aita-anon-info

[aita-anon-info]

oh actually a bit of an update(?) bc i remembered that friends and i were talking about all of this as it happened in a different server, so i went back and looked at our convos to jog my memory:

the argument happened march 4th/5th. so, 3-4 days after my grandmother passed away on the 1st.

friends and i were confused about why P's group was so adamantly against blacklisting height discussions, and all of us agreed comparing it to fatphobia was out of line - height dysphoria sucks, but fatphobia is a systemic issue.

also, we felt like the entire argument was just a misunderstanding. P & co. seemed to think that L was saying they didn't like short characters, which they never said. our side viewed it as just discussing height, while P's side saw it as putting people down for being short, which was never our intention and we apologized for it coming across that way.

friends and i all left the server of our own accord a few days after that because no one was talking there anymore.

about a month after that, i rejoined the server. D and i talked at that time and he said he was glad to see me back and had missed me. we went back to being friends like we'd been before

a few weeks after THAT, i got kicked from the server with no warning and woke up to a panicked dm from a friend saying D was deleting the server in 24 hours. i of course panicked, because i had many friends in the server i hadn't gotten a chance to speak to before i was kicked. i was reinvited to the server (not by D), friend requested everyone, and then was promptly banned by D as soon as i was done

then messaged D asking wtf was going on. this (now over a month and a half after the argument!) is when he said i was transphobic, and there were "other complaints from server members" about me. asked for clarification or context, received none. told him i was upset but wasn't going to block him so that if things changed he could still contact me.

reconvened with friends from server. those who were close to D before all of this confirmed that he was acting really weird/out of character and we agreed that he seemed to be trying to push people away for reasons we weren't sure of.

my actual memories of march and april are really hazy for probably obvious reasons, so i figured i'd go look for the actual convos i was having when this happened, with timestamps and stuff. this should be a more accurate timeline for what happened.

AITA for abandoning my friend?

Around the beginning of this year, I joined a Discord server that was run by one person, D. D's partner(?), P, was also in the server. It very quickly became apparent to me that P did not like me, despite my attempts to be friendly, and at one point P even left the server for reasons I suspect had something to do with me. Despite this, D and I quickly became friends, and I genuinely enjoyed talking to him and spending time with him. I assumed it was fine even if P didn't like me, because I wasn't interested in D romantically and wasn't trying to cause problems for them; I just liked hanging out with D as a friend.

Things were fine for a few months, but there ended up being a minor argument in the server that spiraled a bit out of control, with most people in the server ending up split between supporting me and my friends, or P and his friends. I advised D to close the channel to stop the argument, and apologized to him in private once it was over, asked if there was anything I could do to help, etc. I still don't think I was in the wrong in this argument, but it was really over such a minor thing that I was trying to just deescalate and move on.

For about a week or so, everything was fine, but then D suddenly kicked me from the server without warning, and when I messaged him to ask what happened, he told me that what I'd said during the argument (now a week prior) was transphobic and he didn't want to be friends with a transphobe. I asked for an explanation of what I'd said that was transphobic, but he didn't answer, and kept insisting we couldn't be friends. So, I told him that I'd back off and leave him alone for now, but that I'd still be here if he changed his mind some day.

I already suspected by that point that P had something to do with him suddenly changing his mind, and a mutual friend, K, later confirmed that they also suspected P was being toxic and controlling based on their conversations with D. D had already cut me off by this point, so there wasn't much I could do; I just told K the same thing, that I still cared about D and wanted the best for him, but I wasn't going to reach out.

Fast forward a few months. After a death in the family and a subsequent struggle with grief and depression, I wasn't doing so great anymore. It was at this point that D reappeared, messaging my Tumblr to tell me, essentially, that he was still alive but not doing well, that he was sorry for how he'd treated me before, and that we still couldn't be friends, because P didn't like me. I'd told him before that I would still be his friend if he wanted me to, but now he wanted me to listen to him talk about what had gone wrong in his life when he was just going to vanish again after. I told him that I would happily listen and support him as a friend, but that if we're not friends and he's not going to stick around, then I don't have the energy to help him and also take care of myself. So, he left again, and I haven't heard from him since.

I've been worried about him since we last talked; I know that he's depressed, and I know what it's like to deal with an abusive partner, as I've had a few of them in the past. I want to be able to help him, but I don't know if he'll let me, and I know that if we have a major falling out again like we did before, it'll be a lot harder for me to recover now. AITA for putting myself first?

What are these acronyms?

[aita-anon-info]

a lot of people were asking the context of the argument. i didn't include it bc it wasn't really relevant to what i was asking about and it was already a pretty long ask, so i didn't want to make it a bunch longer, but if y'all are interested then?

essentially, another friend of mine in the server (we'll call them L) was talking about a fictional character that they like/find attractive. they made an offhanded comment about how "it'd be nice if he was taller" [in comparison to a character they ship him with], but overall were just talking abt how much they like him as a character.

i didn't know anything about the character, but we ended up talking about height differences, and i mentioned how my (transmasc) boyfriend is very short. he is fine with his height and encourages me and others to make short jokes about him, because he finds them funny. i'll be honest that i don't remember exactly what i said here, but i later showed my bf screenshots of the convo and he said i hadn't said anything he was upset by.

this is when other members of the server came in, most notably one of P's close friends as well as P's cousin. it started with a very aggressive request for us to stop talking about height because we were making people uncomfortable. L and i were both fine with stopping, but we asked which part of our conversation had been the issue so we could avoid it in the future. this spiraled into a huge argument where P & co. were saying that L was height shaming this fictional character (who does not have emotions, as he is not real) and that i was height shaming my boyfriend (who found everything i said funny). they likened having a preference on a fictional character's height to irl fat shaming/promoting eating disorders and called both L and i "heightist" for having this conversation. i at one point gently suggested that height could be added to the server blacklist if it was a triggering topic, and P's cousin snapped at me that it's not triggering, it's completely inappropriate, and it's not on the blacklist for the same reason things like racism and homophobia aren't on the blacklist - because everyone should "just know" that some topics aren't okay. important to note - not once was transphobia brought up during this argument. it was only a week or so later that D suddenly decided i had been transphobic.

this is around the point when i realized that everyone was just getting upset and no one would be able to talk productively at this point, so i asked D to shut down the channel to end the argument, which he did. i apologized to him privately for not just backing off sooner (although i'm really not sure i would've been given that chance). after everyone had calmed down, D asked for my advice on ways to prevent those kinds of arguments in the future, and we talked about a few potential options to keep things calmer.

then, as i said in the original ask, everything went back to normal for about a week before D suddenly kicked me out, and when i asked why, he said that i had been transphobic during the argument. i asked him to tell me what i had said that was transphobic, so that i could learn from it and do better, but he didn't give any examples. he just told me that he "couldn't be friends with a transphobe" and left it at that.

i'll admit that the whole height debate was a bit of a sensitive subject in a server full of mostly transmasc folk, and i don't really know if i was in the right or not. but if i was wrong, i was willing to try to fix it/make up for it, and i wasn't given that chance. i also was the only one kicked from the server - not L or anyone else that argued on our side. no one else was accused of being transphobic. so again, while the argument was a complete mess and i was willing to accept responsibility if need be, it really felt more like i was being singled out and pushed away for an unrelated reason.

EDIT to add: i also don't blame D for the transphobic thing and i didn't even when it first happened. i was upset, but even then i could tell that this wasn't just about the argument. a lot of people are bashing D in the notes, but i've never been angry with him. i'm worried, more than anything. i just don't know how to help him, or if i even can, with where i'm at mentally.

this is really long so idk if you want to reblog this @am-i-the-asshole-official ??? but idk if anyone would check the reblogs otherwise so?? up to you

AITA for abandoning my friend?

Around the beginning of this year, I joined a Discord server that was run by one person, D. D's partner(?), P, was also in the server. It very quickly became apparent to me that P did not like me, despite my attempts to be friendly, and at one point P even left the server for reasons I suspect had something to do with me. Despite this, D and I quickly became friends, and I genuinely enjoyed talking to him and spending time with him. I assumed it was fine even if P didn't like me, because I wasn't interested in D romantically and wasn't trying to cause problems for them; I just liked hanging out with D as a friend.

Things were fine for a few months, but there ended up being a minor argument in the server that spiraled a bit out of control, with most people in the server ending up split between supporting me and my friends, or P and his friends. I advised D to close the channel to stop the argument, and apologized to him in private once it was over, asked if there was anything I could do to help, etc. I still don't think I was in the wrong in this argument, but it was really over such a minor thing that I was trying to just deescalate and move on.

For about a week or so, everything was fine, but then D suddenly kicked me from the server without warning, and when I messaged him to ask what happened, he told me that what I'd said during the argument (now a week prior) was transphobic and he didn't want to be friends with a transphobe. I asked for an explanation of what I'd said that was transphobic, but he didn't answer, and kept insisting we couldn't be friends. So, I told him that I'd back off and leave him alone for now, but that I'd still be here if he changed his mind some day.

I already suspected by that point that P had something to do with him suddenly changing his mind, and a mutual friend, K, later confirmed that they also suspected P was being toxic and controlling based on their conversations with D. D had already cut me off by this point, so there wasn't much I could do; I just told K the same thing, that I still cared about D and wanted the best for him, but I wasn't going to reach out.

Fast forward a few months. After a death in the family and a subsequent struggle with grief and depression, I wasn't doing so great anymore. It was at this point that D reappeared, messaging my Tumblr to tell me, essentially, that he was still alive but not doing well, that he was sorry for how he'd treated me before, and that we still couldn't be friends, because P didn't like me. I'd told him before that I would still be his friend if he wanted me to, but now he wanted me to listen to him talk about what had gone wrong in his life when he was just going to vanish again after. I told him that I would happily listen and support him as a friend, but that if we're not friends and he's not going to stick around, then I don't have the energy to help him and also take care of myself. So, he left again, and I haven't heard from him since.

I've been worried about him since we last talked; I know that he's depressed, and I know what it's like to deal with an abusive partner, as I've had a few of them in the past. I want to be able to help him, but I don't know if he'll let me, and I know that if we have a major falling out again like we did before, it'll be a lot harder for me to recover now. AITA for putting myself first?

What are these acronyms?