I mentioned last time I blogged how I don't like rehashing what happened last year ad nauseum, don't like repeating it, don't like focusing on it to a detrimental amount, etc. You get the idea. It can sometimes be hard to believe that I legitimately am working on moving on given how it seems most of my blogs as of late have been revisiting the subject. But, something did happen which made me want to talk about it some more.
Last time, I mentioned that one of the reasons I considered going public was essentially for the benefit of a good friend. I didn't want that good friend to become a victim--they're also good friends with the problematic streamer. They might have called me a good friend, but the entire time, they were also good friends with the person I believe to be problematic. And I didn't want them to get hurt by that streamer.
I considered warning them about that streamer, as well as the ex-friends.
I even wrote a draft of what it'd be. Something along the lines of,
"Not an unban request because I know you won't believe me right now, more of a warning to your future self.
"Please do not let (problematic streamer), (ex-friend), (ex-friend's partner), or anyone tied to them gaslight you about anything you personally experienced. Never let them rewrite events, or put doubt into your mind.
"Never accept fault or blame yourself for anything relating to them.
"Never villainize yourself. Never think you are the problem, never believe you are to blame. Never let them convince you things you know happened one way, happened the way they tell you it did.
"Do not let them emotionally manipulate you, especially not with anything regarding harm caused. Don’t accept being told you know what you did wrong, or that you have caused unacceptable harm to the community or loved ones.
"Trust your instincts. Not your brain or your feelings of what you want to be true. You will always want to believe everyone involved is a good person except yourself, and will be naturally inclined to blame yourself.
"Ignore those negative thoughts and, focusing on just your INSTINCTS, recall events with as much clarity as you possibly can. Not taking the accounts of others in. Just your own memory, as pure as can be.
"You will doubt it. Over and over. But try your best to listen and be honest.
"And just know, if you ever fear that nobody will believe you...WE WILL. You will always have at least two who will listen and be on your side and believe your perspective and what you say.
"I know current you probably won’t know WTF this is about. And I mean it; I truly hope you never need to understand why I would send this to you. But this is for any future you, to hopefully remember if it does come to pass and you do need help. Best of wishes regardless of what your future holds."
I considered sending it to them, even if not going public. All because I don't want them to get hurt. I don't want them to be a victim. I don't want them to end up like kels and I did. I don't want them to be traumatized. I don't want them to be villainized. I don't want them to end up broken, shattered, defenseless, hopeless, feeling used, taken advantage of, abused. I don't want them to have to suffer like that. And given what I know about the problematic person, there is a very real, reasonably high chance, they are at a high risk of having exactly that happen.
I wanted to, for lack of a better term, "save" them, save them from the abuse before the abuse would happen, as it were.
A big reason for wanting to go public was for the chance it would be saving them, protecting them from harm, before the harm actually happened. And I wanted to warn them for the same reason. They called me a good friend at one point, and the feeling is mutual. I care about them. I worried about them, and still would worry about them if not for my guides essentially going "let it go. Stop worrying. You can't do anything. It's their battle to fight, their lesson to learn", essentially.
Every time I asked what would happen if I went public, the answer from my guides was overwhelmingly positive, because we likely would be believed and supported after we challenged the narrative the masses were fed and believed blindly. We have proof, we have evidence, of our innocence, or at least of not being guilty in the way we are thought, of the intentions behind our actions, etc. You get the idea. And it would do a lot of good, and prevent any potential future harm, especially to my good friend who is at risk.
...But ultimately, for numerous reasons, I decided it would be better to move on, and I promise we will be moving on largely, probably after this blog for good. This will probably not be the very last blog I ever write on the subject, because as I unpack thoughts I feel it's healthy for me to express them. Still, this will be one of the last blogs, and likely the last blog in a long while, on the subject of the problematic streamer and what went down last year.
Because we are moving on.
I did also ask if I should deliver the warning to that friend, privately, the only way I could. The answer was consistently "maybe, but only if it's for the right reason; what are you hoping to accomplish by doing this?", essentially. And, yeah, what I want to do is to protect a good friend from trauma and harm they shouldn't need to suffer through. They've already survived so much, so I don't want them to have to suffer more through yet another toxic relationship.
...But a large part of me told me that it's their battle to fight. Their lesson to learn. Their path to heal from. Their journey to undergo. And that they don't want my help. And that my help wouldn't do much if any good. They'd have my advice if they ever recognized they need it, but they might not recognize they need it, and would likely never have much use for it. By the time they would know they need it, they wouldn't need it. I know that sounds silly, but no, really. By the time they would need the warning, they no longer would need the warning. By the time they would believe the warning, they would have already overcome the need for the warning because the inherent ability to recognize the situation would mean no need for a warning about the situation. Either they wouldn't believe the warning because of not recognizing it or they wouldn't need the warning because they do recognize it.
...So, accepting that helped me move on a lot from the idea of going public, or warning people in general.
I feel like it is their lesson to learn. Back when I was still at my peak levels of despair, in December, January, and February? The message from my guides was always crystal clear. "It's their lesson to learn, not yours." That I had already learned and grown from my mistakes. The people who cut me out were the ones who would need to learn at that point.
And...it remains true. The people who cut me out because of the misinformation campaign against us, the people who cut me out because they believed I am a threat to communities? They're going to learn the hard way they cut the wrong people out and the actual threat is still there, poisoning the well to this day.
And that's what inspired my blog about the subject today.
Because I got the best proof of this recently.
In the community of a cross-pollinated streamer who is close friends with the problematic streamer, there's a 90-95% community overlap. That community and the community of the problematic streamer are a Venn Diagram that's nearly a circle. There's some only in one half, but 90+% are in both. So what happens in this streamer's community is representative of the community of the problematic streamer, too. Especially since the problematic streamer regularly talks to the streamer this community is about.
I'm no longer in the community myself...but as it turns out, people still want to talk to me about that community.
Even if they don't know the circumstances behind why I'm no longer there.
I recently had a conversation with someone who has absolutely no idea the circumstances for why I'm not in that community anymore...and despite them having NO IDEA, they STILL came to ME to talk about issues they were seeing. Issues that validate what I've been talking about.
They managed to intuit out that some of the people in this alleged safe space chat weren't good people. They had NO IDEA. They had no idea what I went through. They had no clue. They were afraid to namedrop the streamer, afraid to speak badly about that streamer and their community, because they thought I still thought fondly of them. They were afraid of souring MY opinion of the community, not realizing if anything it'd be the other way around.
They, completely separately from me, detected problems I had known about. Without any context, without any knowledge, they correctly picked up on toxic poison being spread, of gaslighting being done. They somehow knew that certain people were gaslighting others, without any prior bias, without any prior context. They couldn't have known. They deliberately avoid knowing that kind of thing for their own mental health. Yet somehow, despite deliberately avoiding it, they managed to pick up on that poisoning of the well, that poisoning of the community.
They knew, and became disillusioned. Without any knowledge of what happened to me. I've had multiple friends from that community who have become disillusioned with it. They mention all of the problems they had, and they had these problems before what happened to me, made worse and confirmed by what happened to me. But it's not just close friends who knew what happened to me. It's not people who were biased.
This is someone who had no idea what happened to me, who loved the community, and was baffled, confused, by the change, wondering if they were the problem. If the community had stagnated while they outgrew it, essentially. They found what the issue was, without knowing it. They said "I think it's my own feels", they said "it's surely nothing and I'm overthinking"...
...Except they aren't. They're right. They weren't even trying to identify the problem, they specifically were just trying to vibe as they always did, yet instinctively, they felt it. The change in the community vibes, because of the poisoned well. A well which got poisoned because of the problematic streamer and the minions of the problematic streamer who are our ex-friends. And the mistrust, the paranoia, the lack of understanding, etc., all which entailed from following their lead.
It affected an entire community, and they are still feeling the effects, getting worse with time. The source of the poison is still there, after all. Innocent, perfectly harmless actions, are now being viewed with suspicion and doubt, paranoia and mistrust. Actions which used to be people trying to connect with each other, converse with each other, are now seen as something that raises red flags in the minds of those who have been poisoned.
Friendships which lasted years, undone by that poison. By that effort to divide, sow the seeds of mistrust, to paint harmless actions as sinister. Innocent things meant to bond and to form a community are now in that community being perceived as malicious acts that warrant being tense about. That paranoia, that suspicion, is there. People are feeling a need to defend themselves, in ways they didn't used to feel the need to defend themselves.
And that is the poison which is spreading. Keep in mind, this is a community well-versed in internet safety. All of us thought we were staying safe and did fairly good jobs at it previously. Yet thanks to the poison...what was previously safe and a good job is seen as not enough protection. Walls go up. Divides are formed. The connection isn't being formed as it used to. All due to the community well being poisoned, and the poison not being removed.
Again. The source of this is from someone who had no idea I already knew from first-hand experience. This is from someone who didn't know I was a victim. This is from someone who had no idea what had happened to me. And this person still managed to identify the exact problem, without trying to!
So, that leaves me thinking...
...My guess of this all resolving in or before 2026?
...I'm beginning to think that was a hugely conservative estimate.
The poison spreading this quickly and rampantly? To where someone completely unrelated can intuitively tell about it without trying? It's going to lead to people realizing what the problem was. Eventually. They are going to learn what caused them to change for the worse. And it's going to happen sooner rather than later. They are going to learn what burned them, and they are going to do digging into the root cause.
I think the community will bounce back from it eventually--but the damage will have been done. Many who leave in this process likely won't return. Myself among them. As much as that community once meant to me...I don't think I can ever trust them again, not unless they have a serious reform. They lost their ability to trust in others. I wouldn't feel welcome unless that trust in others was returned.
And yes. I get the irony. My trust in them was lost by their lack of trust. But it's the best way I have to describe it. The poison of a lack of trust infected the community thanks to the problematic streamer and the agents of the problematic streamer, the ex-friends who chose the problematic streamer over their friends, over doing the right thing, and continued to spread the misinformation about kels and I and poisoned the minds of my friends.
These people twisted innocent actions, these people took the portrayal of people at their weakest, most vulnerable, worst states where they were emotionally compromised, and portrayed that as the norm. These people turned love into lovebombing, turned sharing information/facts into harm/abuse, turned efforts to mend into efforts to hurt. They spread that perspective, that doubt, that questioning of character, and infected the minds of everyone in the community.
And that paranoia, that doubt, didn't stay on just me, or just kels. It remains, with nearly everyone distrustful of nearly everyone, in ways they weren't before.
And that's poison.
I was never the problem.
kels was never the problem.
The problem remains, even after we have left, because the call was coming from inside the building.
I wanted to believe the problematic streamer was a good person.
And despite everything, as fucked up as it is? I still want to believe the ex-friends are good people.
I've laid out, nearly as explicitly as I can without actually talking about the exchanges, all of the ways I know they're not. How they used emotional manipulation to try and get me to drop kels. How they outright gaslit me and tried to lie about events I remembered too well for their gaslighting to work. And so on and so forth. I have every reason to think they're horrible, with the only reasons I have to doubt it being...well, basically...
...a combination of remembering the good times when we were friends, hearing about them from people still friends with them, and my belief in most people being good but all people being flawed.
I want to believe they're good, despite all of what they did to me, and how their poison remains a plague that infected an entire community and sowed seeds of distrust that destroyed the vibes of connection previously present.
But really...I guess only time will tell.
Ultimately...it's not my battle to fight.
It's not my space anymore.
It was a found family, I truly treasured my time there...but I've moved on.
And that's again why this will likely be among my last blogs on the subject.
Receiving word about what has happened there from an unbiased source? Validated me. It's vindicating to know that the exact things which were things I said were problematic, are being seen as such by people completely unaware of my knowledge. They weren't biased by me. They found that on their own, because it's not just me.
It's healing. It's soothing. But it's not something I'm going to get entangled in. It's not something I'm going to continue focusing on. With the knowledge of the state of the community, I know that the explosion is going to happen sooner rather than later. People are going to want answers, people are going to ask, "What the hell happened to us? What happened here???", sooner rather than later. They are going to do digging, reevaluating, and revisit the past. I know it's going to happen, sooner rather than later, and knowing that is cathartic.
Knowing they will heal, they will learn, they will grow, after realizing the mistake they made in letting that distrust fester, in letting that lack of faith last so long. Knowing they let themselves be hurt by a nonexistent version of people, and that the threats they viewed were never threats. Knowing they will grow, they will figure out, what the real issue was and who caused it and how it happened.
That's all healing, to know it will happen sooner rather than later.
...But I have spoken my piece. So now I am at peace. It's not my place anymore, despite my fondness for it. It's not my fight. I already learned. I already grew. I already am healing. That healing would best be served by moving on, now that I have spoken as much as I can. There's a lot more I could say, to be sure...but I don't think it'd help to.
Fingers crossed from here on out we can all collectively move on.
I apologize for bothering you. And I am so sorry for having been this critical, this negative. I truly want to not be, and I truly hope to embody the very thing I think the community I was in had lost. I want to trust, as I wasn't trusted. I want to believe, as I wasn't believed. I want to see the good, as I wasn't seen for all the good. I want to be better than to ever possibly risk putting someone through the Hell I lived through.
I wouldn't wish my suffering on my worst enemy. Not the streamer I believe is problematic, not the ex-friends. I don't think they deserve that. I don't think they deserve to suffer. I don't think they deserve to be entirely cast out. To have the harm they caused be recognized, identified, and have communities correct for it? Yeah I think that's a necessity to happen at some point. But I never want to have anyone go through what we did.
I don't want to ever feel a need to be paranoid, distrustful, guarded, reserved. I don't want to ever put up walls. I don't want to ever spread poison. I don't want to ever speak badly of people I used to think fondly of. I don't want to think people are irredeemable, and should be condemned. I don't want to believe people are horrible enough where they deserve scorn. I don't want to highlight the negatives we all have. I don't want to focus on the bad.
So going forward...I hope that I can focus on all the positives. On all the learnings. On all the healing. On all which is good in this world. I truly wish you can have that strength, too. Thank you for tolerating my rants about my trauma. Thank you for bearing with me. Thank you for listening. And I hope that I can help you in some way shape or form going forward. <3
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