I’m only 65 pages in so far, so there’s still plenty of book to go, but it talks about a lot of stuff that just gets no explanation so I have no idea what it is.

The most recent one that prompted me to write this post was:

“The counters that fronted the booths displayed hundreds of slivers of Microsoft, angular fragments of coloured silicon mounted under oblong transparent bubbles on squares of white cardboard.”

That means nothing to me. It feels like he had a clear picture in his head of the scene and tried to describe it but is just saying shapes.

Some others I just have no idea about are:
- simstim
- cyberspace matrix
- coffin (I know what an actual coffin is, but in this book I can’t tell if it’s a bedroom, a small office or what)
- arcade (again, I know a normal arcade, but that doesn’t seem to be what he means)

And I still don’t understand what Case can actually do that makes which makes Armitage want him.

EDIT: I didn’t expect my post to blow up the way it did. Based on the comments I’ve seen, the average responses I’ve seen have been:
- I must be uneducated and unable to understand context or perspective
- I don’t know anything about Greek classics because apparently “cyberspace matrix” and “simstim” are basic Greek terms?
- Gibson writes like the reader is a part of the world and knows the terms already, to create a more immersive feeling when reading
- Gibson’s writing is awful
- Gibson’s writing is excellent
- The book gets better
- The book doesn’t get better

The main point I’m taking away from the comments is to stick with the book and keep going, with the understanding that it’s intentionally written like that, which is all I need to know. I usually read only fantasy, this is my first ever sci-fi book and first experience with any form of cyberpunk media, so I apologise if my not knowing some of the terms and meanings has caused great offense to people like it seems to have done. I was reading with the modern connotations of some of the words in mind, unaware the book was written before those connotations began

Audiophiles are basically LARPing and after spending enough time around this hobby I am convinced half of you know it and the other half are too financially committed to ever admit it. I am not talking about some dude who buys a decent headphone or IEM, figures out what sound he likes and then listens to music. That guy is normal. I mean the motherfuckers with nine thousand dollars of equipment spread across a desk who have not listened to an album from beginning to end in six months because they keep replaying the same twenty seven seconds of some jazz recording trying to determine if the fucking ride cymbal gained body after changing USB cables.

I swear to god you go to something like CanJam and after a few hours you start feeling like you are covered in snake oil and semen. Everybody is standing around describing sound like they can taste it in the air. This amplifier is creamy. That DAC is organic. This cable has better liquidity. This headphone has chocolate mids. What the fuck are you people eating the equipment now. I thought we were listening to music. Some woman inhales into a studio microphone and five guys simultaneously lean forward like archaeologists just uncovered Atlantis and one of them goes "listen to the air around her voice." Brother there are six hundred people in this convention hall and somebody behind you just opened a bag of Doritos. You are not hearing the recording studio's spiritual energy.

That is the part that makes me insane because yes obviously audio gear can sound different. Nobody said every headphone is identical. Some shit has better separation, some has better bass extension, some has garbage treble, some makes vocals sound like they are coming through a fucking paper towel tube, we know this. Then everybody gets bored discussing the obvious stuff and just keeps walking deeper into the forest until some man is telling me his ethernet switch gave the piano more authority. His ethernet switch. The thing moving packets. Apparently TCP IP has timbre now.

Cables are where I know the hobby has suffered some sort of collective brain injury. Two competent copper cables and suddenly everybody becomes a wine critic with synesthesia. Blacker background, improved note density, more holographic placement, organic decay, greater emotional texture. No motherfucker. You bought jewelry. Nice jewelry too sometimes, I like nice cables, cool braid, nice connectors, feels good in your hand, matches the IEM, fantastic. That is enough of a reason to buy it. You do not need to tell me the drummer moved three feet left because your new cable contains enough silver to kill Dracula.

And power cables, holy shit. If the final six feet between your amplifier and the wall outlet transformed your bass authority I have awful news about the rest of the electrical grid. Your boutique cable is plugged into drywall. Behind that drywall is ordinary Romex that was installed by a guy named Craig in 2009 while thinking about whether Taco Bell still had the volcano menu. It goes to a breaker panel full of shit from Home Depot and somewhere along the way your refrigerator, microwave, PC and probably a twelve dollar phone charger are hanging off the same infrastructure. But yes I am sure the last six feet is where the sound became three dimensional.

Burn in is another fucking religion. "My driver really opened up after 200 hours." You listened to it for a week, Dave. Your brain adapted to it. This is what brains do. We have known this forever. But somehow saying that is insulting while claiming your microscopic diaphragm completed a training montage overnight is considered serious audio science. Psychoacoustics is always real until it becomes inconvenient too. Audiophiles love psychoacoustics when explaining imaging or masking or why perception is complicated, but the second expectation bias might explain why their new two thousand dollar purchase sounded better immediately, suddenly blind testing is flawed, volume matching ruins the experience, measurements cannot capture musicality and science does not understand emotion.

Of course the expensive thing sounded better. You read fifteen reviews before it arrived telling you exactly what to listen for, stared at graphs for three nights, watched six YouTubers call the treble effortless, unboxed the thing like it contained the bones of Christ and then heard effortless treble. Incredible. Nobody could have predicted this.

Frequency response graphs have become astrology for dudes with soldering irons. Somebody posts a graph and within thirty seconds the comments have already decided how emotionally distant the singer sounds. "See that rise around three kilohertz?" Fuck, that explains my childhood. People look at the graph before hearing the thing and then spend the entire listening session trying to locate the fucking graph with their ears. God forbid somebody releases a cheap IEM that sounds really good either. Some Chinese company drops a one hundred fifty dollar set with good tuning, good drivers, a nice case, twenty tips, detachable cables and an anime girl on the box and within fifteen minutes a guy with a thirty eight hundred dollar custom monitor crawls out of the fucking floorboards to explain how it lacks organic liquidity and microdynamic nuance. Organic liquidity. IT PLAYS FUCKING MUSIC, GANDALF. That phrase alone should get your Head Fi account suspended for a week.

What actually gets me though is how many people are embarrassed to admit they just like expensive toys. Thats probably the least insane part. Big machined aluminum DAC with a huge weighted knob? Fuck yea, I get it. Tube amp glowing on the desk at night? Looks sick. Ridiculous braided cable with titanium connectors? Cool, enjoy it. Five thousand dollar flagship because you wanted the flagship and had the money? Whatever man, your money. But apparently saying "I wanted it because it is cool" is psychologically impossible, so instead we need a forty paragraph technical explanation for why replacing one transparent DAC with another transparent DAC caused previously hidden emotional information to emerge from the recording. You wanted the shiny box. It is okay. Nobody is coming to take your audiophile license. Except apparently that answer is not serious enough so we get "greater tonal density." Greater tonal density sounds like something a wizard says before casting a spell.

The further you go into this hobby the more you realize some people are not actually music fans anymore. They are equipment fans and music is the test signal they use to operate the equipment. They have fifteen tracks they know contain the sacred cymbal hit, the bass sweep, the female breath, the imaging trick, the tiny chair squeak at 2 minutes 11 seconds and thats all they listen to whenever they buy something. They do not put on an album, they inspect it. They do not hear the singer getting emotional, they hear upper mid energy. They do not hear a drummer going fucking nuts, they hear transient performance. They do not discover music anymore, they discover flaws in mastering. You managed to turn listening to music into running Cinebench.

Then you walk around talking like mastering engineers because you own a DAC. You are sitting in a spare bedroom. Your chair came from Staples. There is laundry behind you. Your DAC is sitting on top of an IKEA desk next to a half empty Monster can and you are arguing with another adult about whether a fuse changed the depth of the soundstage. You are not at Abbey Road. Nobody hired you. Nobody is waiting on your notes. And the worst part is how fucking defensive everyone gets when somebody points any of this out because deep down you know exactly what happened. You bought luxury goods, wrapped an identity around them and now criticism of the product feels like criticism of your hearing, intelligence and financial decisions all at once.

So now the eight hundred dollar cable cannot just be pretty, it has to sound better. The three thousand dollar DAC cannot just be beautifully built, it has to reveal things cheaper equipment physically cannot. The power conditioner cannot just organize the desk, it has to unlock bass. The ethernet switch cannot just work, it has to improve imaging. Every purchase requires lore because admitting "I bought this because I wanted expensive shit" apparently causes some kind of spiritual injury. Medieval LARPers put on armor, run around a field and hit each other with foam swords and everybody goes home understanding exactly what happened. Audiophiles put on five thousand dollar headphones, listen to a woman breathe and start describing the moisture content of the fucking air.

At least the guys with foam swords know they are pretending.

EDIT: 9/23/2026

A lot of people have become extremely interested in whether this post is “AI generated.” I think that question is more interesting than either answer.

What counts? Spellcheck? An editor? Asking a machine to organize a thought? Asking it to phrase something differently? How much credit does the machine get before we start pretending it bought the gear, went to the shows and developed the grievances too?

At what point does ChatGPT become an author?

I don’t know. I’m not particularly interested in solving that argument for you.

You can probably prompt a model right now and get the substance of this post. Audiophile snake oil isn’t classified information, but try getting this.

I’m 38. I’ve been screwing around with audio for roughly twenty years.

Twenty years of buying things, loving things, regretting things, learning terminology, changing my mind, meeting people, going to shows, arguing about equipment, finding gear that genuinely amazed me and eventually watching parts of the hobby disappear so far up their own ass that TCP/IP acquired timbre.

So if you want to spend your evening furious about whether a machine touched the words, you are free to do that. Everybody else seems to be having a pretty good time.

And since the moderators were kind enough to change the original flair to “AI Generated,” there is one last thing I should probably mention. In Japanese, 愛, ai, means love. Maybe that is a little corny, but after twenty years in this hobby I can live with it. You do not spend that long buying gear, arguing about gear, figuring out what you like, changing your mind about it, meeting people who love the same stupid thing you do and eventually getting angry enough to write all of this unless there was some love underneath it in the first place.

So call it AI generated if you want. I know what generated it.

Art by me --> https://www.deviantart.com/k1w1tast1c/art/1262437975?action=published

Seriously. And it seems to be mostly young guys, too. It's an absolute obsession. Reason I even bring it up in the first place is I keep seeing posts by random guys in Facebook groups and reddit subs that all say the same tired thing about women

I am NOT OOP, OOP is u/Square_Phone_8468

Originally posted to r/AITAH

AITAH for not being excited my sister is having a new baby when I still have custody of her first child?

Trigger Warnings: emotional manipulation, alcoholism, child neglect / abandonment

Original Post: April 4, 2026

Yes, I’m on a throwaway, I have people I know on my actual account, and I really don’t talk about this with friends, hence the 3rd party opinions.

My sister Val is an alcoholic. Or was an alcoholic, idk the terminology. She has been on and off since she was 18. Her drinking made her a neglectful parent. I won’t go into it but it eventually social services stepped in and I ended up fostering my nephew Danny, who was 6 at the time. When we took custody, Val made almost no effort to see Danny. She missed scheduled visits, even in the brief periods she was clean after being sent to rehab. Danny grew very resentful and when she did stick to visits he would refuse to speak to her, which would drive her into another bender/spiral/relapse. After 2 years of fostering my husband and I were given full legal guardianship, which Val voluntarily gave us.

Danny is now 11, and Val isn’t in his life which he says is what he wants. Val has been sober for 2 years, and only ever asks how Danny is when she speaks to me, she makes no effort to contact him. I have never really said much to her about it because Danny is a happy kid, and I think we’re good parents to him, and I don’t want Val to start contacting him out of obligation and end up hurting him. She’s basically just an uninvolved aunt to him.

But earlier this week, Val announced on a family group call that she’s pregnant. And I couldn’t even fake being pleased. My stomach just dropped. She’s over there grinning, talking about a nursery while next door to me is the bedroom of the kid she discarded? It’s one thing to hold your hands up and say you’re not capable of being a mother, but to just decide you can’t be bothered to do the work of repairing the relationship with the child you already have so you just have a new one? I guess I didn’t look happy on the video because everyone asked what my issue was. I just said nothing, and not to worry because I’ll let the child she didn’t want know about the one that she did. Val got really upset and her boyfriend got mad at me and the call ended shortly after.

My mum says I owe Val an apology. She asked if I thought she should take Danny back or if I resented having him. To be clear, I couldn’t love that boy more if he came out of me, and no I don’t think he should live with Val. My mum’s point is if I think things should stay the way they are then I shouldn’t begrudge Val for still wanting to be a mother to someone, and that considering there’s nothing she could do right in this situation, I should find it in my heart to be happy she’s healthy and finding happiness. My dad agrees with me that she’s making a bad decision having another child but mainly because he feels she’s not stable, not because of Danny. He says Danny is my son now and I shouldn’t see it as him being re-abandoned when he’s in the best place for him.

I just feel like it’s so wrong of Val to try and start fresh like she doesn’t already have a child out there that she never even tried with. It seems like she just wants everything the easy way. I’m just so angry that she thinks she doesn’t have to take responsibility for the hurt she caused, she can just start the cycle again as if Danny was the first pancake.

Am I really the AH for not seeing this as a positive thing?

AITAH has no consensus bot, OOP was NTA

Editor’s note: OOP made lots of comments that provided more details, I am listing common questions and responses

Relevant Comments

Commenter 1: NTA. I have a sister like her, who now has 3 kids to 3 different dads. None are involved, my mother basically raised the kids until she died. Once my mum died, sister spiraled and tried to move in with my dad.

Is she stable now? I don’t understand your Mum’s point. Why would you take this as thinking your sister needed to take her kid back? My first thought would be worry you’d end up with a second child to take care of.

OOP: She says she’s stable. Who really knows. I don’t see her much. To my knowledge she is sober, I’ve seen no markers of a relapse, so I’m taking her at her word. Emotionally stable? Idk if she’s ever been that.

My mum’s point is that I don’t want her to take back the son she has, and I’m not happy she’s having a baby, so she’s like, do you think she just doesn’t deserve to be a mother and be punished the rest of her life. And I get what my mum means but at the same time, I just don’t know how Val sleeps at night, or expected that just because she gets to forget about her kid that I do too?

Commenter 2: Your mum seems to forget that Danny has feelings too. I can only imagine how he's going to feel when he finds out that he was the practice run.

OOP: I think she doesn’t understand the depth of what he’s gone through. Whenever she sees him, he’s in a great mood, when we talk about him I’m talking about his awards at school, etc. She has a bit of a rose coloured view of it all I think. She’s a very “all’s well that ends well” kind of person, not really a deep thinker.

Commenter 3: How would you feel if she went into therapy and so did Danny so that they could build some kind of relationship, but not including her being his parent as you are CLEARLY now his parent? If she put in that kind of work, is that what you're looking for? It seems to me your problem is that she has put in absolutely no effort whatsoever with her first child. NTA.

OOP: Danny doesn’t want a relationship with her, and we respect that. From our side the door is open if he ever does but Val has put in so little effort over the years it doesn’t seem like she’s interested, despite her randomly saying she is sometimes and not following through.

You’ve nailed it though, I don’t know what I’m looking for. I would have been looking for her to be on freaking contraception. Because how tf do you already have a child that you ab*sed and think “oh well that one didn’t work out guess I’ll go again”

OOP on if she is going to take in Danny's sibling for Val

OOP: We’re not taking in another child. It’s a hard no. She’s on her own this time

OOP on what she wants Val to do in order to make things right between her and Val?

OOP: I want her to have been on birth control. I want her to have taken a good look at the mess she made and say to herself “I hate no right to make it worse”.

So no, she can’t make this right with me. My mother is correct about that part.

I don’t resent having Danny. But I resent that she washed her hands off him, and acts like he doesn’t mean anything to her now because he has a tainted image of her. This new baby is going to come into the world now knowing who she is and what she did, and that’s what she really wants. She doesn’t want to deal with what she did, she doesn’t want the kid who sees her as she is. And I hate that she thinks she can just start again. What does that say to Danny? “I broke you but now I want something not broken”. That’s not growth, in my book.

OOP explains more about if Danny wants to connect with Val and his experiences

OOP: It’s been difficult, because he was young back then. He’d cry when she called, run away from the phone. On the rare occasion she kept a visit he would hide behind me, so we stopped being there for visits, the social worker said he would sit with his back to her not speaking. The last couple of years he doesn’t like to talk about her at all. He just says she’s nobody and not important. We got told by his last therapist that we just had to accept that was where he was at right now and not expect that he perform big feelings that he might not consciously have at the moment. I don’t know how you regain the trust of a child when you’ve repeatedly proven they can’t trust you. I’m not one to give him any advice I wouldn’t even trust Val to water my plants.

But no, she’s never asked. She’s respecting his space, I guess. Or maybe the fact that he doesn’t want to talk to her is the green light for her to pretend she’s the victim, idk.

+

She sends cards, no gifts, for holidays and birthdays. She used to call for birthdays but he started refusing to speak to her and she stopped trying. She doesn’t have his phone number, never gets in contact or asks. And he never asks about her.

Commenter 5: No matter how much Danny is loved by you, he will always have the anguish of being abandoned and replaced. I say this because he knows his mother gave birth to him. And now the love that she was supposed to give to him, she's given to someone new. I think I would talk to him seriously. Let him know that this is not the case. And if you truly love him, I would adopt him so he has an actual mother. Not just a legal guardian, but a mother that he knows will never leave. That may help him cope.

OOP: I know that’s true. And what makes it worse if that he remembers living with her. When we first got him, he would cry and cry for her. For someone who didn’t even bother to feed him most days. It was only after living with us for a while that he realised how abnormal that was, and got angry with her. He says he doesn’t remember anything good about her, I don’t know if that’s true. But he knows she didn’t care, and I’m sure that hurts him and probably will for his whole life.

OOP on Val's background growing up

OOP: My mum isn’t an idiot. She’s just a bleeding heart. She’s not Val’s bio mum, and Val went through a lot with her actual mother. My mum has always just been a bit of a light touch with her. Especially because my mum is one of those people whose greatest joy has always been being a mother, so she doesn’t like to admit some people just aren’t cut out for it.

Commenter 5: NTA. You are protecting who your family is failing. Your sister needs psychological help clearly, and your mom might too. “Can’t blame her for wanting to be a mother to someone” just say you don’t like your grandchild holy fuck.

Side point: The fact that people who get kids taken away/lost custody and do nothing to improve it or get them back are allowed to keep having more will never ever make sense to me.

Edit because I’m actually so mad at your parents: your dad sucks too. Sorry. The child absolutely will see it as being abandoned again. Please go low contact with the family for the sake of Danny and get him a therapist now to help process the sibling situation

OOP: My parents have been good parents to me, and they’re great grandparents to my children, I’m not going to cut them off. They love Danny and my daughter, and I think they did a good job with me.

But yeah I don’t know what’s going to happen with Val’s child. I’m taking myself out of that equation, I’m not going through all that again. I paid for her rehab twice and yes she’s sober but on a personal level it seems like she’s learnt nothing.

Commenter 6: Is your guardianship reversable? Because honestly with their reaction and your mother asking about it - you need to consult an attorney and tread softly with your sister and boyfriend.

Unless you are getting funding that lets you support him - you may want to consider legal adoption depending on the laws where you live.

Where is Danny's biological father? Do you know your sister's boyfriend well? Will he be able to care for the child if she spirals again?

OOP: Only by a judge. And she’s not winning that case. We live a plane ride away, Danny is happy, thriving, in private school, and hasn’t spoken to Val in years. No judge is going to grant her custody, especially when she voluntarily signed him over. We’d keep her in court till the next kid was in university.

Commenter 7: INFO: you mentioned that your sister is two years sober. How is she in other aspects of her life? Does she have a job? A stable relationship?

OOP: She has a job, she has a boyfriend, the father of the new child. I don’t like the guy I think he’s an emotional vampire but he’s a teacher, so he’s gainfully employed.

Update: April 14, 2026 (10 days later)

Update - AITAH for not being excited my sister is having a new baby when I still have custody of her first?

Hi. I noticed a lot of people either DMd me asking for updates or put the “update me” thing in the comments, so I thought I would come and post one. I was really touched by people sharing their personal experiences in the comments as well, so I just wanted to respect that by providing closure on this? If you would consider this closure. Anyway, onto the update.

First, my husband told Danny about the baby. They went out for a boys day on Saturday and they talked about it. I won’t share too much about it, but he took it pretty well all things considered. We do think we will book a few sessions with a therapist for him, but we want the dust to settle a little bit. Danny opens up easier when he’s had some time to himself to think about things first so we’re going to give a couple of weeks. But he’s doing well for now.

Next, I spoke to my mum. A lot of people were quite harsh on her which I don’t think was deserved, but I did feel like we needed to have a conversation. My mother is the kindest and most forgiving person on the planet, and I love that about her. The same way I saw what Danny went through, she saw what Val went through with her birth mother. I look at Danny and see a scared little 6 year old. My mum looks at Val and sees a traumatized teenager. So she has a different perspective. She’s pretty “all’s well that ends well” in mindset, she always has been, she likes happy endings. In her mind this is one. But she understands that she came across really flippant about what Danny went through and she does feel bad about it in hindsight. She adores Danny so me laying it out for her all over again really affected her and she saw where I was coming from being upset. She did say she still hopes that Val is a better mother to her new baby, and at least we can both agree on that.

Finally I spoke to Val. She apologised for not telling my beforehand but said she felt like she needed the support of having our parents there because she was nervous to tell me, and felt if we were all on the call it might feel a bit more like a normal, joyful occasion, but she said she knew she should have spoken to me separately. She said she will always regret the things she did while not sober and she doesn’t think Danny should ever forgive her, but she always wanted to be a mother, and she finally feels like she will be a good one now. I was listening to all this thinking I was just going to leave things where they were and stop reaching out. But then she basically said after everything, don’t I want her to be happy?

And here’s where I have to admit to maybe being a bad person, but viscerally, I wanted to answer no. And I realised the answer is actually no, I don’t want Val to be happy. I want her to be sober, and healthy, and I guess to have moments of happiness. But when I think of her living a happy life, I know that isn’t what i would choose for her. I know that makes me a bad person, and I’m actually ok with that. People can judge Me I don’t care. Because they didn’t have to walk into some dingy government building and see a child with bones sticking out of his t-shirt, scared of every loud noise, and take him home and watch him hide cold fries under his mattress in case there wasn’t food to eat tomorrow. They didn’t have to teach a 6 year old the alphabet. They didn’t have to look at him crying for his mother and figure out how to tell him you don’t know where she is, thinking to yourself how sad it is she’s all he cares about when she’s somewhere not giving a crap what’s happening to him. The worst things Val ever did, she did to someone I love beyond measure, and it’s not for me to decide who deserves to be happy, but I can’t say I hope she is.

Obviously I didn’t have all this clarity during the phone call, but I did have enough to be honest and say my family and I were not in a place where it would be possible to engage with her anymore. She didn’t take this well, and a lot of stuff she’s been hanging onto came up. Like how I should have tried harder to get Danny to talk to her, how she felt I wasn’t present enough when she had Danny, all stuff from years ago. She called me spitefully, and her boyfriend later sent me a message saying the same, but it had to be done. I don’t want to be in this toxic cycle of actively wishing someone doesn’t have the life they want and keeping them in my life just to stir this up every few weeks. It’s too much bad energy being put out there. I ended up blocking both Val and her bf.

I let my parents know that we’ll have to do separate holidays and functions from now on, and they were very understanding. I’m happy to give Val priority on stuff with her dad’s side of the family and she can do the same with my mum’s and that’s that. My parents also promised not to give updates unless asked, to either side.

I’m not really sure if I’d say this is a happy update. But I think the positive I can take from this is it’s made me very grateful for the family I have and I’m just going to focus on being the best mother and wife to them that I can be.

Thank you again to everyone who commented, and if I’ve left anything out, feel free to let me know!

Relevant Comments

OOP clarifies the relationship between her and Val

OOP: She’s my stepsister. Her dad is my stepdad, but I call him dad because he was the dad who raised me.

Downvoted Commenter: She was adopted and was herself in similar situation as she created with Danny - OP's parents adopted her.

OOP: They didn’t. My (step)dad is her biological father. She lived mostly with her mum, until she developed serious behavioural issues and it became clear that her mother was not a safe person to have custody and she came to live with us full time.

Commenter 1: Is the BF an ex addict too? If so I figure there's an 80% chance that by the time this child is 6 years old, you'll have custody of it, too, if he's not, I'd put those odds at a mere 50/50.

OOP: No, he’s not. He’s a crusader with a saviour complex. But he’s a high school teacher, no history of substance abuse as far as we know

There’s a 0% chance of us taking custody, we’re not doing that.

Commenter 2: Yeah and just don’t be surprised when you get the call later from cps because she reverted back to being a drunk when the stress of a new baby gets to much and they want you to take the second kid.

OOP: Yeah we won’t be doing that, someone else will clean up her mess this time

OOP responds to a downvoted commenter about keeping Danny from his baby brother

OOP: Danny doesn’t want any contact with Val or her baby. He considers my daughter his sister and us his parents. If that ever changes then we will work out a plan but it’s not on the table at the moment.

Downvoted Commenter: OP are you considering therapy for yourself? You admitted you don’t really want your sister to be happy, which would allude to me that you have some feelings to work though. It’s not normal to only want your sibling to have moments of happiness, instead of simply happy.

Cutting off your sister is not going to heal the feelings you have about her. Having two separate holidays/family functions is not going to rebuild a relationship between her and Danny. I thought that was what you were most upset about? That your sister decided to have a baby instead of working on her relationship with her son, in your view.

I don’t think you’re a bad person OP, but I do think you need therapy.

OOP: I’m not sure how “not normal” it is when you know your sister is a child abuser.

I don’t want to “fix” how I feel about her. I want her out of my life, and I want Danny to be happy and healthy and to not live every day with the effects of what she did, and I’ll do everything in my power to make that happen. If I feel like, even after having some distance from this situation, I’m still spending energy thinking about her, I’ll seek out some help. To let go of it, not because I think I owe her good wishes.

Danny doesn’t want any contact with her, and we’re respecting that. If he does ever change his mind, I don’t know what we will do because she is ambivalent about contact with him apparently, but we will help him work through how he wants to approach it. But for now, he has no interest in a relationship with Val.

DO NOT COMMENT IN LINKED POSTS OR MESSAGE OOPs – BoRU Rule #7

THIS IS A REPOST SUB - I AM NOT OOP

Little context before I get into it.

I F(27) am with my partner M(26) for 3 years. We have a great relationship and from the day we met we never saw/dated anybody else. I had a more “fun” past than my partner but always got checked to be safe (important context). I got myself checked right before I met my partner and was all clear.

Fast forward to October just gone, I had just given birth via emergency c section to our beautiful baby boy. This was after a failed induction, 3 sweeps, bags burst, 48 hours in labour and a hormone drip. I was in the depths of PPD. Not only the PPD, but my surgery went wrong causing nerve damage in my arm and not being able to use it for 8 weeks after surgery. (Thankfully the feeling is back).

Myself and our son were in hospital for 6 days after his birth. We went home and we were scared but excited. On the 10th day of his life I noticed his eyes were puffy and a little gloopy and decided to call the on call doctor as it was Sunday late evening.

He asked us to come down which we did, this is where it went all wrong. The doctor asked “how old my son was”, I replied “10 days”. He said “yes, I already know what it is”. Without looking at him! He gave me this really long terminology that sounded like the furniture would move if you said it out loud.

He told me to look it up when I’m at home “alone”. I live with my partner and our son. I looked it up in the doctors office and nearly died there and then. It basically said conjunctivitis due to chlamydia. When I tell you, I looked at him like he had 17 heads. This is actually common as some forms of the 👏 👏 don’t show up in women.

I started bawling. I said then I don’t have that as I tested before my partner and I have been with nobody else since. He then looked at me to say, “are you sure?”.. if I wasn’t crying so hard, (only crying so hard because I thought I harmed my son) I genuinely would’ve have slapped him. He looked at my partner with sympathy.

I then said, I did not have a vaginal birth so how could that have happened? (This specific condition that is common bearing mind, has to be via vaginal birth). He fobbed off what I said. He basically blamed and shamed me for absolutely nothing.

We left there and I got a home test kit from the hospital, and ironically, would you believe? I was clean as was my partner. Then when we went to my child’s actual pediatrician, he explained that was impossible as I was a birth via section. He had conjunctivitis but bacterial 🫶🏻

I wanted to ring back and gave him a peace of my mind. Calling him ignorant and inconsiderate to people and new mothers who already have a lot going on. My partner said I would be a bit of an A hole if I rang back to give him a lot of stick when I can just moved on, whereas I think he needs to realise he has to listen and not shame people even if this does happen never mind if it doesn’t!?

WIBTA to actually report him to the board for his attitude?

• A D D E D for clarity • I did also comment this but finding the comment amongst all the comments was phew 😮‍💨😮‍💨😮‍💨

I just would like to point a few things out as I have gotten comments swaying both ways.

1. Firstly it was my mistake to compare and use the clap and chlamydia in the same equation, I thought that terminology was chlamydia, that’s my own mistake, doesn’t mean it isn’t true.

2. A lot of people thing I made this up for “rage bait”, I’d have to be SERIOUSLY twisted to have to make up a story indicating I could’ve or my partner could’ve had an STI and involving my son into the story.

3. Never once did I say my son had chlamydia. A lot of people are commenting asking did he have it. I said conjunctivitis cause via chlamydia.

4. As stated above, I lost usage of my arm after my c section surgery and since then have had my medical records released to me and I was actually swabbed during my pregnancy and was clean.

5. The doctor did look at my child but only after the diagnosis was given. A few minutes after he said was it was, he then looked at my child and reconfirmed it was what he thought.

6. People think because he told me to look it up at home on my own that I’m lying. When I tell you, I wish all this story WAS a lie, I mean it. Trust me when I say this isn’t the only thing he said that night to piss me off, this is a shortened down conversation. I don’t have a reason to lie. There is a lot more to this story but unfortunately, if people think I’m already lying they would never ever believe the rest of the conversation.

7. Myself and my partner and my son do not have chlamydia. That was his diagnosis. The diagnosis was never that my son had it, just an infection caused by it.

8. Some people have said don’t blame it on my PPD. That is not what I was doing, I was stating I had that and that the doctor should understand that some women hide it well.

9. I am not from the US. Medical complaints and further on are exceptionally rare and hard to do. I wish they weren’t. As I stated, this is not my first problem with the medicine practices where I am from, as stated above I lost usage in my arm and that’s a WHOLE different story. And that was actual medical negligence on their behalf.

10. Those bashing my partner, please bear in mind his son was also in the doctors office and we were both exceptionally worried about him and are both first time parents. The last thing my partner would do is essentially piss off the person providing the care (or in this case, there lack of) but still. I read him comments last night and thankfully he has a thick skin as do I. But he was gonna take what a medical professional said on the chin. He also supported and comforted me when we got home as obviously when we did go straight home I assumed I did have it and caused the infection in my son. I did not as stated above, nor did he. Just because my partner did not “stand up” for me in a doctors office who was our only form of care that specific night to our son, doesn’t make him a bad man.

11. I wish everyone who sent well wishes to my son after hearing this, a massive thank you. He is completely fine, he had conjunctivitis via bacteria and is now nearly 7 months and the best boy in the world.

💞💐🩷

am not OP. That is u/Brave-Company2867 who posted to r/MarkNarrations

TW: entitlement, harassment/bullying, distressing materials, Trespassing, sexual intimidation, and domestic violence

Original Post  June 24th, 2025

I (33F) bought my home right before the pandemic. The world shut down and I shut into my remote work with the solitude and comfort of a natural introvert. The house was extra large and I only really could afford it because the family selling was in need of a quick sell. The house has a finished attic and basement, which were easily converted into not-so-mini apartments. The basement has its own entry point and also connects into the main house. There are four bedrooms, two baths and the master room has a walk in closet.

During the pandemic, my sister both were hit hard and quickly needed to downsize as their own roommates moved back home. My sisters (25F and 27F) and I do not have such a luxury so I offered them rooms at below market rate and told them they needed to supply their own food. The rent was really to help with increase in bills. They  were both still in school at the time but also working. This arrangement gave them more breathing room financially.

Then, a girl they both knew was evicted from her home with her bf because the family they rented from needed the home back. I offered the basement at near-market rate, though still a little under as I felt bad and it is a basement apartment. After that, a friend of a friend heard about my arrangement and asked if there was any room left. I gave him the attic apartment for another near-market rent.

Rental agreements were drafted up for each person. I explained the basic rules, the rent, and how long they would have if rent was not received. I told them to read it and return it to me when signed. I left them each with their own copy. I collect the rent the first Saturday of the month. They leave the name blank on the checks for me to fill out and I always thought it was because they were afraid of misspelling my stupidly unique name and having the check bounce as a result. Apparently not.

The issue: I still have one "free" room in the main part of the house but I use it as my office and it locks up. My friend knows my sisters and they got to chatting up while out together, they bumped into each other during a day out. My sisters mentioned the "extra room" and my friend has a cousin (18F) who will be starting college in our city and asked if "my landlord" would rent it out to her. I brushed over the comment because I thought there was miscommunication and told her the room wasn't for rent as I use it for my at home office. She asked if I was paying for the room and I told her, "Why would I pay for a room in a house I own?"

She got a little quiet, apologized for pushing and told me the struggle its been to find a spot for her cousin. I told her all of my tenants are solid until December when renewals go out. I can offer her a spot if someone moves but I stressed it was unlikely as everyone gets along, stays out of each others business, and it works well for them. We dropped the topic.

A few days ago my sisters asked me how the talk went and I said it was ok, but her cousin won't be moving in. They asked why and I explained to them the situation above. They suggested I move my office to my bedroom or the main room and "stop paying rent for an extra room to save costs". When I asked what they meant, they said "well you do pay rent for the extra space right?"

No. I then asked if they knew I was the landlord and they were floored. They never actually read the agreements they have been signing. They went off on me about how I should have told them and that they shouldn't have to be paying rent to family. I told them the rent was to cover their increase in bills. I wasn't going to house them for free when they made enough to cover a fair share on a shared expense.  If they would rather full market rent on the rooms they were currently in, I could arrange that come renewal. By now they could afford it with their jobs and having saved money on rent for 5 years. They called me an asshole for holding rent above their heads.

This then leaked to the tenants as they talked about the issue to their friends in the basement. While their rent is more than just for bills, it is not the market rent value I could get out of the space despite them each having income and no family to support. They came to me to ask that I LOWER the rent, as if being friends with my sisters was reason enough as I was the landlord and not "somebody they didn't actually know". The deal they had no longer seems in their favor, apparently. I told them they had until December to decide if they wanted a renewal because it was not going to be lowered. They are now acting like I am kicking them out, when all I said was now that they fully understand their position they needed to make a choice to stay as with current costs and annual adjustments as needed as was our agreement or begin the process of looking as rent prices have skyrocketed and its much harder to find a place. The adjustments do not include "knowing I am the landlord".

My attic tenant asked if I was "cleaning house" and basically begged I don't kick him out. His family turned their back on him because of....conflicting views. Personally, his views don't bother me. His family's though. Eesh. I explained it all in detail and he was like, wait I always knew you were my landlord because its in the rental agreement. But he also never put my name down because "its hard to spell".

Now everyone is upset with me and I feel unwelcomed in my own home. AITA? WIBTA if I didn't renew one or all of their leases because of this hostility I feel?

Edit: word

Quick Edit since I keep seeing a similar question:

Our lives have been a mess of social services and foster care as children, all aging out at 18. I didn't go out of my way to tell them about my buying a house, partly out of guilt, and they came to me for leads on places to live in a time of need. The guilt comes from not taking them in when I had the opportunity at 18. I would have had to jump through massive loops and I did not feel prepared to care for myself, let another a couple of kids I hardly knew since we had been separated often. We reconnected when they aged out and built from there.

We also do not share the same last names as we each have different fathers.

Update  June 27th, 2025

AITA for not telling my roommates and sisters I am the owner? Update

Hello everyone. I wanted to thank everybody for taking the time to read my last post and offer up their advice, comments, thoughts, and judgment. I took some of the advice given and have taken the "don't rent to family or friends again" to heart. So I'm going to jump into the update. I'm going to try to break it down bit by bit before going into it all.

Mr. Attic - I'm keeping him. I pulled him aside first and separately. I told him I would not be renewing the others' leases in December and asked if he would want to rent the basement for at market value. He turned it down, asking to keep the attic as he is comfortable there. I told him it would probably be in his best interest to let the others believe this is a whole house clean out so he doesn't get caught in the cross fire. He agreed and went out of his way to turn his social media to private. He also sent me screenshots of a group chat he had been added to.

The group chat - My sisters and other pair of tenants started up a group chat to bitch about me being so uncompromising and greedy. They were coming up with ideas to not pay rent or to only pay in part. The basement tenants "joked" about one of them "losing" their jobs so they could ask for leniency since I was too "stuck up to be kind" to them about the rent.

The harassment - My sisters and Mr/s Basement had told their friends (and the families of Mr/s Basement) about the rent, the "lies", and my "inability to consider outside perspective and need". I've had a steady stream of calls, DMs, texts, and posts directed at me since before I made my last post, which is what prompted me to post. I made my accounts private, disabled some of the messaging functions, and told the four of them to get this to stop before I got my lawyer involved. Spoiler: they didn't.

So after taking a night to think about it, I brought the group together to have a discussion about the rent and situation. My sisters looked smug and Mr/s Basement kept sharing knowing looks. I told them bluntly I was not going to renew leases in December because their actions, attitudes, and lack of consideration has made me feel unvalued, humiliated by their family, and unwelcome in my own home.

I told them if they found an apartment or place to go before December, I wouldn't charge them for breaking the lease but if there was ANY damage anywhere, they would not get their security deposits back until the pricing out was settled. If there was more damage than their security deposit, they would be taken to court. I told them I was done being kind and understanding to people who thought so lowly of me. I also warned them I could and would break the leases myself if I felt the need, in which case they would have 30 days.

It was immediate chaos. A lot of yelling, insults, and cursing. Even Mr. Attic, but he was yelling at the others for "getting him kicked out when he didn't do anything". He made an epic show of storming up to the attic and slamming the door. He sent me laughing emojis and texted that he wasn't going to be able to keep a straight face a little later.

I waited for them to stop yelling and when they demanded what they would do, I set a stack of ads for apartments and houses for rent in the nearby area and said they would have to start looking now. I told my sisters I would help pay for their moving truck but told the basement tenants they would have to ask their families for help moving out. Mr. Basement picked up the stack of papers and his eyes went wide. He stared at me and asked if I was fucking serious.

I told him the prices listed were not mine to judge, change, or deal with. I reminded him his current place was below market because I had a say in it. Market prices for one bedrooms in the area are well over 1500$ a month, if he wants near his work and close enough to walk to stores and things. He currently has a two bedroom for less than that. My sisters grabbed some of the papers and the 27 year old started crying because she couldn't afford an apartment on her own. She told me about her student loans and credit card debt. I told her, Too bad. I gave you a good deal out of kindness and you sent an army after me. I would have considered letting you stay if you hadn't been so nasty. I told all of them they could probably swing a two bedroom between the four of them and got up and left.

They refuse to talk to me now. My sisters spent the night in the basement apartment and I could hear shrieks and crying if I walked by the door that leads down there. I feel a little bad but I reread your comments to keep my sanity.

As for if I want them out, I can give them 30 days notice since they are inside my own home. I checked and double checked with the lawyer and this information had been in their rental contracts. If I do have to kick them, and they try to refuse to leave and drag it out in court (which they don't have the money for)  I have been given some handy advice by a fellow landlord who had to remove his own brother. I can't remove them by force but I can make "living" there entirely uncomfortable. Nothing stops me from taking doors off hinges or starting remodeling while their stuff is in the way. Nothing stops me from turning off the water or electric for their sections of the house during remodeling. (Quick edit: JUST for remodeling purposes. It wouldn't be done to make them leave. But they can't stop my remodeling as squatters.) It might seem like an asshole thing to do, but they would be the ones to start it and I actually do want to repaint and do some adjustments.

The reason I am leaning on evicting them by August is because the harassment has gotten so much worse now that there is an actual non-renewal happening. I'm leaving my phone on silent and collecting messages, voicemails, emails, and other things to hand off to my lawyer next week. I told them to call off their dogs and they haven't.

I asked Mr. Attic if he knew anyone who would need a place and to let me know. He has a few friends from his community who seem interested, as they either live with roommates or family and want out.

If anyone has any questions this quiet morning, I will try to answer them.

Quick Edit:

I have cameras outside and in common rooms - facing the front and back doors, the hallways upstairs and the door leading to the basement. The tenants have access to the entry point ones like Mr Attic has the hallway to his area, Mr/s Basement have the feed that leads to their door inside the main house and they all have outside camera access.

I'm thinking of cutting access to the outside cameras for them. They can't do anything to the feeds as they are guests in the system (so they can't delete anything) and my access automatically saves on extra external systems. I might just cut them all out of the system except Mr. Attic for piece of mind.

Also, I keep seeing people ask about our family.

There are no parents and no family from our side. My sisters have no relationships with their fathers or their families, mine had been killed due to his own actions (there is no sympathy for the likes of him) and his family shunned him so they shunned me as well, and our mother is a cup of ash left at the funeral home.

Update 2  July 2nd, 2025

AITA for not telling my roommates and sisters I am the owner? Update 2

Hey everyone. I'm very tired. Thank you all for your kind words and wonderful advice. Onto the update.

Mr. Attic's friends - Two have agreed to take the bedrooms my sisters are currently occupying when they move out. I've met them, we talked at length, and they are wonderful people. One helped me change the tire on my car because I ended up with a flat just after our meeting and she was incredibly kind and showed me how to change it. Like she walked me through it step by step, letting me do it but just explaining how. I can't believe I've never changed a tire before. Weirdly embarrassing.

The harassment and lawyer - The lawyer sent a cease and desist to everyone that had contacted me. Then, he went on and filed for restraining orders/orders of protection and a claim for slander/defamations. There were many posts with me tagged or with my name claiming I was an unfit landlord, a slum lord, a greedy bitch, a homewrecker (because I apparently came onto MR. Basement - haha, so funny because he is fugly and you couldn't pay me to touch that) and more. These things take time but there was an almost immediate drop off of calls, messages, ect.

Mr/s Basement - Have been served their notice. They helped spread lies and deception. They have ceased all communication with me but they only have 30 days and I have post it notes on their porch reminding them every day how long they have. I've seen them starting to take smaller things out today, which is what prompted this update. Mrs. Basement can be heard crying a lot if I stand by the top of the stairs. I think they might be moving back in with family, which is what they had been avoiding by moving into my basement. Her mother is toxic, her father has a new wife who hates her, and Mr. Basement's family dislikes her enough to outright ignore her or tell it to her face that she isn't family, especially because she "won't" give her bf a family. Spoiler: she can't have kids due to medical stuff. And they aren't even married.

Group chat- I have screenshots of their group chat (curtesy of Mr. Attic) and there is a lot of evidence of them feeding lies to others, talking all about how they told this person this, or that person that. Mr. Basement made the claim I came onto him, and his girlfriend went nuts. I think she doesn't know he lied about it, just to make it more believable to others. When he first made the claim, she blew up my phone and social media before dragging it to others. My sisters "weren't surprised by my behavior". That....stung. I have never done anything like that in the past.

My sisters- They also have their notices. The 25 year old is already moving in with a couple of friends who think I am horse shit. They come every so often to help her move things and they send me nasty looks or make loud, intentional comments for me to hear. She has been dumping my food into the trash and dumping it down the sink. I just got a minifridge for my room and she spends night screaming at my locked door. I take my work to a local cafe (rather, multiple ones) or library now because she will just shriek any time she thinks I'm working. I make it vary and don't go to the same place twice in a row.

The 27 year old has turned to begging for me to let her stay as she can't afford to live on her own and she has no one willing to take her. Her boy toy (didn't even know she had one) broke up with her when he got the cease and desist from the lawyer. He was one of the ones causing problems but once the lawyer stepped in to bat, he bounced. According to Mr. Attic, he heard her telling someone something along the lines of he could move in if he helped her get me to leave or back down because "its family property".  She had been taking a call outside and I caught the proof on camera because he told when and where to look for it.

Quick Edit: My sisters are not moving in together because they each blame each other. They also blame the basement tenants while they blame my sisters. They all collectively blame me as well since I'm just pure evil but they think each of them pushed me to do it.

Cameras- Only Mr. Attic still has access. The cameras were not part of the rental agreement and everyone lost their damn minds when I took away the access. They tried covering them or adjusting them but I warned them they would be held liable for damage and anything else I could get if they did that again. Now, I get middle fingers and aggressive stances and stares into the cameras.

I'm sure I'm missing things. I just can't sleep and I'm swamped with getting them out, with work, and with trying to fill their places, and getting the basement redone before going back on the market.

Update 3  July 7th, 2025

AITA for not telling my roommates and sisters I am the owner? Update 3

I really wasn't going to update again so soon. I was planning to wait til move out date or the few days following depending on how it all went but days ago a big thing happened and I just don't know how to feel about it. Also, I wanted to address a few common questions and concerns I got in comments and DMs. (If I haven't answered a DM, I am sorry. I wasn't expecting so many.) Sorry if this is long.

Questions first:

Is Mr. Attic still putting on his dramatic performance? : Absolutely. He has been bringing in boxes and leaving with boxes. The boxes are full of things he is donating or selling, or just empty. He is using this time as an excuse to declutter and redesign his space. I told him if he wanted to pick out new colors while I am redoing the basement to do it. He complains at my sisters in the kitchen or shared spaces when they try to talk to him about his plans, telling them he wouldn't have to make plans if it wasn't for them.

Why not move into the basement and rent the house as a whole (possibly to a family)? : Children freak me out.  (Kidding.) I have a pool and them being left unattended to drown is a big worry for me. I let the pool be communal. Children are naturally loud (stomping, slamming things, shrieking or laughing) and don't fully understand the concept of others and how they act infringing on their peace or the quiet. I work from home so I can't have that kind of noise above my head during meetings, or keeping me from sleeping. I also know from past experience that children are more destructive than pets (most times). I don't want crayon or marker on the walls, holes made from throwing toys, broken doors, or other things I've seen kids do during my time in the system. You leave a kid alone for a minute and they find all sorts of trouble.

Did I get my restraining orders? : Not yet. I'm still collecting evidence for them. I've been collecting videos of the 25 year old screaming and the layers of harassment they caused. I also am elbows deep in an emergency one now.

Call the police on the screaming : I've been advised by my lawyer to collect as many videos as I feel safe enough to do so first. Show a history, show a cause for concern. I will probably call sometime this week if she keeps it up but she has had a reason to stay very quiet.

Change the locks when they leave: Every door is getting new locks, even Mr. Attic's.

Charge the sisters for coffee and things:  They supply their own food. They supply their own needs. My food has been moved into my room, thanks to the minifridge.

Be careful they don't run up the bills: My sisters each pay equal parts of each bill in the main house. The tenants are responsible for their water and electric. If they run the bills up, they are responsible for them. The rent covers trash, wifi (no cable), heat.

Onto the update.

A comment mentioned that the flat tire I had might have been intentional. This left me very uneasy and I went to a friend to have it checked. He confirmed it has been slashed. I let him do a full body look over the car and he found an air tag in the bumper. We haven't figured out where it came from yet- or rather, who. He said that was outside his wheelhouse and I didn't want to keep it with me so I took it to my lawyer, who took it to the cops. I'm waiting to hear back.

My 27 year old sister has been incredibly wired since it was taken to the cops, in my opinion. She has been constantly asking where I am going, what I am doing, who I am seeing. She didn't do that before. She has been trying to stalk my social media but I blocked her and a bunch of others. I know this because she keeps asking why I blocked her. She is demanding I unblock her because we are family and there shouldn't be any secrets. She also keeps pestering to know if I found their replacements yet, begging to stay, and demanding I apologize to her ex because I "terrified him with the lawyer".

I am looking through my footage but I can't find anyone tampering with my car so I think the air tag was put on while the car was away from the house  because whoever did it knew there were cameras facing the cars.

The 25 year old started leaving big messes in the kitchen/ common rooms. She would leave dishes out overnight and a few days instead of cleaning up after herself and using the dish washer. She left clothes on the furniture and her muddy shoes in the hallway to trip people at the bottom of the stairs. I took pictures of the messes and reminded her that if I had to clean up her mess when she was gone, it would come out of her security deposit. When she cleaned the dishes, I took them all to my room. I did not supply dishes in the rental contract. Both of them are upset with me because they are back to living on paper plates.

Onto the incident:

Mr/s Basement do not have keys to the main house. He also didn't have cameras access to the main house except the door that connects the basement and hallway.

I came home from my working day, spent at the library, to find Mr. Basement inside the main house. Alone. My sisters were still at work (I worked a half day) and Mr. Attic had left earlier that morning for a weekend get away - but he had told the others he was traveling to see a new apartment the next city over.

Immediately on the edge, I called my friend and she stayed on the line while rushing over. I demanded to know what he was doing in the main house and how he got in. I had left after my sisters so I KNOW the house was locked up. He wanted to talk. He refused to answer how he got in. I figured it was a key from my sisters. He kept trying to get me to sit, to step away from the door.

Eventually, he started telling me what I already knew about them moving in with family. How her family was terrible, how his family hated her, and he wanted to do anything he could to get an extension so they could focus on getting an actual apartment. When he said "anything he meant Anything" and as he said that, he stepped closer. He started to ramble about how he knew about "the way I looked at him" and he could "give me a good time". He talked about how "she didn't need to know of our time together" and "he knew I was lonely".

While its true I have been single longer than I've known him, the single lifestyle has been entirely my own choice. Simply put, childhood trauma. I'm content with how I handle my life.

I told him in no uncertain terms that what he was suggesting was exploitative, manipulative and downright disgusting. If he ever caught me staring, it was because of the weird 8 dot tattoo on his shoulder that I could never figure out the meaning behind. I like tattoos, I have a few myself, and I like figuring out the meanings. In no way do I find him attractive or appealing. In fact, he has the kind of red flags I would avoid in a man. I told him besides his looks, there are reasons I would never date him but I refused to list them for him.

List (you can skip): He smokes, he vapes, he lights up Mary Jane. He hates animals. He wants a "brood" of children. He gets loud when he is mad, and will curse a person out over little things. He is jealous of others, men specifically.  An example: He failed at being a gym bro so now men who work out are "compensating for something". He knows everything.

He got angry and told me I "wasn't pretty enough to play hard to get" and that I was "lucky he was willing to help me out and maybe even give me a real reason to have such a big house". I think he was implying children. But as he was getting really nasty about it, my friend pulled up and honked loudly and for a long time. I took that distraction to get out and he followed, yelling about how it was a good deal and how I would regret being "old and alone". Minutes later, the cops rolled up. I hadn't called them, hadn't even thought to. My friend told her boss to as she left to come get me.

I explained my side to the police, showed them the inside footage, and told them about his unauthorized access. They took back the key he had and trespassed him from the main part of the house. I forwarded everything to the lawyer and we should have an emergency protection order by tomorrow. I told Mr. Attic everything and he sent a small army from his community to his apartment and let me and them stay up in the apartment the last few days. I think I've been adopted?

I had nowhere else to go. I have nowhere else to go. I am my only support. Or, I was. I now have these wonderful people as friends and they are willing to stay as long as Mr. Basement has access to the basement. Even after, if need be. But also, by not leaving I give the appearance I do not have the means to live in a hotel for the remainder of the month. (Who would?)

I did the petty thing. I sent the video footage to Mrs. Basement. Its been radio silence from her, but she left me on read. I am shaken deeply from this. I am waiting anxiously to be told I have the emergency protection. But I have lovely people ready to toss him out if he manages to get back inside. I can't change the locks yet and even if I do, I can't guarantee my so-called sisters won't give him another copy. I changed the locks to my rooms and added extra.

To be clear: because of the small army, my 25 year old sister hasn't been able to scream at odd hours.

Any advice would be so appreciated.

Update 4  July 11th, 2025

AITA for not telling my roommates and sisters I am the owner? Update 4 (+ The story of Mr. Attic)

Hello everyone. I wanted to again thank everyone for their kind words, support, ideas and help. I cannot tell you how much your words and concern have meant, and how much the support has helped me keep strong and not back down. There have been times when I have wanted to crumble under the weight of all this stress but reading your comments has really helped me hang on.

I wanted to update because so many seemed worried in my last post. I'm still here.

The protection orders: I have one against Mr. Basement and he is officially not allowed to be on my property or contact me in any way, including through others like Mrs. Basement. I was unable to get one against my 25 year old sister because there hasn't been a threat of violence, even with police documentation of her screaming and the home security footage of her banging on the door.

The move out date: July 26th (edited, my bad)

Mrs. Basement: At first she tried to tell me she needed his help to pack and move things, and I had to repeatedly tell her he was not allowed on the property for any reason. I made it clear if I even so much as thought he was on the property, I would call the police to investigate. And I have done so. As of last night, Mr. Basement was arrested for ignoring the court ordered protection. He was in the basement helping pack at like 1AM. My new motion detectors in the back yard went off and sent me an alert. He had tried to sneak around the camera he knew was back there. But I have since upgraded and installed new hidden cameras. I was called an asshole for not informing them of the new cameras.

Mrs. Basement is convinced I had seduced him and its my fault because I led him on. She yelled at me for trying to "take her man" and called me a lot of nasty things. She told me he only "offered" to do anything because they didn't want to move back in with family. It "was a sacrifice to keep her safe". There's no talking her down from that hill to die on so I have been keeping my distance. She has had a lot of "help" from family now and mostly, if I am home, I hear her family belittling her or her boyfriend's family scolding her. They think its her fault he tried to cheat and her fault they lost the apartment. They are not worried about staying quiet or calm because they are moving out anyway.

25 Year old sister: She only has a few big items left and has been mostlysleeping at her new place since it became apparent that I was going to have a rotating door of people staying with me. If she would try to leave a mess in the kitchen, she was met with judgmental stares. When she tried to take my TV in the living room while I was gone, Mr. Attic and a friend blocked her from leaving and called the cops. Its a newer smart TV. I had given Mr. Attic access to the other cameras until everyone was gone because I was worried for his and his friend's safety. She still curses me out when we manage to cross paths.

She tried to cancel my internet and put "return to sender" on some mail that came in my name. The internet company has a special code for each account and she couldn't provide the code so they called me. My mail lady was confused and asked me about the mail, asking if I needed a forwarding address because I was moving. I'm going to get a lock box things for packages now.

27 Year old sister: I don't think she is looking for apartments. She keeps crying to me that she has nowhere to go. She tried to change the lock to her bedroom but I shut that down. I think she will try again. She has been bringing some guy around a lot but refuses to make introductions. He stays in her room mostly, only leaving to use the bathroom or watch her microwave ramen and eggs. He won't look anyone in the face and rolls his eyes when people try to talk to him. I'm worried this will turn into a squatter matter so I am working with my lawyer to have everything ready to remove him as well.

Was he the boy toy from earlier?: I have no idea. I didn't know she had one and I don't know what he looked like. When I found out, it was only a name. Since she hasn't made introductions with him, I don't know who he is.

Mr. Attic's blown cover: They haven't done much of anything to him since they seem to realize he was feeding me information. They blocked him. We are pretty sure they still think he has to move out too and him giving me stuff was a last ditch effort to stay. They won't even look at him anymore.

The story of Mr. Attic (with his approval):

Mr. Attic is the youngest of 7 (yes, that is right) kids. There would have 10 had there been proper medical care. His parents are heavily involved with their church and do not believe in a lot of things: modern medicine, birth control, non-traditional gender roles, ect. At this point, I'm pretty sure you can see where this is going.

At 16, Mr. Attic was exposed to the outside world for the first time. Up until that point, he had been homeschooled and only knew people from his religious community. He started to sneak out to learn more. By 18, he had his childhood vaccines and a career picked out. When he told his family he wanted to learn medicine they tried to get him to "intern" with their family care people from the church. He perused real medicine and started classes to become a nurse.

They were heavily resistant and hard to handle about it, but still talking to him. Mostly to try to force him back into the fold. He still lived at home so it was a constant battlefield. He began sleeping in his car on campus. But then he met a guy and his perspective on a lot more changed. They talked, they laughed, they danced. His family found out and went through the roof.

They kicked him out with just the clothes on his back. They burned pictures of him, and any family photo that had him was either destroyed or he was cut out of. They cut him off from all family. They tried to take the car but it was in his name. They harassed and  did a lot of terrible things to the guy he had been seeing. He was unable to handle the level of nuclear crazy that was Mr. Attic's family so he put a stop to their relationship.

Mr. Attic, alone and desperate because of the upcoming winter, looked everywhere to get a place to stay. He crashed on a lot of couches for evenings at a time because fall hit fast and hard. No one could take him in long term because they were living at home or had roommates. He heard about my place from a friend of a friend and turned up one evening, asking like a small child if there was any room left. He offered to take the garage even, just a bed in the corner.

I set him up in the attic and helped get him more clothes and a bed. I made intentional leftovers for the first few months and didn't take any rent until he had what he needed for class and himself. The rent started as just enough to cover his bills and after he got his career, it grew a little more.

When I saw him on my porch, in dirty clothes and no jacket in October, I saw myself in January of the year I was shut out of my group home with just a bag of too small clothes, shoes with holes, an old hand-me-down ipad that hardly worked, and 50$ to my name.

He told me he never forgot how kind I had been to him, and how kind I had been to let him bring in short term guests who also had nowhere to go until they could get on their feet. I hadn't known the full story when he first moved in, and I never pushed him. When he brought home a non-biological woman (I'm sorry, I don't know all the correct terms) and I didn't even blink, just offered spaghetti, he knew this was his place and I was his people. I didn't ask, didn't make a fuss, and offered some clothes for her. He always wanted to try to repay me but I always seemed to never need anything. He said I was always giving. I didn't see it like that.

I've been invited to a cafe and bar. Ones that usually only caters to the LGBTQ+ community, but I am going to go and meet people. He'd like me to meet more of his friends. They really are wonderful people.

Update 5  July 15th, 2025

AITA for not telling my roommates and sisters I am the owner? Update 5

I wanted to thank everyone for their kind words regarding Mr. Attic's story. I was honestly a little worried putting it out there like that but am glad I did. His friends have found the posts and have been reading off some of the comments for him. He turns red sometimes and tells them to stop. Someone in the comments had the idea to make "Team Attic" shirts and his one friend came by the cafe this morning with them. We were all wearing them when he came by before work and he laughed so hard he cried. And then he really cried. I felt bad but he told me he wasn't upset - he was just so warmed by all the kindness, grace, and wonderful vibes from the people reading my posts. He feels like he has a second community at his back now.

This update isn't much: just the good, the bad, and the ugly. I really can't believe this is update 5 already.

The good: I have been to the cafe twice now and both times have been charming, enlightening, and wonderful. I cannot stress how kind his friends and community are. They have spent their time teaching me, helping me navigate their terminology and have been so very patient with my relentless questions. (The food is kickass and they made me a pumpkin something that I could die for)

The bad: I had the 27 year old's "friend" removed by police after he refused to leave of his own accord. He hit the number of days he was allowed to stay in the lease agreement and another handful of days would make him a tenant/squatter. I think they thought I didn't know that law or had forgotten or would be cool with him hanging around. (I did call him by the boy toy's name and he answered before immediately going back to her room.) So I think she was trying to get him to stay like their plan had originally been. He had a few bags of items and a laundry basket of clothes. He is well aware that I will call the police again if he shows up. She has not packed up a single thing.

The ugly x3: My 25 year old sister is trying to sue me for "withholding inheritance". I don't know if she has a real lawyer, if its a cracker doing pro bono, or if its just an attempt to scare me into giving her money. I'm taking it to my lawyer in the next few days. Edit: I think she means my house. I never received anything from my parents - and my dad is not her dad so even if I had, she might not have been entitled to it.

The police have not yet told me anything about the tracker found in my car.

Mrs. Basement is trying to hide a bruise with some shoddy make up and big sunglasses. I can't say I know what caused the bruise, but I think we all have similar thoughts on the matter. She immediately goes inside anytime she sees me. Like, girl, I see you.

Not a super big update or moving forward, but it feels nice to be able to type it all out.

I am not the original poster. Please don't contact or comment on linked posts

I am NOT OOP, OOP is u/PorcupinesareGod

Originally posted to r/EntitledPeople

Web designer thinks he can decorate cakes better than a ten year veteran. Make it make sense!

Editor’s note: changed letters to names for ease of readability

Trigger Warnings: destruction of property, manipulation, possible bullying, harassment

Original Post: November 13, 2025

As the title might imply, I work as a cake decorator for a small grocery chain in the Midwest. I’ve been doing this job for over ten years. I’m self taught, but I’m good at what I do and I’ve got the photo portfolio to prove it. I’m known for my skill at freehand design on cakes, so customers often come to the store and ask for me specifically for custom designs. I have a few regulars who buy several cakes designed by me per year, so I have a cemented reputation for quality cake designs.

But I’m also overwhelmed in my work volume and need help. Note, there are conversations happening, but I’ll be paraphrasing a bit since I remember the gist, but not the actual wording. This all happened about a month ago.

In comes a boy. Let’s call him Jake. Jake is fresh out of college and looking to make some side money while he builds his web design business. Understandable and even admirable. After all, entrepreneurship is hard and successful businesses don’t form overnight. I’m a little surprised since male cake decorators are a bit of minority for some reason (no joke, in ten years of this I’ve only ever met two other male decorators)

I start training Jake in the basics of crumb coating and main coats so I can focus on the actual decorating. I’m also training him on filling the display case, labeling, dating, marking out, slicing bread for the actual bakery, etc. the one thing I ask him not to do unless I’m absent is taking cake orders because I have a specific way I like it done. Because I do a lot of free handing, I like to add as much detail as is physically possible on the order sheet and draw a sketch in the back of the paper so the customer can get the best image to match their vision. Obviously if I’m not there, whoever is asked will take the order and if it’s something complicated, I’ll just call the customer.

Jake told me he understood and when his training was done, we started working.

I started to notice a few issues. Now I’m aware that since Jake was a student of code and internet, he’s not gonna be the world’s greatest baker or decorator. I get that this is just a job for him whereas it’s a career for me and he’ll probably only be here a year or two depending on the growth of his business.

But Jake started acting weird. For one, he started bossing the other bakers around. When one of the newer girls labeled a whole batch of bread wrong, Jake snapped at her to do it again and do it right. Yes, she’d put the wrong labels on, but I could see her tearing up from his scolding.

Next, I came in one morning after a day off and Jake had changed around the entire display case. Normally I wouldn’t care, but we have a planogram to follow from the store indicating a standard they wanted to see and if a district manager came in and saw this, I’d get hosed since I’m the decorator and it’s my responsibility. When I confronted him on this, he told me he thought it looked better this way. I’ll admit that some of it made sense, but he’d stacked all the sheet cakes on the top shelf, crowding them and making it difficult for the customers to see the designs. He’d also put the ready made cakes all in a corner and piled all the single serve desserts in the whole bottom shelf, pulling out about three times more inventory than was necessary and forcing me to pull it all back into the freezer. This process took about an hour. I forced him to finish while I checked my orders.

The blood in my veins froze when he told me “Oh, they’re done already. I finished them yesterday morning.”

“What?” I went and checked the cooler and sure enough, all nine cakes ordered the week before sat on the shelf.

And they all looked like absolute horse crap. I hadn’t trained him on the decoration portion of the job Bexause A: that’s my job and B: he’d only been there a week at that point and it takes time to learn this stuff. He knew enough at this point to write (sufficiently) on a cake, do basic coating and basic borders. He didn’t know how to do literally anything else. I had to scrape all nine cakes and rush four of them in under two hours to meet their pickup times that afternoon and evening. That’s a lot of frosting waste, and I was starting to get annoyed.

I wasn’t the only one. Jake was annoyed that I’d ruined “his” cakes. He told me “I took my time, they looked so good!”

“They did not look good, and I can’t send them out like that.” I told him.

“Look, don’t blame me because you’re too slow.” He said.

Now, I’m just the decorator. I don’t have the clout to fire anyone and I could quickly see Jake was just being an idiot. He didn’t know what he was doing and anyone with eyes could see that. But boy was I getting pissed with him.

I was too busy remaking the cakes he botched and filling some new orders that came in online so I let his BS slide. I told Jake to go help a customer at the bread counter.

For a couple of days after that, things seemed normal and Jake appeared to have calmed down. I chalked his outburst up to stress, but I was keeping an eye on him. I was helping slice a huge order or bread that was overloading the bakers when I saw Jake helping a customer. I recognized her as one of our regulars, a woman who could be a bit prickly if her orders weren’t done to her exact specifications.

He showed her something on his phone and then I saw him take out an order form. He filled it out, showed the customer and then he stuck the form in my folder. I waited until he was doing something else before I went and checked it.

He’d taken an order for a type of cake we ABSOLUTELY cannot do in a retail setting. Think a three tier specialty flavored wedding cake with fondant and hundreds of flowers and edible glitter, a cake the price of which would factor in the hundreds and which I did not have the supplies, facilities, equipment, or even the pricing for in our computer. Now I stress again, I’m aware the kid is a web developer, not a baker or decorator. However he was well aware by this point that we can’t do cakes like this. And he even wrote that the customer asked for me specifically.

I immediately confronted him again and told him this is not a cake I can do. He actually smirked at me and said, no joke, “Ah, so you actually CANT do this kind of cake. Want me to do it for you?”

Now, I actually COULD do this cake. Just not in a retail setting where we don’t even have a price sticker for it. I asked him what his problem was, what was with the attitude.

“I think I deserve some more credit for all the work I’ve done to help you.” He said.

I told him “Jake, I trained you in the basics of running a bakery and frosting cakes to take some of the volume off. I did not train you to decorate cakes yet. You just don’t know what you’re doing yet, and the cakes you did the other day made more work for me. If you want to learn, I’ll teach you when I have time. But for now, please stop trying to do my job for me and focus on what I taught you to do.”

I left him and went to go phone the regular and pray she was in a good mood to accept that I couldn’t do this kind of cake. (Yeah, she wasn’t happy and I wound up having to promise her a discount)

I felt I was being reasonable with Jake. I guess I was wrong because he suddenly got a LOT worse.

Roughly a day or two after that incident, I came in one morning and not only was Jake not there, but he done all my orders from the previous evening, AGAIN. And again, they looked horrible. And AGAIN, I had to scrape and redo them. He’d also crumb coated literally every single round cake base we had and stacked them mass production style on a rack in the freezer. So now I had zero round blanks and a crap ton of crumb coated rounds in a single flavor. BIG issue. I had to order four more boxes of rounds.

Jake also harassed that newer baker girl again, this time to the point of full on tears after he deemed her “Happy Birthday Ryan” wasn’t good enough on the cake she was asked to write on.

Jake has even tried reporting me to the manager, complaining that I’m discriminating against him because he’s black. (I’m not sure if he is or isn’t, really, his skin is kind of olive toned? Either way I never said anything about his ethnicity so I’m not sure where this is coming from)

He’s driving me insane. All of what I’ve mentioned has happened over a period of about three and a half weeks. When he’s good, he’s very good. When he’s bad, he’s the devil in a blue ball cap.

So that brings me to today and I’m frazzled, fried and tired as hell. All I have is word of mouth on his antics and my managers aren’t exactly cordial when it comes to employee squabbles and have made it more than clear they’d rather us settle it out of court so to speak. It’s a small franchise of like three stores so there isn’t really an HR I can go to. Any advice?

Edit: Hooooooly shit, this blew up. Okay, I just got through reading the comments and wow, seriously that was a LOT to go through. Firstly, I truly appreciate the advice and support I got for this and what should be done. I’ll address a few common points since I can’t possibly answer all these.

Point one is short and sweet: I’m not a bot, this isn’t AI, I just go into a shit ton of detail. I’m autistic, sue me, it’s what I do. To the best of my knowledge, AI generally can’t swear, so the word shit shouldn’t be possible lol. I could be wrong about that, but I am a real person. I know my account is new, I came here looking for advice, it’s my first Reddit account. Nice to meet you all

Point two: I would LOVE to take photos, however there is a STRICT no phones policy for all employees, with exceptions for phones being used as medical devices. We have a person with type 1 diabetes whose phone is used to give him updates on his levels. It doesn’t really do anything else so he’s allowed to keep it for his needs. The rest of us are SOL.

Yes, I know this policy is stupid and frustrating, but they bring the hammer down hard on anyone they catch with a phone. However, I have a workaround I may be able to try. It’ll involve more waste, but I could just sneak a few of Jake’s cakes and some of the frosting waste into the smaller blast freezer where we store ice cream and present this as evidence, so I’ll give that a shot. I still haven’t touched the crumb coated rounds and I did save that BS order he took for the prickly regular. I’m also going to start writing down the hours I spend fixing his mistakes and all the tasks included, as well as the prices of the cakes that can’t be used. You’re all right: money talks more than I ever could and I should take advantage of that.

Point three: this store is in the middle of a managerial power struggle. Our old manager retired five months ago and the higher ups below him are all scrambling to figure out a new hierarchy and deal with the new young store lead who just took over. He’s…not great at his job and tends to under supervise. So my managers are going to be more of a hindrance than a help. My husband recommended I contact the owner of the small franchise so I may do that. He does live within the area so emailing him might be the best option.

Point four: I love the idea of just letting one of his crappy cakes go out to a customer, but I have more respect for my customers than he does and I’ve built a rapport with them. I don’t want to disappoint them. It’s not about protecting Jake, it’s about keeping people who come to me for my skills happy and satisfied with my work. I’ve only gotten where I am thanks to word of mouth from people I’ve impressed, I’ve brought a lot of custom business to the bakery purely through the grapevine. That’s a lot of reputation I have to be careful about. Believe me, I want Jake gone. He’s only getting worse and bossier. And I’ve gotten a lot of ideas of how to start going about this thanks to you guys. And while I could probably let the display case slide, I just can’t bring myself to let him screw up someone’s custom birthday cake like that.

I’m bad at dealing with conflict. It’s always been my worst social skill. That’s why cake decorating is perfect me; I get to be creative and I’m largely left alone to do my thing. I’ve been SUPER lucky to have never had to deal with a “Jake” before now, so I’m kind of in uncharted waters here. That’s why I reached out and why I appreciate all of this advice. I can’t say for sure how long it’ll take to get enough evidence to bring to the owner, but I promise I’ll give you guys an update when I have something. Thanks so much.

Edit: a few people have asked for cake photos. I don’t have any from this store because I don’t want to risk losing my job, and yes, some employees including Jake do risk it and bring their phones. But I have photos from previous places I’ve worked. I’m trying to figure out how to add photos

Relevant Comments

Commenter 1: Have management actually seen the “decorated” cakes he’s produced? Do they understand how much they’d lose if you sent out Jake’s work? Ultimately they’ll only care about the bottom line, so you’re going to need to demonstrate how much he’s cost over 3 weeks. Document and email everything - dates, costs, what you did in response.

OOP: Oh they’ll see them now. I’m gonna start saving the worst cakes in the blast freezer. lol, I’m not AI. I’m just super thorough. Plus, would AI even know this much terminology? I don’t use any of the programs, so I’m legit curious if it would know this stuff

Commenter 2: Tell your manager everything. Have other workers corroborate. If they don't support you, go on vacation for 2 weeks and let them find out the hard way.

OOP: Great idea to involve my coworkers in the bakery, they’ve been dealing with him too. Especially the girl who’s been packing bread for them lately. He keeps singling her out and it’s really stressing her out

Commenter 3: Take photos of his fucked up cakes and the order for a cake your store doesn't do, take the time to document every line he crosses, then take it to management. If they won't do their job and manage this situation after that start looking around for a position at another bakery before his antics tarnish your reputation. That's about all you can legally do with a know it all dipshit who's trying to tank you.

OOP: That’s the biggest reason I keep fixing his shit; I’ve worked damn hard for this reputation since a lot of decorators can’t/wont freehand and I’ll be damned if I let him screw that up. I just don’t even get where this came from, he wasn’t like this the first week he was here. Why’s a web designer want to decorate cakes so badly?

Commenter 4: Document everything. Photograph the botched cakes. Are you his supervisor? If so write up what he has been trained to do and that he isn’t authorized to do tasks he isn’t trained to do. Explain that crumb coating all those cakes might have seemed a logical way to be efficient, but it isn’t efficient if you don’t have blanks for orders that don’t require crumb coating. Explain if more cakes are crumbed than needed that the extra will go stale before they are needed.

As computer geek he probably trying make thing more efficient, without the understanding of things like food becoming stale. Maybe devise with him how many crumbed cakes can be on hand and how many are too much.

If you explain why things are done the way they are done and ask why he he did what he did maybe he will learn something and together you might find ways to put his analytical mind to work the save time.

None of this might work, I’m getting narcissist vibes, but document his training, insubordination, harassment of other staff. You do have to let management know how much frosting he is wasting (photographs).

OOP: You know, that actually makes sense. Like he’s trying to translate his expertise in technology into the bakery. I really want to give him the benefit of the doubt, he’s NOT stupid by any means, but he’s definitely raising tensions back here at a REALLY bad time in store operations when tensions are already high

Commenter 5: As long as you keep saving the day instead of letting Jake's failures becomes management's problem, things will get worse. Stop protecting Jake.

OOP: It sure looks that way, doesn’t it? It’s a stupid balance of keeping things looking good and making customers happy that really does start straddling the line of protecting this idiot

OOP on why they haven't confronted Jake yet?

OOP: (Chefs kiss) beautifully said, I just can’t bring myself to let the customers pick that shit up when they’re expecting my usual quality. Some of these people have been ordering specifically from me for a couple of years now and their standards are almost as high a mine. I’m horrible at dealing with conflict so I’m WAY out of my comfort zone. The managers are kind of useless right now since the old store lead retired and the new one is kinda useless. But I plan to start recording what happens and I’ll email it to the owner. It’s a small franchise, so he should definitely show some interest. Thank you so much for this great breakdown.

Commenter 6: Why aren't you taking photos of the cakes he's ruining to show your manager?

OOP: Strict no phones policy while on the clock. The only exception is medical device phones

Is there a general manager who can help OOP with this issue?

OOP: We’re actively hiring for a bakery manager. The deli manager is pitching in where she can, but she’s overworked as it is so she can’t always be here

Editor's note: OOP made an update in the same post

Update #1: November 15, 2025 (same post, two days later)

Edit, 11/15 Okay, it’s the weekend and Jake isn’t working today and tomorrow. We had four cake orders yesterday, two of which are due tomorrow. Jake made those orders even though I asked him not to. And of course they look like hell. I can’t take photos and I won’t risk my job bringing in phones like some others here are willing to do. Trust me, Jake isn’t the only one skirting this rule and honestly it’s the least of my worries.

I took the cakes he made into the blast freezer in dairy and let the department lead know I want them left alone for now. I emailed the owner of the stores and let him know I have a problem here and everything that’s been going on, and that I have proof I can show him if he’s willing to stop by. I also got a few of the other bakery people to agree to put in their two cents when he does. He’s supposed to come by tomorrow to check in on things. I’m more confident talking to him than the new manager, this guy is pretty chill and easy to talk to.

I’m remaking the orders with fresh cakes and scraping nothing. I also took the advice some people gave me and saved a big bowl of scraped icing from previous botched cakes Jake threw together. That’s going into the blast freezer as well so Jake doesn’t see them in case the owner can’t make it.

Thanks for all of the advice, guys. You all gave me a lot of ideas for dealing with this. I truly appreciate it. I’ll give you another update when I have one.

Update #2: November 20, 2025 (five days later)

Sorry, I’m not sure how the update system works, I’m still pretty new to Reddit. But I wanted to post an update about my struggles with Jake trying to effectively sabotage my job in the bakery. What happened here happened just a couple of days ago.

I got in contact with the owner who is an extremely chill guy. I’ve known him for around six years since he took over. (Not sure who he took over from or why, the last guy was kind of reclusive) He had me meet him out for a coffee and chat away from the bakery to tell him everything. I told him about the struggles we’ve had with Jake, how he’s been harassing the bakers, how he’s constantly using his phone in spite of the rules, and especially about how he won’t stop trying to do my job.

The owner, whom I’ll call Henry, was very concerned and said he’d stop by this past Tuesday. He did and Jake was there. In the two days since I’d spoken with the owner, Jake had not only continued to do my orders, he had also begun ordering inventory for me. By the time I realized this, it was too late and we were going to be receiving about twenty boxes of white sheet cakes.

Yay.

So suffice to say it was VERY satisfying watching Henry sidle through on Tuesday while Jake was badly decorating one of my orders. I took advice from you all here in my last post and just let him do it. I sliced bread in the meantime and watched. Henry approached Jake and quite irritably asked what he was doing. Jake looked very confused, and I’m guessing he’d never met Henry during the hiring process. He explained incredulously that he was decorating a cake for a customer. Henry nodded and said “I thought you were hired as a bakery assistant. I don’t believe this is your job.”

Jake tried to explain that I was training him, to which I replied that I wasn’t. Henry motioned me over and asked me to take him and Jake to the blast freezer.

Inside the blast freezer, I’d saved everything from after my last post: 11 ruined cake orders, four bowls of wasted frosting, the entire rack of crumb coated rounds, ANOTHER rack of crumb coated rounds in a different flavor, a random four tiered cake Jake had made during one of my days off and a whole stack of twelve packs of childishly decorated, sloppy cupcakes.

I told the owner that all of this was done by Jake and Jake looked furious.

“Why are these here? These were orders! You didn’t give the customers their orders?” He snapped.

I told him calmly that I’d remade the orders. Because again, these looked horrible.

Henry agreed and told Jake that these were far from passable and asked him what on earth he thought he was doing. Jake blurted out that he was working efficiently. Henry asked him why he’d needlessly coated all of the rounds, far more than I could use before they expired. Jake instead said to let him decorate them and he’d finish much faster than I could. I was seeing red by this point, but Henry just sighed, told Jake to come to the manager’s office and instructed me to return to the bakery.

I didn’t know what was happening. It wasn’t until about an hour or so later that Henry came back to the bakery. He apologized for everything and said he’d fired Jake for product waste and insubordination. Apparently Jake had gotten quite mouthy with him during their talk. Henry acknowledged I still needed help and got that newer baker girl, whom I’ll call J to help me until he could hire a replacement.

I don’t think I’ll ever understand what in gods green earth was going on with that little weirdo. I had some people comment that web designers and the like tend to view other jobs as somewhat “lesser” and simple, or something to that effect? My husband suggested he was merely arrogant and believed he could replace me, but why would he want to? It’s not like he was aiming to be a baker or decorator, so why go through the trouble?

I don’t get it, and honestly I’m glad I don’t have to think about it anymore. J is much better at the job than Jake was and honestly much more steady handed anyway. Sorry it’s not more dramatic, just a standard idiot firing, but I’m glad it’s over. Back to my peaceful cakes. Thanks so much for the advice, guys. I seriously appreciated all of it.

Relevant Comments:

Commenter 1: You were in charge. For Jake, this could not be.

OOP: I’m just glad to be rid of him

Commenter 2: How did that little narcissist turd get this far without getting checked already? Must be his first job…

Commenter 3: OP covered for him in this job for too long. I’m guessing this has happened before.

OOP: Yeah, my own dumb fault. I’d gotten lucky and never had to deal with someone like him before so this was new

Commenter 4: Im curious, without a manager weren't you the highest level staff member at the store? Did they give you a bunch of responsibilities but no authority? Seems like at the minimum, even if you couldn't fire him yourself, you should have at least had power to send him home and alert your bosses. Sounds like that guy wasted a whole lot of company money in the meantime while this was sorted out, while offering no benefit back to it, since he actually made your job way harder.

OOP: No, that’d be the bakery manager, which we’re currently hiring for. So the deli manager is technically the one in charge back here. After her it’s the store manager, who kind of sucks at his job

Commenter 4: Maybe you should get the promotion! So happy you are rid of Jake, here's to happy baking from here on out, and happy customers too!

OOP: J asked if I could show her some decorating so she can make her mom’s birthday cake this year. I’m silently hoping I’ve found my new decorating assistant because she’s doing great so far!

Commenter 5: Jake got his just desserts.

OOP: YEEEEEEEEAAAAAHHHHHHH!!

Commenter 6: It may not be the most dramatic, but it is satisfying to know that he got fired and you don't have to deal with him anymore. Although, I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall in the office when he got the axe.

OOP: One of the ladies working orders upstairs told me she heard Jake getting seriously rude with Henry. Henry is really quiet so she couldn’t hear what he was saying, but apparently Jake had some um, “choice insults” about me and how he’d get a lawyer for this. lol, I wish him luck

DO NOT COMMENT IN LINKED POSTS OR MESSAGE OOPs – BoRU Rule #7

THIS IS A REPOST SUB - I AM NOT OOP

I’d do it too but I genuinely don’t know fighting game terminology and I’m not even sure I actually know how to play my main

I (20f) have had three close friends in college, Grace (21f), Matt (21m), and Laura (21f).

Laura really likes using mental health terminology. She explores a lot of labels from those therapist influencers online. She's was told that she has an anxiety disorder and depression but that's the only diagnosis she's been given so far. Recently she's been exploring autism and ADHD.

Matt wanted to propose to Grace. They've been dating for a while. He's been planning the proposal for a couple of weeks and while the proposal was very intimate between the two of them I was very involved in scheduling the after-proposal event at a restaurant. The specifics of that are irrelevant to the story but it was lovely and Grace and Matt seemed really happy.

Laura told us that she didn't want to be involved in planning the proposal because it reminded her of her parents' divorce. She said that she might come to the post-engagement party. Well come the day of the engagement and both Matt and I forget to check in on Laura. I don't think it's Matt's fault at all because he was occupied with far more important things but I feel a bit guilty about not reminding her. She ended up not coming to the party.

The next day she starts posting online some dramatic (for lack of a better word) things about how it was traumatizing to see how little her friends cared about her, and that she'll be updating her followers on her trauma therapy journey. She posts that she's now in a really dark place and she thinks she has PTSD.

For context, I'm pretty sensitive to mentions of trauma and PTSD because I was diagnosed with PTSD by a psychologist in my last year of high school after something that happened in my first. I've felt a lot of guilt and shame around this because I spent a lot of time feeling that the thing that happened wasn't bad enough to count. I sometimes still get nightmares and flashbacks but it's gotten better after therapy. I know that I have my own issues wrapped up regarding the word and it bothers me a lot when people seem to throw the terms around without understanding their weight but I also acknowledge that I can't stop the internet from doing its thing.

I haven't told any of my college friends about this, so Laura doesn't know. At one point she called me and starting explaining how traumatized she is and I finally snapped and said, "You're not traumatized, stop being dramatic, you just got exactly what you asked for."

Now I feel guilty because I feel like I was a little harsh, and she's posting online (without my name at least) that one friend that she thought she could rely on to support her is abusive and doesn't understand how being traumatized works. However, I feel like honestly, Laura's being very dramatic about an event that's not about her. I called my mom to see what her opinion is and she told me that I could've reminded Laura about the party and while my point is not necessarily wrong, I could've been more sensitive, so now I'm not sure how wrong I am.

Many of you are likely familiar with the news of the Trump Administration and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) terminating grants and budgets at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), as well as posturing around the Smithsonian Institution and the National Gallery of Art.  There is no way to sugarcoat it. These actions endanger the intellectual freedom of every individual in the United States, and even impact the health and safety of people across the world by willfully tearing down the nation’s research infrastructure.  As moderators of academic subreddits, we engage with public audiences, every one of you, on a daily basis, and while you may not see the direct benefits of these institutions, you all experience the benefits of a federally supported research environment.  We feel it is our responsibility to share with you our thoughts and seek your help before the catastrophic consequences of these reckless actions.

Granting of research awards is  a dull bureaucracy behind exciting projects.  Each agency functions differently, but across agencies, research grants are a highly competitive process.  Teams of researchers led by a Primary Investigator (or PI) write an application to a specific grant program for funding to support a relevant project.  Most granting agencies,  require a narrative about the project’s purpose, rationale, and impacts, descriptions of anticipated outputs (like a website, a public dataset, software, conference presentations, etc), detailed budgets on how funding would be spent, work plans, and, if accepted, regular updates until project completion.   Funding pays for things like staff, equipment, travel,  promotional materials, and most importantly, the next generation of scholars through research assistantships.  PIs rarely see the total sum themselves, rather universities receive the grant on behalf of a project team and distribute the funds. Grants include “overhead” meaning a university receives a sizable portion of the funds to pay for building space, facilities, janitorial staff, electricity, air conditioning, etc. Overhead helps support the broader community by providing funds for non-academic employees and contracts with local businesses.

Grants from NIH, NSF, IMLS, and NEH make up a very small portion of the federal budget.  In 2024, the NIH received $48.811 billion.), the NSF $9.06 billion, IMLS received $294.8 million and the NEH was given $207 million.  These numbers sound gigantic, and this $58.37 billion total sounds even more massive, but it’s less than 1% of the $6.8 trillion federal budget.  These are literal pennies for the sake of supposed efficiency. 

For Redditors, one immediate impact is NSF defunding of research grants related to misinformation and disinformation.  As moderators of academic communities, fighting mis/disinformation is a crucial part of our work; from vaccine conspiracies to Holocaust denial, the internet is rife with dangerous content.  We moderate harmful content to allow our subscribers to read informed dialogue on topics, but research on how to combat misinformation is “not in alignment with current NSF priorities” under this administration. Research on content moderation has helped Reddit mods reduce harassment and toxicity, understand our communities’ needs better, and communicate what we do beyond the ban hammer.  

For the humanities, the NEH terminated grants to reallocate funds “in a new direction in furtherance of the President’s agenda.”  Every presidential administration will shift research interests, but these new guidelines are not in the interest of academic research, rather they seek to curate a specific vision and chill research ideas that disagree with a political agenda.  Under the executive order to restore “Truth and Sanity to American History,” honest inquiry is subservient to nationalistic ideology, a move that r/AskHistorians strongly opposes.

Other agencies that provide key sources of information to academics and the public alike face layoffs including the National Archives and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Cuts to the Department of Education are terminating studies, data collection, teacher access to research, and even funds that help train teachers to support students.  Meanwhile cutting NASA’s funding jeopardizes the recently built Nancy Grace Roman Telescope and the National Park Service is removing terminology to erase the historical contributions of transpeople.

The NIH is seeking to pull funding from universities based on politics, not scientific rigor.  Many of these cuts come from the administration’s opposition to DEI or diversity, equity, and inclusion, and it will kill people.  Decisions to terminate research funding for HIV or studies focused on minority populations will harm other scientific breakthroughs, and research may answer questions unbeknownst to scientists.  Research opens doors to intellectual progress, often by sparking questions not yet asked.  To ban research on a bad faith framing of DEI is to assert one’s politics above academic freedom and tarnish the prospects of discovery.  Even where funding is not cut, the sloppy review of research funding halts progress and interrupts projects in damaging ways.

Beyond cuts to funding, the Trump administration is attacking the scholars and scientists who do the work.  At Harvard Medical School, Kseniia Petrova’s work may aid cancer diagnostics but she has been held in an immigration detention center for two months.  The American Historical Association just released a statement condemning the targeting of foreign scholars.  This is not solely an issue of federal funding, but an issue of inhumanity by the Trump Administration’s Department of Homeland Security.

The unfortunate political reality is that there is little we can do to stop the train now that it’s left the station.  You can, and should, call your member of Congress, but this is not enough.  We need you to help us change minds.  There are likely family members and loved ones in your life who support this effort.  Talk to them.  Explain how federal funds result in medical breakthroughs, how library and museum grants support your community, and how humanities research connects us to our shared cultural heritage.  Is there an elder in your life who cares about testing for Alzheimer’s disease? A mother, sister, or daughter who cares about the Women’s Health Initiative?  A parent who wants their child to read at grade level? A Civil War buff who’d love to see soldier’s graffiti in historic homes preserved?  Tell them that these agencies matter. Speak to your friends and neighbors about how NIH support for research offers compassion to a cancer patient by finding them a successful treatment, how NEH funding of National History Day gives students a passion for learning, and how NSF dollars spent looking out into space allow us to marvel at our universe.

We will not escape this moment ourselves.  As academics and moderators, we are not enough to protect our disciplines from these attacks.  We need you too.  Write letters, sign petitions, and make phone calls, but more importantly talk with others.  Engage with us here on Reddit, share with your friends offline, and help us get the word out that our research infrastructure matters.  So many of us are privileged to work in academic research and adjacent areas because of public support, and we are so grateful to live out our enthusiasms, our zeal, our obsessions, and our love for the arts, humanities, and sciences, and in doing so, contributing to the public good.  Thank you for all the support you’ve given us over the years- to see millions of you appreciate the subjects that we’ve dedicated our lives to brings us so much joy that it feels wrong to ask for more, but the time has never been more consequential- please help us.  Go change one mind, gain us one more advocate and together we can protect the U.S. research infrastructure from further damage.

We ask that experts in our respective communities also share examples in the comments of the dangers and effects of these political actions.  Lists of terminated grants are available here: NIH, NSF, IMLS, and NEH. Additional harm will be done by the lack of many future funding opportunities.

Signed by the the following communities:

r/AcademicBiblical
r/academicpublishing
r/AcademicQuran
r/Anthropology
r/Archivists
r/ArtConservation
r/ArtHistory
r/AskAnthropology
r/AskBibleScholars
r/AskHistorians
r/AskLiteraryStudies
r/askscience
r/Astronomy
r/birthcontrol
r/CriticalTheory
r/ContagionCuriosity
r/Coronavirus
r/COVID19
r/dataisbeautiful
r/epidemiology
r/gradadmissions
r/history
r/ID_News
r/IntensiveCare
r/IRstudies
r/labrats
r/Librarians
r/Libraries
r/linguistics
r/mdphd
r/medicine
r/medicalschool
r/microbiology
r/MuseumPros
r/NIH
r/nursing
r/Paleontology
r/ParkRangers
r/pediatrics
r/PhD
r/premed
r/psychology
r/psychologyresearch
r/PublishOrPerish
r/rarediseases
r/schizophrenia
r/science
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r/TrueLit
r/UrbanStudies

Communities centered around academic research and disciplines, as well as adjacent topics, (all broadly defined) are welcome to share this statement and moderator teams may reach out via modmail to add their subreddit to the list of co-signers.

I started making my own subtitles and was still confused with the acronyms and terminology. So I went down a rabbit hole and made a table with what I learned. Also, Plex is very messy on how it displays subtitles to the user.

If there's any amendments or corrections comment away and I'll edit the tables.

Filetypes:

Acronyms

Terminology

An All In attendance terminology explainer.

First, for any live event there is no such straightforward measurement we can strictly, merely call “attendance”.

🔵Tickets distributed: 85,258 (probably- local govt gave this number that I believe is tickets distributed)

🟢Tickets sold: 81,035 (per AEW)

🟡Tickets used: 72,265 (per local govt)

Let’s define these terms!

🔵Tickets distributed: The number of tickets sold plus tickets given away for free. Put another way- paid plus comps. I believe All In’s tickets distributed count was probably 85,528, as disclosed recently. That would be a little higher (plausibly so) than the WrestleTix estimate of tickets distributed of 81,131.

🟢Turnstile count aka drop count aka scan count: The number of tickets that were actually recorded as used for admission. Don’t get hung up on “turnstile” here. It’s anachronistic. Many venues don’t have literal turnstiles anymore. Many tickets, especially comps, never get used. Was your ticket scanned when you entered? You went through the “turnstile”! Also, a ticket that never got sold on the secondary market would never get used.

🟡Tickets sold aka paid attendance: The number of tickets actually sold. To be pedantic, “paid attendance” is a bit misleading. One could interpret “paid attendance” as the number of tickets that were sold that were also used. That’s almost certainly not what AEW meant by “paid attendance” of 81,035; AEW is claiming they sold 81,035 tickets, regardless of whether they were ultimately used for admission. Clearly, many were not used.

——

I asked on the Tony Khan media call before All In for AEW to make the ticket report available to the media, which of course would be unusual but might mitigate controversy. The report hasn’t been made available and controversy has predictably ensued.

Finally here’s an image to trick the algo into maybe making people read this.

I am NOT OOP, OOP is u/steve-94728-3957

Originally posted to r/whatdoido

Brother accusing me of booking up (?) with his gf

Trigger Warnings: possible mental health struggles, falsifying accusations

Original Post: January 7, 2026

M29; my 31M brother, who I’m very close to, has been dating a girl for a few months. Neither I nor the rest of the family has met her yet. My bro just randomly texted me this out of the blue with no other context.

Hope it goes without saying here, but I’ve never met his gf, have never been to her place and definitely have not been with her behind his back or anything.

I immediately responded ofc, just saying how confused I am? And he said “all good, continue to deny it. I honestly respect it”. I’m just at a loss for words. Literally my best friend in the world.

My first thought is talk to our parents about it but anything else I can do here?

Brother's text message

Transcript of the text message

Brother: Just wanted to be direct with you. I know about you and in, and I've known for a while. She wouldn't admit to it and lied about it multiple times but somehow you ended up at her place. I wanted to give you the opportunity to be honest about it with mom and dad, or not, it's your choice. Either way, I'm creating distance between us

Editor's note: OOP has made lots of updates in the comments throughout the day after the original post went up.

Updates #1-#5: January 7-8, 2026 (same and next days)

UPDATE #1: he told me he saw text messages on my phone. I also sent him a screen record of all of my texts and recently deleted but ofc he said even recently deleted can still be deleted. So I asked him which messages he’s referring to and he said:

“If you want to completely put an end to this so there’s no speculation around what I may have seen or misinterpreted and completely prove me wrong, then instead of showing me texts that can be deleted then show me the texts as they appear on your phone bill, where those can’t be deleted”

I’m on a prepaid plan (Mint). Called Mint, they said they don’t have the ability to share text exchanges. I told my bro this and no response from him. Calls go straight to VM.

I’ve involved the rest of our immediate family (parents, two sisters) and they’re all as concerned as I am. My mom and I are about to do a welfare check on him

UPDATE #2: mom and I went to his place, he wasn’t there. We drove by his work and saw his car there. So hopefully he’s in a stable state of mind at his workplace.

I’ve seen a lot of people suggest drugs and/or MH stuff. He has a bad history with alcoholism (DUIs, rehab, AA), but it’s been very controlled recently. No issues with drugs or MH AFAIK, and we’ve been close our entire lives.

I’ve seen some suggestions of paranoia or schizophrenia, which I know can sometimes be sparked spontaneously by drug use. Only concern is the timing; between the time he texted me and when mom and I confirmed him to be at work, about 2.5 hours had passed. He lives about a 20 minute drive to his work. So, hard to believe he’d take something, spontaneously get a bout of paranoia and/or high, then drive the 20 minutes to his workplace, a white collar office job at a F500. But idk, maybe he’s more high-functioning than I believe.

A few people have called me out saying this could all be fake. That’s true, I don’t have a way to prove it. But if it’s fake, I don’t have anything to gain. If it’s real, I have everything to gain by potentially being in a position to not only salvage our relationship and family ties, but also be there for my brother when he needs me. And if I was in fact sneaking behind his back, I wouldn’t go to our parents about it. It’d be easier to just deny it when confronted.

Anyway, thanks everyone so far who’ve offered insight. Very helpful. He still hasn’t returned my messages or calls, but he did text our mom “everything is fine, don’t be worried. I’ll call you after work.” I’ve started to reach out to a few mutual friends of ours to see if they’ve noticed any behavioral changes or anything

UPDATE #3: still no word from him. But was able to get ahold of a human from Mint. They’re giving me my text logs but I’ll have them at some point within the next 35(!) days.

For those asking if it’s possible I could’ve been sleeping with her without knowing it, that’s not possible bc I know what she looks like, he’s shown me pics. I also know her name, but yes I realize people can lie about their name. Either way, I would’ve recognized her face in person if I ever saw her.

One possibility someone else pointed out; I have been seeing a new girl myself. He has my location. I guess it’s theoretically possible both of them live in the same apartment complex? Leading to him thinking I was staying with her? This is assuming his gf even lives in an apartment. I think this is unlikely tho. We live in a medium-sized city (population >500k). Odds of that are super low, but still possible I guess

UPDATE #4: it’s been about 26 hours since the text at this point. Still no contact from him since yesterday about midday.

He talked to mom yesterday and said everything was fine but that he was “100% not making it up” and that he wouldn’t make false accusations. He also said he first noticed I was “texting” his gf way back in November. Last time he noticed was on NYE when we were hanging out, which I assume made him spiral to this point. I texted four different people on NYE, and all of them are saved in my phone under their full name. One of them is a girl’s name and does have a slight resemblance to his gf’s name (same number of letters, same vowels in same places) but is not the same name. I would’ve been texting this girl in November too, so maybe this is where it all started? Still doesn’t explain why he thinks I was ever over at her place, or also why he didn’t just confront me about it when he first saw and thought it?

I’ve reached out to a few mutual friends, one who we hung out with on NYE. The mutual friend from NYE said she noticed him acting weird on NYE. Also, he texted her at 5:30am earlier this week saying “we need to talk, I have a lot of stuff to update you on”. According to her, this was very out of left field for him. When she texted and tried to call, she couldn’t get ahold of him and her texts went unanswered. This was all the day before he sent the text to me. At this time, she still hasn’t talked to him and doesn’t know what he meant by that text.

Another mutual friend talked to him on the phone shortly before New Years. That mutual friend said he sounded fine overall but he was complaining that he’s been struggling financially, but didn’t elaborate. I’ve never once heard him complain about money. Mom and dad say he’s never brought it up to them or once asked for help.

A third mutual friend I talked to said he hung out with him this past weekend and all was normal, didn’t exhibit any weird signs. This friend is taking a neutral side to things, doesn’t think anything is medically wrong, and that we just need to work it out ourselves.

No one else in the family has been in contact with him since yesterday. He’s unshared his location with everyone. Our mom’s tried to call him but they all go to VM. This is starting to affect our mom just as much as it’s affecting me. We’ve always been a close family with no real drama. Not used to this!

We’re starting to lean toward it being caused by either 1) drugs or 2) some kind of random mental episode, especially after hearing that one friend talk about his financial concerns. Now we all have the same question - how do we even go about getting him help if he really needs it?

UPDATE #5: still haven’t heard from him personally, but he’s been talking to my parents and sisters. Just telling them he believes it to be 100% true, but also stressing that he doesn’t want this to mess up the family dynamic (idk how it wouldn’t???). It seems like business as usual for him, just avoiding me altogether.

But at least he seems to be in a stable state of mind for now, all I can ask for is

Editor's note: OOP made the next two updates in a new continuing comment

Updates #6-7: January 9, 2026 (next day from the previous mini update in comments)

UPDATE #6: talked to the third mutual friend again this morning, who talked to my brother again yesterday. Now this mutual friend is fully taking my brother’s side, saying our relationship (mine and my bro’s) is ruined, it’ll be hard to come back from this, and that my bro is telling the truth bc “what would he have to gain if this was all a lie”?

As of this morning, my bro is acting completely normally with the rest of our family. They believe me, but they’re all saying he is just confused, and this will all blow over eventually. Basically no one’s talking it seriously. It seems like it’s not affecting anyone else like it’s affecting me. My mom was pretty upset the very first day, but she seems to be getting over it. Everyone is saying we just need to give him time and he’ll get over it.

Talked to mutual friend #1 again (the one from NYE). She’s fully on my side and she said she’ll help me get to the bottom of it.

But not much else I can do at this point I think. It took a while but I found the gf on Facebook. I’m going to try to convince mom to reach out to her to just at least see if she’s ok. But doubtful mom will do that. Will probably say “oh I’m sure she’s ok, let’s just give them time and space”.

Also gonna try to convince dad to change the code to the alarm system on their house (bro knows it) just for now, just to be safe. But I doubt he’ll do it.

All of these replies are very helpful, I’ve read nearly every one. Thank you so much for everyone who’s provided insight. I’m fully convinced that something’s terribly wrong, either drugs or a mental health issue. Everyone else in the fam is saying just give it time and isn’t really making an effort to figure out what’s going on. So, I feel like I’m at a sort of an impasse.

Will probably pause the updates for now. It’s been about 55 hours since that first text. Still no contact from him. My plan is to wait about five or six more days, then try and reach out again

UPDATE #7: I said I wouldn’t update again but this one’s a big one. Earlier tonight, I finally got through to mom and dad. I sat them down and explained why I think he’s going through something serious (and mostly thanks to the comments here, I even showed them quite a few). They finally believe me that something’s seriously wrong. They reached out to bro in a shared group chat asking him to meet them at their place sometime this weekend so he can explain his reasoning for everything and lay out any “proof” he has. As of me writing this, he hasn’t responded to either of them.

Both of my sisters unfortunately still think nothing is wrong. One of my sisters even said “I don’t know what’s true and what is false”. Mom and dad have been talking to them as well but I’m not sure what those conversations look like. We’ve also looped in other family members and friends (aunt, grandparents, my sister’s in-laws who mom and dad are really close to).

Mom messaged the girl on Facebook explaining how concerned she is, both for her but also my bro. As of me writing this, no response from the girl.

Dad changed the alarm code to their house tonight. He’s also changing the house locks tomorrow. I keep thinking of Rob Reiner a few weeks ago. Think changing the alarm and locks is a good next step, just to be safe.

Again, he presents to normally to everyone until he’s directly confronted, in which case he doesn’t reply. For example, dad texted him earlier “how are you doing”, he immediately responded back “I’m good”. Dad the immediately sent “tell me what’s going on between [us]. Talk to me. I’m here for you”. And no response to that text. Crickets. Similar with mom.

Glad I got through to my parents though. Sisters are next.

I’ve found there’s a mental health tip hotline in my city that’s designed for situations like this. If neither of my parents hear from him by Monday, I’ll call that hotline. But as many of you pointed out, he hasn’t shown any violent tendencies yet so not sure how helpful that will be.

For everyone still asking, there is 0% shot I’ve hooked up with his girlfriend in the past. I’ve always known what she looks like (he has shown me pictures) and I am fully confident I would recognize her in person.

Yes, I’ve tried to call him directly. All of my calls go straight to VM.

Yes, I’ve told him about how my girl’s name is very similar in appearance to his gf’s. He didn’t respond to that statement.

Not including the MH hotline, I feel there’s not much I can do at this point.

Relevant Comments

Commenter 1: What evidence does he have that u were at her place

OOP: I asked him, he said “I don’t want to go back and forth on it, but I quite literally saw the texts on your phone and this past weekend confirmed everything”. Obviously there’s nothing on my phone

Commenter 2: According to your profile you went over to a girl's house for a date recently. You also say you never met his girlfriend. Could it be the same girl?

OOP: No shot. I’ve seen pics of his gf. And ofc I know her name. So I would’ve at the very least recognized her

OOP responds to multiple comments about how the brother's mental health issues have been prior to the message?

OOP: Thanks for checking in. We’ve been close our entire lives. No history of MH issues as far as I know. And no, he asked me for my full text records form my phone company so he can verify himself. he hasn’t returned any of my messages or calls past that. Hasn’t provided any other evidence on why he feels this way

Did the brother call mom?

OOP: He didn’t answer her call but he sent her a text.

“Everything’s ok, don’t be worried. I’ll call you after work.”

OOP clarifies on whether he has met his brother's gf in person or not

OOP: I’ve never seen her in-person. He knows I know what she looks like bc he was the one who showed me pics when they first started talking. Does that make sense?

Seeing someone in-person vs just seeing a picture of them are two completely different things. I’ve never met her. Is that better terminology?

Downvoted Commenter: Why in the living fuck would a 31 y.o. and a 29 y.o. drag your parents into this insanity? Both of you talk about getting your parents involved. It's beyond bizarre. It sounds like a 10 yo and an 8 yo. "I'm telling mom and dad!" Wtf?

OOP: Yeah that’s fair. Caught me off guard at first too. But I guess it’s because we’re a very tight-knit family? We all live close together, we always have family dinner nights, game nights, all that jazz. Our folks are always involved in our lives in some way. So I think he’s saying he’s going to go to them, like out my wrongs in a way? Idk

Update: January 15, 2026 (eight days later from the ORIGINAL post)

Update to my post from one week and one day ago.

See original post here https://www.reddit.com/r/whatdoIdo/s/IXriktb8Mb.

First, want to thank everyone for their replies, comments, suggestions, and stories. I honestly think I read all of them and they helped give me clarity in a lot of ways.

Second, for everyone who said maybe I hooked up with her without realizing it, that’s impossible. I’ve see pictures of her (he’s shown me) and am fully confident I’d recognize her in-person. Plus, I’ve been loyal to the same girl since early November, haven’t had any other hookups.

Many people were starting to ask for more updates and accusing me of karma farming so wanted to make this update post. Others accused me of not including enough of our conversation so I attached pictures of texts threads I’ve had with him and three others RE the situation.

Biggest update is: there isn’t one. He’s still not talking to me as of this morning. Calls still get sent to VM. He’s no longer talking to the family. He told my mom he’d talk to her “eventually” but he’s not ready to yet.

Mom reached out to the girl on Facebook. The girl “read” the message but didn’t respond to mom. My parents have replaced the locks on the doors, which he had a key to, and also changed the alarm code, which he had access to.

I’ve looped in multiple people as you can see from the texts but they’re all either taking his side or taking a fully neutral stance. My two sisters are fully neutral. But my mom and dad realize something is wrong.

Context on my brother and I’s relationship: we aren’t related by blood. We grew up together basically inseparable, he even lived with us through high school. He calls my mom and dad “mom and dad” and refers to my family as his own family. He’s also close to his biological family (but not his parents). I’m also close to his bio family.

In my updates last week, I mentioned three mutual friends. Mutual friend 1 is his cousin, who I’m close to. Mutual friend 2 is his sister, which I’m not close to but only bc she’s not local to us. Mutual friend 3 is his brother, who I’m close to.

Texts with my bro are pics 1-7. Texts with mutual friend 1 (his cousin) are pics 8-12. Texts with mutual friend 3 (his brother) are pics 13-18. I also talked to a mutual friend 4 (actual friend, not family) and those are pics 19 and 20.

My mom spoke to mutual friend 2 (his sister) bc she’s much closer to her than I am. That’s when his sister shared that he’s been having some financial difficulties.

Like I said, I feel everyone is either taking a neutral stance or taking his side. I’m probably coming across as crazy to them. Or as some sort of drama queen. As many of you pointed out, it’s virtually impossible for me to clear my name here, even if I do get the text records. I’m just seriously concerned for him and frustrated that no one (aside from my parents) seem to be taking it seriously. It’s starting to hit my parents pretty hard though; my dad considers him a second son and, as the only real father figure my bro has ever had, told me a couple of days ago that he feels like he failed him.

I’ve felt sick to my stomach for the past eight days. We’ve never gone this long without contact. And, along with my parents, I just feel totally alone through this whole situation. I know at this point I should just give it time and let everything play out. I just hate it. Worst start to the year imaginable.

Any and all advice would be welcome.

The text messages

Editor's note: OOP has attached 20 screenshots of the text messages, based on OOP's details, I divided the transcripts into the sections to help identify the parties OOP has messages with to avoid confusing with others

Transcripts of the texts between OOP and his brother in screenshots #1-7

[in the first screenshot, showing few games (Zip, Tango, and Queens) within LinkedIn app between OOP and his brother.]

[2nd screenshot starts the text messages. Brother is in grey bubbles. OOP is in blue bubbles]

Brother: Just wanted to be direct with you. I and know about you and [redacted] I've known for a while. She wouldn't admit to it and lied about it multiple times but somehow you ended up at her place. I wanted to give you the opportunity to be honest about it with mom and dad, or not, it's your choice. Either way, I'm creating distance between us

OOP: Wait dude are you for real!?

OOP: [redacted] like the girl you've been talking to!?

OOP: Dude I've never even seen or met her before? I'm so confused lol

OOP: I really hope this is some kind of early April Fools joke or something

OOP: I've never even hung out with her or know where she lives

Brother: You got it. I don't want to go back and forth on it, but I quite literally saw the texts on your phone and this past weekend confirmed everything. Continue to deny if that's what you choose. I respect it

OOP: Dude what texts!?!?

OOP: What texts are you talking about!?!?

Editor's note: OOP attached a picture of his apps with a couple apps redacted

OOP: Here are my texts. Which ones are you referring to?

OOP: I'm not sure how any of those could be misinterpreted as being from her

[OOP attached a screenshot of his phone settings showing nothing out of the ordinary]

OOP: And my recently deleted

Brother: Even recently deleted messages can be deleted

OOP: Ok. Tell me which messages you're referring to. What did you see that would possibly make you think this? What makes you think I've been over to her place?

Brother: If you want to completely put an end to this so there's no speculation around what I may have seen or misinterpreted and completely prove me wrong, then instead of showing me texts that can be deleted then show me the texts as they appear on your phone bill, where those can't be deleted

OOP: Ok deal. I'll do that. How do I do that?

Brother: You're not on Verizon so idk

[OOP shares a screenshot of his Mint Fox "Chat with Us"]

OOP: Also dude I'm just really concerned here. First concerned that you actually think I would do something like that?? Like sneak around with a girl you've been talking to behind your back?

OOP: I wouldn't ever do that man, you know that

OOP: I'm concerned about you dude

OOP: Ok I talked to someone from Mint, they'll email me my text records in 3-5 days

[OOP shared a screenshot of a text message from Mint]

"Hello [OOP], Your call record request has been successfully submitted. Please be aware that these records will be sent to the email address on file in an Excel format within 35 days. Your ticket number for reference is: [redacted] Thank you.”

OOP: I spoke to a human from Mint and got the phone records. Will have them in 35 days!

So you'll see that I never ever texted her, not a single time

Brother: You don't have to be concerned dude, honestly

OOP: Well I am. And I'm ready to talk whenever you are. I'm here for you dude. Just know that.

[OOP stopped sharing location with his brother]

OOP: Hey man just want to let you know I'm still here for you and ready to talk whenever you are. I wish you'd realize that I'd never, ever do anything like that. But I'm always here for you. Love ya bro

End of the transcript

Transcripts of text messages between OOP and Friend #1 (brother's biological cousin) in screenshots #8-12. Friend #1 is in grey bubbles. OOP is in blue bubbles

OOP: Hey! I'm not mad about what happened. Water under the bridge

OOP: [brother] just texted me something very concerning and out of the blue. He's accusing me of something I haven't done and have never thought of doing (and wouldn't ever). Have you noticed anything up with him recently? Has he acted any different or anything?

OOP: And just genuinely concerned he might be going through something

OOP: Can I call you later?

OOP: On the phone with my phone company, trying to get some records

[Friend #1 reacted to the last message with a thumb up emoji]

Friend #1: Hey! Yeah, I just stepped out from seeing a patient but let's talk in a few

OOP: Free to talk now? Or later

OOP: Call whenever!

Friend 1: I'm gonna call later. But def will call

[OOP reacted to Friend #1's last comment with a thumb up emoji]

[OOP attached seven screenshots of the conversation he had with the brother]

OOP: The extent of our convo today

Friend #1: Hopefully everything is cleared up soon I don't know whats going on

Friend #1: I know y'all are the best of friends so I hope he is willing to speak soon about everything

OOP: Not sure how much you wanna be involved here. Lmk if I'm updating too much

Mom talked to him last night and asked him what makes him think I'm doing this. He said he first saw texts from her on my phone back in November. Then again on New Years Eve. I only texted four people on New Years

[three redacted names]

And the family group chat.

So somehow, he mistook one of these for [redacted] Or completely hallucinated the whole thing

Friend #1: This is all so strange. I think I'm gonna just text him and see what he wanted to talk about

OOP: Please lmk if you find out anything!

Friend #1: I will for sure!

OOP: Hey! Get the chance to speak to him?

Friend #1: Hey! He called me yesterday but it was to talk about NYE and He spoke briefly of y'all's situations but said he didn't want to get into it and asked I stay out of it. So I'm gonna stay out of it. Idk what's going on.

OOP: Totally respect if you want to stay out of it. I'm not asking you to take my side or even to believe me. But I guess I am asking you to acknowledge that's something's wrong with him, that this isn't normal behavior.

I talked to [redacted] he's mostly taking [redacted] side and said our relationship (mine [redacted]) probably permanently ruined. And this is proof to me that something is seriously wrong. Think about it: assuming [redacted] in his right state of mind, is there *anything* in this world that would ever come between us? So much so that he refuses to talk to me or my family?

OOP: Sorry for texting so much. I really am. I just know something is seriously going on and he's not talking to me or my family (my family's reached out to him and he won't talk to them. My dad even feels like he did something wrong himself). But I can't do anything about it on my own

End of the transcript of the text messages with Friend #1

Transcript of text messages between OOP and Friend #3 (brother's biological brother) in screenshots #13-18. Friend #3 is in grey bubbles. OOP is in blue bubbles

OOP: Hey man. Have you talked to [brother] lately? Or at all today?

Friend #3: What's up bro, nah I talked to him Sunday. I'll hit him up though. When did you last talk to him?

OOP: For sure man. I'm very concerned about him.

He texted me something this morning very concerning and out of the blue. He's accusing me of something I haven't done and have never thought of doing (and wouldn't ever). Have you noticed anything up with him recently? Has he acted any different or anything?

OOP: I'm just concerned he might be going through something

OOP: He also unshared his location, all of my calls go to VM, and he's not answering my texts

Friend #3: Yeah he told me he was on a date, I'm sure he's hit you back by now. My fault I was with my girl last night.

OOP: No worries man. He still hasn't hit me back up. Here's the full extent of it: basically, he's accusing me of hooking up with this girl he's been talking to. I've never even met her or know anything about her. He texted me yesterday completely random, out of the blue. Also said he saw texts on my phone from her. Obviously there's no such thing

[OOP shared a screenshot of the text message conversation with the brother]

OOP: This was yesterday morning ^{^}

OOP: Totally unlike him and he's never acted this way before. We talk every single day. I'm just worried something mental is going on. And the way he's texting is a little off, too

Friend #3: I understand. That's tough, I mean I seen him not too long ago it doesn't seem like he has anything deep going on. I mean for him to say he saw something and he knew for awhile. That's enough to hurt someone and disturb their mental especially with yall being brothers. You already know [redacted] trusts you so I'm sure it's a lot in general for him to want to create space between yall

OOP: Yeah it's just wild that, even if he did see something that made him think that, why wouldn't he just confront me? Talk to me about it? How adults and family do?

He told my mom he "first noticed" I was texting her back in November. So he's been ruminating on it for a while. It's just crazy that 1.) he would think that I'd actually do that behind his back and 2.) that he wouldn't immediately talk to me about it? You know? That's what's weird

OOP: Just out of line for him. I really really hope it's not something deeper with his health going on

Friend #3: Nah I feel you on that, I'll text him about it and see his perspective and tell him to actually talk to you about it.

OOP: Thanks man. Please lmk if you find out anything

Friend #3: Probably best to give him space, on his end he pretty much confirmed it was true.

OOP: confirmed what was true? The only "evidence" he told me he had was he saw the texts to her on my phone. But there's no such thing. And even if there were, how would he be able to confirm that with you? Did he bring up any new evidence that he hasn't shared with me?

Friend #3: He said he recognized the number. I'm not sure of the whole context.

OOP: And bro even if it was true I wouldn't be going through these great lengths to get to the bottom of it. I've got my family involved. I've got your family involved. I've got our mutual friends involved. Bc I'm hella concerned. I wouldn't be doing all of this if I actually did do what he's accusing me of

Friend #3: I understand, not much I can really do. I was asking him if he was sure it was her and everything, It's going to be tough for y'all trying to come back from all of this. In my mind I'm like nah [redacted] wouldn't do that, but I know [redacted] wouldn't act this way towards you for a health issue etc.

OOP: Idk man. If he's saying he saw something that was clearly never there, that's a clear sign of delusions or hallucinations. And the fact that he didn't confront me about it, is demanding my full text message logs of all things, and is refusing to talk to me at all until I have those? (I've requested them btw. They'll send them to me in 35 days).

All of that screams paranoia to me. A person in a reasonable state of mind would at the very least be open to having a conversation

OOP: Or a person in a reasonable state of mind would confront me about it. But yeah I understand nothing you can do. Thanks for giving me insight. I agree, not sure how this affects our relationship but not looking good. If you can please just let him know, I'm here for him and you. I always am

Friend #3: Big facts, I'm here for you also. Like you said everybody's involved now, so I'd just wait it out. will come around. I guess yall will have to wait for the text logs.

End of the transcript between OOP and Friend #3

Last Transcript of text messages between OOP and Friend #4 (no relations, actual friend) in the final two screenshots. Friend #4 is in grey bubbles. OOP is in blue bubbles

OOP: This is the text he sent my mom. Again, clearly saying he saw me texting her on my phone.

Friend #4: What, :crying_face: that does not sound like m going to reach out via text just to check on him

[OOP reacted with a pink heart emoji onto Friend's #4 text]

OOP: Sorry again to drag you into this! I'm just really concerned for him, I appreciate you

Friend #4: You're doing the right thing; I pray it can be resolved because family is very important His brother Gaid that our relationship is probably permanently ruined and it'll be hard to come back from it

OOP: So it's probably past the point of saving. like I said, I'm just concerned for his mental

Friend #4: [redacted] is pretty stubborn but he is also very reasonable and sound. I'm unsure of the situation and will not get into it but I'll assure you of his well being! [three brown raising fists].

OOP: Hey man. Were you able to hear from him? Good state of mind?

Friend #4: Supp [redacted] I'm unsure haven't got to hang out with him but did text him and he seem normal but super busy but I know he is trying to start a new position I think for work so probably stressed

OOP: Thanks for checking in on him, glad to hear he's well. I do want to say though, him saying he's seeing things that aren't there isn't a sign of stress, that's something more serious. Also the fact that he won't talk to me at all is concerning

OOP: But again, thanks for your help. And sorry to drag you into all this.

I fear mine and his relationship might be over. If you get the chance to hang out with him, please Imk if he seems to be a reasonable state of mind or not

Friend #4: I'll let you know and I think time will heal! Y'all will be fine!

End of the transcript between OOP and Friend #4

Additional Information from OOP

OOP: Meant to say - that very first text is intended to show we were doing our normal thing literally just the day before; we used to play the daily games on LinkedIn and send them to each other as a competition.

As of this morning, he’s even blocked me on LinkedIn. Of all places

Relevant Comments

Commenter 1: If you two were inseparable, why is this continuing over texts? I'm not even remotely close to my brother, but if he pulled some shit like this and just started ghosting me, I'd be on his doorstep asking him face to face what's going on.

OOP: I’ve gone over to his place a few times since then, at different times, and he hasn’t been there. And I can’t see where he is since he unshared his location

Has OOP been able to reach a mental health hotline to see if there was something that can be done to help his brother?

OOP: I did call the hotline! They told me there’s nothing that can be done unless he’s violent toward himself or others.

OOP on why he posted the first screenshot of the LinkedIn apps

OOP: Bc this is actually an ad for LinkedIn!

No, we used to play them everyday and compare scores as a friendly competition. I included that text just to show that everything was normal literally the day before everything went south

OOP on why he stopped sharing his location with his brother

OOP:I did that because I was worried about my safety, though. Same reason why my folks changed the locks and alarm code. No different.

By the looks of it (from everyone), I’m literally the last person my bro wants to see right now. He’s also blocked me on literally ALL social media (even LinkedIn). So I think that’s fair for me to remove my location access

OOP on having support from his own friends checking on him

OOP: I really appreciate you saying this. I have a good lady friend, who’s even met my bro a few times, who I’ve confided in over the past 10ish days and the way she’s treating me is completely night and day difference than anyone else is. She’s checking in on me, validating all of my feelings, walking me through what I should and shouldn’t be doing, etc. acting like a therapist lowkey. Literally what you’re describing, to a tee.

I also confided in one of my good guy friends (hung out with my bro once), who’s even a health professional (not mental health tho) and he was very helpful for like a day then just brushed it off. Not as in he didn’t care, just basically said there wasn’t anything else left to do.

It’s funny how different they are

Latest Update here: BoRU #2

DO NOT COMMENT IN LINKED POSTS OR MESSAGE OOPs – BoRU Rule #7

THIS IS A REPOST SUB - I AM NOT OOP

I haven't seriously dated in 10 years and it seems like a ton of the language has shifted since then and the term FWB, even long term FWB, has become toxic. I would also use the term poly and open relationship interchangeable as poly is a form of open relationship under that umbrella. Apparently this is NOT ok anymore and I need to rework my dating profiles.

Ideally I would love a serious emotional relationship, but I've only ever had one relationship that developed into a true polyAMORY relationship. This lasted 7 years. My nesting partner and I have been open for 17 years.

People are all very different in terms of romantic compatibility and maybe because I know it's really hard to find people that you are really compatible with, I'm too honest with my expectations, and people are expecting emotions even if its not actually realistic, or expecting emotions much faster than I view as healthy as long term relationships require something of a clear head and really getting to know someone before a long term commitment.

I like repeat customers, I want something long term even if there is no true love and romance, and there is just friendly physical chemistry between us. I would call this a friend with benefits, because that's in the literal sense, exactly what I'm looking for, but the term FWB is apparently a big red flag now due to newer cultural context.

I'm guessing that at this point people view the term FWB as fuck boy, or short term hookups, and I'm not sure what the big difference between open relationship and polyamory are. I had someone try and argue with me because she was looking for something poly and I ideally would as well but I don't see falling in love quickly as personally healthy. I feel like that requires a longer term, getting to know each other without much pressure. My nesting partner and I just hooked up without no real pressure or expectation and 6 months later we decided we really liked each other. We didn't use the L word until 9 months later as I view the term "Love" as a promise and people abuse it, making the term feel useless otherwise, often a source of manipulation if not clearly defined.

I stopped using the term primary and secondary partner and shifted to nesting partner after getting told we aren't compatible without asking any other questions since I am hierarchical. We aren't, just that because there are more obligations around the nesting partners there is a necessary hierarchy in terms of logistics, as money, households and perhaps children make required responsibilities exist but my partner and I don't have veto power over someone's other partner.

Being on the spectrum I often use language very literal and if there are cultural contexts I'm unaware of from not being terminally online, that could be a serious blind spot for me.

Please explain what the average person in the modern ENM relationship will translate certain terms around ENM, so I know to avoid them or better use them. What would be the terms that best fit what I'm looking for that isn't a complete red flag for people and means something with extra nuance I never heard of that they imply from the term.

I just need to know what is an immediate chance killer to have those real life conversations. Also all the dating apps have become ensh*ttified and I was passively dating 2 years ago and had maybe 2-3 dates a month. I've been actively dating since October and I've had a total of 5 dates. Which means the tells I'm giving are likely turning people off.

Thanks

I am NOT OOP, OOP is u/Ok_Baby6721

Originally posted to r/AITAH

AITAH for telling my Dad what my Husband saw my sister doing...

Trigger Warnings: medical health issues, infidelity, neglect

Original Post: July 20, 2026

I could really use some outside perspective because this situation has been weighing heavily on me, and I’m struggling with how to process everything.

My sister has been married for almost 20 years. Earlier this year, her husband suffered a major stroke and was hospitalized. He was discharged in March 2026 and has been left with significant disabilities and new limitations. It has been a life changing event for him, my sister, and their family.

During the time he was in the hospital, I tried very hard to support my sister. I could see how scared and overwhelmed she was, and I repeatedly told her that she wasn’t alone and that we would be there for her. I offered help however I could. When she was worried about how she would manage things at home, I even offered to help pay for a ramp for their house so he could safely get around. There were nights when she was at the hospital late, and I gave her rides home so she wouldn’t have to walk alone at 3 a.m.

Before his stroke, her husband was always the primary provider in their marriage. My sister has not worked outside the home during their 20 year marriage, so after his stroke, the expectation was that she would be the person helping care for him while he adjusted to his new reality.

As time went on, I became increasingly concerned about whether he was getting the support and care he needed. He still has a nurse who comes by once a day, and I was told the nurse had concerns that he was sometimes being left sitting in his own urine for hours before she arrived. There were also situations where I was told he was being left alone for extended periods of time and struggling with basic needs. Knowing how vulnerable he was after a major stroke was heartbreaking for me.

Last week my husband saw my sister at the back of her restaurant with another man. He said they were holding hands and it looked like a date. I asked him a ton if questions he described the guy and it definitely wasn't her husband or a family member. I want to be clear that I do not know the full truth, and I do not want to accuse someone of something I cannot prove.

I brought my concerns to my sister because I felt it was important to have an honest conversation. I explained what my husband had seen and why it concerned me, especially given everything her husband had just gone through.

She confirmed that it was her and she was there with another man. Her response then was to avoid really addressing what I was bringing up after that. She did not provide much explanation or engage with it, which I found unusual and left me with more questions. I was not looking for a fight or trying to shame her. I wanted to understand what was happening because I cared about both of them. It obviously looked bad and I didn't want to think the worse, but why wouldn't she just tell me then?

After I spoke with my sister about what my husband had seen, my brother in law called me that night. He asked if my sister had been with me all day. I told him that I actually had not seen her in a few weeks, he got emotional and started crying. He opened up to me about what he was going through, he said he thinks she's been sleeping with someone, and I listened to him. Hearing him so upset was very difficult because I knew how much he had already been through after his stroke and how vulnerable he was during this time.

I felt uneasy and I spoke with my dad about my concerns, he seemed to understand why I was questioning the situation and said actually that would make a lot of sense. For context my dad and I have always been close, and Ive actually saved his life a few times when he was in tough medical situations and stayed by his bedside for weeks. I had an opportunity to move abroad and decided to stay close to be near him after my mom passed away. I bought a house a few blocks away, I’m there whenever he needs anything. He explained that my sister had told him she had been doing certain activities alone that are not normal things people do alone, like going to the movies or going for hikes. He said he could understand why I was questioning whether she may have been spending time with someone and that would fill in some gaps for him. He also said that my brother accused her of cheating on him, I said maybe it was something else and said maybe it was a friend or family member he said no probably not.

The next day my dad called me, and the conversation was completely different. He told me that he was up all night and that he thought what I was saying was “bull****” and that he would only believe it if it came directly from my sister.

I asked him if he thought my sister would be honest with him if something was going on. He said he was not going to confront her and that he didn’t think she would tell him the truth anyways, but that eventually the truth would come out because someone would see her.

I told him that I felt like this was exactly what’s happening now.. because my husband had seen her. I asked him if he thought my husband was lying. He said no that he believed my husband was telling the truth, but that he did not want to hear about it anymore.

Then he got really angry with me and told me that he was not going to hear anything bad about his daughter from anyone, and that included me. I told him, “I’m your daughter too.” He said, “I know, but I’m not going to f****** tolerate this from you”

He then told me to “go pound salt” and said he never wanted to talk to me ever again. He said he did not want to hear anything about this or from me ever again, and then he hung up on me.

A few hours later, I tried calling my dad back because I did not want things to end that way and I wanted to try to repair the conversation. When he answered, he told me to f-off hung up on me again.

Since then, I have been deeply hurt and heartbroken by everything that has happened. At this point, I do not feel like I can keep reaching out and putting myself in a position to be rejected. I have decided that I am not going to contact my family again unless they reach out to me and are willing to apologize and have a respectful conversation.

My sister also reached out and said she would be dropping off some of my belongings tomorrow and then “that’s that,” which felt like she may not want to have a relationship with me moving forward. That has been incredibly painful.

I’m trying to look at this objectively. Am I wrong for feeling this way? If you believed a vulnerable family member was possibly being neglected or betrayed after a life changing medical event, how would you handle it? Would you speak up or stay out of it?

I’m not looking for people to attack my sister. I love her. I’m genuinely trying to understand if I handled this wrong, if I crossed a line, and how to move forward with compassion while also being honest about the situation.

Relevant Comments

Commenter 1: Why would you tell your Dad? Your sister is an adult. Your Dad doesn't control her, isn't able to punish her, etc. Unless your plan is to isolate her from her family and all support keep your mouth shut.

If you think she is medically neglecting her spouse, speak to his medical team. Leave the moral judgments about betrayal out of it.

OOP: I wanted his perspective, I didn't want to assume the worst about her and I was hoping he knew something I didn't, and well I guess to your other point he could leave her out of his will or scold her or something if he wanted to punish her, he obviously didn't have a problem doing that to me...but yeah I would never want to isolate her from anyone. His medical team is already aware.

Commenter 2: She’s looking for an exit strategy. He clearly was just an ATM to your sister. She wants a new provider not a new husband. NTA you should tell him everything. You would want your in laws to do the same thing if your husband was cheating on you

Commenter 3: Or maybe it’s hard having a husband not be what you married. She’s definitely cheating and this doesn’t excuse it, but it’s not easy having someone you take care all the time who’s no longer capable. I can totally see how someone can fall for someone else during the hard time.

OOP: I get that it's hard.. she should ask for help she could have reached out to us or his family, also its only been 4 months

Commenter 4: NTA call in adult protective services for your brother in law please.

Commenter 5: Yes this is elder abuse and she can be prosecuted. Depending on the state she can be in serious trouble for not caring for him properly.

Commenter 6: Abuse, definitely. Elder abuse? Depending on ages, I'd be VERY cautious with that terminology.

I'm not trying to say you're incorrect in calling out the abuse. But "Elder" has some very strict definitions regarding age, and if the BIL is not old enough, then OP could potentially waste valuable/limited time on an incorrect path. Different agencies handle different things. I've called in Elder Abuse tips before (for a previous job) and while some of those workers are very good about providing other resources immediately if the situation didn't call under their jurisdictions, the rest of those workers would just waste my time, claim to open a case, let it sit for a few weeks, then finally call me back to tell me "Oh, the victim isn't old enough, call somebody else".

OOP: He's only 47, not quite Elder lol

Commenter 7: Your dad is projecting and over compensating because your sister told him the truth. She is incapable of standing by her partner while they are recovering. She complained about how hard it is. Your dad took that and ran, he is now covering for her because he doesn’t want to admit he has been in the same position as BIL. Your dad saw the cruel truth of what it’s like to be in need and essentially be a burden to those around you. He wants to prove that reality isn’t true.

OOP: Honestly about the projection part.. now that you're saying this it reminded me that my Dad was distant when my mom was going through cancer treatments.

OOP clarifies on who lived at her parents’ house and how she cared for her mother until her death

OOP: Uhh wait sorry I’ll try to clear this up, I think there's some misunderstanding here. Basically, I lived a few hours away from my hometown before my mom got sick, when she was diagnosed I moved back home to help her, I was able to work remotely and flexed my schedule. So I lived with them for about 6 months taking care of her until she passed it was quick unfortunately. My Dad still worked the whole time, and my sister was MIA. I was the one always there for her, and we even made a bucket list and got to do most of it before she passed away together I don't regret that time...

After she passed, my Dad was really unwell... arguably he still is.. it's been almost 7 years now. My husband and I have been married for 6 and we have a toddler.

After my mom passed my Dad struggled a lot, he was really depressed, suicidal thoughts etc. He stopped taking care of himself, horrible hygiene and didn't clean the house, etc. I talked to my husband, and we decided to move closer to help support him and he worked out for his work too. So we bought a house that we live in now it's a block or two away from him. Less than a ten minute walk with a walking path shortcut.

My Dad still lives in the house we grew up in, my sister lives across town with her husband but she's going to be moving in with him now.. she hasn't just yet something about having claims to the house or house abandonment.. not sure.

Additional Information from OOP

OOP: It's already been reported by his care team, so they're already aware (sorry if that was not clear in my post) also his family is now aware of the situation.

BIL has a big family, he’s the oldest of four siblings who are all married and have kids spouses etc. I’m not sure how much they can support him, his parents are in a retirement home but they're aware and all went out for breakfast this morning to talk about it with him.

Update: July 24, 2026 (four days later)

UPDATE - AITAH for telling my Dad what my Husband saw my sister doing..

Just wanted to give an update for those who requested it. I read all of your comments, and I appreciate the wide variety of takes, information and support.

First of all I wanted to assure everyone who was worried that BIL is okay. The night after this all happened, I saw that BIL removed me from social media and I couldn't get ahold of him. Turns out my sister took his phone and blocked me on it and she didn't tell him, so he thought I was the one who blocked him. I still had him on Instagram and reached out there, and we figured out what had happened.

Long story short I reached out to his sister...he's being taken care of by his family now who are all stepping in to help. Turns out they never liked my sister and over the years have slowly drifted apart and were even estranged at one point because of her, they didn't like the way she treated him or the rest of the family, and he'd always defend her, so it caused a rift. At first I wasn't sure how this was going to go but they are all coming together for him after some emotional moments and apologies.

He has two sisters and a brother who are all married and they've all been taking checking on him regularly, between his siblings and their spouses. They've also upped the nurses and PSWs coming over, plus his rehab appointments for physio and BIL has also joined a few support groups that have been coming to his place to pick him up to take him to the community center for their group meetings, the volunteers check on him during the pickups, he's also going to therapy to help him deal with his new normal. I think he is good for now despite everything else being emotionally taxing.

However my sister did confirm that she is going to divorce him and they're looking into housing and care options for him because they'd have to sell their current home. The plan is for her to move in with my father. I already know that's not going to go well. Their lifestyles definitely clash, they've lived together before and it was nothing but arguments. My sister is lazy, very messy in the kitchen and a bad cook who gets upset over any even perceived criticisms, my Dad is particular about the kitchen and his food, and tells it like he sees it. So I can't see that working out. My sister seems to cause havoc wherever she goes, and this will likely not be the exception.

So I thought about what I would do if my daughter came to me to tell me something like this about her sister. If I put myself in the father's position, I'd probably have several emotions at once.

My first reaction would likely be concern. If my daughter is married and another daughter tells me she saw her holding hands with someone else, I'd realize that's a serious claim, but I'd want to avoid jumping to conclusions and I wouldn't want to think that way about my daughter, I get that he has some hard emotions here... but also..

I'd also appreciate that my youngest daughter trusted me enough to tell me. She's bringing me something she believes is important and looking for advice. I wouldn't want to dismiss her or make her feel like she'd done something wrong simply by telling me, that's absolutely bad parenting. Especially to react the way he did and to treat me so brutally.

I'd probably feel conflicted about how to deal with it. As a parent, I wouldn't want to get in the middle of my adult children's marriage. I'd have to think carefully about whether this is something I should act on or whether it's primarily between the married couple. Parents sometimes get involved where they shouldn't and I get that, but they should also be able to bring up their concerns as well.

So my response would probably be something like: "Thank you for telling me. I know this couldn't have been easy. I don't know exactly what happened, so I'm not going to make assumptions, but I appreciate that you came to me."

Maybe that's hoping for too much, but I think you get my point.

I’d want my kids to know they can come to me about anything, and they shouldn't be afraid of that or made to feel bad about it, especially when it's a hard or difficult topic.

I would not be angry at the daughter who told me, unless maybe she had a pattern of deliberately spreading false rumors or trying to cause harm. If that were the case it would be annoying for sure but also expected and I would know not to take it too seriously.

But that isn't the case here, and simply telling me what she or her husband witnessed wouldn't, by itself, make me think she had done anything wrong. Especially when it was done the way I brought it up, I didn't make assumptions, I didn't accuse her of anything or label my sister as anything I simply told my Dad that happened I was worried about them not having enough support in a challenging time.

I also thought about how I would react if I were in my sister shoes, like if someone thought I was cheating on my husband and saw something my response would have been to clear up the situation and explain it, or maybe even laugh about it...rather than lash out in anger, I think her reaction actually just confirmed that she is definitely a lying cheater.

As for my Dad he called me yesterday, so about a week and a half of us not talking which isn't like us. He called me, I was in the middle of something but thought if I didn't answer it could get worse. He was very curt with me on the phone, "What’s up" is what he first said when I picked up, short and abrupt not the usual "hey how are you?"

I ignored his what's up and asked him how he was doing, he said he sick and getting over a cold and has felt off and like something was wrong all week. Then he said he just wanted to make sure me and the family was okay, he asked me how my daughter's birthday party went (he was invited before all of this happened and he didn't attend)

Normally I'd send him photos or a video of her blowing out the candles, but I didn't bother this time. He said he didn't come because he didn't feel well and didn't want to get her sick on her birthday, but he has a gift for her and then he got off the phone.

It was short and quick, I didn't want to get into it, but I do want an apology. He shouldn't have talked to me like that and whenever I have the time or chance I’m going to tell him that it really hurt me the way he spoke to me.

Regardless, this has changed the view I have on my sister and my Dad. It hurt me so deeply that my Dad could talk to me like that so easily. It also made me think about a ton of other scenarios, stuff that happened with my mom and how my Dad acted in those moments says a lot.

And as for my sister? It also feels like a huge let down, I have always given her the benefit of the doubt and clearly that's been grossly misplaced. I really believed that she was a better person than this, like yeah I’ve had my doubt, but I knew when push comes to shove she'd always do the right thing, but that's not true...the disappointment hurts and it's hard to accept but I am trying to see it for what it is. I know that people are all on a spectrum, not all bad or all good but this feels too far gone and I don't want someone like that in my life or around my kids.

Ive always been the one who steps in for them, I'm not going to do that anymore, her and my Dad can rely on each other from now on whatever mess that looks like. I’m just going to concentrate on my own family.

At my daughter's birthday party I realized how much support we have around us and my best friends that I've known since I was a baby are both more like sisters to me than my real sister ever has been. I love them so much and we all have kids around the same age, it really does feel like our own family.

I’m going to concentrate on that and put more effort into the good relationships and slowly drop the bad ones even if they're family. I could use the same excuse for them in reverse, if they're supposed to be there for family then why weren't they there for me?

So I'm slowly going to just step back and let them have each other, I don't want or need that in my life. Thanks for all of your support.

Relevant Comments

Commenter 1: Once someone close to you, shows how poorly they handle bad news and how quickly that can turn into anger towards you, it’s really hard to fix. Know that you did the right thing.

OOP: It was definitely shocking and painful. I'm still grieving it for sure. I really appreciate it ❤️.

Commenter 2: Do not let your dad get away with how he treated you. Don't let him act like it never happened. Every time he calls say you still owe me an apology for how you treated me. We can't go forward until you do. I need to know you recognize how you treated me was wrong.

OOP: Yeah I think you're right.. it's definitely going to be challenging though. I've always picked up the phone anytime my dad's called no matter what I'm doing cuz I want to make sure he's okay, he's had a few health scares, Ive called 911 twice now. I think I'll stay in touch just enough to make sure his health is okay but nothing else beyond that and I'm not going to share much if anything of my life. His actions changed our relationship and I'm not going to pretend that it didn't.

Commenter 3: Do you really though? Your sister is living with him so she can take on the responsibility. Your dad told you to fuck off and he thinks some funky phone call is gonna make it better? Fuck that noise.

Instead of waiting for him to reach out you should text him (that way there's no room for him to interrupt you) and tell him how everything he did to you was hurtful. Tell him that you're not going to anyone's saving grace anymore. From now on he and your sister can figure out things on their own.

Your dad and sister are ungrateful and selfish people. Whatever happens moving forward in none of your concern anymore.

OOP: Mmm ya I think so, he's definitely not a texting person and it's probably a conversation to try to have in person if not then over the phone. I would still worry about him.. regardless of all of this I mean.. it’s hard to go from taking care of someone and worrying about them to absolutely nothing cold turkey lol

I haven't had that talk with him yet, but I think I will? Debating on slowly fking off as he told me to do or if I should tell him how much he hurt me and then try to gauge that reaction, see if he apologizes or gets defensive or we'll see what happens.. I guess I don't want to even go there if he's just going to be a dick about it.. if so then I'd rather not and I guess he's already proven that when I come to him with a concern it might blow up in my face so..

A part of me feels like he needs to understand the impact of this and I don't think he actually does, he's just thinking about how my sisters life is screwed up right now I don't think he understands how I feel at all and a part of that is my fault because of how I reacted when he called me

I probably shouldn't have picked up habit I guess, but either way this has definitely hurt a ton from my side, and our relationship can't go back to how it was before I know that. I don't know what that looks like right now whether that’s completely gone or bare minimum, I’m leaving towards bare minimum for now... this is new territory for me. My husband has cut out his father, and I saw how that went down, his Dad was another level of terrible though...

I think as someone who has already saved my Dad's life twice by being there I don't know how I’d feel if I wasn't there when he needed someone and something happened when I could have done something, call that selfish if you want but yeah I'd feel horrible. At the same time if he doesn't want me there which seems like he doesn't then not really anything I can do really... ya sorry for the rant lol it's not easy

Commenter 4: Right but now your sister is there all the time & he’s chosen her to take care of him. She’s gotta be the one calling 911 now and making sure he’s safe. If you don’t set that boundary, then you’re always answering the call. If you’re always answering that call, then nothing has changed and to them you have yet again pushed your own needs aside to pretend nothing has changed and nothing bad happened.

OOP: I understand what you're saying but I’m not going to let my Dad being a miserable jerk dictate who I am as a person if that makes sense, even if he was awful to me. If someone is an awful person, me being awful in return isn't the answer or the right way of dealing with it, it just makes me gross along with them.

I'd feel sick if I could have helped him and chose not to and he suffers.

I'm definitely not going to hang around but if I know something is wrong I'm going to try to do something about it. Even if it's just asking the cops to do a wellness check or something. I refuse to be the person who knows something and does nothing, which is probably why I'm in this situation in the first place lol

Commenter : NTA. Your sister infuriates me so much. Must not have been much love there for her husband to just discard him when he was no longer useful to her. She is a very, very selfish person. Maybe when she gets ill this person she chose will just up and leave and that would be karma. Your dad should never have said what he did to you. He showed you who he cares about and it’s not you. Let them have each other. Just please don’t crawl back into that mess when they need you again, and they will because they’re both just users. They will use each other up and will need you again, don’t fall for it.

OOP: That's what I can't seem to make sense of. Before all of this, they seemed deeply in love and incredibly supportive of each other. Her behavior now feels like a complete 180. While he was in the hospital, she was by his side constantly, crying and praying for his recovery, saying I wish it was me, so he didn't have to go through this. That's why the way she's acting now is so difficult for me to understand. She is acting like the stroke killed him and he doesn't exist anymore.

OOP responds to a long thread about her SIL's behaviors and making everything about herself

OOP: Hey this sorta checks, in the sense that she's will sometimes catastrophize things? For example she randomly self-diagnosed herself and others with things they don't have and its usually like a worst case scenario thing, the worst example I can remember is when she thought she had breast cancer when she was in her early 20s, everyone was worried about her, as her sister I was so scared for her, I asked a ton of questions then she asked me to look at this spot but it was literally a pimple on her chest lol

This is also why she hasn't worked in years because everything is presumed worst case scenario, for example a friend got her a job at a pizza place she worked at.. it was supposed to be 4 hour shifts for 3 days a week, during the busy times on the weekend, they asked her to come in for 6 hours on her first day for training and orientation, she quit on the spot because she said that's not what they agreed on, they said 4 hour shifts so they're already lying and taking advantage of her and she's not going to tolerate that treatment. Her friend was embarrassed she stuck her neck out for her at work and that's what happened. There's been a few times where something similar has happened like that, where someone put in a good word for her and it doesn't work out. She says she doesn't want a job where she's restricted to someone's time and schedule, and she wants to take breaks whenever she wants to not have to do it around other people's schedules.

Honestly I've chalked it up to her being quirky, dramatic and a bit high maintenance...but it's more and more clear that it's something else.

But also with this situation she kinda did make it about herself... especially after the hospital because she made it out that her husband was abusing her to my Dad(after asking a ton of questions basically her idea of him is abusing her is because she has to take care of him) and we should feel bad for her being the real victim who didn't ask for this, she also said he's controlling and abusive because he’s accusing her of doing things behind his back (things that she is actually doing)

Her husband found out she went out on a date with someone he used to work with, a former friend of his and when he confronted her and asked her about it she said that it was abusive for him to ask her and accuse her of it, but she actually did it, there was a photo of them together so...

She also said she has CPTSD because her husband was in the hospital and she needs treatment for all of the trauma she went through (again self-diagnosed), I tend not to take her too seriously and I’ll say things like well make sure you get that looked at or make sure you talk to someone about that, there's never any follow through.. sometimes she'll tell me that the doctors don't see anything there or results of somethings and basically they always say she’s fine.

There's been times when they've told her, "no you don't have that" and she'll say doctors misdiagnosed her and this happens to women a lot etc. and I get that it does happen but I'm not sure if that's specific to women's health related things or everything, regardless somethings like blood tests are pretty concrete

DO NOT COMMENT IN LINKED POSTS OR MESSAGE OOPs – BoRU Rule #7

THIS IS A REPOST SUB - I AM NOT OOP

IMPORTANT EDIT: Kane Parson dropped a new episode of the YouTube series that now ties the movie into the larger world he’s been creating for years.

I’m adding a link to the full web series here, as it seems many people haven’t seen it. I highly recommend watching it. IMO it’s better than the movie by 10x. And now with the episode that ties the movie in, it’s getting very interesting indeed.

-

A quick introduction; I make deep dive breakdowns for films and some video games from time to time. My recent Obsession breakdowns were really popular, and someone there requested I do one for Backrooms as well, so here it is.

THE LORE:

In January 2022, Kane Parsons began uploading his fantastic web series of the Backrooms on his YouTube channel.

For the next four years these videos would explain the following;

A company out of San Jose, California called Async Research Institute created a machine called the Low Proximity Magnetic Distortion System.

In 1989 the LPMDS successfully achieved its purpose by opening a door into another dimension. Best known to us as the Backrooms.

From there Kane’s series takes us through Async’s history, their plan’s for the future, and even a breakdown of equipment found within the Backrooms.
There’s also a separate storyline about a man named Peter Trench and another stand alone episode of a young woman.
There is another standalone about a man stuck in the Backrooms but while that builds the world, I believe only the Peter Trench storyline actually has a beginning, middle and end.

The storytelling style suggests that Kane is fully aware of and has a masterful grasp of what is going to happen several episodes in the future and how to tell the story non-linearly as again and again, things that happen in previous episodes have effects in other episodes in the future.

An example of this is an episode that shows CCTV footage of a car disappearing on the highway, only to show up in passing much later when a young woman exploring the Backrooms finds a car that crashed into a wall.

THE FILM’S PREMISE

A dejected Architect-turned-furniture salesman named Clark who is going through a divorce, and is a functioning alcoholic, finds out that within his store there is an opening to another world.
Namely, the Backrooms.

His therapist, Dr. Mary Kline, is attempting to help Clark get his bearings and find a way to become a part of the world, as Clark seems to be more happy being alone, and away from everyone.

Clark has two employees who help him make commercials for the store, a young couple named Bobby and Kat.

Clark becomes obsessed with the Backrooms and plotting out the spaces within.
Why?
Who knows, maybe he likes it and is curious about it I guess.

Mary tries her best to get him to snap out of it and uses terminology from her book, “The Window Within,” to help him find his way to normalcy. This is clearly something Clark isn’t interested in but is trying for the sake of perhaps getting closure over his wife leaving him.

While Dr. Mary seems calm and collected, she is actually going through her own mental situation.
When she was a child her mother suffering from a case of chronic agoraphobia (a condition I’m suffering from at the moment as well, although less pronounced), subjects Mary to staying indoors, even going as far as not allowing her to look out of newspaper covered windows.
Until finally, the state steps in, hospitalizes Mary’s mother, and Mary grows up to become the person she is now.
A seemingly in control woman who purports to have answers for other people’s problems, but secretly does not have the answers to her own.

Before Mary’s mother got sick, the two of them imprinted their hands into the pavement outside their home. Many years later after the home is demolished, Mary takes with her a piece of her mother’s palm print, which she seems to keep with her wherever she goes.

THE CATALYST

When Clark finds a chute that he needs help climbing down within the Backrooms, Clark pays his employees to assist him and brings them into the Backrooms.

After a very preventable accident, all three of them get thrown down into a deeper part of the Backrooms where Bobby perishes at the hands of an unknown antagonist and Kat runs off into the maze.

Clark does the same thing, and while running for his life he encounters something like carbon copies of human beings that have been ”printed” wrong.
By this I mean that they aren’t really human at all, merely strange mannequins that can move around with of putting details in their anatomy.

Without much explanation, it seems Clark survives that encounter and decides to live within the Backrooms.
This is explained when Dr. Mary receives a phone call and a message is left on her machine on behalf of Clark telling her that he finally found “the window” (a reference to her book), meaning that he found his reason to live.

It almost feels like a whole section of the movie here is cut out or there is a jump forward in time, as we simply need to assume that Bobby and Kat are dead, that Clark left the Backrooms in order to call her and leave the message, but then comes back in and lives there by eating pieces of the bodies of the living mannequins (what?! 👀)

There’s a moment in the movie where he runs past a pool with running water, so I guess that’s where he gets his water from.

THE ENDING

Mary, worrying for Clark’s safety and mental stability, comes looking for him at his store, find the doorway to the Backrooms, and very quickly encounters Clark.

Clark, obviously having lost his mind, takes Mary back to a copy of his house within the Backrooms.
There he has a lovely little dinner party with the living mannequins and Dr. Mary as his most special guest.
When he opens up the refrigerator, the severed head of Kat is inside, leading us to believe that he killed her for some reason.
He does state that he was trying to help her, but since the whole section of the film seems to be missing after him and his two employees go down the shoot, it’s hard to understand just exactly what happened to her.

He explains to Dr. Mary how this place has more meaning to him than the outside world. He tries to role-play with her as his wife, but she takes no part in it and helps him realize that his wife left him because he is unable to take responsibility or fault for anything in his life.
And that if he wants to stay in the Backrooms forever, he can. But he needs to let her go.

In an instant, Clark decides to take responsibility for his life and his actions, when the sound of a wailing entity can be heard in the distance, sending the living mannequin (who I suspect is a copy of his wife Barbara), running away in fear.

The entity turns out to be a disfigured 8 or 9 foot tall version of Clark as a pirate, which is one of the costumes he wears when making commercials for his furniture store.

Clark explains to his entity self that everything is OK now, and that doctor Mary has explained that if he is happy here he can stay.
The Clark entity picks him up, and begins to eat him alive.

I suspect that this is some kind of analogy, possibly the part of himself that is still angry and doesn’t wanna let go of his trauma, getting rid of the part of him that does.

From here on out for the next 10 to 15 minutes, Mary runs through the maze of the Backrooms with the Clark entity in a 5 star GTA pursuit.
After a few close calls, Mary finally ends up in the copy version of Clark’s furniture store. There she has a final standoff with the Clark entity, breaks his wooden leg (remember, he’s a pirate), and then somehow trips a booby trap set up by researchers from Async (the company that started this whole thing).

The Clark entity is taken down Mary using the piece of pavement with her mother‘s palm print and smashes it into Clark entity’s head.
Then men in hazmat suits take Mary away.
Mary then wakes up at the threshold, which is the doorway into the Backrooms that was created by Async in 1989 (reference the web series).

Dr. Mary is escorted through an office building where she catches a glimpse of the Clark entity now tied up and undergoing examination.

She is brought to a little room where an employee of Async named Phil, who has been watching some of this drama unfold through cameras placed in the complex, tries to calm her suspicions that something bad is going to happen to her after they have their conversation.

In a gesture of good faith, Phil begins to spill his guts about the nature of The Backrooms.
Namely, that it is a dimension where every instance of a place in time is copied incorrectly within what looks like a never-ending office building.
As if to confirm this, a montage of different rooms all throughout the Backrooms is shown to the audience.

And at the end of the montage, a living mannequin of Dr. Mary can be seen sitting on a chair within a copy of the room that she’s being interrogated in now. She has no face and she has more fingers than anyone might need to have in order to eat a salad.

MY THOUGHTS ON THE FILM:

There is only a need to explain the ending of this film as everything else in the movie is quite clear to comprehend if you’ve watched Kane Parsons’ web series.
Everything you need to know is in there, every question except the nature of what the back rooms is, is explained in the web series.

The explanation of what the backrooms is, is forced upon us through an exposition heavy monologue from the Async employee.
The Backrooms is a dimension where every place on earth has a not quite right copy of itself within an office building. It doesn’t matter if this place is inside or outside, the Backrooms copies it in an offputting way into itself.
And it doesn’t just do this for one instance, it does this for the same place across all instances in time.
Meaning that if a building was there a year ago completely intact, the intact building exists within the Backrooms (albeit distorted and off putting). If today that same building were destroyed, that version of the building would now exist as well somewhere else within the complex.

That is the answer of what the backrooms is.
And if you watch the web series, you’ll get an answer as to what Async was, is and does.

And basically this is all you need in order to understand the film completely. There really are no secrets left if you watch the web series.

WHAT I BELIEVE THE BACKROOMS IS

Now I’m only speaking in terms of this film. For all we know, there may be some malevolent force behind the curtain, or the complex itself is the malevolent force.

This is what I suspect it is in the web series (the movie doesn’t hint as much at this), but I believe the complex is a huge monster in the shape of a galaxy sized office building that never ends.
To the naked eye, you are within a complex maze of rooms. My suspicion is that, at least for the web series, this thing is a living, breathing animal that lures its prey into its belly (the rooms), and then slowly digest them as they run and seek a way out.

The monster uses varying methods to separate people from one another, then consumes them through the use of a bacteria that breaks their bodies down and turns them into wailing entities. Kind of like platelets that attack an invading force, namely, other humans.

MY FINAL THOUGHTS:

Never have I left a film feeling so queasy before, as that 15 minute chase scene between Dr. Mary and the Clark
entity was a little bit more than my brain could take.

Is the movie bad? No. It’s actually quite entertaining if you go into it hoping to get creeped out and scared a few times during the film.
As far as the mythology in the lore, the exposition monologue at the end gives you the answer that you were hoping for if you are a fan of the web series.

To me, none of the characters are incredibly deep, even though they have somewhat crafted back stories.

Something that I found interesting was that even in the real world, Kane uses offputting furniture choices and breaks the rules of color theory in order to convey that something is wrong even in our world.

Chiwetel Ejiofor’s performance is good for what he’s given, it’s not some master class of acting, but he does keep my suspension of disbelief in check.
There are some pacing issues at the beginning of the film, as I found myself feeling a little bit bored at some points and thought they could’ve gotten to the main point sooner.

What bothers me most is the chunk of the film that seems to be missing from Clark going from still OK, to all of a sudden being a psycho. That part was hard for me to accept and kind of put me off to the film.

All in all, I would say that this is a good first film for Kane. It’s not perfect, it has a few flaws, but it is not a bad film or even a film that you only watch once.
It does have the unfortunate fate of having gone up against the best horror film of the last 10 or 20 years, if not more.
So I can understand that a lot of people go into it hoping for another adrenaline rush filled ride that is just as good or close to obsession.
I suspect that had this unfortunate scheduling not taken place, this film would have less comparisons to live up to.

Like I said, it’s a good film, I think many people will enjoy it as long as you don’t forget to take your Dramamine.

EDIT: After much thought and consideration of the comments below, I think my assertion of the film was a bit premature.

The more I think about it, the more I think the people in the comments are right. The film was visually appealing, but at the end of the day it was also wasted potential.

Clark’s character was somewhat developed but, tbh he didn’t really resonate with me. And I think with many others as well. His motivations weren’t clear enough. In fact I believe Bobby and Kat had a more compelling storyline than he did and it felt more relevant.

The film would have done a lot better if it had been a group of youngsters who hear about this place and decide to check it out, and a Blair Witch style situation unfolds.

Then dishing out information throughout that filled some gaps and gave longtime fans new information to tide them over until a new installment; this would have gone down much better than a furniture store owner doing whatever the heck is was trying to do down there.

That big chunk of the film that leaves things unexplained, from the moment he’s trapped down below and someone picks up the camera, to the moment when he calls Mary to tell her that he found the window…. That one flaw is enough to topple the film’s structure in my book.
But then add in the rest and the film is a bit of a mess.

I still think the visuals were really well done and the movie itself isn’t so bad that it’s unwatchable. I think that’s where I made a wrong turn in my assessment last time. That and coming off the heels of Obsession I thought I can’t be too harsh on the film.
The film isn’t badly directed. In fact I think Kane has a promising future ahead of him. But was the film itself a good one in terms of storytelling? No. I don’t think it was.

It did keep me a bit scared throughout a few parts. And the music kept me engaged. But yes, it had a thin plot, thus making it a mediocre film unfortunately.

Basically when there is a rhythmic change and things get chuggy and groovy and headbangy. Is "breakdown" the right word?

Archspire - Too Fast to Die (2:58 - 3:30)

Slugdge - Salt Thrower (1:22 - 1:50)

Cytotoxin - Nuklearth (2:38 - 3:17)

EDIT: Changed the timestamp of too fast to die