A few people on the second Discord server that I joined began posting flashers in main chat, joking about “making me convulse”, and one of them had the gall to talk about how they didn’t want to get out of bed, so they were going to… take it out on other people. They didn’t want to get out of bed, so they were going to… do things that had a high risk of harming people in real life. If I actually do have seizures back-to-back in real life, this could kill me, but I don’t expect nor do I trust these people to care about the health or lives of other people at this point and I sure don’t trust them to handle doing any research on it. So I’ve decided to institute a “zero strikes and you are permanently out” policy when it comes to this sort of thing. If you know that I am epileptic and you do this, I am kicking you out of my life for the rest of your life or the rest of my life. We are no longer friends. We will never be friends. There is absolutely nothing that you can ever do to get me to forgive you. Deal with it. If you know that I am epileptic and you comment on how that will “make me convulse” as you do it, the same principle applies. I can, and I will, hold a grudge for forty years if your actions seek to hurt me in real life. Again, deal with it. Find a way to deal with it. I have faith that you can.

At any rate, these were actions that you consciously meant to take. I may have grown up with a lot of these people, but it doesn’t mean that I have to continue being in the lives of the majority of them or participating in their Discord servers or communities when their acts maliciously hurt other people… and that’s what I’ve decided exactly what not to do. I quit all of the Discord servers that these people are on or participate in even though I do think a handful of them are good people, and I don’t mind reconnecting with a handful of them, because I don’t want to be exposed to this level of drama and vitriol. I don’t want to be exposed to people who will maliciously hurt other people like this, or people who want to maliciously hurt other people like this, and I do not intend to go back on this given any circumstances. I do intend on continuing to converse with, and maintain connections with, the individual people that I have reconnected with who I do enjoy talking to and being in the lives of, but this does not hold true for the majority of them and I will not be giving “the majority” as a whole a second chance. As it is, when the pandemic finally becomes endemic (or when the pandemics finally become endemics… or in the case of monkeypox, stop, I guess I should say), this will make it that much easier for me to be around less and not have various people questioning where I am.