By David Futrelle
Love works in mysterious ways! A couple of days ago, a lovelorn — or at least horny — young Redditor spammed every relevant subreddit he could think of — from r/relationships to r/AmITheAsshole — with a post asking for advice on a very particular romantic dilemma he found himself in.
On the off chance that this was a real post and not just a trollish experiment, I thought I’d share his post with you all, as it’s one of the worst things I’ve seen since, well, this past Tuesday.
Our lusty Redditor, a twenty year-old fellow who calls himself BrettTheBeast, wonders: Would it be so wrong to hit on a girl whose life I ruined in middle school?
And yes, he really and truly did ruin her life:
So, in middle school, there was this girl i used to pick on because she was fat. I called her horrible names, stole her things, put a picture of her head on the picture of a pig and put it on her locker, and i gave her a nickname that followed her all around school, and was just awful to her. She always ended up crying and she actually transferred to another school (either because of me or her parents just moved. I heard 2 stories.)
You put a picture of her head on the picture of a pig and put it on her locker? She may have CHANGED SCHOOLS because of you?
Now look, i KNOW I WAS AN ASSHOLE for that. But i was 12 and my family has a very negative view of overweight people. I feel horrible about it.
Clearly you don’t feel horrible enough about it.
[W]hat i want judgement on is this.
[I] discovered her on Facebook again and she’s actually pretty damn hot now. She dropped all her baby fat and has grown up to be quite doable. The only fat on her now is her breasts (seriously, she’s, like, an F cup.)
Jesus Christ, dude.
And, i got to thinking. There’s something i want to do. I want to add her as a friend and send her a message to “apologize”.
You can tell that this will be a really heartfelt and sincere apology because he can’t even use the word apology without putting it in scare quotes.
And also because of this:
I do feel guilty, but i have somewhat of an ulterior motive. I want to apologize and ask her to meet up for coffee with her. While there, i want to make a move on her.
Excuse me for a second.
Ok, I’m back.
I was thinking i apoligize and start complimenting her on how beautiful she’s become and maybe make a move on her. Just rub her leg or something.
“Yeah, so sorry about stealing your shit and that pig picture on your locker! Don’t mind me while I KINO ESCALATE on your leg, which isn’t as fat as I remember it!”
I haven’t talked to her yet, she probably doesn’t even remember me.
Uh, dude, I’m pretty sure she remembers you.
Would this be scummy of me? Would i be an asshole if i hit up this girl with the intent of trying to seduce her?
Er.
Signs point to yes.
If you’re looking for a silver lining on this, pretty much everyone on Reddit agreed that, yes, this guy is a huge asshole. Even the creeps in the Ask The Red Pill subreddit.
Well, most of them, anyway. Then there was this guy:
Somehow he managed to make a followup comment that was even worse:
I just …
That’s enough posting for the day.
H/T — Relationships.txt (@redditships) on Twitter.
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Anyone who says “Boys tease girls because they have a crush on them, it’s how they show affection” needs to read this article and the stories in this thread, and then drink a talllll glass of shut-up juice.
Boys who are abusive jerks are abusive jerks, and girls are their practice-victims.
Even if the guy is making up the story, I still throw him into that category. Anyone who thinks of the above and thinks “Yeah, that’s pretty funny, I’m gonna post that on a dozen subreddits” is cognitively indistinguishable from the dude he’s imagined.
@Scildfreja – Yep, you’re absolutely right. It’s so damaging to tell girls that boys are mean to them because they have a crush on them. That sets girls up for a lifetime of accepting stalking and abuse as necessary components of romance.
I long ago gave up on making any sort of distinction between shitposters and people who sincerely believe what they say. They both have an equally corrosive effect on discourse. As far as I’m concerned, they all should be chucked into the same file folder of awful. It’s not our responsibility to sort out who’s serious and who’s just joking.
I did learn one good thing from my experience with Danny, which is that being targeted by bullies is in no way a permanent judgment on your worth or your attractiveness. Look at how quickly catcallers pivot from “hey baby, wanna hook up?” to “you’re an ugly %^$@”. It’s not like the woman’s appearance changes dramatically in those two seconds. Who and what the bullies choose to pick on is almost incidental. If it wasn’t you, it would be someone else.
Oh, boy….
If any of the people who made my life an absolute nightmare from 4th to 8th grade ever contacted me, I would most likely respond with a fuck you and a block.
Off-topic, but I think we could use some brain bleach after this… CarrieV, I saw socks for sale that reminded me of your avatar:
https://goodlucksock.ca/products/womens-purrsist-cat-socks
(Was in the Royal BC Museum last night watching The Polar Express in IMAX 3D with family, and these were in the museum gift shop.)
This was a real rollercoaster. It starts with “I was horrible to this girl and I wish I hadn’t done it,” and I’m thinking great! Maybe people can change and become better, and a heartfelt apology would probably mean a lot to this girl. Then we swerve into “now I want to bang her,” and I get depressed.
@Jurgan
IDK, if I got a heartfelt apology from one of my abusers I’d assume it was a ploy to win my trust so they could abuse me again. And I’d probably be right.
Reformed (and reforming) abusers need to give their victims space. All of the space. Enough space to fit entire galaxies in, and then a bit more.
(Also there’s a difference between an abuser actually wanting to fix themselves, and one who just wants to resolve their own feelings of guilt. The latter is just going to start abusing again once they feel forgiven enough.)
@Cyborgette:
I can kinda imagine a former bully who had grown out of it, wanted to apologise, and who wouldn’t relapse. But you know what? I’m 90% sure they still shouldn’t contact their former victim. Because they’re probably mostly doing it so that they can feel better about themself: it’s their own closure that they value more than their victims’. Risking reopening your victim’s wounds just so that you can tell yourself you’re not a shitty person? That’s selfish. If you want to feel better about yourself, leave her alone, and do something for charity instead. There are organisations who work to combat such abuse, and they need donations and volunteers. And call out this shit whenever you see it.
@buttercup,
LinkedIn is always asking me to let it friend all my email contacts. I would guess that he probably didn’t add you on purpose.
@Moggie
Yes. That. Exactly.
@Hippodameia
Given how far off the scale “BrettTheBeast” is registering on my Creep-O-Meter(R) (they’re over 9,000 kiloWeinsteins!!!), the feathered inhabitants of seagull island should be so naturally disgusted by his presence that they would be forced into a primordial, “fight or flight” instinct that would either leave our before mentioned Redditor without a source of complete proteins or without eyes and extremities.
Troll or not, this is all the more evidence that asshattery starts in youth. Alas, [sarcasm]boys will be boys![/sarcasm]
@Orion I’m on LinkedIn under a different email than my match.com address, so I don’t think it was the result of the site sending automatic friend requests to his contacts. But who knows.
I think if any of my childhood bullies contacted me out of the blue to “apologise”, I’d probably start by asking them which twelve-step program they were involved with, and how they were doing with recovery so far. Because in my case, it’s been thirty years since the end of high school (and over forty years since the start of primary school), and they’ve never felt any need to contact me before now, which argues any remorse they’re feeling is probably situational at this point.
I never even see my friends from school any more and it is unlikely that I will ever return to my home town so this will probably never happen to me, luckily. for me school was bad, but maritime colleage was actually worse. I was so glad when it was over and I could finally just keep friends with people I love and trust.
As someone who was tormented by little shitstains like Brett in middle school, if one of them tried this with me now I would laugh in their fucking faces. A sincere apology is one thing, but the only nookie they’d get from me is a good, old-fashioned “eat my entire ass.” I guarantee she remembers him and would rather eat glass than fuck Brett.
Astonishing. But not surprising.
Plus noted the feedback along the lines of “the best thing that could possibly happen to this woman whose school days you blighted is getting a chance to be shagged by her abuser whose sole interest in her has been sparked by the idea of her breasts.”
Because entitlement and appallingness doesn’t end with school.
@Valentin, I hear you on that. I get that for some people, high school reunions and such are really fun, but it would be my definition of “worst nightmare”. Brrr.
@Cyborgette
Exactly. Can’t speak to ever confronting one of the jerks from the playground later in life, but I imagine that many of them will downplay the impact that it had on those that they bullied, as well as rationalize it as “building character,” like they were doing the bullied a favour by preparing them for the cruel, cruel world or somesuch crap.
Ten bucks says that’s how Brett Kavanaugh rationalizes his youth.
@mish
high school reunion would still be a nightmare for me too, but at least I had friends in school. What I had in maritime colleage I don’t even know what that was. Basically all of my so called friends undermined me, lied to me, joked about me and tried to control my love life for their amusement and gaslight me that my girlfriend was abusive and a psychopath. I only recently (as recently as yesterday) realised what they did was *not* okay and was not normal.
At least in school my friends were real friends.
This man is the poster child for “evil cluelessness.”
Yeah it doesn’t matter if he’s a troll, just as it doesn’t matter if someone is only being a nazi “ironically”. The effect on society is identical. Normalisation kills, wether or not it’s meant as a “joke”.
Also, funny story, I grew up in a religious community that was SO extreme far-right (radicals one might say) that I was convinced by my pastor and”friends” from the church to go apologize to a guy who bullied me mercilessly in high school. Because, you see, I said one sentence one time that was only a tiny fraction of a percent less than overenthusiastic in loving, charitable kindness, so I did a bad thing™. The guy was literally clueless what I had possibly said that was mean (because the thing I felt so guilty about wasn’t even actually mean), and being so dumbfounded, he fortunately didn’t have a chance to use my vulnerability to tear me apart.
Just goes to show the viciously inhumane gaslighting that fundamentalists inflict on victims.
I’m ten million percent certain the individual who posted that story is a troll. An extremely tasteless troll, but still a troll.
@Jane Done
I’m so sorry you had to go through that. I just experienced something similar in a university residence hall. One of my flatmates harassed me incessantly (non sexual). I reported the behavior and the vice wardens (RAs for the US readers) dismissed it. I recorded the behavior and the vice wardens told me that the reported, recorded behavior couldn’t be what I said it was. They told me I was being the unreasonable one and needed to try harder to get along with this guy.
Yes, they gaslighted me when confronted with actual evidence of his harassment and made me responsible for his behavior. There was a point where I was so exhausted, and they were so insistent, that I started to think they might be right. If I hadn’t kept such good notes, they might’ve succeeded in convincing me.
It took six months to get the university to act on my reports. I never did get an explanation for why the vice wardens acted as they did, nor did I get an apology from them.
Still have flashbacks to that guy. Still struggling to trust my perception again. Still pisses me off how I was treated by the university.
@Jenora Feuer Did you also see the Ancient Egyptian Exhibit? 🙂
@Fishy Goat:
No, I didn’t. We were just there for the IMAX this time. I live in Toronto, visits to Victoria are for family.
Granted, the year they had the B.C. 150th celebration exhibit we stopped at the special exhibits section as well.
@Mish:
High school reunions have never happened for me, either…I was bullied there by guys I’d sooner shit on than accept an insincere “apology” from. And now that the high school in question is no more (it merged with the other one in town, the one my horrid former crushboy went to), the point is moot. In any case, I’ve never been contacted by any reunion organizer nor received an invitation, which makes me wonder if there even were any…and if so, were the organizers friends with the assholes from back then?
(And if so, fuck them with a splintery broomstick as well. Because even someone who has no intention of going would still like to know that others thought she was worth inviting, whether she wanted to come or not.)