To go back or not back to social media?

(The start of everything) Hello, so I used to be a niche content creator for a popular fandom for a game and was heavily known in this fandom. For my age I am currently 18 turning 19 in June. I have a semi high following but I always wanted the dream of gaining 15k so I am currently at 14k. The type of content I would make would consist of funny skits, ragebait takes, and some positive content. But what mainly got me popular was my takes. Some where ragebait, some where not. I just wanted to be big either way. Anyways, I had a good reputation for a while. Been doing tiktoks since 2024-2025 and I have grown pretty good. I made a bunch of new friends to talk to online, fans, and things were amazing. It did come with some haters of course, but I made some haters like me and I was grateful at the time. I do want to say the sole reason why I did tiktok though, was so that I can have some sense of popularity as well as new friends to talk to on discord. Having no one to talk to on discord can get lonely, I didn’t have that many friends there. But I’ve been blessed by my tiktok creativity that people actually came and talked to me.  I HIGHLY RECOMMEND READING EVERYTHING TO GET A FULL GRASP but skip to December 2025-February 2026 if you want to see how the cancellation started.

social media life- So back in my middle school days, at 11 years old I was introduced to discord and honestly it changed my life. I made a ton of friends there, had hella fun and was introduced to plenty of new things. I remember back in my summer days I would use it non-stop just to talk to my friends online, but there’s one important person that also led to my cancellation and I have a ton of regrets later. I will call them “kaylee”. But me and kaylee used to be good friends. Been friends since my sophomore year of high school. She was a funny type of girl, and she had her own type of community revolving a fandom so she used to be big too. Though, she got canceled for making a controversial art piece on twitter back around 2023. Nobody remembers though so it doesn't matter. 2024 hits, and our friend group falls apart because of her being a bad person doing shady stuff. I tried my best to get the friend group to be back together but it didn’t work. We were a big group of people too, so it was a split in the sides. Though of course I’d still be talking to both sides as I was friends with everyone on either side. During the year 2025 back in January, one of Kaylee's friends (We will call her Ella) had done some controversial artwork on twitter as well as been caught saying hate speechful things that involved racism, homophobia and saying the “R” word a lot. She doesn't apologise for it at all. It got even worse when the screenshot got Kaylee involved when she too said the same things Ella did. But even I said some harmful things that completely closed off the other side of the friend group to not talk to me. I did apologize of course, because I wanted to own up to everything. The reason why I said these though, I just wanted to look funny and cool because well, I just simply had a crush on kaylee at the time. Not any more though. Anyways for that rest of the year it was just me, kaylee, ella and some other people in our group. 

(Discord and social media pt2)-For the rest of 2025,that group was the only thing I had at the time, I didn’t like being lonely so I had an idea of what if I made a discord server with my other online friends, my group, and my fans? And so I made the server and boom it had about 200 members. Pretty rad. Until it died lol. SO I deleted it due to my impatient behavior of it not growing as usual and a member making a similar discord server while stealing some of my active members. So after all of that, I’ve just been finishing up my high school senior year while making tiktok videos on the side. Not much to say after that so things have been chill.  I talked to different people, fans were enjoying my stuff, made new friends, super nice.

(End of school transition)- So if you came to this part, you’ll have noticed I have barely talked about my irl life. In highschool, I had some friends but not a lot. I felt lonely at times and would catch myself sitting alone in the lunch room sometimes. But I wasn’t truly alone, I had a few friends there and I'm grateful for them. Without them idk where i’d be right now. But because of that loneliness I had, I was depressed all the time because, simply, I just didn’t feel like I fit in with high school anymore. I mean, I was a senior and that year socially just sucked in all honesty. I really hated it when some of my friends would even post stories of them hanging out without me and it really grinned my gears, but what more could I have done ya know? My instagram is full of my irl’s btw, so only a few online/discord friends know about it. Anyways, we had a senior sunset and that was a mental crash in my mindset. Only 2-4 of the people I usually talk to were there but they were talking to other people. I'm not a popular kid at all to keep in mind. But, for the rest of that night I just sat on the bench staring at the other seniors just hanging out having fun blasting music there n there. A few hours later I went home and posted a story about how this school year was just pure lonesome. It still felt like I didn’t fit in this year and I feared that people were just gonna forget about me. Surprisingly some people actually responded to my story and how they still saw me as a friend and no one is going to ever forget about me. A dude said I needed to keep being myself and surround yourself with good people. At that moment I thought about my friend group I made in high school and I felt better. But it still sucked being lonely almost the entire year. But that’s the end of that. Its a timeline of connections.

(Summer 2025)- Out of all my summers, I have never felt bitter isolation in my entire life. I felt like a hikkiomori(-Word for shut in) as I was basically bed rotting EVERY day. Of course I would go outside sometimes but 90% of summer was me inside the house doing chores, playing on my game,  making tiktok videos and doomscroll on apps all day. I didn’t have a server at the time, I would talk to the same discord people, it just felt like EVERYDAY was a repeating day of the day before I swear it felt like jail. I had no job either, if anything I didn’t have enough drive to get a job. The only time I’d go out is if I had to go somewhere with my family, but pretty much I’d spend most of my time in my room being in discord. It got to a point where discord felt like my second home, in fact, I always saw it as that. I mean I have had the app since I was 11 years old. I was practically raised by the internet. Not to say my parents raised me badly, they did a good job raising me to be a good child to them. But as the boredom and isolation grew of being in the house all summer, bad thoughts came to my head and I’d vent about it on my instagram story to let it all out. It was a bad time for me from a social and real perspective. But here is my experience being online during summer 2025.

(Summer 2025 online)- So in all honesty, it was cool. Discord and making tiktok kept me occupied for pretty much only a few hours into a day, everyday. Even though I did talk to the same people every week it was pretty chill. Though I did have some mental and bad thoughts about myself that made me depressed and lonely at times. I mean, I didn’t really have time to even go out as much or heck, really couldn’t because I didn’t get invited to places with my irl friends as much or I would still see certain people I know hanging out without me when I view instagram stories. The only sort of communication I had with my irl’s was just texting them on instagram. Anyways, when it came to tiktok’s it went smoothly until I noticed I had this feeling of falling off or I’d get jealous at another creator who is in the same fandom as me, get high numbers then I want. I got so narcissistic that it came to a time where on a discord server with some people in it, I saw that the creator was it in, and told him straight that I was jealous of you. He didn’t respond but it;s like each time I heard that person's name I just get jealous. Sure, I had a high follower count on him, get 1000-10k views per video but he’ll sometimes overachieve that limit and hit more views than me. Heck one time he even got 1million views. That was insane. To be fair though, he’s one of those creators who is faceless but he made a name for himself to standout. But because of him though it just made me wonder, “Is my content even good enough” or “Why don’t I have this number of views or likes in this time frame I'm supposed to be big”. It got wrapped into my head and I’d vent to this about my friends online, but they always said to just stay in your lane. Considering that I was hella creative and had ideas, I still made videos anyway despite the fact I wasn’t mentally it and felt like a burden. But each time I see a video do the way I want it too, I’d just get very happy. Weird to say, but it felt like a drug. A drug of happiness just from seeing digital statics and getting validation from it. I felt alive. Like a king with a big ego. People would always call me egotistical and I didn’t blame them because seeing the stats on tiktok I have right now I just felt very full and good of myself. But I was still humble and told others that if they wanna be big they can too. Anyways besides all of that, I always dreamt of a friend group when I go to college for the fall of 2025. 

(Fall 2025)-College hits, I get a dorm and would still be on my tiktok grind to reach my goal of 15k. But, because I was still wrapped in a loop of comparing myself to other creators in my fandom, I decided that 15k was going to be my retirement. I didn’t want to be wrapped in that checking of seeing this video did this amount of numbers, as it would still make me sad that I'm not getting enough likes or views in a video. I just hated looking bad ya know? Also during this time, I'm still friends with kaylee and the other group members. Kaylee is still important but not for this section.  Anyways, that dream of me making new friends and having a friend group? It came true. A few months into fall I met some guys and we just all became cool. My isolation and fear went away. I used to get so happy when I saw them anytime. They were my guys ya know? We’re still friends to this day too. But there’s one important person in our group that helped me out, he’s a wise guy. I’ll name him Scott. Anyways, not much to say about this section. Overall pretty cool. I do meet a person who I used to call my girlfriend but I’ll get to her later.

(October- November 2025) So for these two months I've pretty much still been doing my daily things of hanging with my friends I met in college, making tiktoks, focusing on school, things were cool. Then one day, I got this follow back request from a girl. I see that they were also followed by kaylee so I follow back. We’ll call this girl, “Lilly”. Didn’t think much of it, until one day she’ll respond to my note on how she hates math too, as my note said “I FRIIGGIN HATE MATH”(exactly as that lol) then we just had a conversation after that. A week later on halloween we’d talk again and after that we’d just talk everyday. But it was until Thanksgiving break where we really started to get to know each other and spend time with each other. We’d do things like play roblox and stuff and talk about the new stranger things season. We were both stranger things fans so we’d yap about it for hours. I also wanna mention that… we don’t know each other irl but this i’ll explain later because you’ll see how we end up as. Anyways, she just became a cool online best friend after that. A day comes by, she sees that I have discord and asks if she can get my discord. I say she sure can and pretty much we talk like everyday. We’d match pfps and this will come to play later.

(December 2025- January-2026) So exams are over for college, and winter break comes. If I were to describe it, it's a mix of happiness and chaos. So for a few days, it genuinely felt like summer 2025 again with the boredom and isolation feelings. To fix this though, I eventually took a risk of making a discord server so that I can actually talk to people, so the thoughts of isolation, self doubt and just pure boredom don't come into play. For a few days, the server actually grows and it grows to 200 and something members. Everyone was active, we were having fun, we were chilling. I would still be making tiktok videos too. Was still best buds with lily, winter break felt lit.(College students have a FULL month of winter break btw). Anyways, I would remember on some nights, lily and I would play vr chat as I found out she got a vr for xmas. I asked her if we should play sometime and we did. It was fun….. Which also caused me to develop a crush on her. AND I know what you may be thinking… E-dating??? I mean in all honesty she had a great personality and she was very pretty. Also, I never had a physical girlfriend before. So yeah, life was pretty good and actually fun to wake up too. Then 3 days later she asked the big question of “what are we” and in my mind I was scared of what she would say if I said something like “Can we be something as lovers?” So…. I said we’re good friends. Yeah…… she got disappointed, and also unmatched our pfps. But a few minutes later I had a talk with ella on do I have the green flag on asking lily out cause to be honest I was VERY nervous to take this risk. Ella said go for it before you fumble, and I said screw it and told the honest truth to lily and we became boyfriend and girlfriend! December 22. The day we got together, I’ll always remember it. So yeah life was good. Until things got crazy on my discord server. (January still into winter break) So I'm gonna keep it real, I got selfish,said some bad things, and I pretty much regret everything. My mistakes also caused my tiktok cancellation so here we go. So remember haylee? She was also in my server and she said some harmful things to my server members. Instead of banning her(She was banned for good eventually) I did nothing and ignored it. Why? She was my friend, one of my closest online friends at that. I even made her a head mod so regular mods wouldn't ban her. The sole reason why she was there though, was because she was so much of an extroverted person that she would keep the chat alive and I knew that having her in a server that has 200+ people would benefit the server being active. But It paid a price considering that haylee became this dark humor type of person and people would ping me and tell me to do something about it. I’d time her out at times but it was never a ban. But one day later, I caught someone making a google doc about my server and the things that were said about it. I confronted him about it,(We’ll call him brian) we talked and I thought he wouldn’t release it if I just revamped my server and he told me to also apologise to my server members for how I ran it and what was said by not just me by from haylee and other members.The rules were pretty short and felt lazy so I did actually revamped my server with better rules but for some reason he didn’t like it? LIke I even enforced more time outs and bans if any disrespect is seen. Brian suggested making it even stricter but I thought it was good enough. And so, he released the doc and now everything went to shit. And honestly, it's still my fault. I regret saying those harmful things, I acted immature, and because of not having ground I acted as a follower which resulted in selfishness all because I didn’t care enough about my server members and I didn’t think of consequences until it hit me.

(February-) So around february the doc and expose video caught more attention and when I say my follower count on tiktok dropped OH IT DROPPED ALOT. I was at 14.9k, ALMOST to 15k until it dropped to 14.2k. Wow. But I deserve it of course. I should have never acted immature. I even lost some friends because of it too. Got kicked out of this content creation group for our fandom, guess they were quick to do all of that. I still hate that they did that. Not one person talked to me about my situation. They just discarded me like trash. But of course, I am still guilty for what I did. No justifications about it. Had plenty of time to have ground and stop. But nope. Acted like a child. Anyways, a few days later I apologized for the hate speech I said and the way I ran my server. Also debunked some things too. After posting the video and it being reviewed by my friends, they said it was good, I posted it and….. Comments didn’t like the apology. Then brian decided to make a follow up video adding how my apology looked rushed and stuff then added new information that even I forgot or BLUNTLY didn’t know that was in my server. (After brian posted the doc and video I deleted the server a week later as I didn’t want any drama anymore and wanted to be a better person). I didn’t like the hate I was getting and honestly it just made me sad because people who liked me now don't anymore or either just hate me now, I still bet that content group do too. I liked them all and not one of them probably sees me as a cool person now. Anyways after that, I decided to make a close friends server with only a few people inside of it. So it was just me, my girl lily and some friends.  As it was still February at the time, I wouldn’t be posting because at that time I decided to just quit after everything that happened and private all my videos. I didn’t feel like a king anymore and some sort of amazing person but just a regular guy. At night I would miss what I have and talk to my friends on what I could have done better. A few days later on the last week of february I wanted to remake my apology and still clarify some things as I hate lies being spread and want to apologise again for what has happened. But my friends and gf lily advised me NOT to. I didn’t understand, but lily said if I apologise again I’d just be people pleasing to people who don’t care about me and want to see a reaction out of me. I’d just be another clown for them, EVEN if this 2nd apology is better then the last one I made. So I gave in and decided not to. And with that I ended February with a low follower count, friends being gone and stuck with a bad reputation on an internet fandom.

(March)- So I decided to say screw it and post a video. Sure it looks like nothing had happened but I wanted to just see if a comeback was possible. Surprisingly I still got some likes and some good views. Though it did come with some comments sometimes, of people saying how they didn’t forget or would say stuff like “bro came back like nothing happened” I tried ignoring it but it still affected me. I would still be envious of other creators in our fandom getting high follower counts, high likes or views then me and it just made me want to just crush them. I wanted them to think, “That guy is still here”? And over shine them somehow in tiktok now that I'm seen as a bad guy. But that was a very immature mindset I had at the time. And plus I would still get mad if a video didn’t get a number of views. Sure the next video after that would get what I want but it felt like a lottery all thanks to a tiktok algorithm. The algorithm was how I’ll admit, see myself. I used to judge myself based on the views and likes I got on a video. I wish I didn’t judge myself like that but I was too stuck in tiktok creating. But irl, if im not making tiktoks, I'm either just studying, hanging out with my friend group or going to the gym to workout. At the time, my friends and gf just said to stop focusing on tiktok creation and take a break as they saw it drain me and considering the bad reputation I have on tiktok now and still have to this day. At the time I was still depressed and everything, it felt like summer 2025 again, only less lonely since I’d be talking to my gf lily everyday. Being in discord, talking to people was the only thing that made me feel safe and secure as well as not isolated all the time. Like I said before, a second home for me. But to speak more about me and my relationship with lily… lets say it wasnt bad but it wasnt great either.

(My relationship with lily)- So because me and her were in a long distance relationship,  mainly talking on discord, instagram, messenger ,tiktok, we couldn't hang in person at all. Sure we can play games together but the only way we could really be in person is through vr chat. It's the least we can do for physical contact. But I still loved her. When I meant that things weren't perfect, there were times where she’d start an argument but next day she'll always apologise and I'm grateful that we can communicate what conflict that goes on with each other. It was a few times in particular I didn’t like however. At this time she found out haylee was still following me on social media platforms and then started an argument about it. I told her plenty of times I don’t even like haylee as I knew for a long time. But to make my girl feel secure, I just closed the distance I had with haylee. Though which was weird because she even stated that she still talks to one of her exe’s and even said “Maybe it's just me being insecure”. I moved past that situation though. But oftentimes I felt like she didn’t love me. It was this one time where she admitted to having to talk to a lot of discord boys and trying to get with them I guess. Idk why she would admit this late at night when we were on call with each other. But yet again I ignored that too. But besides all that she was the best gf I ever had. She helped me with problems I had, did lovely things together, and she was very supportive. She was one of the people who gave me the drive to work hard on myself. And I still do.Then… around the end of march she broke up with me because she couldn't handle the distance. I said it was understandable and we just stopped talking for two days. The day after we broke up that day I said on my instagram story I was going to take a break on social media such as discord too because the breakup really affected me. I also explained how I had a fear of her moving on too quickly because my first girlfriend did this and I didn't want Lily to do it either. It sucks because I knew her for a while now and she had my soul and heart. I loved her. But I forgot she was in my close friend's story and she decided to break contact and we talked about everything and we got back together. Everything was cool for a few weeks until the day after the breakup came during April.

(April)- So basically this month was probably the best lesson learning month I ever had this year. I would still post sometimes on tiktok, even though I wouldn't really gain anything from it since my follower count won’t really go up and then I had thoughts of just quitting for good. Parasocial as this may sound but I do indeed talk to ai. I told it about my problems and it was one particular thing it said where some people might not even follow me ever again because of my situation. It sucks but it sounded like the truth. Anyways, I always feared that the summer isolation would happen again so I tried my best to stay confident at times and try to do the right things so I won't feel isolated this summer again. But a few days later, me and my girl had a casual conversation on instagram and I saw this meme. I send her the meme about my favorite game Lily sees this and she goes on a full rant talking about how much I talk about it I say sorry We say goodnight as usual, have a call, and I wouldn't know this would be my final time calling her. The next day later, her text started getting dry and she just dumped me. “U” “Me” “Done”. Exactly how she said it. I cried so hard that day. In front of my friends too. It sucks cause we literally made vows to each other that’d we stay. She literally has a surgery coming up plus she's also hard of hearing in one ear. I told my friends about why she dumped me because of the meme I sent about my favorite game and my friends are saying she probably used that as an excuse to leave and I hate that its probably true. But the next day she apologizes and we hope we can at least speak again when the time is right. Next week later I decided to break contact as I just said screw it and asked did she want to just be friends. In a paragraph she explains why we shouldn't be anything for a while, and how she doesn’t want to hurt me again. She had an ugly cry, she said, and explained how good of a guy I was to her even. “You grow stronger everyday” she said and “Im proud of you”. So I respected her decision and said our goodbyes. But… Everything felt so backhanded at the start of may.

(May of this month)- Me and my friends were hanging out playing smash bros, something in my head said “check discord”. At the time I was taking a week break on discord. But opening that app was a grave mistake. I caught Lily matching with someone else, and having his name in her discord bio. Im not mistaking this at all because the pfps they were matching was a couple one. It broke my heart because part of me still loved her.I cried in my friends bathroom so hard because my worst fear came true. This is the 2nd time a girl I love breaks up with me then move on to someone new 2 weeks later. It made me feel worse about myself. So I VOWED that I would rather die and be single forever then to E-date and long distance ever again. I literally invested in myself just so that I can see her sometime this summer. Guess I can't. After that, the very next day I deleted discord and decided to announce to my audience I wouldn't be posting for a bit anymore. (For a bit because I want to ask you guys is a comeback ONE DAY would be worth it). One of my friends said its probably advised to not be on these apps for a while as it's pretty toxic on my mental health. Sadly, I agreed and to this day I still have discord deleted and logged off my main tiktok account and went inside a main account. Sadly, I still have thoughts about my ex and it was this one time where I was playing a game on my ps5 and the discord notification popped up on my screen with my ex and her couple matching pfp. It gave me chills like ptsd. But I'm trying to move on with everything though. But yesterday I had those what if thoughts. What if I actually achieved my tiktok dream of 15k? Would you think its worth it at all? Or should I just step away from social media for a while, those 2 apps in this case.
Anyways I am out of school and I'm currently trying to better myself by getting a job and go to the gym. The job market is tough but I'm not giving up.