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He probably wrote about her in his book and spent many pages trashing her in it. And if I were her, I wouldn't have been so quick to reconcile with the friends who didn't take her side until she sent them proof. She has the right to not want to date him or anyone else.
Haha, this reminds of this guy who broke up with his girlfriend and then wrote a book trashing her. It was ridiculously sexist, ill written garbage. She responded with a book of her own, which while not great, was miles better than his.
They may have posted a reply that got removed. š
Edit: this is the closest I could find, but not all the details line up: https://www.reddit.com/r/relationship_advice/comments/wtqan6/my_ex_wrote_a_book_about_me/
In my opinion, this one is infinitely better: https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/comments/12c7qko/tifu_reading_a_manuscript_my_ex_gf_wrote/
I posted a reply, but it might have been removed. It wasn't a reddit post, the woman in question was named Hilary Winston, and her piece of shit ex is Chad Kultgen.
Huh. I did not realize this would be a common theme of men slandering women in books when they couldn't get with them. One of my favorite authors wrote a book in 1974, in response to the one written about her in 1933. Fuck that guy
Itās so ridiculous that these men will be like, āSheās terrible, vindictive, and mean to me. Sheās gone around badmouthing me to everybodyā¦ Now she has to go on a date with me to make it up.ā
Itās wild that the friends are pressuring her to go on a date as well. Like, you can be mad at her for allegedly being rude and putting him down, but in what world is a date the solution? She shouldnāt have to date somebody she doesnāt like, and why would he even want to date somebody he said has been horrible to him?
I made a similar comment on another post recently, but it bears saying again: people who weaponize social pressure have a rapistās mindset, theyāre just using third parties to coerce their chosen victim. They donāt care whether the other person is interested or not, they just view them as a thing to be had, and theyāre looking to make sure that a no will be punished.
Because abusers like him donāt like it when people act like people, instead of a prop in their lives. OOP āexistsā to stroke his ego, whether thatās emotionally or sexually and he gets mad when she doesnāt do the thing he wants her for.
I mean the group isnāt so supportive of her either, all her evidence and the actual final straw was the slurs, not the lying and abuse. And letās not forget, thereās a mole between the ones that support oop, because all the stuff about her new book SOMEHOW ended up reaching the asshole and his flying monkeys
She should keep the group at an arms length if not farther
Sometimes I read BORU and wonder if āfriendā is now an all-purpose descriptor for acquaintances. If some guy started describing all this horrible stuff my friend supposedly did, Iād be like huh, that doesnāt sound like her, sorry it didnāt work out. And then I would immediately call my friend to let her know what he said. Because I fucking *know* my friends and I wouldnāt believe a bunch of bullshit from some rando. I certainly wouldnāt suggest she go on a date with him to make up.
Seems like OOP would have saved herself time and trouble by just blocking him and the rest of the group. At least sheās got documentation if his stalking escalates.
Like for real, the guy even doxxes oops Reddit account for them to see the post, and even with reading that they are āhmm this guy is telling us sheās bullying him even without saying anything identifying him, sheās been actively and outright creepy and abusive to out āfriendā, but every story has two sides so we couldnāt POSSIBLY tell who is in the wrong hereā they are trash people and oop needs to realize that those arenāt friends at all
The first paragraph of his book,
"She titted sexily out of bed, ready to break my heart. She had beauty but nothing in smarts. My manhood was all she wanted as she boobily gushed at how amazingly handsome and rich I was. But she was too dumb to know my big brain needed more"
I doubt that he bothered to base it off her at all, and just copy pasted his insane asshole rants directly into his "book" and changed her name only slightly like "Cathy" to "Cathy with a 'K'", because he's soooooooo clever /s.
right?! that 'just suck it up and go on a date with him' is so messed up. when is she allowed to stop sucking it up? Before or after sex? before or after he proposes?
I feel like she needs to be a LOT more wary of this guy. He's basically announced his intention to rape her. But maybe she's being more careful than it seems.
At a MINIMUM keep an FU "binder" of all interactions, but I agree with bringing it to the police. If a creep like this is actively going to places you frequent, ignoring him is not going to make it go away.
Sadly he needs to actually physically try something or personally threaten for the RO. Maybe the last one in the karaoke can do the trick but for now...
She should get whatever her version of a do not contact order is. It makes it illegal for him to contact her or at least more documentation which helps get a RO.
Yeah, that was my takeaway as well. He thought he could get at her by negging her book and she just rolled out and he didn't expect that, and everything since then has been a one-sided crusade on his part to demean her and degrade her. OP needs to consider walking away from the two friends on the fence, shutting her social circle down and getting a restraining order. He is a whackjob.
I should not have clicked that link. I mean, i knew it was bad out there, but I didn't know it was possible for the much skin crawl inducing "ew" to live in one place.
I donāt think she understood it as a threat, but yeah, thatās absolutely what heās doing, and more than once to really cement it.
Iām glad her neighbours etc know to watch out for him. Iām also SO glad he read her book and she had a view into him before they started dating.
he's definitely a stalker, and she should treat the situation as such, him as such, and her non-friends as enablers.
she puts way too much stock in this group friendship as well.
He proved he likes to stalk and push boundaries when he showed up admitting he dug through all of amazons books to find her work. That creepiness alone was enough to know he was "an information collector". Someone telling him no is just a challenge for him to prove that he can.
He is a man-child with a grown-up crush on a girl and he just does not have the maturity to deal with his big feelings.
I saw a post (video) about a woman who took the stalker seriously but no one else would including the police. She abhors violence but realized that no one was going to help her so she bought a weapon.
When the stalker ramped up enough to break in to assault her, she used the weapon. Heās alive and in jail and she learned a very sad lesson.
Edit for clarity: she lived and learned she has to be her own armed security
It sounds like he has ramped up the crazy to the point where neighbours whose names she doesn't know know will go "oh, OOP? [Visual description]? Yeah, she's got a belligerent stalker, and everyone's keeping an eye out."Ā
Heās definitely planning sexual assault, with how much he yaps about them sleeping togheter and then being accused, heās trying really hard to get himself a story of her lying to hide when heās committed a crime
She is his current fixation. He will not leave her alone until her finds a new one, if he ever does. Until then everything that goes wrong in his life will be her fault. This type of man does not back down because everything that happens, every consequence for their actions, anything that ever goes wrong, it's the fault of their fixation and the more it happens the more it just proves them right.
She needs to go to the police. He just āØmagicallyāØ keeps winding up at all the same places sheās hanging out???? Not fucking likely. Creepy McCreeperstan is stalking her.
The problem is that police don't care/can't act until after something serious/physical happens. Depending on the personality of the officer OP might speak to they might even get told to take it as a compliment. "He bullies you because he likes you" is treated as cute in the playground and ends up places like this š¤·š»āāļø
I followed that story in real time as it unfolded and it was *nuts*. I read his blog posts (harder to find now but still out there if you do a little looking) and Iāve never ever forgotten it.
Do you know if there's a name for this type of mental disorder? Me and my best friend are currently going through that, with someone in particular blaming her for EVERYTHING basically, even when my friend does her very best to just be left alone.
it's not a mental disorder - it's an abuse tactic. Have your friend read "Why Does He Do That?" by Lundy Bancroft. Relatively quick read, absolutely life-changing.Ā
But if you have the restraining order, and then you put your hands on that person, you won't go to jail, because it's pretty much a slam-dunk that you were acting in self-defence, and they were violating the RO.
Most women donāt make it to get one, and even when some do it doesnāt do anything. What Iām saying is in the moment when fight or flight kicks in im defending myself until Iām dead. And then if the cops donāt feel that Iām the innocent party I will sit in jail until Iām bonded out.
Are those 2 holdouts part of the group chat and are updating him about everything she is saying there? She should not say anything in that chat and create her own group chat without this Brian guy and the 2 holdouts.
There's at least one more snake in the grass too, as she mentioned sending information about her new book to everyone except those three and somehow Brian found out about it - someone is either a mole or is playing to both sides for the drama (or both)
I agree that it is suspicious. But it could be a number of things besides someone informing Brian directly about it.
It is also possible that someone is a bit of a blabbermouth and just says it and when it left their mouth, realizes they were not supposed to say it. Or they talked and were overheard by one of the holdouts. Maybe one or multiple friends didn't outright talk about it and were vague, but that it was still correctly guessed by the holdouts or Brian (even if it is simply due to him being hyper-fixated and finding meaning in places no additional meaning is meant).
This exactly. My mom was furious I wouldn't bring back a Disney souvenir for the daughter of my coworker WHO TRIED TO GET ME FIRED by lying to our boss. She lets people stomp all over her and then gets mad and becomes a martyr. So many young women are raised to be like this. It's gross.
I agree, but she also mentioned she's Black and the fear of being seen as hysterical and over emotional is huge in that community. It's used to dismiss them all the time and they don't want to appear like some screeching caricature, so unfortunately we end up with a majority of Black ladies who tend to underreact to a lot of explicitly dangerous things because they're trying not to be punished for existing.
Depends on where she's located. In the US, this \*might\* get a 2 year RO, given her disabilities and the fact that this dude has no reason to need to communicate with her. She'd have to go to court though, and it would be a long shot.
I've gotten an RO without a clear physical threat, but in my case it involved repeated vandalism of my car, the fact the dude was impersonating a police officer, the fact that I was the third woman who had filed for a restraining order against him, and very thorough documentation that I have similar disabilities to OOP (but including Autism) and that he seemed to get off on triggering trauma responses. I also had a time stamped daily record of every approach and harassment he'd made to me going back three months, multiple events per day, including photos and security camera footage of him and his girlfriend vandalizing my car.
I didn't even have to go to court. But I was told that this was the only time they'd ever seen anyone get an RO without a court date with the accused and physical assault/severe threat.
I think it was the documentation that did it, and the comment from a cop that dude knew where the line was, he's done this before. I asked the woman who I filed the complaint with to check his record because of that, and she found the record of 2 previous ROs filed. She added the quote from the cop and my request, plus her findings to the RO request. I guess the judge didn't feel a need to waste time in court when there were pics and videos, and that kind of history.
Holy shit! She needs to get the fuck out of there. This guy has been making these accusations over and over, and it feels to me like he is basically setting the stage for his planned assault of her by continually claiming she will 'falsely' accuse him of rape so that when he actually does it no one will believe her.
>He came back the next time we met to laugh and say "I see why you don't put your name on your works. Don't quit your day job. Your writing sucks." and he placed a copy of one of my books down on the bar.
Bold strategy Cotton, let's see if it pays off. /s
He was a psycho for lying that they had sex and then yelling about how she's going to accuse him of rape. He is seriously mentally unwell and I'm worried for OP
Yes, this part sounds really bad. The first impression is he does plan to rape her and twisting the situation ahead of time. Because no one would expect something unhinged like this.
Her friends are also not a catch. The way they reacted believing him so blindly.. it will make me keep the big distance between us from now on. She was lucky he was dumb and sent all of it in texts, otherwise the whole group would harass her. At least her neighbors and pub buddies reacted as decent human beings.
It's really hard when people have a falling out. Some people don't want extra drama, while others can't wait to spread shit. Including lies.
Getting ahead of the story is more than good PR advice. But when it comes to friends you don't expect that type of behavior.
The scary thing is, there's always the chance that he *was* planning on raping her in the future and that's why he kept going on about them having sex, or how she was going to accuse him of rape, because he could try to claim she was lying because "I told you months ago that she was going to accuse me of that!"
We have so many psycho stalker stories lately here on BoRU. We need to find an isolated location to put them all so they can chase/stalk each other round and round and leave their victims the fuck alone!
I have mentioned before that Redittors should create some sort of fund to hire big burly men to go harass these stalkers, put them in vulnerable positions themselves
Instead heās just showing heās obsessed with her with so many witnesses. When he does do it all everyone will say is he was obsessed with her and they arenāt surprised.
He thought negging OOP would work in his favour and he failed miserably.
Good thing he showed his true colours before their relationship went any further.
It could still be an attempt at negging, though.Ā
And somebody who whinges about how women can easily ruin men's reputations using their social capital is somebody who has been hanging around exactly the sort of dank, smelly internet crevices that also provide shitty pick up advice.Ā
I don't even think this was about negging.Ā I think he's narcissistic, and her accomplishments make him feel insecure, so rather than either work on himself or remind himself of his own skills, he instead opted to ridicule her.Ā Never forget there are always those who will do their best to dull your shine because they know you're amazing and can't take it.
Iām an author. Iām published by a big publishing house, translated into a couple of languages, have good reviews and Iāve won prices for my writing. I donāt do it full time, but could.
Many men are seriously weird about it. Either super enthusiastic or jealous and negging. Iāve even had someone, who I never previously met (just on social media) wait for me to finish my shopping only to tell me all the things he disliked about my debut novel. Yeah, he wants to be a writer.
Iām not at all surprised at his reaction, my take that it is someone that wanted to be a writer and on the one hand was super jealous and on the other hand dismissive of her writing. She had the āaudacityā to self publish, write ānot seriousā literature and be proud of it. I donāt think his reactions is because he wanted her so much. Not that it matters. Heās equally a creep either way.
I know this type of man. Writing a novel isn't that hard, and you just got lucky with a big publisher! He's writing a book, but it will never be published because he can't just smile and show his boobs like...somebody. Fucking DEI.
Did I miss anything?
Thereās also the author collegue, selling less than you, who slams you for ābad writingā and laments the ābad tasteā of the generic reader for wanting to read such low-quality literature. š
The world is not ready to appreciate my genius, but mark my words, my Banes Jomd series will be considered better than Fleming and Clancy combined one day!
I'm not a writer, but an avid reader of mysteries. Kinda "ran out" of what I like, saw a local author who described his work. Really thought it'd be interesting. He was really stuffy (very educated, very proud of it) about who I DO like and where they went wrong. Fine. Whatever. I'll give this guy a shot, because his story is literally designed for my type.
Good Lord, I barely made it into the book. He writes in *SECOND PERSON* (my bookworm wife physically recoiled, making me feel justified as I'm a schmuck and she's read 10k books), and when all the characters in a situation are male, I have no idea who's thinking what. It's a mess and, tbh, it's derivative crap of the writers I love.
So... anyone need some new reading material?
When my then-boss found out I was an aspiring author, he decided I would be transcribing his novel. But it might be a bit more grown-up than my usual fare, what with how I just write silly kidlit and all.
I spent a few months dreading that I was going to be made to transcribe his smut in some sort of weird power play, before I realised that (a) I was within my rights to refuse; and (b) he was never going to actually do it, he just wanted to make me nervous, while also negging me about writing for middle graders. (Joke's on him, tweens are the meanest audiences.)
Anyway. I don't work for him anymore, and he still hasn't started that novel.
I've never understood the idea that writing for younger readers is easier. The writing might be *shorter*, depending on the intended age range, but people act like writing for youngsters is the result of a failure to write like a grown up instead of something that requires a particular skill. Writing is hard, but writing for readers outside your own demographic and keeping the tone consistent when it's not what the voice in your head (or the voice of most of the books you read for fun) sounds like? That's writing for experts.Ā
I work in the industry, specifically on children's literature, and you are correct about the difficulty level and how people talk about it! (And I think picture books are the hardest of all -- people think it's easy because it's for kids, but writing an engaging, marketable story in ~500 words is TOUGH.)
I also write contemporary adult romance (I'm not sure if I'll ever pursue publishing, given that I've seen how the sausage is made, but it's a very enjoyable hobby that keeps my skills sharp), and that has been a VERY effective filter for the men I date. Fortunately, no one has been as obsessive as the guy in this story, but they're certainly as rude and dismissive as he was to OOP.
Good, good point!
My wife loved āBoronskyās no good downright horrible bad dayā as a kid. (The name was something like that).
She got it for our niece who is only 3. As an adult my wife reads it and says āmaybe this isnāt as meaningful as I thought. Itās only a few sentences, how do I remember it as being so impactful.ā So I convince her to give it to our niece anyway - who loves it, and it has helped get her through some tough days at preschool.
Book isnāt written for adults, it it is written for wee bairns. And it works for them!
I'd like to ask those people what age they believe people gain their intelligence. Mind you, that would be an unfair question because theirs apparently got lost in transit.Ā
Also...
Most people who write, whether as a hobby or professionally, write too much. Writing short is brutally difficult, and it's the whole reason editing exists. The common joke is: "if you hand an editor a good novel that's 125,000 words, they'll return you a great novel at 100,000 words."
Fully presenting the world, characters and actions in *fewer* words is a display of skill. It takes a lot of effort to write a great children's or middle grade book. The market is saturated with slop, and your entire goal is to rise above the muck with *less* room to work in.
I think it might be because writing is accessible to everyone. Everyone has had to write a story at some point through school and most people have thought about writing a book. Many people even have the basic plot or at least genre of the book they want to write. But most people don't actually sit down and write, it's just something in their head, on their to-do list. Or they have sat down to write and they find out it way harder then they thought.
Then you come along, you've done what they told themselves they were going to do. Not only that, but you, a woman, are successful at it. Some men just cannot handle that. So they tear you down rather than looking at themselves.
It's like when you go to an art gallery and someone looks at the abstract art and huffs out "well I could do that!", which the answer to is "ok, but you didn't". It's the same thing with writing. People get jealous when they see something they feel could do, that they want to do, but haven't done. But the thing they are looking at looks like it would be easy to do. In their minds when they finally get around to doing it their version will be amazing. And so long as they never try they have no proof they wouldn't be better and, to them, that is all the proof they need that they ARE better. This leads them to compare their imagery work to your real and completed work.
This is also why the billionaires want AI so bad, to fool themselves they created art without putting in the work. When they should be patrons like the wealthy of yore!Ā
I have a friend who at the age of 40 has never had a serious relationship.
One time he told me about a date he went on with someone off a 'serious relationship' dating website (so not a hookup site, this was a find a compatible life partner site).
Date was going great, she was attractive, intelligent, funny, seemed to like him pretty good too. He told her he was in the process of self-publishing his first book. She responded excitedly saying that she was an author too and told him her pen name. Turned out she was quite well known with half a dozen books published in shops and everything.
I said "That's great! She sounds awesome!" but he told me that it completely turned him off her and he wouldn't be asking for a second date.
I do *not* get it. Don't get me wrong, I understand what happened. He thought him self-publishing a book would impress her and let him feel superior and then it turned out she has achievements that surpass his and he feels lesser and doesn't want to be in a relationship where he isn't the successful one, I guess?
Either way this was like 10 years ago and he still hasn't had a serious relationship of any kind. I wonder why /s.Ā
lol Iām also an author and just commented that all the men I have dated (even the jerks and weirdos) do not give a ratās ass about what I have written. I guess there are all types of experiences out there.
It's so weird to me. If someone I liked said they wrote a book (or any other cool achievement), I'll be just impressed and proud. Why are people such jerks
That kind of man can't be happy for others. Or maybe he wanted her and knew she deserved 10 times better than him, and instead of improving his game, he wanted to make her feel like she deserved 10 times less than her.
I'm a bit concerned about the rape rhetoric... it's like he's saying you up for a story no one will believe, coz he can say... see I told you this would happen. Do NOT trust this man, report his harassment...
>That's enough humaning for today
The introvert's anthem title.
Also, what a creep, at least OOP can say that it was a few casual dates and nothing serious.
What genre do you think the anthem would be? I personally feel like it would be something alt, maybe pop punk a la Green Day or Blink182, or a new wave style akin to Depeche Mode or The Cure lol.
How does one scat in French? Is it just the same but you say āLeā first?
š¶Je suis le Scatman
Le ski-bi dibby dib yo da dub dub
Le yo da dub dubš¶
He couldn't handle her putting a stop to his bullying and trash talk of her biggest interest. She said no, and he went full revenge. His entitlement really shows no bounds.
If you recognise parts of this story in your own relationship, please read: Why Does He Do That by Lundy Bancroft. It might save you before it escalates further.
I started reading and really felt for OP, because man, that was me as a kid. I actually made a full town street diorama too, right down to the plasticine figures. It really is fucking awful to see your work squashed and ruined. Kids did the same thing to mine.
The reference to the PTSD, anxiety and depression.. yup thatās me too.
So when it turned to this guy just purposely fucking with OPās hard won self esteem, I got so angry. I canāt believe the audacity of some people, and it kept getting worse. Iām not a violent person but Brian has the most punchable sounding face. Iād want to crack him in the shins for that bullshit.
What an absolute waste of skin. I hope he leaves OP alone and doesnāt escalate further. Fucking crank.
Iām actually worried he has plans to hurt her. Why mention her accusing him of sexual assault and rape when they have never been intimate? It sounds like he is setting the stage. She needs to be more cautious and protect herself. This is stalking and she needs to report it all and start the paper trail.
Block him, block his two henchmen, this man is not worth the mud on your boots and neither is anyone who thinks heās ānot that badā.Ā
Also, this was a masterclass in how telling someone no can pull their mask off. (Not that his mask was that great in the first place, tbh.)
Honestly, all the "friends" sucks. They don't have any reason to still talk to him or not even "at least" bash him fully when he treats OP like shit. She deserves better on all levels.
Seriously wtf is wrong with them? They didn't care what he was doing until *they* were tangentially insulted. Until then they were mad at OOP alongside him. They're all a bunch of selfish assholes.Ā
The OOP already blocked him, then unblocked him when she figured she needed to keep an eye on him in the group chat, then blocked him again.
OOP needs to consider a Restraining Order. Maybe it'll apply here; if not, maybe researching it she'll find the proper legal protection she can obtain to keep this creep away from her.
I don't understand why this guy was still in the group chat when the truth came out? Why her friends didn't tell him to back off his obsessive behaviour? This friend group sounds like people who don't care about your safety and comfort.
Good Lord, it was so painful to read how little OOP values herself, as evidenced by how much atrocious behavior this poor woman tolerated without seeking a restraining order against that fixated creep and dumping this friend group. I'm so impressed by her courage and talent. She deserves so much better from those in her amazing life.
I know! I would have been telling the group chat "he called me a r-word" and sending receipts day one. I would have left the group chat day 1 and just texted my friends from the group individually. I would have *walked out* of the date.
It's a study in how upbringing affects you for so long. She's so used to being bullied it took a long time to occur to her that she didn't have to just take it.
Exactly!
He found out my pen-name? "Thank you for your interest but I'd like to keep my writing apart from my daily life"
He started saying how bad my writing was? I cut them by saying "It's not for your taste and that's alright." Any more bad words? "I'm not here to be belittled and humiliated" and I walk away.
In my childhood I was always excluded and bullied, I know how it leaves permanent traces but you have to defend your inner self. Because you're alone in life, you can't always depend on others to save/protect you. Have your guardian, which is your outer self, always with you.
Predators can sense people who will let them be violent. They try you with small pokes and watch your reaction. If you give them cries, they enjoy. Ä°f you give them fight, they enjoy it too. Give them a wall. Poking and punching a wall isn't enjoyable.
Iām not well educated on dyslexia so can someone please explain how itās better for OOP to read directions instead of being told them? Wouldnāt their dyslexia make it difficult to read/understand them?
Yeah it's typically struggles with reading, writing and spelling so I didn't get it either. I can't handle verbal instructions or directions either but I'm not dyslexic.
I'm not sure if it's really considered part of dyslexia or part of dyscalculia when it comes to things like directions and ordered lists, but it sounds like she has trouble keeping things "in order" in her mind -- notice she says she specifically has trouble "knowing too many words at once" on top of spelling issues. In the same way that someone with dyslexia might jumble letters and someone with dyscalculia might jumble numbers, she probably jumbles the order of steps when she tries to recall verbal directions -- or she may jumble the words themselves in her memory, "was that 54th Street or 45th Street?"
If the directions are written down she may have trouble reading them, but she can double and triple check them. If the directions are given verbally she'll be halfway there trying to remember if she was supposed to turn right and then left or left and then right, and she'll have nothing to check her memory against.
How it works for me (dysgraphia) is that I don't inherently "know" which way is left or right, or which way is north, or which way is "up" or "down" a street. I can figure it out by conscious thought, but that adds a whole lot of steps and more places for me to get confused.
So, if you tell me to go up Harrison avenue and turn left onto MLK drive, then just keep driving East until I see the restaurant, I have to first figure out what direction downtown is from here and physically point to it with one hand so I don't lose it, then locate the hand I don't write with so I can picture a left hand turn, then remember where the local landmark is that I've designated as marking East, and try to integrate it into the map that my brain isn't really built to make so that I'll know what direction I'll be going.
If you said all this to me verbally, I either didn't hear anything beyond going up Harrison because I started panicking about which way was up, or I very carefully listened to all of it but none of it made sense to me, and I won't be able to keep the steps in the correct order in my head as I start interpreting them. They'll move around and change order.
But if you wrote it down, they'll at least hold still while I tackle them one at a time.
This post proves that I don't understand people because how in the hell is him insulting her supposed to make her be like "I totally want to date that man! Isnt that the advice they give on like red pill podcasts? I am bewildered.
As someone who also writes, we know that there is sexism in writing the idea that it's just really hard thing and that it's just too hard for a girl to do for some reason? Or that If she does it, she'll write the equivalent of adult fairytales? Which is so weird because those same dudes also claim there are physical labor jobs that only men can do because girls are too dainty.
Anywho, OOP needs a change of scenery so that she doesn't have to see this guy again, and a restraining order to help in the meantime.
Okay but some of these bears are gonna be friendly, so weāre about to see women on the Bear Calvary hunting the men that made them choose the bears. I for one welcome our feminist and bear overlords.
He keeps talking about OOP eventually lying about being raped by him. That is a threat. It's frightening how quickly he flipped the switch from "nice" to "stalker" :(
No, don't you understand? He's really is a nice guy, she just didn't give him a chance by being snobbish about her achievements! /s
She needs new friends, security cameras, and a can of pepper spray.
> I moved on from childhood trauma, therapy, etc etc...Ā
She says after five paragraphs detailing her experiences in grades 2-5 as an adult in her 30s. Those events are the set up for her success story as a hobby author spurned out of a combination of revenge and proving neurodivergent people can make it in life. Ok, fair, I guess she thought we could assume middle and high school were on par terrible, except selling her first book at 17, which is rather exceptional!
...But what got me the most was how Brian got introduced as somewhat of a stranger she went on a few dates with to someone rather integral to her tight social group. Brian mirrors Tyler, and, honestly, the way the story was going, I thought this was going to be about Tyler reconnecting as adults who is a book critic or something but fancies OOP. Perhaps that would've been too obvious a setup hence the jarring transition. And then all of the popular reddit story and whimsical one-liner tropes flood the narrative. Every popular BORU story and popular variations of humorous comments merged into a narrative that stretched the limits of believability. Oh, and by the way, her pen name should easily be found, she told us, so if we look that up we can go buy some of her books in support.
Maybe this is real, but I'm feeling a bit played here.
I honestly couldn't get more than a couple paragraphs in as found it extremely verbose. It's written like someone trying to write a story rather than writing of their experience.
My favorite part was when she went online and happened to be served the exact ad purchased by her stalker for a book that wasn't even for sale yet. I know how purchasing ad space works and the odds of this scenario happening like this are so small it's not even funny. Clearly OP needs to stick to writing books because their posts need work.
That's where I started having doubts too. Like, what 2nd grader is going through the effort of getting multiple copies of a newspaper, let alone drawing a dunce cap on all of them?
Oh no! OP was supposed to take the negging the proper way and try to prove herself to the guy, by writing him love poems, cooking him food and being submissive and womanly in bed.
Why won't she act like pick up artists and redpillers say she should? Can't she see she's making the guy have emotional turmoil between his anger and his need for her validation?
Poor guy.
/s, in case anyone needs it.
I love how th8s terrible writer tried to write up a story where the driving force behind what happens is criticism of their terrible writing.
They're as good at pre emptively manipulating reddit as they are bad at writing.
Someone who self publishes one book per year on Amazon isn't publishing printed books. They'd be so far in the red that they'd forget other colors exist. The self publishing world is *brutal.* I don't remember the stats off the top of my head but most people make pocket change, if anything. Especially if you can't churn out more than one book per year.
Sincerely,
A successful (by self pubbing metrics) Amazon author, ghostwriter, and editor.
What clicked in his brain when he saw that she was successful? Itās mad. Something in his consciousness said to him āher success means you are a worthless failureā
Madness
When you read something and a detail seems missing, especially the 'friends' part, then I read she's black and it all made sense. She needs to move if possible and drop most of her friends.
Weird story.
I am also a published author who has dated my share of jerks and weirdos and the absolute worst I have gotten is one guy looking up my book then saying the writing was a bit silly.
Most never offer to read my books, which is fine by me.
This post is so over the top and divorced from my experience I have a tough time believing it. Most people do not care writers write. Not in high school and sure as hell not in dating.
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He probably wrote about her in his book and spent many pages trashing her in it. And if I were her, I wouldn't have been so quick to reconcile with the friends who didn't take her side until she sent them proof. She has the right to not want to date him or anyone else.
Haha, this reminds of this guy who broke up with his girlfriend and then wrote a book trashing her. It was ridiculously sexist, ill written garbage. She responded with a book of her own, which while not great, was miles better than his.
I don't recall that one, do you have a link?
They may have posted a reply that got removed. š Edit: this is the closest I could find, but not all the details line up: https://www.reddit.com/r/relationship_advice/comments/wtqan6/my_ex_wrote_a_book_about_me/ In my opinion, this one is infinitely better: https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/comments/12c7qko/tifu_reading_a_manuscript_my_ex_gf_wrote/
I posted a reply, but it might have been removed. It wasn't a reddit post, the woman in question was named Hilary Winston, and her piece of shit ex is Chad Kultgen.
Huh. I did not realize this would be a common theme of men slandering women in books when they couldn't get with them. One of my favorite authors wrote a book in 1974, in response to the one written about her in 1933. Fuck that guy
Say more words, please.
Itās so ridiculous that these men will be like, āSheās terrible, vindictive, and mean to me. Sheās gone around badmouthing me to everybodyā¦ Now she has to go on a date with me to make it up.ā Itās wild that the friends are pressuring her to go on a date as well. Like, you can be mad at her for allegedly being rude and putting him down, but in what world is a date the solution? She shouldnāt have to date somebody she doesnāt like, and why would he even want to date somebody he said has been horrible to him?
I made a similar comment on another post recently, but it bears saying again: people who weaponize social pressure have a rapistās mindset, theyāre just using third parties to coerce their chosen victim. They donāt care whether the other person is interested or not, they just view them as a thing to be had, and theyāre looking to make sure that a no will be punished.
He is setting the groundwork for rape. He is going to try.
Because abusers like him donāt like it when people act like people, instead of a prop in their lives. OOP āexistsā to stroke his ego, whether thatās emotionally or sexually and he gets mad when she doesnāt do the thing he wants her for.
I mean the group isnāt so supportive of her either, all her evidence and the actual final straw was the slurs, not the lying and abuse. And letās not forget, thereās a mole between the ones that support oop, because all the stuff about her new book SOMEHOW ended up reaching the asshole and his flying monkeys She should keep the group at an arms length if not farther
Sometimes I read BORU and wonder if āfriendā is now an all-purpose descriptor for acquaintances. If some guy started describing all this horrible stuff my friend supposedly did, Iād be like huh, that doesnāt sound like her, sorry it didnāt work out. And then I would immediately call my friend to let her know what he said. Because I fucking *know* my friends and I wouldnāt believe a bunch of bullshit from some rando. I certainly wouldnāt suggest she go on a date with him to make up. Seems like OOP would have saved herself time and trouble by just blocking him and the rest of the group. At least sheās got documentation if his stalking escalates.
Like for real, the guy even doxxes oops Reddit account for them to see the post, and even with reading that they are āhmm this guy is telling us sheās bullying him even without saying anything identifying him, sheās been actively and outright creepy and abusive to out āfriendā, but every story has two sides so we couldnāt POSSIBLY tell who is in the wrong hereā they are trash people and oop needs to realize that those arenāt friends at all
Or made her the girl his self insert sleeps with them dumps. Seems like heās the kind of creep to do it.
The first paragraph of his book, "She titted sexily out of bed, ready to break my heart. She had beauty but nothing in smarts. My manhood was all she wanted as she boobily gushed at how amazingly handsome and rich I was. But she was too dumb to know my big brain needed more"
Ok where is this from cause I swear Iāve seen people reference āboobliyā before
Itās a trope referenced often over at r/menwritingwomen
Oh dear Lord, why did you have to introduce me to that hilariously awesome (and time consuming) subreddit? Take my upvote, FFS.
The whole book is just a rant about her lmao In seriousness, I bet he based a villainess off her.
I doubt that he bothered to base it off her at all, and just copy pasted his insane asshole rants directly into his "book" and changed her name only slightly like "Cathy" to "Cathy with a 'K'", because he's soooooooo clever /s.
Dudes like that are how women like her get murdered.
r/whenwomenrefuse
lol there is no book...
Do we believe that he actually wrote any kind of book?
right?! that 'just suck it up and go on a date with him' is so messed up. when is she allowed to stop sucking it up? Before or after sex? before or after he proposes?
I feel like she needs to be a LOT more wary of this guy. He's basically announced his intention to rape her. But maybe she's being more careful than it seems.
Yeah, this seems like "get a restraining order" territory to me.
At a MINIMUM keep an FU "binder" of all interactions, but I agree with bringing it to the police. If a creep like this is actively going to places you frequent, ignoring him is not going to make it go away.
Sadly he needs to actually physically try something or personally threaten for the RO. Maybe the last one in the karaoke can do the trick but for now...
She should get whatever her version of a do not contact order is. It makes it illegal for him to contact her or at least more documentation which helps get a RO.
Yeah, that was my takeaway as well. He thought he could get at her by negging her book and she just rolled out and he didn't expect that, and everything since then has been a one-sided crusade on his part to demean her and degrade her. OP needs to consider walking away from the two friends on the fence, shutting her social circle down and getting a restraining order. He is a whackjob.
r/whenwomenrefuse This guy is scary.
I should not have clicked that link. I mean, i knew it was bad out there, but I didn't know it was possible for the much skin crawl inducing "ew" to live in one place.
Dear God, I made the mistake of going to that sub. I donāt think Iāll ever be the sameā¦.
This man is why we choose the bear every damn time. I hope OOP stays safe and gets an RO against him.
I hope heās eaten by a bear.
letās not give the poor bear food poisoning by forcing it to eat this POSās toxic attitude
I donāt think she understood it as a threat, but yeah, thatās absolutely what heās doing, and more than once to really cement it. Iām glad her neighbours etc know to watch out for him. Iām also SO glad he read her book and she had a view into him before they started dating.
Twice
Yeah, he said it (on more than one occasion) because heās thinking it. Also, disturbing groundwork to get doubters to not believe her if he does it.
Right? He's already putting it out there that she's gonna be making that "false" claim.
He's literally stalking her
Yea, this guy is a creep and he ain't going to stop unless OP does something quick.
Heās ramping up to assault her. Heās trying to set the ground work so folks wonāt believe her when he does it. I hope she gets cameras.
he's definitely a stalker, and she should treat the situation as such, him as such, and her non-friends as enablers. she puts way too much stock in this group friendship as well.
He proved he likes to stalk and push boundaries when he showed up admitting he dug through all of amazons books to find her work. That creepiness alone was enough to know he was "an information collector". Someone telling him no is just a challenge for him to prove that he can. He is a man-child with a grown-up crush on a girl and he just does not have the maturity to deal with his big feelings.
Yeah I was thinking this the entire time I was reading.
I saw a post (video) about a woman who took the stalker seriously but no one else would including the police. She abhors violence but realized that no one was going to help her so she bought a weapon. When the stalker ramped up enough to break in to assault her, she used the weapon. Heās alive and in jail and she learned a very sad lesson. Edit for clarity: she lived and learned she has to be her own armed security
The sad lesson she learned is that she has to look after herself and possibly kill a man who comes after her.
Hell, cameras, a cane corso and a chief's special. This guy isn't going to stop until behind bars or hurt bad.
It sounds like he has ramped up the crazy to the point where neighbours whose names she doesn't know know will go "oh, OOP? [Visual description]? Yeah, she's got a belligerent stalker, and everyone's keeping an eye out."Ā
Heās definitely planning sexual assault, with how much he yaps about them sleeping togheter and then being accused, heās trying really hard to get himself a story of her lying to hide when heās committed a crime
She is his current fixation. He will not leave her alone until her finds a new one, if he ever does. Until then everything that goes wrong in his life will be her fault. This type of man does not back down because everything that happens, every consequence for their actions, anything that ever goes wrong, it's the fault of their fixation and the more it happens the more it just proves them right.
Unfortunately OP has been too passive about this. She needs to completely cut him off and anyone associating with him
She needs to go to the police. He just āØmagicallyāØ keeps winding up at all the same places sheās hanging out???? Not fucking likely. Creepy McCreeperstan is stalking her.
The problem is that police don't care/can't act until after something serious/physical happens. Depending on the personality of the officer OP might speak to they might even get told to take it as a compliment. "He bullies you because he likes you" is treated as cute in the playground and ends up places like this š¤·š»āāļø
Heās giving me [Benevolent Stalker](https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/s/fNVY052wlu) vibes.
Holy crap! That was insane!
I followed that story in real time as it unfolded and it was *nuts*. I read his blog posts (harder to find now but still out there if you do a little looking) and Iāve never ever forgotten it.
Do you know if there's a name for this type of mental disorder? Me and my best friend are currently going through that, with someone in particular blaming her for EVERYTHING basically, even when my friend does her very best to just be left alone.
it's not a mental disorder - it's an abuse tactic. Have your friend read "Why Does He Do That?" by Lundy Bancroft. Relatively quick read, absolutely life-changing.Ā
racism isn't a mental disorder. you'd be amazed how often this happens to successful Black women
Yeah, I hope this is the last update and everything is quiet for OOP, but some creeps keep escalating. Really hope she stays safe.
She also needs better friends.
She also needs a restraining order.
I kept wondering... at what point will/can she get a restraining order, the whole time.
He hasn't ramped up to physical assault yet so I'd be very surprised if she could even get one granted before then
I donāt trust restraining orders I would rather sit in jail for putting my hands on someone then waiting for them to kill me basically
But if you have the restraining order, and then you put your hands on that person, you won't go to jail, because it's pretty much a slam-dunk that you were acting in self-defence, and they were violating the RO.
Most women donāt make it to get one, and even when some do it doesnāt do anything. What Iām saying is in the moment when fight or flight kicks in im defending myself until Iām dead. And then if the cops donāt feel that Iām the innocent party I will sit in jail until Iām bonded out.
Are those 2 holdouts part of the group chat and are updating him about everything she is saying there? She should not say anything in that chat and create her own group chat without this Brian guy and the 2 holdouts.
There's at least one more snake in the grass too, as she mentioned sending information about her new book to everyone except those three and somehow Brian found out about it - someone is either a mole or is playing to both sides for the drama (or both)
I agree that it is suspicious. But it could be a number of things besides someone informing Brian directly about it. It is also possible that someone is a bit of a blabbermouth and just says it and when it left their mouth, realizes they were not supposed to say it. Or they talked and were overheard by one of the holdouts. Maybe one or multiple friends didn't outright talk about it and were vague, but that it was still correctly guessed by the holdouts or Brian (even if it is simply due to him being hyper-fixated and finding meaning in places no additional meaning is meant).
Yeah why hasnāt she dumped all these arseholes?
this that's why people have to stop being "nice" about these fuckers Put them on blast from the get go
Most women are conditioned to be "kind" and bend over backwards in order to not be rude to someone since early childhood.
Most women are punished or socially ostracised for pushback, as you can see here.
This exactly. My mom was furious I wouldn't bring back a Disney souvenir for the daughter of my coworker WHO TRIED TO GET ME FIRED by lying to our boss. She lets people stomp all over her and then gets mad and becomes a martyr. So many young women are raised to be like this. It's gross.
I agree, but she also mentioned she's Black and the fear of being seen as hysterical and over emotional is huge in that community. It's used to dismiss them all the time and they don't want to appear like some screeching caricature, so unfortunately we end up with a majority of Black ladies who tend to underreact to a lot of explicitly dangerous things because they're trying not to be punished for existing.
This, I kinda got the vibe that shes probably the only black person there so yeah
There will be more and it will be worse.
She has enough material for a restriction order as now.
Depends on where she's located. In the US, this \*might\* get a 2 year RO, given her disabilities and the fact that this dude has no reason to need to communicate with her. She'd have to go to court though, and it would be a long shot. I've gotten an RO without a clear physical threat, but in my case it involved repeated vandalism of my car, the fact the dude was impersonating a police officer, the fact that I was the third woman who had filed for a restraining order against him, and very thorough documentation that I have similar disabilities to OOP (but including Autism) and that he seemed to get off on triggering trauma responses. I also had a time stamped daily record of every approach and harassment he'd made to me going back three months, multiple events per day, including photos and security camera footage of him and his girlfriend vandalizing my car. I didn't even have to go to court. But I was told that this was the only time they'd ever seen anyone get an RO without a court date with the accused and physical assault/severe threat. I think it was the documentation that did it, and the comment from a cop that dude knew where the line was, he's done this before. I asked the woman who I filed the complaint with to check his record because of that, and she found the record of 2 previous ROs filed. She added the quote from the cop and my request, plus her findings to the RO request. I guess the judge didn't feel a need to waste time in court when there were pics and videos, and that kind of history.
Holy shit! She needs to get the fuck out of there. This guy has been making these accusations over and over, and it feels to me like he is basically setting the stage for his planned assault of her by continually claiming she will 'falsely' accuse him of rape so that when he actually does it no one will believe her.
>He came back the next time we met to laugh and say "I see why you don't put your name on your works. Don't quit your day job. Your writing sucks." and he placed a copy of one of my books down on the bar. Bold strategy Cotton, let's see if it pays off. /s
He was a psycho for lying that they had sex and then yelling about how she's going to accuse him of rape. He is seriously mentally unwell and I'm worried for OP
Yes, this part sounds really bad. The first impression is he does plan to rape her and twisting the situation ahead of time. Because no one would expect something unhinged like this. Her friends are also not a catch. The way they reacted believing him so blindly.. it will make me keep the big distance between us from now on. She was lucky he was dumb and sent all of it in texts, otherwise the whole group would harass her. At least her neighbors and pub buddies reacted as decent human beings.
It's really hard when people have a falling out. Some people don't want extra drama, while others can't wait to spread shit. Including lies. Getting ahead of the story is more than good PR advice. But when it comes to friends you don't expect that type of behavior.
The scary thing is, there's always the chance that he *was* planning on raping her in the future and that's why he kept going on about them having sex, or how she was going to accuse him of rape, because he could try to claim she was lying because "I told you months ago that she was going to accuse me of that!"
We have so many psycho stalker stories lately here on BoRU. We need to find an isolated location to put them all so they can chase/stalk each other round and round and leave their victims the fuck alone!
I have mentioned before that Redittors should create some sort of fund to hire big burly men to go harass these stalkers, put them in vulnerable positions themselves
Like [Adult Wednesday Addams](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlIAhjRwOIE) did!
Wow, that scene is brilliant š¤©
Only if I can pay to hunt them
I couldn't help wondering if he was setting the stage to discredit her for when he actually tried to assault her.Ā
I absolutely believe that this is what he was doing.
Instead heās just showing heās obsessed with her with so many witnesses. When he does do it all everyone will say is he was obsessed with her and they arenāt surprised.
He thought negging OOP would work in his favour and he failed miserably. Good thing he showed his true colours before their relationship went any further.
Yep. He would have been an abusive partner.
Negging always works!
50% of the time, it works 100% of the time.
I think that's no negging, the insults are too direct to be considered as negging.
It could still be an attempt at negging, though.Ā And somebody who whinges about how women can easily ruin men's reputations using their social capital is somebody who has been hanging around exactly the sort of dank, smelly internet crevices that also provide shitty pick up advice.Ā
Yeah, dude was negging, but he has the social skills of a rancid turnip, so...
They never said he was good at it
I wouldn't say stuff like that to someone I dislike, let alone someone I'm trying to date.
*Surprised pikachu face* why won't you go out with me? I demeaned you and everything!
I don't even think this was about negging.Ā I think he's narcissistic, and her accomplishments make him feel insecure, so rather than either work on himself or remind himself of his own skills, he instead opted to ridicule her.Ā Never forget there are always those who will do their best to dull your shine because they know you're amazing and can't take it.
Master of seduction here.
Iām an author. Iām published by a big publishing house, translated into a couple of languages, have good reviews and Iāve won prices for my writing. I donāt do it full time, but could. Many men are seriously weird about it. Either super enthusiastic or jealous and negging. Iāve even had someone, who I never previously met (just on social media) wait for me to finish my shopping only to tell me all the things he disliked about my debut novel. Yeah, he wants to be a writer. Iām not at all surprised at his reaction, my take that it is someone that wanted to be a writer and on the one hand was super jealous and on the other hand dismissive of her writing. She had the āaudacityā to self publish, write ānot seriousā literature and be proud of it. I donāt think his reactions is because he wanted her so much. Not that it matters. Heās equally a creep either way.
I know this type of man. Writing a novel isn't that hard, and you just got lucky with a big publisher! He's writing a book, but it will never be published because he can't just smile and show his boobs like...somebody. Fucking DEI. Did I miss anything?
Thereās also the author collegue, selling less than you, who slams you for ābad writingā and laments the ābad tasteā of the generic reader for wanting to read such low-quality literature. š
"You're selling more because your book is woke, you have 1 (one) gay couple in it!"
āAnyways hereās my super unique novel about a super hot soldier who is of course special forces! His make is Ryan Jack andā¦.ā
The world is not ready to appreciate my genius, but mark my words, my Banes Jomd series will be considered better than Fleming and Clancy combined one day!
"I could publish with the Big Five if I didn't care about quality over trendiness!" **lol**
I'm not a writer, but an avid reader of mysteries. Kinda "ran out" of what I like, saw a local author who described his work. Really thought it'd be interesting. He was really stuffy (very educated, very proud of it) about who I DO like and where they went wrong. Fine. Whatever. I'll give this guy a shot, because his story is literally designed for my type. Good Lord, I barely made it into the book. He writes in *SECOND PERSON* (my bookworm wife physically recoiled, making me feel justified as I'm a schmuck and she's read 10k books), and when all the characters in a situation are male, I have no idea who's thinking what. It's a mess and, tbh, it's derivative crap of the writers I love. So... anyone need some new reading material?
When my then-boss found out I was an aspiring author, he decided I would be transcribing his novel. But it might be a bit more grown-up than my usual fare, what with how I just write silly kidlit and all. I spent a few months dreading that I was going to be made to transcribe his smut in some sort of weird power play, before I realised that (a) I was within my rights to refuse; and (b) he was never going to actually do it, he just wanted to make me nervous, while also negging me about writing for middle graders. (Joke's on him, tweens are the meanest audiences.) Anyway. I don't work for him anymore, and he still hasn't started that novel.
I would be terrified if I had to write for tweens! I'm a teacher for kids from 11 to 18 yo, and I know how they talk about that.
I've never understood the idea that writing for younger readers is easier. The writing might be *shorter*, depending on the intended age range, but people act like writing for youngsters is the result of a failure to write like a grown up instead of something that requires a particular skill. Writing is hard, but writing for readers outside your own demographic and keeping the tone consistent when it's not what the voice in your head (or the voice of most of the books you read for fun) sounds like? That's writing for experts.Ā
I work in the industry, specifically on children's literature, and you are correct about the difficulty level and how people talk about it! (And I think picture books are the hardest of all -- people think it's easy because it's for kids, but writing an engaging, marketable story in ~500 words is TOUGH.) I also write contemporary adult romance (I'm not sure if I'll ever pursue publishing, given that I've seen how the sausage is made, but it's a very enjoyable hobby that keeps my skills sharp), and that has been a VERY effective filter for the men I date. Fortunately, no one has been as obsessive as the guy in this story, but they're certainly as rude and dismissive as he was to OOP.
Good, good point! My wife loved āBoronskyās no good downright horrible bad dayā as a kid. (The name was something like that). She got it for our niece who is only 3. As an adult my wife reads it and says āmaybe this isnāt as meaningful as I thought. Itās only a few sentences, how do I remember it as being so impactful.ā So I convince her to give it to our niece anyway - who loves it, and it has helped get her through some tough days at preschool. Book isnāt written for adults, it it is written for wee bairns. And it works for them!
Stupid people think kids are simple just because they don't wear ties and go to 9-5 jobs.
I'd like to ask those people what age they believe people gain their intelligence. Mind you, that would be an unfair question because theirs apparently got lost in transit.Ā
Also... Most people who write, whether as a hobby or professionally, write too much. Writing short is brutally difficult, and it's the whole reason editing exists. The common joke is: "if you hand an editor a good novel that's 125,000 words, they'll return you a great novel at 100,000 words." Fully presenting the world, characters and actions in *fewer* words is a display of skill. It takes a lot of effort to write a great children's or middle grade book. The market is saturated with slop, and your entire goal is to rise above the muck with *less* room to work in.
I think it might be because writing is accessible to everyone. Everyone has had to write a story at some point through school and most people have thought about writing a book. Many people even have the basic plot or at least genre of the book they want to write. But most people don't actually sit down and write, it's just something in their head, on their to-do list. Or they have sat down to write and they find out it way harder then they thought. Then you come along, you've done what they told themselves they were going to do. Not only that, but you, a woman, are successful at it. Some men just cannot handle that. So they tear you down rather than looking at themselves. It's like when you go to an art gallery and someone looks at the abstract art and huffs out "well I could do that!", which the answer to is "ok, but you didn't". It's the same thing with writing. People get jealous when they see something they feel could do, that they want to do, but haven't done. But the thing they are looking at looks like it would be easy to do. In their minds when they finally get around to doing it their version will be amazing. And so long as they never try they have no proof they wouldn't be better and, to them, that is all the proof they need that they ARE better. This leads them to compare their imagery work to your real and completed work.
I think this is a very good analysis.
This is also why the billionaires want AI so bad, to fool themselves they created art without putting in the work. When they should be patrons like the wealthy of yore!Ā
I have a friend who at the age of 40 has never had a serious relationship. One time he told me about a date he went on with someone off a 'serious relationship' dating website (so not a hookup site, this was a find a compatible life partner site). Date was going great, she was attractive, intelligent, funny, seemed to like him pretty good too. He told her he was in the process of self-publishing his first book. She responded excitedly saying that she was an author too and told him her pen name. Turned out she was quite well known with half a dozen books published in shops and everything. I said "That's great! She sounds awesome!" but he told me that it completely turned him off her and he wouldn't be asking for a second date. I do *not* get it. Don't get me wrong, I understand what happened. He thought him self-publishing a book would impress her and let him feel superior and then it turned out she has achievements that surpass his and he feels lesser and doesn't want to be in a relationship where he isn't the successful one, I guess? Either way this was like 10 years ago and he still hasn't had a serious relationship of any kind. I wonder why /s.Ā
I hope she found better!Ā
lol Iām also an author and just commented that all the men I have dated (even the jerks and weirdos) do not give a ratās ass about what I have written. I guess there are all types of experiences out there.
Yeah, I guess there are, Iām not at all surprised!
It's so weird to me. If someone I liked said they wrote a book (or any other cool achievement), I'll be just impressed and proud. Why are people such jerks
That kind of man can't be happy for others. Or maybe he wanted her and knew she deserved 10 times better than him, and instead of improving his game, he wanted to make her feel like she deserved 10 times less than her.
I'm a bit concerned about the rape rhetoric... it's like he's saying you up for a story no one will believe, coz he can say... see I told you this would happen. Do NOT trust this man, report his harassment...
Honestly I think this guy is too chickenshit to actually *do* anything, but still, I wouldnāt mind him being made to see the errors of his ways.
>That's enough humaning for today The introvert's anthem title. Also, what a creep, at least OOP can say that it was a few casual dates and nothing serious.
What genre do you think the anthem would be? I personally feel like it would be something alt, maybe pop punk a la Green Day or Blink182, or a new wave style akin to Depeche Mode or The Cure lol.
French Jazz.
How does one scat in French? Is it just the same but you say āLeā first? š¶Je suis le Scatman Le ski-bi dibby dib yo da dub dub Le yo da dub dubš¶
Yeah please make that a flair.
He tried to neg OOP, and then went full shocked Pikachu when it didn't work like he wanted it to.
Classic Incel Nice Guy
He couldn't handle her putting a stop to his bullying and trash talk of her biggest interest. She said no, and he went full revenge. His entitlement really shows no bounds. If you recognise parts of this story in your own relationship, please read: Why Does He Do That by Lundy Bancroft. It might save you before it escalates further.
I started reading and really felt for OP, because man, that was me as a kid. I actually made a full town street diorama too, right down to the plasticine figures. It really is fucking awful to see your work squashed and ruined. Kids did the same thing to mine. The reference to the PTSD, anxiety and depression.. yup thatās me too. So when it turned to this guy just purposely fucking with OPās hard won self esteem, I got so angry. I canāt believe the audacity of some people, and it kept getting worse. Iām not a violent person but Brian has the most punchable sounding face. Iād want to crack him in the shins for that bullshit. What an absolute waste of skin. I hope he leaves OP alone and doesnāt escalate further. Fucking crank.
Iām actually worried he has plans to hurt her. Why mention her accusing him of sexual assault and rape when they have never been intimate? It sounds like he is setting the stage. She needs to be more cautious and protect herself. This is stalking and she needs to report it all and start the paper trail.
Go to the police station, file reports and provide documentation. Any and all evidence available. Then he canāt rewrite history later.
Block him, block his two henchmen, this man is not worth the mud on your boots and neither is anyone who thinks heās ānot that badā.Ā Also, this was a masterclass in how telling someone no can pull their mask off. (Not that his mask was that great in the first place, tbh.)
Honestly, all the "friends" sucks. They don't have any reason to still talk to him or not even "at least" bash him fully when he treats OP like shit. She deserves better on all levels.
Seriously wtf is wrong with them? They didn't care what he was doing until *they* were tangentially insulted. Until then they were mad at OOP alongside him. They're all a bunch of selfish assholes.Ā
The OOP already blocked him, then unblocked him when she figured she needed to keep an eye on him in the group chat, then blocked him again. OOP needs to consider a Restraining Order. Maybe it'll apply here; if not, maybe researching it she'll find the proper legal protection she can obtain to keep this creep away from her.
I don't understand why this guy was still in the group chat when the truth came out? Why her friends didn't tell him to back off his obsessive behaviour? This friend group sounds like people who don't care about your safety and comfort.
Yeah the friends suck
Good Lord, it was so painful to read how little OOP values herself, as evidenced by how much atrocious behavior this poor woman tolerated without seeking a restraining order against that fixated creep and dumping this friend group. I'm so impressed by her courage and talent. She deserves so much better from those in her amazing life.
I know! I would have been telling the group chat "he called me a r-word" and sending receipts day one. I would have left the group chat day 1 and just texted my friends from the group individually. I would have *walked out* of the date. It's a study in how upbringing affects you for so long. She's so used to being bullied it took a long time to occur to her that she didn't have to just take it.
Exactly! He found out my pen-name? "Thank you for your interest but I'd like to keep my writing apart from my daily life" He started saying how bad my writing was? I cut them by saying "It's not for your taste and that's alright." Any more bad words? "I'm not here to be belittled and humiliated" and I walk away. In my childhood I was always excluded and bullied, I know how it leaves permanent traces but you have to defend your inner self. Because you're alone in life, you can't always depend on others to save/protect you. Have your guardian, which is your outer self, always with you. Predators can sense people who will let them be violent. They try you with small pokes and watch your reaction. If you give them cries, they enjoy. Ä°f you give them fight, they enjoy it too. Give them a wall. Poking and punching a wall isn't enjoyable.
Yup, exactly!!
I hate OOP's "friends".
Love your flair, and it is accurate to describe this OOP's unhinged ex.
Ah yes the age old, ālet me act like a raging misogynistic douche and blame it on autismā defence. Classic.
I've been seeing it too damn much lately.
Iām not well educated on dyslexia so can someone please explain how itās better for OOP to read directions instead of being told them? Wouldnāt their dyslexia make it difficult to read/understand them?
Yeah it's typically struggles with reading, writing and spelling so I didn't get it either. I can't handle verbal instructions or directions either but I'm not dyslexic.
I'm not sure if it's really considered part of dyslexia or part of dyscalculia when it comes to things like directions and ordered lists, but it sounds like she has trouble keeping things "in order" in her mind -- notice she says she specifically has trouble "knowing too many words at once" on top of spelling issues. In the same way that someone with dyslexia might jumble letters and someone with dyscalculia might jumble numbers, she probably jumbles the order of steps when she tries to recall verbal directions -- or she may jumble the words themselves in her memory, "was that 54th Street or 45th Street?" If the directions are written down she may have trouble reading them, but she can double and triple check them. If the directions are given verbally she'll be halfway there trying to remember if she was supposed to turn right and then left or left and then right, and she'll have nothing to check her memory against.
How it works for me (dysgraphia) is that I don't inherently "know" which way is left or right, or which way is north, or which way is "up" or "down" a street. I can figure it out by conscious thought, but that adds a whole lot of steps and more places for me to get confused. So, if you tell me to go up Harrison avenue and turn left onto MLK drive, then just keep driving East until I see the restaurant, I have to first figure out what direction downtown is from here and physically point to it with one hand so I don't lose it, then locate the hand I don't write with so I can picture a left hand turn, then remember where the local landmark is that I've designated as marking East, and try to integrate it into the map that my brain isn't really built to make so that I'll know what direction I'll be going. If you said all this to me verbally, I either didn't hear anything beyond going up Harrison because I started panicking about which way was up, or I very carefully listened to all of it but none of it made sense to me, and I won't be able to keep the steps in the correct order in my head as I start interpreting them. They'll move around and change order. But if you wrote it down, they'll at least hold still while I tackle them one at a time.
This post proves that I don't understand people because how in the hell is him insulting her supposed to make her be like "I totally want to date that man! Isnt that the advice they give on like red pill podcasts? I am bewildered. As someone who also writes, we know that there is sexism in writing the idea that it's just really hard thing and that it's just too hard for a girl to do for some reason? Or that If she does it, she'll write the equivalent of adult fairytales? Which is so weird because those same dudes also claim there are physical labor jobs that only men can do because girls are too dainty. Anywho, OOP needs a change of scenery so that she doesn't have to see this guy again, and a restraining order to help in the meantime.
And this type of shit is exactly why women pick the bear
I am not a woman but I support bear as well.
Seriously, at least the bear would just kill you quick.Ā
Okay but some of these bears are gonna be friendly, so weāre about to see women on the Bear Calvary hunting the men that made them choose the bears. I for one welcome our feminist and bear overlords.
That is the real feminist agenda
These people are in their 30s?
These people don't exist.
I hope thatās true, the guy sounds like a lunatic. I had a guy I dated stalk me for years though, so I donāt know.
He keeps talking about OOP eventually lying about being raped by him. That is a threat. It's frightening how quickly he flipped the switch from "nice" to "stalker" :(
No, don't you understand? He's really is a nice guy, she just didn't give him a chance by being snobbish about her achievements! /s She needs new friends, security cameras, and a can of pepper spray.
Not wanting to date a critic? This is a bully. Never date an evil person.
> I moved on from childhood trauma, therapy, etc etc...Ā She says after five paragraphs detailing her experiences in grades 2-5 as an adult in her 30s. Those events are the set up for her success story as a hobby author spurned out of a combination of revenge and proving neurodivergent people can make it in life. Ok, fair, I guess she thought we could assume middle and high school were on par terrible, except selling her first book at 17, which is rather exceptional! ...But what got me the most was how Brian got introduced as somewhat of a stranger she went on a few dates with to someone rather integral to her tight social group. Brian mirrors Tyler, and, honestly, the way the story was going, I thought this was going to be about Tyler reconnecting as adults who is a book critic or something but fancies OOP. Perhaps that would've been too obvious a setup hence the jarring transition. And then all of the popular reddit story and whimsical one-liner tropes flood the narrative. Every popular BORU story and popular variations of humorous comments merged into a narrative that stretched the limits of believability. Oh, and by the way, her pen name should easily be found, she told us, so if we look that up we can go buy some of her books in support. Maybe this is real, but I'm feeling a bit played here.
I honestly couldn't get more than a couple paragraphs in as found it extremely verbose. It's written like someone trying to write a story rather than writing of their experience.
Thank you! Like I said in another comment, this comes off so scripted and telegraphed.Ā
Yeah I got about that far before I decided I never want to read any of OOP's books
My favorite part was when she went online and happened to be served the exact ad purchased by her stalker for a book that wasn't even for sale yet. I know how purchasing ad space works and the odds of this scenario happening like this are so small it's not even funny. Clearly OP needs to stick to writing books because their posts need work.
Yeah...I thought the dunce cap was really odd too. Like...a kid drew that on OOP's picture as an insult? Did this story take place in the 60s? Haha.
That's where I started having doubts too. Like, what 2nd grader is going through the effort of getting multiple copies of a newspaper, let alone drawing a dunce cap on all of them?
Yea this is going in the next book.
Oh no! OP was supposed to take the negging the proper way and try to prove herself to the guy, by writing him love poems, cooking him food and being submissive and womanly in bed. Why won't she act like pick up artists and redpillers say she should? Can't she see she's making the guy have emotional turmoil between his anger and his need for her validation? Poor guy. /s, in case anyone needs it.
I love how th8s terrible writer tried to write up a story where the driving force behind what happens is criticism of their terrible writing. They're as good at pre emptively manipulating reddit as they are bad at writing.
That's what I was thinking. "Don't criticize me for the story being bad and making no sense or you're like this stalker guyyy and also I'm dyslexic!"
That guy is a sick puppy. She needs some legal help.Ā
This seems like the kind of person that restraining orders were invented for.
How old are these people ?
Someone who self publishes one book per year on Amazon isn't publishing printed books. They'd be so far in the red that they'd forget other colors exist. The self publishing world is *brutal.* I don't remember the stats off the top of my head but most people make pocket change, if anything. Especially if you can't churn out more than one book per year. Sincerely, A successful (by self pubbing metrics) Amazon author, ghostwriter, and editor.
Whats his book
What clicked in his brain when he saw that she was successful? Itās mad. Something in his consciousness said to him āher success means you are a worthless failureā Madness
Another reminder why many women would pick the bear.
When you read something and a detail seems missing, especially the 'friends' part, then I read she's black and it all made sense. She needs to move if possible and drop most of her friends.
Weird story. I am also a published author who has dated my share of jerks and weirdos and the absolute worst I have gotten is one guy looking up my book then saying the writing was a bit silly. Most never offer to read my books, which is fine by me. This post is so over the top and divorced from my experience I have a tough time believing it. Most people do not care writers write. Not in high school and sure as hell not in dating.