Thursday was acceptance. The feeling of it having happened, and having that understanding. Actions have consequences, and my decisions led me to a path where I gave up basically everything for the love of my life. (Still worth, though. They are the love of my life, and no cost, no loss, isn't worth it for them.)
Friday was sadness. The overwhelming feeling of all that I have lost.
And today? Today is "anger". It's not truly anger, per se, but I wanted to frame things in the 5 stages model which is nonlinear as my days are showing.
My 'anger' is more in the sense of, a persistent thought;
"I don't want them to get away with it all."
I don't want the streamer who we were critical of continue to have no criticism for their misuse of power.
I don't want the people who banded together against us to get away with pinning everything on us.
I don't want the people who were involved in reporting me and getting me removed from spaces, feel like my removal from those spaces is worth celebrating.
And I know. That is a bit of a toxic mindset, driven in large part by my shadow self's negativity, a desire for retribution for the feeling of having been wronged.
Still.
I want the results from this to be all the people who were willing to take action against us without talking to us first?
To be mortified about having silenced whistleblowers into silence.
And to be clear--that is exactly what we were.
My fiance and I have a disagreement about the streamer in question, the closest thing we have to a strong disagreement in our relationship. In most areas of our lives, we're in perfect unison, or near to. So when I say we are of two different mindsets towards this, that means a great amount for how large the divide is.
On my end, I developed my philosophy of "most people are good, but all people are flawed. Humans are imperfect, they have flaws, they make mistakes, but most are still good", loosely. And I developed it after these events unfolded last year, and applied it to the streamer in question. I believe them to be a good person, but like all humans, they aren't perfect; they have flaws. And those flaws, we were critical of, and led them to take action against someone which drove them to almost take their life and were only saved by my intervention--my fiance.
Under my belief, they may be imperfect and have things to be critical of, including their handling of banning my fiance and spreading it across the entirety of twitch they have access to, but would still be a good person, who just acted imperfectly on imperfect information and had dire consequences that have led to harassment a full year later.
But, my fiance disagrees, and believes that the streamer in question is actually a bad person. My fiance doesn't think they are a good person who just has some flaws. My fiance believes the streamer in question is actually problematic, and that there was some level of selfishness or even malice involved in them taking their actions.
However, regardless of which of us is correct, we spent five months with six of our friends having extensively been critical of the streamer in question, and were planning on going public about it before September of 2023. We were doing so out of a sense of trying to make things better, and were doing so out of a place of love.
I've spent a lot of time reviewing the events of those five months, plagued by if I was making us be better than we were and we were more in the wrong than I thought, or if I was gaslighting myself by believing we were worse than we were when we actually were in the right. Basically, never sure if we were better, worse, or about as I think we were, in the past. My spirit guides have consistently said, "You are in the right ballpark." I'm not excusing my friend group of having done horrible things, nor am I gaslighting myself into thinking my friend group did horrible things when we were doing good things.
My outlook is loosely in the right ballpark, and that belief is more or less this.
We got into an echo chamber ironically complaining about the streamer in question having been an echo chamber. What I on this blog have deemed a "negative feedback spiral". We definitely saw flaws that were real, although how real is something we don't have any way of knowing.
Again, that's where a difference of opinion comes in. My fiance believes all the flaws we saw were real and bad and problematic because the streamer is problematic;
As much as I want to side with my fiance, I can't believe that myself; I believe that the flaws we saw were at least more real than not and existed, but the streamer is still a good person despite what we saw, because we were overly focusing on the negatives and being too critical and too harsh.
And we will never know the truth, which belief is right, unless it turns out that the streamer is in fact cancelled for being problematic.
Or if we went public about everything we know--but again. That would involve a big fight, a big public spectacle, a huge amount of time spent to out things, and then the harassment of those who don't believe us...even if we were. At this stage, we might have basically nothing to lose by going public and sharing things, but it would still involve losing people, and people who stay being harassed by those unreceptive to our viewpoint.
Which, my fiance doesn't want to do anymore. They want to just move on in life. And while in some ways I can disagree with them, on that, I will be with them.
Still.
The fact remains.
All of the times we were removed from spaces.
Back in July when this happened to them, and drove them to write a suicide note and almost take their life, with me being the one person who saved them.
Back in December, when I was myself driven to nearly kill myself, with my fiance being the only reason I lived.
Back in April, when we were both affected.
And now, now. At the end of June. Nearly a full year later.
We were going to be whistleblowers to problematic behaviors from a streamer.
And now, we're at least, for now, not going to. We have been silenced, at least for now.
And that's where the ""anger"" comes in. That's where the desire for those who got me removed to not be celebrating it comes in.
I want their reaction to not be the joy of removing a person they now view to be a terrible person.
I want their reaction to be horror that they threw away a close friend who was just trying to do the right thing, and then went on to band together in getting said ex-friend removed from spaces, all because that friend...was guilty of the crime of being in a position where she could blow the whistle on problematic behaviors from a streamer.
Today, I am having that desire.
Despite the fact that it would require my fiance to be right about the streamer in question.
If I am right, it will never happen, because we weren't in the right. We saw things to be critical of, but the person would still be good despite our criticisms, and thus there will be nothing to be horrified about and the people who wanted me removed will have no reason to regret their actions.
And...that's probably not a healthy mindset. To wish that my fiance is right about a streamer being a problematic piece of shit, and that everyone who took action against us is horrified they silenced would-be whistleblowers. Still, it's where I am at today.
That revelation will probably disappoint people. That I'm not better, better than to stoop to that level of thought. Or maybe validate those who wanted me removed--if I have the attitude above, then clearly it means I was a terrible person, a terrible friend, and getting me removed was the right decision.
But...I also didn't feel like holding these thoughts in, and I didn't feel like this was the sort of thing to vent to my few remaining friends about. They'd listen, to be sure, but they already know things I'm talking about here.
And I wanted to go public with at least this much.
It might confirm the worst to some, but it may also help others see that things are not as simple as they may otherwise be led to believe.
My fiance did not have a burn book server where we were shitting on people, but we were a part of a friend's server which had a channel where we were critical of a single streamer (and also, one of their mods), with criticisms towards the community as had been structured by the streamer in question.
We did this for five months, from March 21st 2023 until July 23rd, 2023, when the streamer in question found out about my fiance being involved in something, and acted on that information to get my fiance removed from every space they were in.
This drove my fiance to write out a suicide note, and knew how to do it, because they were driven to believe that if everyone thought they were a villain, maybe they were, and that the world would be better without them in it.
I saved their life--but in the process, I knew that by keeping them in my life, I was likely going to lose every space I was in which they were removed from.
I thought it would happen back in August, but then it didn't. So we tried to heal, and move on. We were trying to just live our lives, rebuild, heal, and had no interest in whistleblowing.
But we have been continuously harassed, nearly a full year later still losing spaces we had been in because of what went down, despite all of the effort we have done to try and move on.
We have tried to reflect on the events and be honest about our mistakes and flaws involved.
We have tried to learn from it, and to not repeat the mistakes.
We have tried to rebuild, recover, and live our lives.
But we keep on being told, over and over again, that we are dangerous. That we need to be removed. That the mistakes were too dangerous, too harmful, to warrant being present in spaces. And all of this from people who allegedly say they want to hear people out. Yet instead of hearing us out and making an informed decision, they take action against us.
Even IF they were willing to hear us out after having taken action against us--and most have taken measures to ensure the decisions were final and not up for discussion--that they took action against us places us on the defensive. It places us in a state where we are emotionally compromised. Where we are being attacked, and are in the mindset of defending ourselves, which reduces our ability to be objective and measured and clinical in giving our accounts, sticking to the facts, laying out what we did, why we did it, etc.
And that's why I've been worn down enough to where I was willing to go public, despite thinking the streamer in question isn't problematic.
We have still received grief and troubles from an event which occurred last year.
A while back, we fell down the SWOOP pipeline, with a repeating line being "It's not drama. It's dangerous."
That my fiance has twice been left suicidal and myself left suicidal and we are still receiving harassment a year later lends credit to that.
And my fiance takes it a step further in believing the streamer in question used DARVO tactics, abusing their position of authority and influence to silence them about the issue, gaslighting everyone in the process, lying and manipulating to get them removed. (I may be wrong in some of this assessment, but at least some of it, they do.)
I certainly believe the streamer misused their power, particularly given they acted off of incomplete imperfect information and spread it to hundreds of communities. I'm not personally convinced it was an abuse, but I do believe that at minimum no matter how unintended or imperfect, that influence and position of power was misused.
And like...I get it. My own philosophy applies to both myself and my fiance. Despite my anxieties and imposter syndrome, deep down I do believe I am a good person, no matter what my depression-addled brain tells me. Just...not a perfect person. I know I have flaws, and am imperfect, and make mistakes.
Similarly so for my fiance. One of their potential flaws being a bitterness in believing they are right about the streamer in question being problematic and that literally nobody was willing to hear them out, not even their own friends. If the streamer in question is in fact not problematic, then my fiance's belief that they are would be a flaw. My fiance's bitterness would be a flaw. Among others. My fiance has made mistakes and mishandled situations and could be in the wrong, all flaws. And yet despite that they are still a good person.
And the same logic I apply to others applies to myself. We're not immune to criticism, and if we are flawed, if we are wrong, then we deserve to have actions taken against us. We're imperfect, we make mistakes, we don't always act correctly. We try our best, but we don't always succeed. We have failings. And despite us being good people...those actions have consequences, those failings carry a price.
So...particularly if the streamer in question is a good person...then our part in having been (in the case they are good) overly critical of them, does carry consequences, because we deserve to be held accountable for our failings.
But like...among my flaws is wishing that my flaws would be "flaws", which don't actually exist, that I am better than I think, and that we were right. And that's what my ''anger'" today boils down to. A deep desire to have been right, to have not been in the wrong, to have not made mistakes, to have been trying my best to do the right thing, to have the actions taken against me be unjust, to have them be mistakes, to have my removal as something which people regret after learning what really went down last year.
I recognize it's a flaw. I recognize if I'm right about the streamer not being problematic, then my flaws are flaws. That we weren't right, or at least not entirely right. That we were in the wrong to do what we did. That we made mistakes, and deserve to be punished for having made those mistakes. That the actions taken against us are just, and people will never need to regret taking them because they were in the right to protect people from our flaws.
But...no matter how toxic it is, that's my mindset. Maybe fueled by my shadow, maybe just fueled by my selfishness, my hurt, my pain, how fresh the latest wound is. It's the mood today.
For now, the same I've always said applies.
If anyone wants to hear about the full story in private, we'll explain our perspective of events. (I don't like using the term "sides" because that implies there's a right or wrong. I don't think there is a right or wrong here. It's the most complicated complex situation I've ever had the moral quandary of, but I don't think there's inherently a 'right' or 'wrong'. Just a matter of perspective, and actions taken under those perspectives. Not sure how to explain that though.)
But at least for now, despite me having revealed this much publicly on my blog, I am not going to go fully public and share everything.
I'm not going to fight. Not in private. I'm not going to self-advocate. There's no point. I'm just going to move on.
I'll probably still blog about this for a while, as I have thoughts I feel I need to get out and am comfortable sharing, but after the events fade and I begin to heal, I will move on. As we have been.
Regardless, to any who stuck with me this far, again, I will share this once more;
Thank you.
Among my flaws is how much I love the world, and the people within. I have too much love to give, and while this incident has freed me up from giving too much of myself to too many people, I still can't help but having love for people. And that love is unconditional, on my end. So, I truly mean it when I say;
I love you.
And I hope you have a lovely timezone.
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