This is Goodbye. For Good. TW: Manipulation, Grooming, extremely upsetting cyber-bullying
I need to share something that was brought to my attention today by the victim, who is a friend of mine.
I genuinely need people to appreciate how fucking insane this is:
Someone infiltrated my private Discordâa server I made because I was receiving death threatsâand took inventory of who was in it. We know who did this. We will not be sharing their name so as to protect them from harassment.
I was being harassed on tumblr. Made a private discord specifically to escape this harassment, and apparently even THAT I couldn't have, because these people began targeting the members involved. I cannot stress enough that this was a normal ass discord where we mostly shared fic and photos of Paul McCartney.
One of my friends (whom we will call X), who barely even uses Tumblr, and is generally very quiet and unsure of themselves, started getting anonymous messages telling them nobody liked them, asking why they were even in the server, and generally trying to make them feel unwelcome and scared, using direct quotes of things they said in the server.
X didn't tell us this happened until Teacups-andtime published that ask, which was when we discovered there had been a leak.
Within hours, Xâwho was temporarily locked out of the server as we individually cleared everyone and tried to figure out what happenedâreceived this anonymous message:
The person who created the panic immediately exploited it by telling someone, "You have no one. I am sorry your friends turned on you."
"People feel the same way and want to leave without angering Hux⌠I advise you to leave the server because it clearly makes you unhappy⌠I promise there are lots of lovely people here...I can pass your info on..."
So let's lay out the sequence.
1. Gain access to a private support server.
2. Keep track of who's in it. Find out who is the most vulnerable.
3. Spend weeks anonymously tearing down that member's self-esteem.
4. Create or exploit chaos around a leak.
5. Tell that member they've been abandoned. Make them feel isolated.
6. Immediately offer your own Discord as the "safe" place to go.
This wasn't someone venting or feeling scared or trying to find a safe space. It was an attempt to socially engineer someone into abandoning their friends by first making them feel isolated, telling them their friends hated them, and then presenting themselves as the solution.
And the target wasn't even someone deeply involved in Tumblr. It was one of the quietest, least active people on Tumblr. Someone they picked specifically because of this reason. Someone they targeted for being a friend of mine. Someone who was already anxious enough that this nearly drove them to delete their blog and all of their fanfic.
To score another member for their Discord? To "win" some imaginary Tumblr war? To prove you can peel people away from me one by one?
That is an absolutely deranged amount of planning and manipulation to devote to a website where people are supposed to be posting about fandoms. It is a psychopathic level of disregard for people as something other than 'pawns' in some fucked up power game because your ego got hurt months ago and you never let it go.
You know how you can get discord members? You can ask them like a normal fucking human being. Multiple people have left my server before for multiple reasons. There has never been a falling out. But to come into this space for the sole intention of bullying the members, making them doubt themselves, making them scared, so then you can offer your own 'safe space' for the people you've 'collected?' Who is actually the cult here?
And you know what? I guess you're winning. If my associating with other users causes you to systematically dismantle those users' self-esteem? To groom them for your own Discord?
Okay. I won't associate with anyone. I left the Discord. If my presence here means you are going to start coming after my friends? That's it. This has gone too far.
I don't want to leave, but I don't have a choice. I'm not going to let other people who haven't ever threatened anyone get pulled into this by association. I'm leaving the fandom. Forever this time. I won't be coming back. Not after a week. Not after a month. I won't be finishing any of my stories. I won't be posting any of the other fics I have been working on.
I won't be responding to anons, messages, DMs, comments, discord messages, or AO3 comments. You should grab copies of my stories while you can because I will be taking them down. This fandom has disgusted me to the point I don't with to be associated with it in any way.
Do you feel like you've won? Does that make you happy? You decided that the joke I made months ago and apologized for wasn't okay, but that stalking, death threats, doxing, sexual harassment, and publicly posting my personal information was. Personal information you gave them. You grouped up with other people and coordinated this. You all simultaneously repeated the same lie. You systematically destroyed the confidence of an innocent person to try to win a game only you are playing.
You made it so unsafe I can't stay here anymore. I don't want to go, but I can't see any other option.
You want me to leave. Okay. I hear you. I will.
P.S. On Monday, the day Menlove left, someone botted my kofi page, generating 500 reports before it was taken down. I wasn't using it really anyway but just to prove these people are insane...
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