Cyber-bullying

I had been bullied before (it was playground-type bullying) but once i joined this fandom on Twitter, they took bullying to a higher level. I joined the fandom during the summer, I was honestly just looking for something to pass the time. Everyone was very welcoming and I started to make friends, or at least I thought they were my friends. There were 4 people, lets call them Jackson, Sandy, Mitchell and Yanda. I thought were my best friends. I told them everything because they made me feel safe and loved to some extent. I would’ve done anything and everything for them. After being close friends with them for about 4-5 months, I had found out that they started doing things without me (Skype calls, group chats etc), which doesn’t seem like much but it did to me, considering I was the only person they were excluding. I asked Yanda, the one that introduced me to them (I was closer with her than any of the other people) what was going on. She responded, saying that they just didn’t want to bother me. Which I thought was a little odd. These people weren’t the best of people. I knew that they bullied other people in the fandom, which I knew was wrong from the beginning but I just wanted some friends so I didn’t let it get to me. Anyway, after Yanda told me they just didn’t want to bother me, I just let it slide but I kept my distance for a while.

During that time, I met someone, lets call her Linda, who was also in the fandom and we became very close. She started introducing me to her friends and they were all really fun and welcoming. I became very close to these people until Jackson, Sandy, Mitchell and Yanda found out. When they found out, they insisted that I should stop talking to them because they were “weird”. So me being the person I am, I started to distance myself from those really nice people. Once I did so, I re-joined the cliche (or the cool people of the fandom) aka, Jackson, Sandy, Mitchell and Yanda. They soon started to make fun of the people I used to be friends with and it made me really uncomfortable but I just didn’t say anything. Over the course of 2 weeks, Jackson, Sandy, Mitchell and Yanda made private Twitter accounts to talk badly about people and once I found out, I requested to follow. I found it kind of odd that they didn’t tell me about these accounts but I decided to over look it. It took them all a while to accept my request, but once they did, I saw that they had deleted some tweets. I then, confronted them about it and they became very rude to me.

After that, they stopped talking to me and blocked me on their private accounts. I of course, was hurt. They ignored me for about 4 weeks and during that time, I started talking to those really nice and welcoming people again. Apparently, Sandy accidentally accepted one of my new friends’ (lets call him Adam) request on their private account and Adam saw that they were saying horrible things about me behind my back (and none of it was true). Once Adam told me, I got really upset and wanted to talk about it with the people who were talking badly about me. Yet, when I tried to do that, they ignored me and called me desperate. Right after that, they started talking about me on their main (public) accounts that I followed so they clearly wanted me to see what they were saying. I started to respond to their tweets, asking them what they were talking about and things just got worse. Jackson, Sandy, Mitchell and Yanda started turning people against me and started using things that I told them against me. I felt like everyone hated me and I couldn’t talk to anyone, let alone trust anyone. I went away for a while to get some fresh air and when I came back, Adam told me they were saying stuff about me. Some of the things were “She’s a literal sociopath and not a very good person. Stay away from her!!!!” “She was a rat and started f*** loads of drama. She’s disgusting.” “She’s so problematic. What a b****.” “She’s a little cuckoo. Don’t ever come into contact with her.”. I was so confused on how they even came up with that stuff because I am none of those things & I did none of those things. I was nothing but nice to them.

After all of that, I told everyone that I was deactivating because I have better things to do & it was a very toxic environment. I then left, knowing that they were still going to talk about me. Once my account was deactivated for good, they took my username and were saying stuff like “Ding, Dong the witch is gone” etc. I got on with my life and made new friends in real life, people I knew I could trust. Flash forward 4 months, I decided to make a personal (not fan based) Twitter account to keep up with my friends. Somehow, the people from the fandom I was in found me. I wanted nothing to do with them but yet they were saying stuff like “what happened to never coming back? can we go back to that please?” and “the living dead rat!!”. They eventually stopped talking about me (it took 2 months) and now I’m so much happier. I still don’t fully understand why they did all of that stuff to me, and it’s not my place to, but I apparently wasn’t the only person they had done this to. Just know that you’re not alone and it honestly gets better. Just try and stand up to them or distance yourself from them, and know that what they are saying about you is no where near true.