From Late 2023, 2024 and Early 2025, I went through a prolonged pattern of harassment, instability, and broken trust in a certain online community. It started in November 2023 after a fight with some former friend escalated through miscommunication and my reactions to comments that hurt my feelings. Even though I wasn’t widely hated at this time, the situation had already made me more emotionally sensitive and reactive.
Things got worse in December 2023, when some of the people started mocking me, attacking my personality, and targeting me for how I interact with my female friends. This harassment continued to build on December 2023 and March 2024. These “people” insulted my nationality, ethnicity, social habits, and general behavior and also treated me as if I was their favorite punch bag and target for ridicule.

In February 2024, I started a friendship with someone for whom I truly cared and supported. For few days but also weeks, we hit it off quickly and spoke almost every day. By the end of March 2024, however, people who disliked me began influencing her against me. This turned into distrust and misinterpretation of my messages. Between April 2st and 5th 2024, it completely fell apart. She and her friends went from being sweet to leaving hostile, nasty comments. They spread false accusations, mocked me publicly, and also distorted my vulnerability into “guilt-tripping,” even taking it so far as humiliation, body-shaming on April 6th, and going as far as extreme accusations that had absolutely nothing to do with reality. The sudden shift-from empathy to aggression within days-was deeply destabilizing. After April 2024, the community’s attitude toward me remained hostile. Some were on my side, but large groups continued attacking or mocking me, making me leave the community in April 10th 2024, finally giving me solitude. In July of 2024, there was once again support for me, but the overall tension did not disappear. In August 2024, another negativity hit by my enemies who damaged me a lot. From September 2024 to early February 2025, it was a bit quieter, but the environment was still intense, and my trust has been already destroyed.

During January–February 2025, the first former friend reconnected me aggressively after I had reported one of her abusive messages, thinking it was someone else but it was her all the time, reopening the old conflict. And another wave of mass betrayal and negativity happened in Late February and Early March 2025, due to my bio, another form of misinterpretation, making me leave the community for the second time as my last resort.

Also, on February 18th 2025, I met another person who became my second close friend. That friendship lasted from February until June 2025, and for a while it felt stable and meaningful and I still did express affection and talked a lot. However, after she went through her own rejection in late May 2025, she became distant, not malicious, just emotionally withdrawn. On June 8–9, 2025, she ended the friendship completely, saying we didn’t share the same perspective and when I tried to tell her what’s going on and question her why does she want that, she didn’t want to explain why and when I tried to give her space, she said that we will “never talk again.” The breakup was quiet, but final, and it happened at a moment when I still relied on her emotionally. After that, it made me become very emotional, making me want to delete the chat history, and I did as an result of emotional outburst due to being hurt.

By the end of this period, I had experienced repeated emotional and psychological abuse, deception, manipulation, verbal aggression and immediate losses of trust. These events reduced my willingness to express myself publicly or trust people easily. I am very aware that I made mistakes and didn’t always handle situations with emotional intelligence, yet much of the damage came from exaggerations, targeted harassment, and people taking advantage of my vulnerability rather than addressing issues directly. Leaving that community was the only realistic way for me to protect myself and stop the ongoing cycle of conflict.

Nowadays, the things that happened in a toxic online community in both YouTube and Discord still bother me nowadays. My ability to feel safe around people has been ruined after 1.3 years (from November 2023 to March 2025 when I was 15 and 16) of harassment, false accusations, and broken trust. I feel more isolated now because I don’t let people get close to me as easily, and my affection and compassion aren’t as accessible as they used to be. It’s not that I don’t care at all or that I am cold-hearted and cruel; it’s just that I’ve been hurt and emotionally abused so many times and put under so much stress that I’m emotionally numb and cautious. I’m still working on regaining my confidence and stability, but I’m doing it at my own pace. I prefer calm and respectful interactions, not intrusive ones…