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DO NOT KILL YOURSELF, SAID THE BLUE BIRD
🕑 Added 2021-08-24 18:40:22 +0000 UTC
So, I’ve logged in about a month after the whole twitter "cancellation" happened.
I got a “suicide check in” from twitter, so firstly I just wanted to let everyone know that I haven’t killed myself.
I went completely dark because as I said before I left, I wanted to take a good look at myself and how I ended up in this situation.
Now that things have settled down, and I’m in a much clearer state of mind, I’d like to address a timeline to explain exactly why I reacted the way I did. This is entirely a stream of consciousness, no editing or anything- so please excuse any repetition.
Why I don’t have discord screenshots
Firstly, Inebrias/PeachNatto/@NatNaturalized and I had a conversation about my longing for more female friends. While I wasn’t particularly invested in the conversation, it seems that he took it extremely personally. He was being typically whiny and annoying which, when he’s always gotten like that I’ve always stepped away until I feel like dealing with him again.
The reason I’m bringing this up is because “stepping away” has always been closing the discord DM. I’ve always done it. If someone is being annoying or I need to concentrate on something else or another DM, I close the conversation. Then I reopen the conversation when I feel like I’m ready to deal with someone fairly.
The difference this time is that he removed me from discord. So the result is the following:
- I closed the discord conversation, because I was working and didn’t feel like dealing with one of his whiny tantrums
- I walked away for about 40 minutes
- When I came back, he had unadded me from discord and unfollowed me on twitter
- Because I closed the conversation, I had no access to our DMs
Three weeks later he contacted me with the following through twitter DMs:
I told him I didn't want to be his friend anymore because he kept fetishizing me after I asked him to stop, and I moved on.
My experiences with Inebrias/PeachNatto/NatNaturalized
A lot of people seem to have the misunderstanding that Inebrias was just some random fan that I harassed with racist commentary. That he was a well intentioned left leaning simp that just nodded along while I spouted racist ideology.
To me, it’s obvious that that’s not the case. My misstep was forgetting that everyone else doesn’t have the insight into him that I do.
Inebrias and I were extremely close friends. I trusted him a lot. I overlooked his creepy behavior because a lot of the time he wasn’t a creep. A lot of the time he was funny, charming, or gave me insight into things I hadn’t considered.
But at the end of the day, no matter his positives, that nagging sick feeling in the back of my mind never went away.
I did trust him, though. And I talked to him frankly about things I couldn’t talk to anyone else about. I talked to him frankly about race, about how I was treated during my childhood, about the sort of gang violence I had grown up around, about how much I hated the city…
I am not right-leaning. The fact that the Trump voter gun enthusiast managed to make me look right leaning and managed to make himself look left leaning is very funny- well, it’s funny now, anyways. At the time of me being dogpiled it was 2 AM and I felt like I was in bizarro world. But it’s funny now.
There’s a reason that those screenshots had only my side of the conversation, after all.
He’d show me carefully picked screenshots of black people’s tweets on twitter and try to get a reaction out of me. Honestly a lot of them came across as annoying, and I said as much. Then we’d get into one of our conversations about race which were always interesting even when we had conflicting opinions- being latino/puerto rican, I was always more understanding of the struggles of black people (but screencaps of me being a reasonable person wouldn’t be callout bait, huh?).
When the callout happened, it was 2 AM my time. I was jolted out of sleep by one of my online acquaintances calling me a horrible racist person.
This is the point where I misstepped.
I didn’t actually read the callout or look at the evidence.
My knee jerk assumption was that Inebrias had thrown us both into the fire and outed both sides of our conversations. I hadn’t realized that he had gone full coward and only shown my side of the conversation. I thought he had included the context in a sort of “Ha! She’s just as bad as I am, see??”
I had given Inebrias too much credit.
For someone who hated “cancel culture” and unfair arguments and faulty evidence against the right, he had gone and done the same himself.
And the worst part is that no one questioned the evidence he had given them.
Like that shock collar screenshot born from a zootopia discussion? Damn. What an asshole.
If even a single person behind the callout twitter had thought to talk to me before subjecting me to twitter court, they would have seen that it wasn’t as black and white as Inebrias’ carefully screencapped receipts would have you believe.
But instead they were just complicit in some incel revenge scheme.
The saddest thing for me is that I wasn’t even surprised. I already knew they’d do something like this the minute they could. It didn’t matter if it was an accurate callout, all that mattered was getting rid of who they perceived to be a great enemy. Like me having 35k followers (now 10k or something, I’m sure, I haven't looked) made me some sort of state power to be toppled in their underdog fantasies.
These were thoughts that I always had in the back of my mind, and they were thoughts that I desperately wanted to have proven wrong. It’s why I decided to put my trust into an online acquaintance despite every bone in my body telling me that they were not trustworthy.
I told them anyway, though. I told them things about the way Inebrias had treated me. Eventually I wanted to tell them about all the creepy things he had done, too.
Because ultimately I was embarrassed about how thoroughly I had been fooled by him. How much I had overlooked out of pity or friendship I still don’t know. I wanted this person to know how Inebrias manipulates and corrodes, how he holds blackmail over you without ever saying it (but it’s there, and you know it’s there, and he knows it’s there).
The thing about Inebrias is that he’s constantly prying information from you in every conversation you have, without your consent, and sometimes without you realizing what exactly he’s doing. He always wants more information, it’s never enough, and he doesn’t care about your boundaries. All that matters to him is prying, poking, pushing, questioning, and of course whining and trying to emotionally blackmail you into giving him what he wants.
Here’s are some examples:
- I told him a casual story about me as a child calling my parent a “carburetor” because of the name of the store they worked at. Inebrias then looked up places in my home city with “carburetor” in the name and tried to narrow down where my parent worked. This was the first time I realized what he was doing, and when it dawned on me I had this sudden feeling of dread in my stomach. I talked to a friend about this at the time and they waved it off, so I did my best to shrug it off, too.
- I talked about a sibling's job. Inebrias asked me if the sibling was married. I said no. He then pulled up a registry with my sibling’s full name and profession. That feeling of dread returned, tenfold, and this is about when I subconsciously realized that something was wrong. But I shrugged it off.
- He was obsessed with knowing what town I lived in. He incorrectly guessed a town and I went along with it, never saying yes or no. He’d pull up information about the town, casually. It wasn’t enough to know the town, either- he’d ask what county I lived in to narrow it down even further.
- He constantly prodded me about my job, despite me telling him I didn’t like talking about it. This was an excuse on my part because I didn’t trust him to know what my job was, in any form. But he never stopped asking.
- When he realized that he was wrong about what town I lived in, he became whiny and emotionally manipulative. Hey, Inebrias, remember when you said “I will legitimately never forgive you for trusting [friend] with your address but not me.” ? Because I do, you creepy fuck!
This is the kind of behavior I was trying to warn my acquaintances about. I had no intention of “calling him out,” in the first place. I had intended to talk to two acquaintances about how he treated me and his habit of pushing his fetishes on me and that was it. To many of you, this won’t seem that bad. To many of you, this will seem like me overblowing it.
But you have to understand that I caught on to him very early on, and I at least partially listened to my instincts. If I had listened to my instincts entirely, I would’ve never added him to discord when his username “Inebrias” turned up nothing in my search (turns out he’s pulled this blackmail stunt on multiple people). But I listened to my instincts enough to never trust him with anything concerning my real world location.
If you were more open about where you work, or what town or city you live in, or where you go to school… he knows a lot more about you than you’ve ever told him. I know this because he’s shown me information he’s pried out of others. I know about your suicidal siblings, your self consciousness about your weight, your job, your parents, your classes, your fetishes...
All of this is information I never wanted to know. But he showed it to me anyway.
All of this is information I’ve done my best to forget. But Inebrias squirrels this information away, greedily, and keeps prying for more.
There were many times where his whining and guilt tripping about me not telling him where I lived nearly worked. There were many times where I typed…
“You know what? Fine. This is my address.”
And every single time… I stopped.
I stared at that blinking bar next to the message.
And I listened to myself. I listened to what I was feeling.
What I felt is hard to explain. I’m feeling that emotion right now as I recall that quiet period. Staring at that message, waiting to be sent.
“You know what? Fine. This is my address.”
That sinking feeling in my stomach. The way it crawls up past your lungs and into your throat. Heavy and cold.
Why am I so scared? I asked myself.
I’ve never told Inebrias my address, or my town. But I wouldn’t be particularly surprised if he figured it out, anyway. I stopped voice chatting with him because I became paranoid that I’d let an innocuous statement slip (like a store being nearby) and give him more information in which to dig his claws in and get closer, more accurate.
From the very first time he tried to figure out where my parent worked, I became plagued with nightmares about him figuring out my address. I’d wake up in a panic and have to remind myself that everything is fine, there’s nothing wrong, there’s nothing to be scared of.
And for the most part, I could shrug it off. After all, he was only creepy some of the time.
It’s not like I could get rid of him, either. He had all of those frank, problematic conversations he could post at any time, after all.
That’s another thing that he does, by the way. For me, I was always happy to just ignore people when they’re being annoying, mute them on twitter if they’re being obnoxious, etc etc.
But Inebrias will troll through someone’s twitter, their twitter likes, their discord server, anything that makes them look unlikeable or annoying and then barrage you with screenshots. Then, when you react or give your opinion… whoops! Now he has ammo that he can use if you decide to turn on him.
He especially did this with people I blandly considered to be friends. If I defended them, or didn’t agree with his assertions about them, well now I was stuck in a tantrum of a conversation I didn’t even care about.
I couldn’t even talk to anyone online about what exactly I was going through, because the minute I showed interest in befriending someone Inebrias wasn’t already friends with, he’d dash over and shower them with money, commissions, and attention to get them in his pocket.
I was so happy, when I could finally talk to that acquaintance about what Inebrias had put me through. I told them about how he constantly fetishized me, how he constantly talked about being tiny in my garden and getting murdered by me… how he blatantly ignored me when I told him to stop.
I told them about how he confessed his love for me, and how miserable that experience was. How he prodded and pushed and tried to get me to like him romantically (despite him being in a relationship). How he’d try and guilt trip me for not being comfortable discussing sexual things with him....
I was so stupid. Why I didn’t immediately unadd him and get the fuck away from such an obviously creepy person… I don’t know. He just felt so, so bad, you know? It was all my fault for being such a special person, you know? I had to take responsibility for making him feel so bad, you know?
Anyway, that acquaintance turned around and used Inebrias’ one sided evidence to have me dogpiled on twitter, so if nothing else this has been a humbling experience in learning how to pick your friends better.
All of this ultimately leads into my experiences with this fandom and how I’ve never felt like I belonged.
I’ve never met a single person in this fandom I could call an actual friend. The only person that I’ve ever bonded with constantly peppered our conversations with comments about wanting to lick paws and wanting to be tiny (and then wanting to be stepped on, cut in half, eaten by me, etc). And you know, had extreme stalkerish tendencies.
And at the risk of sounding like I’m coping, in a lot of ways I’m glad that I was “cancelled.“
That art server was my last ditch effort to feel something, anything, about this fandom that I desperately wanted to be something that it’s not. And to be honest, I knew it was a horrible mistake the minute that I made it.
At first I felt bad about people I had befriended thinking I was a horrible person. But then as I sat there, I realized that I didn’t even, and hadn’t ever, liked them. That if I met them in real life I’d avoid them like the plague, and vice versa.
I’d been pretending to be a “good and nice” person for so long, it was no wonder that only people I didn’t even like would want to be my friend. It was just easier to pretend to be "good and nice" than it was to act like myself. Honestly, I don’t even know what “myself” is (besides being a huge asshole).
And the same thing translates over to my content on twitter.
I’ve never been happy with the following I had on twitter. Taking a break from it made me realize exactly how unhappy I really was. I never wanted to be as popular as I ended up being. I still don’t even know why my mediocre doodles became popular in the first place.
I just wanted to have fun. But I was never really having fun either.
I’ve been horsing around creatively online since I was 13 or so in various fandoms and various mediums. And yet I’ve never actually finished any creative project. I’ve never had a project that I could pour my whole heart into and show that, yes, I could actually finish something.
Being on twitter… posting my art for the short term gratification of likes and retweets… It was just so easy to post something low effort and shallow, get the dopamine and do nothing else. Instead of working on what I actually wanted to do and what I was actually passionate about, I was just doing whatever I knew would get me the highest numbers.
And I was deeply frustrated by this.
Is it any wonder that my content had only attracted fans that meant nothing to me? Is it any wonder that when I scrolled through my content on twitter I felt nothing?
When I was “cancelled”, I didn’t bemoan losing all of my adoring fans, or all of my internet friends. The thing that I grieved most is that I never even started the project that I could be proud of. I grieved that I never did anything much at all.
It was a limbo of doing nothing and feeling nothing.
Now I’m in this situation where lots of people want to see me fail- a lot of it justified, some of it not. And after thinking about it, and thinking about the way I absolutely blundered representing myself, that’s a consequence of my actions I’m willing to live with.
I had spent my whole online “career” being as bland and as nice as I could, just so I wouldn’t give people a reason to dislike me. Doing this had succeeded only in putting me on a pedestal I never asked for and making me resentful. Doing this had only made me vulnerable to manipulative people.
I took a hard look at myself, and realized that I couldn’t see anything much at all. Just a vague approximation of a human being.
What does the future hold?
At the moment I’m learning new things. Without the distraction of online I’ve made a lot of progress on my passion project, learning new skills that will allow me to finally share it with the world.
I'm also getting therapy to get a better understanding of my shortcomings as a person. Turns out seeing someone get shot to death as a child fucks you up!
I haven’t looked at twitter since I apologized. I know I have tweets/art I need to delete and people I need to unfollow/ other things I need to follow through with, loose ends to tie. I just got so many death and rape threats that I can’t bear to look at it right now. I think I got so many threats that twitter started auto reporting people for harassment in my DMs, even if they weren’t actually harassing me.
I most definitely will not be returning to twitter. At most I’ll post a link to my project so that I’m not accused of trying to pull a fast one, and that’s it.
I haven't decided if I'll post updates on this patreon or not. But I will keep you updated on what I decide. Thank you everyone who supported me despite everything.
Misc
- No, I haven’t made a new account with a new fox character on twitter. Stop harassing people because they drew a generic female fox furry.
- There are screenshots of Inebrias saying the n word in a discord chat floating around. He did say the n word in our chat once but deleted it really fast.
- I don’t actually hate black people, or white people, or men. It feels so weird to have to even say that, but I guess that’s what I get for generalized, racist statements.
- In response to the "popeyes" screencaps. That was from me literally heading back to my home city, going to a walk in popeyes and getting harassed for being latino lmao. Of course Inebrias wouldn't show the rest of the screencap showing me talking about how upset I was and how I didn't want to talk about it. HOWEVER, it was still wrong of me to say.
Comments
Bee Kitsune
I'm part of the group of people that were pretty fucking pissed when it was revealed that you posted racist and transphobic stuff, I'll be honest. you haven't redeemed yourself for me, but you've taken a step in the right direction. your reputation with me is officially neutral. I'm sure I'm not alone there. it'll be a long road to improvement, but after reading this, it's clear that you're making an effort, and that's more than I can say about various people who have been in similar situations. I don't think it helps to throw the stalker under the bus, though it does sound like what he did and said was wrong. it doesn't make your actions any less severe. just, try to improve as a person, please.
Esuna
I'm the owner of a fan server on discord for a semi popular furry streamer. We've mailed each other things and dmed each other in the past, and out of everyone in her community, I truly do consider her to be a friend. I've never outright stated what my personal politics are because of how terrified I am of her reacting out of emotion, rather than thought, at the prospect of me having a difference of opinion. Your posts gave me the courage to decide on opening up to her. Even if she decides to shun me from her community completely, I know how steep the toll can be with keeping friends that will immediately condemn you for daring to say something they don't agree with. I refuse to learn this lesson twice, and I hope the peace that you have found will continue to last.
