I've been exhausted, with no time or energy.
And, part of it has just been that I have too much to say.
I haven't been blogging in part because I haven't had the time to unpack what I wanted to say.
I suppose I'll start with saying this.
I love the world. I love the people within. I love people. I love humans. I love the communities I am in, and I loved the communities I no longer am in. I love my friends, and I love the people who once called me friend. I love everyone, to varying degrees. And I think that's important to note.
I can't say it as eloquently as when I was telling it to someone else who needed the reassurance, but our society has had a tendency to over-correct for certain behaviors. For instance, the term lovebombing is wonderful to know. The moment we knew what the term lovebombing was, we could identify lovebombing as lovebombing, and cut out the toxic manipulative people using it as a manipulation tactic. A good thing, to be sure...
...But then, people over-corrected. And started calling perfectly normal, healthy behavior, lovebombing.
Gift-giving can be a form of lovebombing. It's a way to often get conditional displays of love, it's a way to draw people in, it's a way to get them to trust you, etc. But the important part here is the CAN BE. Can. Gift-giving is not inherently manipulative. Gift-giving is not inherently lovebombing. Gift-giving is a love language. Many people give gifts to express their love, regardless of what the type of love that is, and they are not manipulative or manipulators.
It's important to recognize the distinction between the two. Lovebombing is a manipulation tactic manipulators use to gain something. But gift-giving is also something can do to express their unconditional love, and that is one of the most beautiful forms of love there is.
Showering with affection can be a form of lovebombing. It's a way to often get conditional displays of love. It's a way to make people feel loved, appreciated, but then to exert control by making that love have requirements, or to have that love be for a purpose. But the important part here is the CAN BE. Showering with affection is not inherently manipulative. This one is actually more important to realize and recognize, because while gift-giving is understood as a form of love language fairly easily (we give gifts on birthdays and Christmas and to loved ones and to significant others all the time), as a society we tend to have been numbed to genuinely complimenting people with pleasantries beyond the standard.
But all the same, showering with affection IS a love language, a la Gomez Addams showering his wife with unending praise and affection. There tends to be a stigma about "showing with actions rather than words", and that the words of showering with praise aren't actions, but those words when backed by time, investment, and consistency ARE actions. They are a form of showing how much you love someone by finding and crafting the words that demonstrate it.
There was a time when we had an understanding of this in some form. Writing poetry was seen as a grand romantic gesture, of displaying true love. Similarly so for songs. But when you take it into a different medium of just speech, people tend to think that somehow, it's not the same level of having been made and crafted with words. What you say, what you take time to write, what words you decide to make into praise, all of those? They ARE a love language.
And many people, myself included, gift words, showering with praise, as our way of expressing love, regardless of what type of love that is. It's particularly the case for me because I'm not talented enough to create gifts for people and even if I were I don't have the time to invest because I can't make them quickly. It's not a skill I have, not naturally at least. I can't give monetary gifts either because I'm basically broke. My financial situation continues to be terrible, so I can't give gifts.
So...what can I give? Not crafted gifts, not bought gifts, what way of expressing love do I have left? ...Words. That's all I have. Words, to express myself, to give my love to all in my life, and to show how much I care about them. Spreading joy and positivity, with words of encouragement, of support, of laughter, of love.
And while my imposter syndrome will tell me I am a manipulator...that the skills of manipulation are so ingrained in me that I can't not manipulate people...
...if I am actually honest with myself...
...I am not a manipulator by taking the time to craft my words. I'm just choosing the best way to express myself, to express my love, and am being considerate, kind, and caring.
And I think that's important to recognize.
Which...brings me to the next thing.
I have such love of people, and I truly wish to see the best in them all.
I have this belief. "Most humans are good, but all humans are imperfect." Most humans are good, but all humans are flawed. Most humans are good, but all humans make mistakes.
And I try to live my life understanding others with compassion, empathy, and truly trying to see their perspective. I don't believe in "sides" for most issues, because there's not sides to be taken; there's perspectives to understand and then process to form our own. There's no judgement, there's only processing information and deducing things from it.
And...like, I'm pretty good at understanding. I'm pretty good at seeing the other perspectives. I'm pretty good at filling in the gaps, seeing their viewpoints, etc. But not perfect. And the only way I can get better is by people sharing, so I can know. Communication is a skill which seems to have been by and large lost. There's breakdowns of conversations, rather than trying to work through the issues.
I know it seems unrealistic, but the stereotypical Disney Channel Original Movie (or similarly so for shows reaching a climax of episodes and especially seasons) have a cliche:
Character A lays out the flaws of Character B, but apologies for their own, understands them, and tries to make it up.
Character B apologies for their flaws, understands them, lays out Character A's flaws, but understands them, and wants to make it up.
This can go back and forth for a bit, but then...
...something magical happens:
...They reconcile through this. By acknowledging their faults and shortcomings, but sharing their perspective to not be walked all over, calling the other side out, but understanding them, the communication doesn't break down, and they hug, and then things are good again.
...It sounds unrealistic, doesn't it?
...But my question is; why?
Why can't we do exactly that?
Why isn't that exactly how we SHOULD do things?
Why should we need to cut ties with people, why should we need to end things, why should we need to distance ourselves?
Obviously, we can choose to, if reconciliation is truly impossible.
But why is there such a societal pressure where you NEED, you MUST, cut ties, rather than trying to heal?
Why CAN'T we resolve it like characters from a Disney Channel Original Movie?
Why can't we talk it out, with us establishing our perspective, but accepting the perspective of others? Why can't we admit we could be mistaken in some areas but stand firm in saying we aren't mistaken in others? If both sides do so and there aren't irreconcilable cases...
...Why can't we keep the people we love, as people we love?
I genuinely don't understand why the instinct is to cut out rather than to hold conversation.
I get cutting out people who were actively harmful and toxic. That needs no explanation. But why would you cut out a loved one for what amounts to something which wasn't that level of harmful and toxic? Why is EVERY hurt met with "distance, cut out"? Why is EVERY pain met with that level of withdrawal and giving up on keeping the person as a loved one? That's what I don't get. If the love is there...isn't it worth trying to keep?
So on my end...I try to keep the line of communication open. To understand, to try and get it.
But there's some things I can't get, and they challenge my perspective on people being good.
There are people who I want to believe are good, yet flawed, but...sometimes, those people take actions that I can't figure out how they could be taken by a good person.
Which brings me to the main thing I wanted to say.
And it's sharing, without namedropping, a dilemma I've had.
I've considered going public about what happened last year, from March 21st 2023 through July 2023 with some spillover that has followed us to this day. As a form of self-advocacy, to explain in public our perspective when almost nobody was willing to hear us out. (The only people who did were close friends.) Yet...another reason I've considered going public is because if I am wrong about the people being good...then they have red flags that are alarming, dangerous, and could continuously cause harm if not addressed.
I want to be clear. I am intent on moving on. My fiance and I want to move on, rebuild our lives, and not dwell on the past. We want to be happy. We want to enjoy life, be content. We are much loved by our friends, and I in particular have a lot of love to give. I want to spread the love to those who will allow me to, pursue my creative endeavors, and basically live life.
I don't want to go public anymore. Despite how I got a reading which said it would go really well, despite how I believe me going public would enlighten people, shed some light on things, make people reconsider, and essentially launch an entire inquiry into how things happened the way they did and how the lies about us spread as they did. I know good would come from sharing...but I don't want to, because I instead want to share on moving on, on protecting my peace, on healing, on becoming better, stronger, more empathetic, more learned, and more incredible and wonderful a human than ever before.
Yet it does bear mentioning.
There are some red flags I want to at least air out.
Most of the red flags are things I can think of innocent justifications for.
There's one or two that I cannot.
So I will share at least this much, without namedropping names. Those who read this blog will likely know the names, although nobody reads my blog. But if anyone were to, they would likely know who I am talking about.
Last year, my fiance was a mod for a streamer.
That streamer has a sizeable community.
Some of those community members are friends, and last year, I was invited by a community member to be part of their private friend server. It's on that community member's server that my fiance and I bonded, becoming closer friends.
On March 21st, an artist for that private friend server (who made emotes for it) as well as a couple of others had some complaints about the streamer we had all met and become friends through. The server owner created a subthread for it, which ended up having eight people involved, or thereabouts. The server owner, their partner, the artist who was also a VIP, myself, my fiance, a friend, and a couple of other long-time community members.
For five months, we had various criticisms of the streamer in question. And ultimately, the character of the streamer in question is important here.
Because there's two extremes.
On one extreme, the streamer in question is a good person, better than most, and we were forming an echo chamber focused on the flaws and amplifying them. We were fully in the wrong for basically everything we did, despite our criticisms having provably had some merit.
I...can't find myself believing this extreme, at least not in its entirety.
On the other extreme, we were whistleblowers. We were compiling a list of red flags that would have helped to expose just how problematic the streamer in question is. We were in denial about how problematic the streamer was, and in our good intentions when we were trying to help the streamer be better, we were looking from the wrong mindset. We all believed the streamer was a good person so we assumed the red flags were just small things that were issues, rather than the red flags they actually were.
We would, in having wanted to believe the streamer was a good yet flawed person, have had all the evidence but not known the importance of the evidence.
What's scary about this extreme is that my only reasons for not believing it are my own philosophy and wanting to trust in the judgements of others.
I want to believe the streamer in question is a good person, just flawed, even despite my fiance saying they aren't a good person. (I want to be clear my fiance does not see the streamer as this extreme. My fiance thinks the streamer is a lousy person, but also doesn't think they are actually monstrous, which is the extreme I laid out above.)
And...the streamer in question is very close to dozens upon dozens of people who have made these kinds of judgements before. All of them have cut out former toxic "friends" who were problematic, and have gotten very good at identifying warning signs. So, if all of them trust the streamer in question and think the streamer in question is good...then surely, they can't all be wrong, right?
So like...my own philosophy as well as wanting to trust in the collective ability of others tells me that the streamer in question would be closer to the former than the latter extreme.
...Yet...
...At the same time...
...These same collective people who judge the streamer in question as being good, are the same collective people who judged me and my fiance as being problematic enough to need to be removed from their spaces. If I want to believe myself not problematic, then I must by extent believe that collective judgement can be wrong. That it was wrong about me, and overly harsh on my fiance. If I am not problematic enough to warrant removal, then a collective judgement saying I am would be wrong, and therefore, if I believe myself to not be problematic (and on my better days I do believe myself to not be problematic), then I must believe,
"They got it wrong once...they could have gotten it wrong again."
There is also the fact a highly spiritually attuned person had their instincts scream at them something was horribly, horribly "off" about the streamer in question. Every time they attended that streamer's streams, something felt WRONG to them. They had a strong reaction to the streamer, without knowing WHY. And because of how spiritually attuned that person is, because of how good their instincts are, they are someone whose instincts influence me.
And that pushes me away from the former extreme and closer to the latter.
Then there are the red flags I can't ignore, I can't justify.
The streamer in question modded my fiance when my fiance was 22. They sent and offered my fiance gifts, on multiple occasions. They repeatedly called my fiance their friend, over and over again, until my fiance was browbeat into believing the streamer was their friend. Again, this was INITIATED BY THE STREAMER, not by my fiance. My fiance didn't say they were friends until after countless times of the streamer calling my fiance their friend.
The friendship was initiated by the streamer, and propagated by the streamer. Not inherently a red flag, except...
...The streamer spread that my fiance had a parasocial relationship with them. When it was the other way around, the streamer had a parasocial relationship with my fiance. The streamer spread the idea that my fiance has issues thinking streamers are their friend, when the friendship was initated BY THE STREAMER.
And...I can't explain why the streamer would lie about my fiance that way. I KNOW the streamer called my fiance their friend, on numerous times. I remember being on stream and on discord and seeing them repeatedly call my fiance their friend. And if I as a casual viewer remember, then other viewers would, too. The proof that the streamer REPEATEDLY called my fiance their friend exists...yet they lied, and spread the idea that my fiance made it up, that my fiance was delusional for thinking themself friends with the streamer in question.
That kind of red flag, I can't justify. And we have proof of this too. We have proof of the streamer calling my fiance their friend, of offering and actually giving things to my fiance. So why did they lie about it, and how come everyone believed the lie? That's a big gigantic red flag that I cannot find any good person justification for. Why would the streamer spread a lie which caused my fiance to be effectively removed from every space they cared about overnight? I know they did, I just can't think of a valid reason to.
Then there is something my fiance told me about a conversation.
One of the people to ban my fiance said that my fiance had blocked the streamer on discord, and ran to that person, essentially. But...the thing is...
...That couldn't have happened. The one platform the streamer is friends with my fiance is on discord. Even if my fiance no longer shared servers with the streamer in question (my fiance had left the discord when things were going down), being discord friends with the streamer in question would bypass that discord limitation and allow conversation. There's no way the streamer could have attempted to talk to my fiance and failed.
So, why did the streamer claim that my fiance had blocked them? It couldn't have been a mistake, or misunderstanding, because on discord by being friends you are given that ability to communicate and to this day the streamer is still friends with my fiance. At literally any time, they could send a message to my fiance, and vice-versa. Why did it get spread that my fiance had blocked the streamer? I can't justify that.
Then there is the contents which initiated this. My fiance got illegally recorded in a private discord call with someone they considered a friend. (And, yes, it was illegal, because discord counts as a communication line and my fiance was in a two-party state at the time which requires consent. They never gave consent to be recorded, and therefore the recording was illegal. Pointing this out is pointing out a fact. The person taking the recording broke the law. My fiance was within their legal right to have access to the recording and to take legal action against having been recorded. That is also a fact. Pointing that out is just pointing out facts. What matters most for the character of my fiance is that at the end of the day? They didn't pursue legal action...again, because WE WANT TO MOVE ON.)
My fiance never got access to that recording, but they very clearly remember what they said. They remember saying that if they were to publicly criticize the streamer on twitter, that they would be accused by people on twitter of being a racist. Which is true. Twitter is a cesspool, and valid criticism of terrible people is often said by toxic twitter residents to be bigotry.
Yet somehow, that got spread as my fiance having said the streamer is racist. Despite my fiance swearing they never said that. We don't have access to the recording so obviously we don't know what the recording said, but my fiance SWEARS they remember, crystal clearly, their EXACT wording. And I've heard them recite their exact wording multiple times. I could even write it here on the blog. They know what they said, or at least they genuinely believe they do, and what they swear they said doesn't match up with what the streamer claims they said.
I can KINDA justify this one. My fiance is human, and could be mistaken about what they said. What they said might have had a wording more ambiguous than they remember, and that more ambiguous wording could be interpreted as something along those lines, maybe. But that requires maybe after maybe, when my fiance is very very sure about what they said.
And then there was something that involved the friend server owner and their partner talking to me.
During the 5 months this was all going on, my fiance repeatedly said they were on the verge of unmodding, and just leaving. They said this no less than 4 times being "this is my 13th reason" and being seconds away from having hit the unmod button. The friend server owner and their partner talked my fiance into not pulling the trigger on unmodding, on remaining a mod, on staying. Repeatedly. Every time my fiance was on the verge of quitting, the friend server owner and their partner would convince my fiance that we needed them to stay.
...Yet after the streamer in question talked to the server owner and their partner, between July 23rd and July 25th, the server owner and their partner in their messages to me tried to convince me that my fiance (friend at the time) was jealous of another mod being administrator in the streamer's discord and wanted that position back.
The VERY PEOPLE RESPONSIBLE FOR MY FIANCE NOT HAVING UNMODDED, tried to tell ME, someone who was there for all of these times they told my fiance not to unmod, that my fiance wanted more power in the community. And to this day, I cannot explain how the very people who KNEW my fiance was on the verge of leaving the community (my fiance has left the community of streamers they were overly frustrated with before, and was repeatedly on the verge of doing so again), tried to claim to me the exact opposite, that my fiance was trying to entrench themself and gain extra power, when that's the exact opposite of FIVE MONTHS OF EXPERIENCE we had.
I'm not sure if the streamer in question gaslit the server owner and their partner that badly to where they believed it,
The server owner and their partner were trying to gaslight me,
Or if it was a mixture of both.
But regardless, there was gaslighting going on and it wasn't from me or my fiance. I KNOW my fiance was only talked out of outright leaving by the duo of the friend server owner and their partner. I KNOW they didn't want power back. So I know that is another lie. The only thing I don't know is who propagated it.
If the streamer gaslit the server owner and their partner that hard, then it would be their lying, manipulation, and it would be an extra red flag because it would mean they were so convincing at lying that the two people who MOST should know my fiance wasn't wanting what was alleged, somehow got convinced they wanted it.
If the friend server owner and their partner just tried to gaslight me, then that means they willingly and deliberately propagated a lie they knew was a lie, just to try and protect their own interests and try and maintain their positions.
I don't know which is worse, but either way, one of them was gaslighting regardless. One of them tried manipulation regardless. And both are terrible positions that I cannot for the life of me find a justification for.
And...it's because of that, that I am beginning to be more in line with my fiance's view. My fiance doesn't think of the streamer as being the monstrous extreme I laid out above, but thinks the streamer is a terrible person, and...
...As much as I want to believe in the people being good...
...I can't find a way to justify the lying, gaslighting, and manipulation which left my fiance suicidal enough where they wrote out a note and were literally going to kill themself, with me as the only thing to save them.
In tandem with us having spotted red flags, which while they can have innocent justifications can also be...well, RED FLAGS...
...And me trusting that spiritually attuned person...
...I just...can't find myself believing in the better nature of the streamer.
They'd be at best in the middle, and closer to the monster extreme I mentioned.
And...that is why I know going public would do a lot of good. We could prove most of this. We could self-advocate to defend ourselves from the lies spread about us. We could potentially expose a monster who those with better resources could further investigate into.
...And yet...at the same time...I don't want to. I want the best success to be moving on without having needed to, essentially. The people who didn't let me and my fiance self-advocate were not worth investing time in because if they weren't willing to hear us out and if the result of them not having heard us out was a monster getting away with horrible things...then they aren't people I want to invite back into my life even if they ended up believing me.
I want to build my life, and let those that cut me out of theirs deal with the consequences down the line, essentially.
I want to live my life, move on, heal, and keep the friends who wanted to hear us out.
So, at the end of the day...it doesn't matter much.
I've aired this out. My belief, my love, my perspective, some knowledge bombs, etc. i've kept a lot generic including not disclosing the red flags we uncovered. But I just want it put on the record. If the streamer is ever canceled for being a problematic POS...we knew. We knew back in 2023. We were in denial because we wanted to believe in their goodness, but we KNEW. And my fiance was driven to nearly kill themself for the crime of having known, and been a whistleblower. But, again, that's only if the monster extreme is closer to reality.
I'll just leave this out there for posterity; time truly will tell. Either we were wrong, or we were right. If we were wrong, moving on is for the best. If we were right, it will come out with time, and the questions about why nobody listened to us back then will be asked when it finally does come to light.
Meanwhile, I will continue to spread joy and positivity and become a Breeacon of light, healing, helping, loving.
Thank you for listening.