Detox: Stan Twitter toxicity, false allegations and mental health

Hello there!

I got my password back and am ready to start writing again. 5 months into 2024 and so much has happened so far, from making my dream of seeing Thirty Seconds to Mars come true to having Ross Lynch from The Driver Era serenade me during ‘Heart Of Mine’ at Lollapalooza, the reason why I didn’t share these moments on Twitter is that people can be really toxic and envious, don’t even get me started on the divides that happen all the time between those fans that are super puritans and those who are a bit more liberal and basically do not give any fucks, the past couple of months have been hellish in terms of being on the bird app and having to deal with ignorant stans who think everything is black and white in regards to a political/religious conflict that has been going on way back to the 1940s, even more before that. Now, I want to talk about the reason why I left Twitter for good and how it’s contributing to the improvement of my mental health and seeking a more ‘normal’, human relationship with networking and social media.

As a 90s baby whose access to the internet was given as soon as I turned 15, it’s a brand new world and territory the moment you get on a computer, you start chatting with like-minded individuals and make friendships with people from other parts of your country, let alone, international friends, those you connect either from your favourite bands or just want a cultural exchange, it enriches your vision and it’s even more fun when you do it safely, luckily for me, I always had my parents monitoring in a way that wasn’t exactly the controlling kind but still kept their eyes on me and made sure that everything was okay. I was a Twitter OG before it became the most popular platform in the world, a lot of people at the time were using Facebook, MSN Messenger, Yahoo, and AOL but my place to find people was Twitter, there were no boundaries when it came to certain topics, there was a period in time which everything was funny, nothing too serious and where people didn’t have to filter themselves, it was a boundless place where the so-called First Amendment didn’t have any limitations, people were saying whatever shit was on their minds and just ran with it, didn’t have to overthink it twice and just put their thoughts out there, that place does not exist anymore, everything is pretty much filtered and you have to think EVERYTHING you will say because it could attract the wrong kind of people and I want to say… there are many sides to this Twitter shit but the ones that have really fucked up the platform big time are: Politics Twitter in which everything is being discussed and Stan Twitter where folks talk about their favourite celebrities in an unhealthy, parasocial kind of way that I wouldn’t recommend, there’s a lot of Mean Girl-ish gossiping and burn book kind of behaviour that is toxic and negative, if you mix the two of them together, both pop culture and politics then you have the perfect recipe for disaster, it’s almost inevitable that this platform has become insufferable for the past 7 months.

Ever since the Israeli/Palestinian conflict started, I have noticed a shift in the type of posts on the platform, especially on the Stan Twitter side, the amount of violence I saw almost in a ‘pick a side’ kind of way without getting the facts and the complexity of a conflict that’s been ongoing for way longer than any of us have lived, sending threats to celebrities to speak up on the situation in Gaza, ‘unstanning’ because their favourite artists do not share the same views as them, I think it’s pathetic how Stan Twitter has somehow become the moral police in regards to such a sensitive subject matter when it’s been the land of bullying and harassment for years, making Twitter such an unsafe place to navigate, don’t even get me started on the ‘exposé’ threads with false allegations and basically making up rumours simply because they dislike that person, it just comes from a place of hive mentality, you either think like them or you are pretty much a ‘Zionist piece of shit, I hope you choke, free Palestine’ when the conflict has deeper roots for some of these ignorant, uneducated people to think everything is black and white, the amount of violence some of these people have on these social media platforms is something that needs to be monitored, there are levels to this First Amendment shit, you can’t send death threats, ‘expose’ people for not thinking like you and making up rumours, false allegations of grooming that could ruin someone’s life and then continue like nothing has ever happened, making it harder for real victims of sexual violence like me come forward.

Some username on Twitter whom I do not even know and never will in person (thank God) tried to ‘expose’ me as a ‘groomer’ for just simply talking to someone who was around 17-18 in a non-sexual kind of way, there is no such thing as grooming someone if the conversation doesn’t have any purpose of getting sexually/sentimentally involved with that underaged person, let’s be real, we were underaged teens on the internet at some point talking with adult strangers, does it make it right? no, it doesn’t, should I have known better and asked about age before engaging in a conversation? Yes, I should’ve but what took place in itself does not legally constitute grooming.

I’ll give the definition of grooming for these uneducated motherfuckers to learn and read a book:

So, for the record, I am not a groomer, or paedophile whatsoever, all of my romantic and sexual relationships (including the one with my rapist when I was 15 years old) have been with people over the age of 18, I was even groomed and sent to my rapist when I was 15 years old so what makes you think I can harm another person the same way they harmed me before? Respectfully, some of these stan Twitter people really have too much time on their hands and would rather ruin somebody else’s life without any consequences. I have reported this issue to Twitter and pretty much-followed protocol on taking this person down from the platform because one thing about me is that I do not play when people try to fuck up my integrity and honour.

People use legal terms way too loosely without even knowing the real implications that come with it, accusing someone of being a groomer is a serious accusation that has to be taken seriously, again, I repeat, I do not play when it comes to defending my honour as a person, it was taken away from me when I was 15 and I won’t let that happen ever again. That being said, Twitter has become such a toxic place to be that after 24 hours of deleting it from my devices, I’m a brand new person feeling so good about everything, and this will be the first and last time I’m talking on this shit. Be blessed.