I'm the anon who brought in the "hot" goss about that American woman adopted out of a Greek family. That woman's tik tok username is karpoozy. She uploads and deletes videos constantly, so it's a bit hard to keep track (the other day she posted a video of herself reading out loud a private message her Greek aunt had sent her to discuss private family matters, confirming what we were saying too, that's now gone. She also nuked the video in which she took down the huge Greek flag she had hanging in her house).
I don't want to put links in here because sometimes Tumblr doesn't send anon asks with links, but if you scroll a bit you'll find that she posted about this on March 21st and 22nd. In the March 22nd video she specifically talks about how her Greek family is trying to hide her to "save face" and prohibits her from posting pictures of her grandparents on Facebook.
I do feel bad for her, she seems to have had a really tough life, but she's just... sooo American. From the "In America we consider this rude"* to her sharing every single text to believing she's being censored because someone told her "please don't post pictures of people you don't know for your massive following."
Even the fact that she started being resentful of the aunt because they weren't texting one another as often... idk, but I have some cousins I only see every other year and it's fine. I feel like the "oh god, if I don't hear from them every other day, then they must hate and reject me and are trying to hide me out of shame!" is distinctively American.
And the funny thing is that my parents divorced and my mother went on to have another child out of wedlock with her boyfriend. According to the USians over there, we'd have to keep my sibling chained in a dark basement lol.
*Yeah, it's rude to speak in a language that your guest doesn't speak but like... how well did the other people invited speak English? She was in their home. Last summer I brought my girlfriend home, and even if she only speaks English and the rest of us spent most of the meal screaming at each other in our language, she wasn't upset nor felt excluded because she realized that she was a guest in their country and their home.
I found two videos about it on her TikTok and I will post them here so anyone can judge for themselves.
Only one video is allowed per post, so I'll post the next one on a reblog.
I saw her videos and I'm still not on her side. I'm sorry but how she speaks of her family is not the way of someone humble and honestly thinking about what went wrong. I see someone who - of course - has been hurt, but at the same time conveniently hides information except when it is to put her aunt and the Greek people in the spotlight.
To her credit, apparently she attempted to learn some Greek, and she - at least - open to some degree. She is also doing other good things, like being an advocate for the rights of adoptees. I don't know her as a person, so I don't want to judge her character, only her specific actions.
Because you know what?? Her family was actually welcoming!! Her bio-father was, sadly, the exception, but the rest of her family in the village (aunt, her husband, her children) wanted to meet her year after year! Her aunt, not even by blood, was the biggest supporter and, as the aunt herself said, "brought her into the family". And then the tiktoker says "by the last day that me and my husband were there [in the aunt's house] the second time I think we really overstayed our welcome, I felt like my aunt was just... sick of us." And notice that she never says WHY this might be!!
Like, maybe she and her husband acted super entitled at some point and the aunt - who called them there for a second time, and let them stay for days! - got "sick of them". And then, the aunt went to ignore them for YEARS! Obviously something happened, maybe a great disrespect from the tiktoker's side. And you can't convince me 100% that was something the rest of the Greeks did, because if it was about the "scandal" it would have erupted already from the first year! What happened in the second? Funny that we only mention the aunt's reaction....
Oh, and also the reaction of her cousin, not wanting to go anywhere with her, I am also not sure she is giving us the full picture here. "Hey, do you want to do this with us [her and her husband]" she asked her cousin many times, and she refused. Okay, sure, maybe the cousin was an asshole. However, there's a reason I want to give the benefit of the doubt to the cousin as well. Because I had foreigners come to Greece and meet me, and asked me to go to the beach or party till late and I had to refuse all their requests. For them it was a vacation and they wanted to live it to the max. For me it was workdays, and a week with a heavy workload. And those spots were empty anyway that time of the year and nobody goes there. Maybe, if the tiktoker asked her cousin what SHE wanted to do that day, maybe they would have found a middle solution.
Something else that stuck with me was her saying: "I was too American for them" but she never says why! What made her think she was too American for her Greek family, and why was that an issue? I bet there are some situations that she didn't mention because she probably suspected would make her look bad. Otherwise, she would totally mention them and get the chance to shit on them.
Another negative thing she mentions is that people gossiped about her in Greek at a public event. She said "They were talking about me, in Greek, in front of my face" well YES, because their language is GREEK, and they are not OBLIGED to speak in English just because YOU are in front of them! Maybe they said a comment in Greek "oh, okay she came here this year too!" Like, nothing bad objectively, but she considered this rude just because they weren't speaking HER language?? Maybe they wanted to stop struggling and just discuss between them in their native language..? Or does she mean to tell me that if a Spanish-speaking person came to their table in the US, they would all suddenly switch to Spanish? Come ooon...
She doesn't even tell us what they said about her! It could be they said the most normal sentences ever! And maybe it was something they remembered because of the conversation and had nothing to do with her! I had foreigners talk in front of me in their native language many times, and they didn't translate everything for me, which is FINE. As long as they were polite to me in words and action, I knew their heart was in the right place.
And look, even if those Greeks were rude, that doesn't give her the right to be fucking xenophobic/racist. She treats Greeks as if they are aliens, as if people in the US would not comment about the child of someone in their close community who appeared out of nowhere after decades!!! Of course, people are going to comment, that's what people do around the globe! Is this the best tactic? No! Is it to be expected? Absolutely!! So I don't know why she thinks it wouldn't happen in that specific Greek village.
And then, a few years later, she posted her dead grandparents online, for a random person on the internet to see but also public enough that her aunt saw it. I understood that she posted the picture on the village's page, asking the other person if those were their grandparents too. I get the desperation to find your family and learn more about your past, however, this does not override your family's right to privacy. Is she completely deft or she just didn't care that she essentially said to a hundred people or so, "hey, one of your co-villagers has an illegitimate child from a foreign woman whom he kept a secret, and it's me!" Does she PURPOSELY ignore how any small community in the world may be intrigued by that news, and then gossip will spread like fire?? WHO will benefit from this gossip? Nobody! Does she ignore that the Greeks have... human communities too...? What on earth was she thinking?
I'm not saying that she should remain a secret, or that she should be ashamed of her existence, and I don't think that's why most of her Greek family was frustrated with her posting that picture. *She* presumed that they wanted to keep her a secret to save face. However, she was not told that by her Greek family. I don't know where she got that vibe, but for sure, she doesn't give us any explanation about it.
And it does feel rude to me that she posted her grandparents like that... She doesn't know the family well, and she doesn't know the wishes of her now dead grandparents. She doesn't know the people of the village well enough to know how they would react. There is a way to do these things. There is a certain pace in meeting people and becoming part of the community. It doesn't mean that she should be ashamed or that her father should get to keep her a secret. It means... just use fucking common sense?? Make a PLAN with your family about the best way to be introduced and win the locals' trust???
Other US-Americans in the comments told her "you are entitled to do this" and honestly, that's some BULL SHIT. You are not entitled to ANY other person, and you should ask their PERMISSION first, or the PERMISSION of the closest people who knew them, in order to post them online on a public platform! Especially if those people you're posting are grandparents from the Greek countryside who had a life with more privacy and calm.
And maybe none of the family, nor the dead grandparents, want HER to air the family business. For example, if I wanted to post my grandparents on a community online (even in our village page!! ESPECIALLY in our village page!!), I would ask their child (aka my parents) or their siblings (aka my aunts) if that would be okay with them. You know... the living relatives closest tot them??? Those people knew them and their wishes better than I ever will! My grandparents did not just sprout; they were active members of a community and it's proper to treat their memory delicately!
Is it a crime that she posted them? No. But this can very well be a sign of disrespect. She has not exchanged a word with those dead people!! They are not "hers" to post. They are not anyone's! So, if some of her family members were negatively predisposed to her, she just made the situation worse.