Okay, so I need some advice. There’s this person that I met in the comment section on YouTube. I should say he grew attached to me because I would roast bullies on there. Eventually the bullying got to the point that he had to delete his account, but he wanted to follow me on Instagram.
I thought nothing of it. I thought “okay, he’s just gonna follow me and that’s it”.
No, what it meant is that he is messaging me almost every night, from 10pm until 2am, approximately. And he talks A LOT. And while I do share the bare minimum same interests, more than half of the things he talks about are just about the toxic people on YouTube. It feels more like he’s talking at me, rather than to me. He sends me way too many screenshots of the comments sections. He once sent me 8 screenshots in less than 10 seconds (no, I am not exaggerating). He’ll ask me these nonsensical questions. And he’ll usually repeat things that he’s already told me 4-6 times. I think he told me he’s turning 23 about 3 times already.
And by far, the most uncomfortable part is that he’s taking this to an overzealous level. He’s literally told me that we’re best friends and he always sending “Hugs”. We’re only chatting through Instagram and I don’t even really know who he is; he’s still very much a stranger. The feeling is not mutual.
I should mention that he has autism, so I was willing to let it slide at first, because I don’t want to be mean. But from the sounds of it, he wants this to be permanent.
I don’t want to deal with this for hours, every night. Nights are very sacred to me. All he really talks about is toxicity on YouTube and his drama on there, and it just ruins my mood. I’ve never been good at being assertive and telling people no, or even saying when I’m feeling uncomfortable.
What should I do? How do I end this without being mean? Please, help!
6 comments
Go to their account, find the dots at the top right of their account (Both on Instagram and YouTube) and hit block.
Ahhhhgg that sucks :/
From someone who wasted like 20 years being too nice and ending up around people I felt sorry for but hated. Just find a way to end it. It’s not worth it. You could just ignore everything until he stops sending. Mute the convo if you don’t want to block and send a one sentence answer once a week until he gets bored of you. You don’t owe him all your freakin’ personal time and energy. This is one sided so if that makes you feel any less guilty. Friendship is mutual so by him talking at you like that you don’t owe him anything, it’s draining as hell and it’s like you’re not even in the picture anyway.
If you want to kindly explain you need your evenings to yourself to de-stress do that. That he needs to learn to wait for a signal from others that they want to keep talking or that he talks too much. Honestly he needs to hear and learn these things. He might be mad at you or upset at first but in the future he might look on it as a learning experience. I’m sure lots of people have ignored or left him in the past and if he wants to grow, when he looks back he will see all these experiences as informative and as learning experiences. It’s hard but honestly easier bc it’s all online so you can just send it and move on. If he becomes abusive just block him immediately and protect your sanity.
Being honest is not equivalent of being mean. Just say it straight up, that you’re not into YouTube drama, that you find it tiring and you like to de-stress at night. Deep breath, type it in, hit send. From there on, if this person still tries to drag you into their mess, answer briefly: yeah, that’s annoying/exhausting, that’s why I stay away from it.
Hide Your stories from Him and mute his DMs. Just stop opening his messages and then eventually Block him. He’s probably already cruised your whole page so hopefully there’s not info there about where you live or work or go to school
You can ask him to tone it down.
“Hey man, I’m just not interested in this YouTube drama, I’d rather just relax and not hear about it.”
If that fails you can always ignore or even block him.
Reply to him with at most one line per 24 hours, just before you go to sleep. You can also mention that you are going to sleep. (This may only work if you have notifications silenced during the time you sleep.)