self-improvement.

Then he came back and was harassing students again.

Sometimes he would pick on new students who had just signed up.

Other times he made inappropriate comments to some of the younger students.

At one point he was incessantly posting disturbing pictures from historical events on the feed.

While there may have been a time and a place for posting and discussing these pictures, the general feed was not it.

His actions were bothering a number of students.

At some point he and I got into it a little.

He was being so ridiculous and unresponsive to kindness or reasoning that I figured it was worth attempting mockery (which his behavior merited, although I thought about it long and hard before saying anything and did not like to use this tactic) to see if that would deter him.

He did not like it.

But he was not deterred.

At this time, I made a point of not reporting him because I didn’t want there to be a chance that I was only reporting him due to any personal animosity.

(Actually, when he was not picking on other students, I found some of his stuff mildly humorous, and I was torn about whether it was better for him to be around or not. After all, sometimes it is useful to have monsters on the outer edges of the map to ensure that you stay sharp, and still question and explore, rather than become stagnant.)

After probably about a week of his shenanigans, and his being reported by a number of other students, this troll was also banned.

This time, Peterson Academy actually made an announcement about the expulsion:

20 October 2024 Post by Mikhaila Implying that Disruptive Students were Contacted by PA with Requests to Desist before Expulsion

And there was much rejoicing. (“Yay…” 🚩)

This last troll had been disrupting the social feed for everyone for a while, and it was nice to see that things would go back to normal.

The announcement of the banning happened later that night, and I had a request from one of the other students to make a meme commemorating the occasion:

21 October 2024 Troll-Commemoration Meme
Posted Shortly After Midnight ET

Within minutes of posting this meme, I got notifications that both Mikhaila and Jordan Fuller liked it.

Screenshot of Jordan and Mikhaila Fuller’s liking my post, dated 21 October 2024

(minutes after I’d posted the requested meme)

They approved of this.

They commented things suggesting that they were laughing at some of the other silliness that was going on, celebrating with us.

It had been a long week. Order was restored.

A few people voiced concerns at how the last troll’s ban had been handled. Since there was no Code of Conduct yet, they argued, how could we be sure they wouldn’t just kick people off for lesser infractions?

I thought these voices were silly.

This is Jordan Peterson’s platform.

There’s no way he would kick people off unless it was obviously warranted.

Progress & Notice of Impending Price Changes

With the last troll’s removal, things settled down at Peterson Academy for a few months.

I finished some more classes and participated in an essay competition.

Someone from the academy who’d become a friend of mine on Facebook made me a very kind birthday-collage post on the social feed, and I received a number of well-wishes from many students.

The year before I had far fewer birthday wishes than usual because most of the people in my church no longer talked to me at that time, and I’d thought this would likely be a similar year.

But it wasn’t.

It was wonderful to be a part of a community again.

A little later in the month, direct messages became available.

One of the first days that feature became available, Jordan Fuller messaged me about my memes:

16 December 2024 Exchange with Jordan Fuller about Memes

As you can see in the photo above, I suggested putting them on Instagram.

I created an account the same day and began posting those memes in case Peterson Academy wanted to use them.

Jordan Fuller was my first follower on that account, and I believe the two subsequent ones were PA devs he’d passed the link along to.

[SIDE NOTE: Instagram removed my account a few days later under some reasoning about its not being a personal account nor business, and I did not try to appeal this because I had other priorities to attend to at the time. I mentioned it on PA, hoping the Petersons or someone else with a little more clout and/or experience in these things might see it and want to help, but they did not get involved. You can still find these on X, if you’d like to see most of the ones I created over the months that I was a PA student.]

Around this time, I also wrote a song where I put Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life to the tune of “The 12 Days of Christmas”. It was a couple weeks before Christmas, and I thought my fellow students would get a kick out of it.

I posted “12 Rules for Living” on YouTube and had almost 100 views and nearly 20 likes on the first day.

[SIDE NOTE: YouTube removed my channel for about 24 hours without notice, citing vague guidelines about making people feel unsafe or something like that. I appealed the ban, asking what about an all-original song parody about a self-help book was problematic and they restored my channel the next day, also without notice. I may write about it someday; if I do, I’ll link it here.]

Despite some external setbacks, I felt like I was making progress.

Things were going really well.

Pricing Weirdness

Sometime around Christmas a banner popped up on Peterson Academy stating that students could purchase up to 3 years of enrollment at the $500/year price point before prices increased to $600/year within the next month.

I did not think this would affect me because I assumed that my subscription was locked in at $450 since I got in as a beta user.

For one, that’s how most memberships I’ve been a part of worked:

Early adopters get to enjoy cheaper rates unless they leave and come back later.

And my subscription page only said that the subscription would renew a year from when I purchased it, with no indication of a price increase:

January 2025 Screenshot of my Pricing Renewal Page on Peterson Academy
(Note that this was set to renew when I purchased the subscription–a month before receiving access.
I do not know what they planned to do to ensure the renewal spanned
from when we got access to the platform a month later.)

I didn’t love that they were increasing the prices, since it seemed to be moving away from the, “We are making education as cheap as possible,” ideal and the claims Jordan Peterson had made about how they had plenty of money to continue the endeavor for a long time.

(By my calculations, at approximately 40,000 subscribers, they should have had approximately $19 million in funding. How much of that would be taxed, I do not know, but whatever they got should have been in the $10 million+ range, I’d imagine.)

Some students who were more curious about this than I was reached out to Support to inquire about the price increases.

One received an email that suggested that not only would the price increase, it would go up for all students.

Email suggesting the price was going to increase to reflect the platform’s value,
a deviation from what was previously stated by Jordan Peterson as one of the goals
(to provide education of a value that far exceeds the price).
At the time of this writing (April 2025), Peterson Academy is still in Beta, according to its homepage.

Now, that on its face isn’t a problem.

Peterson Academy is a private company and they can choose to do whatever they’d like as far as their tuition prices go.

The main issue that I had with this is that they had run a Black Friday sale back in November offering students a 2-year extension for $400/year.

At the time, we did not know that the price was going up.

Especially not for pre-existing subscribers.

So, around Black Friday I decided not to take that deal because I figured that the discount was not enough for me to worry about and I didn’t mind paying an extra $50 a year from then to extend my subscription later.

I (and others) made that decision with incomplete data.

And, as an early adopter who had been largely overlooking the shortcomings of the platform, I perceived it as a bit underhanded to those of us who had been putting so much time into doing whatever we could to help the endeavor along.

(If it hasn’t been fully clear so far, some of us put in at least tens of hours a week helping to build up and keep an eye on the social side of things; report bugs; submit feature requests; tell people we knew about why they, too, should join Peterson Academy; etc.)

This was disappointing, and some people voiced their discontent.

Since we’d had incomplete data before, we wanted to be sure we had better information before deciding to make an investment this time around.

After all, asking students who are trying to improve themselves and may not all be in a place to shell out $500 – $1500 with approximately 4-weeks’ notice is a bit of a lofty request for some–especially international students who have an exchange rate to contend with as well.

We tried to do our due diligence this time and get answers.

Instead, however, we got that vague messaging in the email above suggesting the $600 price increase was unlikely to be the last one, and we were unable to get any answers about the timeframes over which they might raise the prices once again.

This didn’t sit well with a number of us.

Continued Lack of Clarity & Growing Concerns

I think it’s fair to say that any good investor wants to know if their investment is going to be managed well.

In this case, I saw my tuition as an investment in improving education for both myself and others coming after me who didn’t have the same opportunities to go to a regular university as I had.

But now the goal (top-tier education at the lowest price possible) seemed to be shifting.

Perhaps that wasn’t the correct view, but without any concrete explanations about where the money was going and why the tuition increases were necessary, I began to doubt the ability of Peterson Academy to realize the original vision that Jordan Peterson had been describing.

As far as I was concerned, I still believed they had the best intentions and just wanted some clear communication so that I could move forward feeling that I’d made the best choice about my future enrollment status.

The lack of communication was not instilling any trust, but it was the holidays and I figured we’d get some answers after Christmas.

/begin lengthy-but-hopefully-worthwhile aside

It is worth mentioning that another factor came into play at this time.

Around Christmas and New Years, Peterson Academy had an influx of new students and people who had signed up previously who were just now starting to participate more (presumably due to new goals for the new year).

These students had not been a part of the Social side of things much (or, in many cases, at all).

One seemed to perceive our questions as an unfounded lack of trust in Peterson Academy’s team.

She made memes of a more biting sort that looked encouraging on their face but were actually kind of passive aggressive, and appeared to be her way of trying to get us to be quiet.

Some people who had been there for a while and were more conflict averse had expressed that they disliked the discourse we were trying to have.

We apologized and tried to explain why we thought it was better to have the conversations despite the momentary discomfort.

At one point a student started a trend of posting pictures of pets to try to change the subject and “drown out” the posts of people trying to make these points.

6 January 2025 Meme
Although a student mentioned that this was on purpose to drown out the voices asking questions, I still wanted to give the benefit of the doubt that most people participating were not acting maliciously.

Despite good-faith attempts to explain our position to these students, they seemed to miss that we were actually voicing this stuff in an attempt to help Peterson Academy’s credibility and goals of additional funding.

So the human factor was at play, adding some chaos to the mix.

/end lengthy-but-hopefully-worthwhile aside

New Years Hope & the Memeggeddon Origin Story

Around New Years Eve, in the spirit of mutual edification that was common to the social feed, people began posting thoughts about what they’d like to accomplish in 2025.

Someone (Mikhaila, I think…?) suggested that we post our resolutions on New Years Day.

I spent the evening of NYE making a list of what I’d like to accomplish in the new year, and excitedly shared it with everyone early on January 1st.

As a personal side note, I really appreciated the opportunity to reflect on how far I’d come in 2024. I’d tried to make some goals for myself in January of ’24 and hit a wall, realizing then that my whole world had collapsed and the social framework that I’d drawn meaning from before was gone. In under 12 months I’d been able to find things worth pursuing again, and building that list was a wonderful reminder of how much better things can become in only a year’s time.

There was still a lack of communication about pricing, and I did not like the look that was giving Peterson Academy, but I assumed that this would blow over as soon as leadership took the time to respond to people’s concerns after the holidays.

I looked forward to when the questions were answered so that my mind wouldn’t be mulling over them so much, and my daily memes would be easier to come up with again.

(This was important to me because I made a point to generally keep the memes upbeat. On rare occasions I’d use them to get a point across, but I was careful about this and tried to refrain from either calling people out by name–unless it was putting them in a good light–or complaining unless something particularly warranted it and I’d given it enough thought to know that it was not unwise to post.)

My thoughts had been fairly consumed with the problem at hand, and I longed to get back to thinking about the classes and fun things we usually discussed on the social side.

One day, I was talking with my friend Dusty about some of the recent frustrations, and she sent me a funny chat on the side joking about Mikhaila’s recent New Years’ post:

Dusty’s Original Work that Spawned the Memeggedon that Followed Shortly Thereafter

The prolonged lack of communication had been weighing on us and some others, and the comic relief was wonderful.

I asked her if I could turn this into a meme and post it on the social feed.

I had a good reputation with the Fullers (I thought), and people knew me as someone who joked playfully with the group on a regular basis.

This would serve as a much-needed tension breaker for those who had the same misgivings but were still hesitating to voice them.

Dusty gave me her permission and I meme-ified it.

I was very careful, ‘though, to cut out Mikhaila’s face and name. Every one would know it was her post, of course, but I wanted to tease about the absurdity of the situation, not attack her personally:

A Version of the Meme Posted on Peterson Academy 5 January 2025

The meme landed exactly as I’d hoped.

People who hadn’t previously voiced their concerns felt that they had the ability to do so now.

Some were gracious, others more openly critical of the shortcomings of the platform and administration.

I joked that I was going to be Gordon’d, a reference to V for Vendetta that I’d recently watched on a friend’s recommendation and that was so farcically not-remotely like PA that I thought the joke was absurd enough to slide.

It may be worth noting here that much of what inspired me to keep this conversation going was Jordan Peterson’s own teachings about relationships.

In a way, we were looking to have a customer-company relationship with Peterson Academy.

If it was going to be a good relationship, we should talk about and negotiate things we didn’t like or found unsettling.

This would, in theory, remove any room for resentments that could build up over time.

There’s a story that Jordan Peterson has referenced in some of his works called There’s No Such Thing as a Dragon that was a source of additional inspiration.

Here’s a short (~3-minute) YouTube video of Dr. Peterson explaining this book and the main principles behind it:

The other inspiration I drew from was Peterson’s conversation with Matt Rife on the purpose of comedy, which I’d watched earlier on the year before.

Here is a segment of the podcast that I thought was insightful for my own comedy I’d been trying out for–at this point–months on the platform:

Abdicated Responsibility & a Display of True Colors

I really thought that in all our dialogue leading up to this point it was clear that we had PA’s best interests in mind.

I thought that Mikhaila and Jordan Fuller had been watching my interactions with themselves and other students closely enough (since I was very involved in trying to help with things they clearly had their eyes on over the months, such as the trolls) that they would know I was just trying to foster better conversation to their ultimate benefit.

Mikhaila quote posted my meme and gave us a surprising response that demonstrated that perhaps some people’s misgivings about the direction of Peterson Academy were actually justified:

Mikhaila’s 5 January 2025 Response to the Price-Hike Meme

This was met with mixed responses that were largely negative.

A number of people said that they had already stretched themselves to be here in the first place.

Others were taken aback at the assumptions that were made, such as that we were lazy and didn’t work hard enough–or that our discourse was coming from a place of resentment.

At this point there was a lot of buzz about everything.

Mikhaila’s response had come pretty late in the evening, so I left a comment letting her know I’d read it and would provide an adequate response with the attention it required the following day if it didn’t take me any longer than that to write it.

I hoped this would be sufficient to keep things relatively amicable until the next day.

On January 6th, I spent probably a good solid 7 – 9 hours of time making sure to write a good response.

This seemed to be a bit of a crossroads in how Peterson Academy was being run, and I didn’t want my intentions to be misconstrued.

I also hoped that this would quell some of the greater criticisms some other students had begun to voice for the time being.

The way I saw this is that it was a business endeavor I wanted to help make as good as possible. Our feedback, as we’d been told before, was crucial. And this was us trying to point out some student concerns we felt ought to be addressed.

That evening I finally had my response ready, after multiple revisions and having friends (both at PA and not affiliated with the endeavor at all) review it.

Here’s what I posted:

Hey Mikhaila,

Thank you for your response so I can better understand where you are coming from. Let me start by saying that Peterson Academy means the world to me and, while I dislike that we have to have this discussion because disagreement-resolution isn’t fun, I hope that it will be worthwhile and will ultimately lead to a stronger unity in the PA community on the whole.

I appreciate your being open about why you think your background qualifies my criticism as unfair, so I think it would be of some value for me to be open in kind (your family’s background is something I find quite endearing because I relate to a lot of how you guys lived when you didn’t have much growing up):

I am the oldest of six kids and my parents worked very hard to make ends meet when we were young. I sold candles and chocolates to raise money for my school from around the second grade on up, mucked goat and chicken stalls and cared for animals, had lemonade stands, started officially working for the family photography business at age 12, sold t-shirts and magnets I designed, and paid my own way through engineering school after dropping out of college the first time around and working at an Aldi for a while. So, I’m not exactly a stranger to either hard work or personal growth.

I’m not resentful about the price hikes, and I don’t actually have any expectation or desire for you to bail me out or solve my problems.

I’m where I am today as the product of an unexpected life shift and my own decision to start a business—despite a massive pay cut—so that I could better serve my industry and provide services that fill a wide gap of abdicated responsibility. I’m in my current position because of decisions I’ve made, and I’m willing to own every one of them.

I have decided to walk a path where I’m back to having almost no money for a time, and that’s a choice that is my problem and nobody else’s. I regularly turn down job offers (some for six figures) because I believe I’m on the right path, I can get another job in my field quickly if needed, and I think that taking the easy/comfortable path of regular employment right now would be neglecting the call to adventure I’ve finally been able to answer. I’ve worked odd jobs throughout the year to fill gaps when needed, including Doordashing and working part-time as a photographer again. So, you’re totally right that we’ll come up with the money if we’re creative and determined and willing to work hard.

It’s not about the money.

It’s about trust.

And I’m only bringing this up because of how greatly I desire for you guys to succeed in your endeavors and not lose the trust of some of your most-enthusiastic and proactive supporters.

(It is, admittedly, not really pleasant for me to be engaged in a disagreement with someone who’s fairly well-known in some pretty big circles and whose father’s work I adore.)

But this isn’t the first time I’ve been at the ground level of building up a Community. In my professional years I’ve seen companies lose the trust of their customers because they over-promised and under-delivered, and lost credibility by not just acknowledging their shortcomings and adjusting their messaging to be adequately transparent. What do you think the risk would be in communicating how developments are progressing or what hurdles you’re facing that need to be overcome?

I’ve been working around software-development lifecycles for years and I totally don’t care about missing features or delays because I know they’re a typical part of the process. People who are aware of and understand the difficulties are much more inclined to be understanding if deliverables aren’t met, if the vision changes for pragmatic reasons, etc. I think it would go a really long way if you guys would own those and manage our expectations so we can make an informed decision about whether or not to continue to invest in this endeavor. (Without any prior announcement about the impending rising subscription costs, in what way could one have made an informed decision during the Black Friday sale?)

The lack of transparency stymies growth and engagement from the best minds and results in an environment of stagnation and frustration. I would prefer to see PA not go down this path and—hoping I’m not overestimating my worth here—believe I have enough experience and reason to voice that concern. I very much want to be here for the long run, proudly wearing PA merch to advertise it to the world, and continuing to enjoy the betterment this platform affords.

I’m totally willing to be wrong in my view here, too, if I can see where my error lies so that I can honestly say why I’ve changed my mind. I just don’t think I am wrong based on the reactions of many people here who clearly had the same misgivings but were hitherto unwilling to voice them until the humorous posting on the topic made them realize that there was some breathing room to address things that had been bothering them for some time as well.

I wish you guys all the best regardless of your decisions or take on this, and I look forward to enjoying at least the next several months of PA access—and hopefully many more to come after that as well.

Thank you so much for your time and consideration on these things.

With Much Gratitude and Goodwill to You and Yours,

Frankie

I believe this post got quite a few likes and reposts with other people’s comments.

I sat back and waited for a response.

Admittedly, I was feeling pretty good about this.

I thought I had articulated myself well and this should have been a good step toward resolving the silliness that had been going on for too long already that everyone wanted to move past as soon a possible.

Nothing of great note happened on January 7th.

Mostly I tried to post happier stuff while I waited, respond to comments to the meme and other people’s opinions that came in, and continue to encourage new students introducing themselves in the social feed.

I think this was the morning I woke up and wondered:

Am I crazy here? Is it wrong to be doing this despite the fact that some students want me to be quiet?

But I continued to come to the same conclusion that my intentions were good and what I was doing was in an attempt to clear up unnecessary confusion.

The momentary discomfort in the conflict would be worth the better outcome in the end.

I am pretty sure I even suggested to some students, whose assessments I thought were too harsh, that their rhetoric wasn’t merited quite yet and was counter-productive to our trying to get to a resolution because it was just attacking and causing division without furthering what we were trying to discuss.

I hoped that Mikhaila and her staff were considering everything we’d said and taking their time to respond as well as possible.

Instead, things quickly got weird.

The Great Expulsion & Days that Followed

On the morning of January 8th we woke up to some unexpected stuff.

First, there had been a feature to upvote or downvote comments since the platform’s inception. On the morning of the 8th, the feature was gone and replaced with only the ability to add a heart to someone’s comments.

The original feature had been a good way to show approval or disapproval without having to jump into a comments conversation if two people were already having a discussion.

I personally used it to downvote trolly comments that were particularly mean or appeared to be dishonest.

I didn’t use it all that often, but I appreciated the subtle way to indicate (especially to newer students) that a comment (such as something mean for no good reason) wasn’t generally acceptable.

I did not observe many abusing the downvote, and I thought it was a useful mechanism for signaling disapproval without having to be overly direct about it.

The removal of this feature, and at this particular time, appeared to be an intentional suppression of our ability to voice our disapproval at things.

This felt incredibly weird to me.

Especially since they hadn’t mentioned this change before.

It was as if we were having a veneer of niceties enforced against our wills.

I had experienced the need to suppress one’s actual opinions on things at my old church in the name of “unity” and had seen what unpleasant outcomes that can have.

This definitely had some totalitarian vibes to it that made me uncomfortable.

I wasn’t the only one who thought this was weird.

Another student posted the following, and you can see from the comment below it that the sentiment was shared by others:

8 January 2025 Example of Student Reaction to Heart Implementation
Mind you, not all students disliked this new implementation, and the comment below has some speculation in there, but I believe both of these echo the sentiment of many students at this time.

Then Jordan Fuller reposted something from one of the newer users who had been kinda snarky and passive-aggressive toward other students earlier.

I figured he probably hadn’t been paying attention to everything, and it must have been a mistake (since the post looked innocent enough on its face).

Surely he wasn’t being passive-aggressive at us, too.

Either this same day or the one before (I don’t remember which), Mikhaila responded to a different user, referencing the current topic of contention. If I recall correctly, she was relatively vague in her response, so it did not provide the additional information we had been requesting.

What she was clear about, however, was at the end of the post where she said something to the effect of, “And if everyone who has posted about this thinks that I’m going to respond to them, I’m far too busy for that.”

I wish I had a screenshot of this one so that I could have the wording exactly and didn’t have to have only my summary take on it; unfortunately, it appears that she has deleted this particular post of hers since then.

This at least was a clear message that she would not be responding to what I had taken so much time to write.

Unfortunate, but I figured there were still other ways to get to a resolution. Whether she responded to me directly or not, if she at least heard me out then maybe we’d at least get the clarity we were asking for.

Next, Jordan Fuller responded to one student’s concern with a suggestion that if she didn’t like something she could email Support and get a full refund.

This was the first time a refund was suggested.

That student made it abundantly clear that she did not want a refund.

She would prefer to stick it out and keep learning, even if she disagreed with how they were handling things.

Keep this in mind for a little later.

Very shortly after Jordan’s suggestion that a student leave, we got this update from Mikhaila, I think between 1 and 2 PM ET that afternoon:

8 January 2025 post from Mikhaila Announcing that Anyone Discontent Could Leave

At this point, things got particularly weird.

Mikhaila reposted that same other student’s post that Jordan had reposted.

It no longer seemed like a coincidence.

They appeared to be siding with the students who had been kind of nasty to those of us who had been voicing our concerns.

I hadn’t posted a meme for the day yet, and when it became clear that they were actually doubling down on not communicating with us, I decided to joke about how ridiculous things had become:

I can’t say for certain, but I’m guessing this was

probably a not-insignificant factor in my expulsion.

I believe this was mostly met with approval from the other students.

I kind of remember posting this gif as a joke to make light of what was becoming a bigger deal than it should have been:

Then, I was fairly quiet for a while.

I didn’t want to get involved in the continued conversation.

I’d said everything I felt I needed to regarding the matter at this point.

I think I commented on some newer students’ new posts, welcoming them to the Academy.

Even if things were getting weird, I still wanted the Peterson Academy endeavor to succeed overall.

At 21:12 ET that evening, the student who had vehemently denied wanting a refund let us know that she couldn’t get in to the platform.

A few of us had been hanging out on Discord discussing what was going on when this happened, so we found out right away that she had been removed.

(You could verify a removal by the fact that a user’s content would be deleted and their account marked as “Anonymous”.)

By 21:24 ET, my screen refreshed and I no longer had access to my content.

I, too, had been removed.

After months of putting most of my time into building up the platform, choosing this over spending that time to build up my own business because I thought the endeavor was a more-noble cause that I wanted to be a part of, they kicked me out without a word of warning.

8 January 2025 Screenshot of My Deactivated User Account

I never got an email saying why I was removed.

In fact, I never heard anything from Peterson Academy.

Within a few hours I got a full refund for my subscription, and that was the only communication I received.

~~~

Okay, I planned to write about the days that followed here, but it’s getting too long:

I had to split this somewhere, and I think the best place is here.

To see the rest of this account, which includes everything that’s happened since, you can check out Part 2 here: