Hey, y'all. I've got another longish post coming your way. I don't want to sugar coat this or beat around the bush: I want to apologize to the victims, regardless of if you came forward on your own, through other folks, or didn't come forward at all, of Andrew Stein/Mandopony. I'm sorry for not believing you. I'm sorry for doubting your story, even if I only heard/read bits and pieces of one.
When there's so much noise going on and the only source of information that you're being provided with is coming from a source that has hurt people that you talk to and consider friends, it makes it harder to believe certain accusations due to personal biases. And it probably didn't help that I honestly didn't want to believe that this was true... That's 100% on me. I did try to educate myself on it outside of the google doc I was sent twice (both times without me asking and one of the times I explained why I wasn't linking it due to it potentially being misinformation, because in something like this you kinda consider hey, it could be faked even if it's a fucked up way of thinking) but I couldn't find anything except for more and more confusion and dead ends. Looking back on it now, I realize I probably shouldn't have said anything or just reached the conclusion/opinion I held before an official statement was released. I should've just stayed neutral and waited for a statement. I should've just held off much like I've been advising others to do.
As far as my post regarding it previously (the one titled: Rant Incoming), I will most likely be deleting it. I don't want to cause more harm to the victims than I already have.
I wanted to hold off on posting this, it definitely was not sitting in my notes typed up prior to this but I didn't feel like I honestly could hold off on this apology any longer, especially with certain happenings with other social media platforms that I mentioned in other posts. Now more than ever, we as a fandom, as a community, need to protect each other. We need to have each other's backs. I'm terribly sorry for any harm I may have caused to anyone inadvertently.
