I hate that I've had to make this post, let alone pin it to my blog (if you're looking for my old pinned post, you can find it here!), but it would mean the world to me if you could read it through to the end β‘
Back in November, over four months ago now, @/copingcopia reached out to me to warn me about someone in the community who changed their username a lot and was being accused of stealing from other writers in the fandom. For context, please read their posts about the matter here and here. Here are the relevant screenshots of our conversation:
*I censored what I suspect to be the person's real name
I misunderstood their words to mean that if this person could apologise and change their ways, everything would be okay again. I feel like I need to state that I'm autistic and sometimes I take people's words too literally, leading to misunderstandings like this. And so I decided to reach out to the other person, sending the messages in the screenshot below.
*The second post @/copingcopia made implies that I may have harassed this person but this is not the case, these are the only messages I sent to them.
Since then, a lot of people in the fandom have been blocking me and since I'm shy and keep to myself, I know it can't be related to anything other than this. I don't know what's being said about me behind my back, but I wanted to make this post to clearly explain what happened and to state emphatically: I did not mean any harm or to overstep a boundary or to put words in anyone's mouth - I was only trying to help. This person was a mutual of mine and I wanted to see if I could get through to them and resolve the situation in a way that meant nobody had to be hurt or upset.
Coming back to the present, for weeks now I've been receiving a lot of anonymous hate, it started as people sending me sentences from things I've written followed by strings of emojis to make fun of it. I didn't understand at first, thinking it was spam or people using my inbox as an outlet but I eventually recognised certain phrases and realised they were mocking me. Here's an example of what I find when I open my inbox:
If you are one of the people harassing me like this, please, please consider if you're truly doing the right thing and if this is worth your time and the pain you're causing me.
I have a history of being bullied (and a CPTSD diagnosis as a result of this) so this has been especially upsetting for me; being slowly but surely pushed out of a fandom that means the world to me for trying to help someone. This has been going on for months now and it feels like it's never going to end. I didn't want to make this post as I was scared of being viewed as someone trying to create drama but I now feel like I have no choice. I can't take it anymore.
If you read to the end, thank you, and please let this post be a reminder that there's a human being on the other side of the screen and you never know what they're facing and the damage your words can do.
