So here's something I want to observe about this defense, and others like it you've done. You take offense at a statement like "klob does [negative thing]", and you call it a lie, but when it comes to addressing the specific events that [negative thing] is being used to describe, you don't actually refute the events.
Instead you hold up a list of [positive trait]s and go "how can I [negative thing] when I so clearly have [positive trait]??" as if it's impossible to do two things at once.
Take the lovebombing claim. This is at least partially traced to the event, recorded in chat, of you trying to give a present to Duncan's daughter. Did you offer gifts at a time following negative interaction? Then you lovebombed.
Take the stalking claim. This is at least partially traced to informing Duncan that you had found his physical address and performed a background check, and at least partially to your own posted GPS screenshot of searching for a friend's address. Did you track and record the location of the home of people who did not explicitly give that information to you? Then you were stalking them.
Everything else in this document is a distraction, presenting a heap of [positive trait]s attempting to drown out the existence of the [negative thing]s you have done. If you do not address those specific [negative thing]s and perhaps explain how they are not accurately described as "lovebombing" or "stalking" or whatnot, then this is just so much static.
Do not bother responding unless you do so with an explanation of how those specific events are not accurately described.
2
1As someone who knows you IRL, I was somewhat hoping that you could put this behind you man :/
I ctrl + f'd for "adnonymous" or anything related to the email threat you sent Duncan at 5 AM. Unsurprisingly it went unaddressed in this post as well as the other explainers. I feel like you're not getting it, people are scared of you due to the way you are acting. I've internally debated leaving this comment as a message multiple times in your inbox but did not want to get put on blast on your social media.
There's nothing in this post that justifies that action, nor the doxxing. I've read through the FB messenger conversation and at no point did I come away thinking you were in the right here. You say that Duncan doesn't know you. Duncan doesn't need to know you to be scared of you.
And for the record, I am not a member of the rationalist community nor did I know who Duncan was before this whole thing started. I found it through your own posts on social media, and went through feelings of confusion, shock, and then a growing sense of horror as I read through everything. I have no personal stakes in the outcome of these events beyond hoping that things can improve.
Please take your own advice at the end of this post, print copies of the messages, then take them to a trusted therapist or neutral third party to have them make a judgment call. I understand that this has been very isolating, but that can be repaired.
Best of luck.
2
2At this point it seems hardly to add anything to write it explicitly, since I think observers are reaching the same conclusion without help, but I would be utterly horrified to be targeted by Caleb Ditchfield in the way that seems Duncan has been.
It strikes me as an inadequacy of our civilization that someone can perpetuate harms like this and not be stopped. To the extent I have any power to prevent harms like this, e.g. my ~vote on whether Caleb is allowed in communal spaces, I do vote to remove him for the benefit of others.
It is a very sad situation. It seems that Caleb is just very ill, and the worst kind of ill where there's massive denial and he'll fight all efforts to persuade him to get help. I hope that writing this comment, not really changing anything, at least pushes in the right direction.
2
1I don’t think Duncan knows what “a boundary” is.
General Semantics has a neat technology, where they can split out different words that normally land on top of each other. If boundary_duncan is different from boundary_segfault, we can just make each of the words more specific, and not have to worry about whether or not they're the same.
I've read thru your explainer of boundary_segfault, and I don't see how Duncan's behavior is mismatched. It's a limit that he set for himself that defines how he interacts with himself, others, and his environment. My guess is that the disagreement here is that under boundary_segfault, describing you as having "poor boundaries" is saying that your limits are poorly set. (Duncan may very well believe this! Tho the claim that you set them for yourself makes judging the limits more questionable. )
That said, "poor boundaries" is sometimes used to describe a poor understanding or respect of other people's boundaries. It seems to me like you are not correctly predicting how Duncan (or other people in your life!) will react to your messages and behavior, in a way that aligns with you not accurately predicting their boundaries (or predicting them accurately, and then deciding to violate them anyway).
This isn’t something that I do. This is something that I have done
I don't understand this combination of sentences. Isn't he describing the same observations you're describing?
There is a point here that he's describing it as a tendency you have, instead of an action that happened. But it sure seems like you agree that it's an action that happened, and I think he's licensed to believe that it might happen again. As inferences go, this doesn't seem like an outlandish one to make.
The friends who know me well know that I am a safe person. Those who have spent even a day around me know this, too!
The comments here seem to suggest otherwise.
You talk about consent as being important to you; let's leave aside questions of sexual consent and focus just on the questions: did Duncan consent to these interactions? Did Duncan ask you to leave him alone? Did you leave him alone?
52I don't know you at all and I'm sort of peripheral to the community, but I read the whole thing and I want to point out that the defense you wrote, for yourself, makes it sound like you really need help. Lots of people here are telling you to take all of this to therapy. Taking a bunch of stuff to therapy is never a bad idea! The opportunity cost is a few wasted hours, and the upsides can be huge.
Actions like these leave scars on entire communities.
Do you have any idea how fortunate you were to have so many people in your life who explicitly tell you "don't do things like this"? The world around you has been made so profoundly, profoundly conducive to healing you.
When someone is this persistent in thinking of reasons to be aggressive AND reasons to not evaluate the world around them, it's scary and disturbing. I understand that humans aren't very causally upstream of their decisions, but this is the case for everyone, and situations like these go a long way towards causing people like Duncan and Eliezer to fear meeting their fans.
I'm greatful that looking at this case has helped me formalize a concept of oppositional drive, a variable representing the unconscious drive to oppose other humans with justifications layered on top based on intelligence (a separate variable). Children diagnosed with Oppositional Defiant disorder is the DSM-5's way of mitigating the harm when a child has an unusually strong oppositional drive for their age, but that's because the DSM puts binary categorizations on traits that are actually better represented as variables that in most people are so low as to not be noticed (and some people are in the middle, unusually extreme cases get all the attention, this was covered in this section of Social Dark Matter which was roughly 100% of my inspiration).
Opposition is... a rather dangerous thing for any living being to do, especially if your brain conceals/obfuscates the tendency/drive whenever it emerges, so even most people in the orangey area probably disagree with having this trait upon reflection and would typically press a button to place themselves more towards the yellow. This is derived from the fundamental logic of trust (which in humans must be built as a complex project that revolves around calibration).
I completely agree with the first 3 graphs.
I somewhat disagree with the oppositional drive theory that you've described here, if only for the fact that I do not believe that klob thinks he has done anything wrong here. Having read through the messenger messages he posted as evidence, I can only conclude that he genuinely believes that the messages are exculpatory and not indicative of the behaviors he is accused of.
klob, I do want to emphsize:
It pains me so much that they have not done the same with me.
This is them doing the same, and saying you need help.
The first time you came to my attention was in May. I had posted something about how Facebook's notification system works. You cold-messaged me to say you had gotten duplicate notifications from Facebook, and you thought this meant that your phone was hacked. Prior to this, I don't recall us having ever interacted or having heard you mentioned. During that conversation, you came across to me as paranoid-delusional. You mentioned Duncan's name once, and I didn't think anything of it at the time.
Less than a week later, someone (not mentioned or participating in this thread) messaged me to say that you were having a psychotic episode, and since we were Facebook friends maybe I could check up on you? I said I didn't really know you, so wasn't able to do that.
Months later, Duncan reported that you were harrassing him. Some time after that (when it hadn't stopped), he wrote up a doc. It looks like at some point you formed an obsession about Duncan, reacted negatively to him blocking you, and started escalating. (Duncan has a reputation for blocking a lot of people. I have made the joke that his MtG card says "~ can block any number of creatures".)
But, here's the thing: Duncan's testimony is not the only (or even main) reason why you look like a dangerous person to me. There are subtle cues about the shape of your mental illness strewn through most of what you write, including the public stuff. People are going to react to that by protecting themselves.
I hope that you recover, mental-health-wise. But hanging around this community is not going to help you do that. If anything, I expect lingering here to exacerbate your problems. Both because you're surrounded by burn bridges, and also because the local memeplex has a reputation for having worsened people's mental illness in other, unrelated cases.
I am examining what you have written. While I would like to take more time to digest everything, something jumped out at me -
Caleb Ditchfield (“kryptoklob” or “klob”) is frequently full-blown manic
You're not my doctor, as far as I know you're not even a doctor, and making this claim is paramount to, or perhaps actually libel.
You need to retract this claim, Duncan.
[I am not manic, Duncan’s never met me in person, and has no basis to make this claim. I have a doctor that I see regularly, who prescribes me medication for the only condition I have, which is adult ADHD. I’m happy to talk about this stuff - I think it’s important that we normalize talking about mental health stuff, so I do it with my friends and I’ll probably make a blog post about it in the future.]
The objection to what he has stated or claimed (that you are manic) seems to be based in your implied understanding that “manic” is equivalent to diagnosing someone with bipolar disorder, and that because you assert you have not been diagnosed with a “mental illness”, this is libelous. I would like to challenge this basis.
“Manic”, or being affected by mania is a symptom of a variety of conditions or circumstances. While commonly associated with bipolar disorder, being manic does not mean that one has bipolar disorder or a psychiatric disorder.
However, out of these other potential causes, I feel the need to point out that mania can be initiated by amphetamine use without any preexisting psychiatric disorder. Given that you follow up your claim that (paraphrasing for brevity) “It is libelous to claim I am manic” (surrounded with language that implies a belief that manic is equivalent with bipolar and that one cannot be manic without being bipolar) with (again paraphrased for brevity) “I am prescribed and am taking ADHD medication” (which one can reasonably assume is Adderall given the other content of your post mentioning taking it, which can absolutely trigger mania in some individuals), a reader may prove skeptical of your claims.
Given the state of a given individual (yourself) recounting “many people are calling me manic,” some (at least seemingly) independently of one another, a vehement denial that this individual is manic, an immediate declaration that they are taking prescription medication that can cause mania, a mention of being involuntarily committed (admittedly with limited details provided by you at all so I cannot assign significant weight to this. Perhaps the medical report/discharge papers would be reasonable evidence from which to operate.), and the context that this individual’s family at one point made a significant effort to separate this individual from this exact medication, we are left with several conclusions to make.
Probabilistically, there is either a conspiracy across your support structure (friends and family), strangers, and medical professionals operating in concert to gaslight you into thinking you’re acting rather unusual OR something is influencing your perceptions that warrants approaching it with a more open mind than you may have previously been operating with.
After reading the whole thing, I feel I need additional context from klob around this whole post befoire engaging further. My apologies if this is rather overdefined, I just wish to be thorough.
- Do you feel that what you have provided in this post and in hyperlinked resources is sufficient for someone unfamiliar with this entire situation to understand your side of things? You make multiple mentions of wishing that people/your friends would allow you the opportunity to provide your side.
- If you do not believe that what you have provided is adequate, please document and provide "your side" such that it is sufficiently adequate accordingly.
- If you do believe that this is adequate for a 3rd party to understand your side of things, then can we then agree that any conclusions reached by a 3rd party, regardless of whether you agree with them, were reached with sufficient available information (regardless of the logic/models employed), i.e. you agree that the defense of "they did not get my side" will not be used, and instead any defense provided will be based on addressing the logic and models that act upon the inputs/evidence you have provided?
- What is your intention/expectation with this post? What do you consider to be a "win-state" for yourself? Is it just for people to believe your claims? Is it to get 3rd party input on this situation? Is it for this Duncan individual to apologize? Is the expectation that you won't be challenged on your claims and that this would just be a de facto blog post? Help me to understand what you're expecting here.
- Are you willing to engage with the notion that individuals' conclusions can be simultaneously logically reasonable given the available information while being factually incorrect?
- If an individual walks down the street, turns a corner, witnesses a person pull out what appears to be a handgun, point it at someone, a gunshot rings out, blood flies, and the other person falls to the ground screaming, it is very reasonable and even rational for them to immediately flee and call 911, claiming that there has been a murder attempt. If it turns out that they actually stumbled upon a movie set with all cameras and production staff on the roof and actually witnessed the climax of the screenplay, that may mean the individual in question is completely incorrect in their conclusion that there was a murder. However, that does not mean that the individual's logic or mental model was unsound or irrational.
- I am not going to engage on what the absolute truth is because, as you yourself will probably agree, I cannot know what is going on inside your head. For the sake of discussion and within the context of this discussion, I am even willing to take you at your word that "klob has no psychiatric issues". However, you seem to very strongly challenge others' perceptions of your behavior with the defense that their conclusions (which inherently are about your internal mental state and are inherently unable to be known with certainty) are incorrect. Let me preface by saying that the following is a hyperbolic metaphor that is intended to be demonstrative and is not intended to be descriptive of your own behavior - A well-respected lawyer abruptly begins eating small rocks to the extent of having some health issues and negatively affecting their personal and professional relationships. Many people notice this and are concerned. Given this profile, it would be very reasonable to assume that something has caused this individual to develop pica, a mental health disorder characterized by compulsively swallowing non-food items. The truth is, this lawyer does not have pica. They are of sound mind and are actively choosing to do these things. They 100% could absolutely choose to stop at any time, for real. I will not speculate as to their motivation because it's irrelevant to this metaphor. However, one would expect that a lawyer could empathize with any concerned friends or family and say "while I (internally) know that your assessment is incorrect, it is not an unreasonable conclusion to reach given the evidence you have." If it was important to convince them that this lawyer did not have pica, then this lawyer could take steps to support this claim outside of "I don't have pica (eats a rock)" or "I have not been formally diagnosed with pica by a healthcare professional (eats a rock)".
- Are you ultimately open to having your perceptions challenged or changed by new perspectives or evidence?
- If not, I'm not sure if this is the correct forum for your post.
You have the sharing permissions on the link labelled "this document. Right here. This is the important link to click in this blog post" set to private, so nobody else can read that document.
The document was made public, but the role for people with the link is set to "Viewer", and viewers of documents can't see comments. The only way to let everyone see the comments on a document is to give everyone the "Commenter" role.
Access fixed - anyone with the link should now be able to both see comments & comment, too. Thanks for informing me.
Someone's resolving comments that they shouldn't be. I have to revoke permissions. This is so annoying. Got a better idea?
Caleb, what do you need to put this behind you?
It seems to be taking an extraordinary toll on you and others involved.
Is this really the way?
Could there be benefit in giving and receiving grace and letting things go?
There is so much joy to experience in life.
Your true nature is Love. You ARE a good person.
Please return to yourself and let wisdom, not pain or fear guide your actions.🙏
This post was really hard to write.
I don’t enjoy taking a shit on people.
I don’t like defaming people’s names, and I try really, really hard not to spread rumors about people (and their inner character) unless I’m really damn confident that I’m correct in my observations.
I certainly have had so much experience with the rumor mill in college to never willingly wish to be a contributor - or instigator - towards a negative public perception of someone that I’ve never even met before.
And so this post gives me no ultimate satisfaction to write, and though I’m confident in my ability to back up what I say, it definitely doesn’t make me happy to publish this.
Unfortunately, the amount of fear-mongering, bullying, and outright lies that Duncan Sabien has published, encouraged, and let fester about me in the Bay Area spaces that I cherish - LessWrong, Rationality, PauseAI, Effective Altruism, and adjacent areas - demands that I stand up for myself and let you guys knows just how wrong this guy really is.
I hope that this serves as a sort of barrier to future people whom he might critique, and a warning to those who have trusted Duncan in the past - perhaps, get your own read of people and participants in the space. Duncan’s judgement probably shouldn’t be trusted anymore.
Interlude: Why Read This (Or Why Ignore) [Or: Why I Feel Compelled to Write This]
I’m making this post for a couple of reasons - listed below, not necessarily in order of importance or priority. If any of these listed reasons appeals to you, I guess read it?
Again, airing this out for the world to see isn’t actually my idea of fun, and I’d much rather be talking about the 37 cool and awesome things I’ve done than showcase a time in my life when I was going through:
Yes, I’m very open about my personal life, and often, too, but that doesn’t mean I want to share the conversation logs I’m about to share! They are private. But Duncan’s left me no choice, and I’ve certainly been extremely patient over these months attempting to mediate this situation.
So here we go - here’s why I feel like this needs to be written:
1. My reputation matters. I am a good person. I care about consent, and being fair, and being kind, and being just, and especially, about truth.
I have never, ever broken the consent of a woman I’ve slept with or engaged with sexually. Ever. And that’s important. It’s a golden track record that I’m proud to have.
Duncan is claiming I am an unsafe person. That I’m a stalker, that I’m some creep, that I’m mentally ill, that I’m manic, among many other things that he really has no right, context, or knowledge to claim - and…and unfortunately, Duncan’s got influence in the spaces I inhabit, and has already gotten me banned from some of the spaces I’ve been inhabiting for awhile (LessWrong’s Lighthaven campus as an example). More on this later.
2. If this happened to me, it probably has happened to others, and unless someone does something about it, it will probably happen to future completely innocent and kind people, too.
I get that he’s trying to protect his people. I’m that kind of person too - the kind of person that will go lengths to protect the people he cares about. (Just wait until you hear about how I recently got kicked out of two casinos while literally worried for my friend’s life.) But he’s gone overboard, he’s probably overstressed, and he’s in way over his head, and critically - he’s lying. Even unintentionally. People should know that this is what’s happening.
3. Duncan’s going to get someone killed if he doesn’t stop.
I was incredibly aghast at the callous nature of Duncan and his followers throughout this process. Vibes of “well, what if he committed suicide…would that be good or bad?” and tacit agreement of such vibes and comments on Duncan’s facebook posts permeated the conversation; calls to Duncan to realize that he might be wrong were left unheard.
I’m lucky / thankful / glad that no, I’m not actually suicidal in the slightest. I’ve got lots of experience dealing with this kind of rumor mill (in college). But others don’t. And if he keeps this up, he’s going to get someone killed. And that is not okay.
Important Context: Who’s this Duncan Guy, and Who TF Are You?
Great questions, title-creator-guy. If you’re reading this post I assume that you know somewhat about me and have some context as to who I am, but if you’re coming from the Duncan Sabien camp, the things you’ve heard about me are probably tainted by a number of things you may want to be aware of. Let’s give a quick profile of Duncan, and then a quick profile of me (though mine w
ill be longer - I obviously know a lot more about myself than I do about him).Duncan Sabien
Duncan’s been writing his blog, Homo Sabiens, for years. I’ve been reading his facebook posts - unsure how I first came across his profile - and his blog posts - for years. Well before I moved to the San Francisco Bay Area (summer 2020). His posts were a breath of fresh air; a reprieve, they made sense. And so I shared them with whoever would listen (I’ve referred many friends over to his blog).
Two of his essays, in particular, stuck with me, and are some of the most damn helpful essays I’ve literally ever read - and they are:
Caleb Ditchfield (aka klob, kryptoklob, segfault, ditchfieldcaleb, etcetera)
I have various intros saved in my Obsidian note-taking app for various contexts - dating apps, regular discord intros, more professional scenarios, etc. It takes awhile to type them up - so why not?
But I’ll type one up for the purpose of this blog post.
I’m Caleb. I’m from a small town in Georgia called Columbus.
I grew up in a Southern Baptist, evangelical Christian household, was taught 6-day creation, and that evolution was a lie.
My sister was, essentially, kicked out of the house at 16 years old because it came out that she was bi.
My parents told me and warned me that I was probably going to hell for lying to them about things like reading Harry Potter under the covers past my bedtime at night with a flashlight.
I didn’t learn emotional things from my parents; I kind of had to learn them on fly in late high school and early college, and I’m lucky that I had a friend group that was willing to help me learn, an early college girlfriend (Scarlet) who saw my potential and was willing to show me the ropes, so to speak, and a community of kind, friendly, polyamorous burner folk to show me how to be a mature, responsible, consent-forward and caring individual.
Without them, it surely would have been drastically harder.
I’m a software engineer guy with a Computer Science degree from Georgia Tech; I work in blockchain (Ethereum blockchains, specifically).
I’ve never been one to listen to authority, and silly rules are pushed back on, often.
I’m a guy that absolutely fucking cherishes his friends, talks about consent to the point of annoying some of them sometimes, and I’m the guy that my woman friends come to when they are dealing with consent issues on the fringes of the friend group and with their partners - because they know that I am a safe person.
I’m the guy that some women friends let look at their phones, and scroll through anything, because they trust me and know that I’m a safe person.
And this is how I know when some of them are in emotionally abusive - or physically abusive - situations.
It’s not an easy role to be in, especially when I am powerless to protect those I love.
But I do it anyway. I’m a guy with influence, with money (sometimes), with status (sometimes), and a I’m a guy who knows what he’s about and what he stands up for.
Have a look at the #goals channel of my community Discord server.
In summer of 2020, I moved from Atlanta, GA to San Francisco, CA to start a new chapter of my life. Ever since seeing the HBO show Silicon Valley I had kind of dreamed of moving out here - and I got my chance, thankfully. I loaded up my 2007 Chevy Malibu w/ attached trailer and made the drive in 4 short days.
Here’s the part where I link you to the entire facebook messenger conversation history between Duncan Sabien and I. I did consider only linking the relevant parts to each section of this post, but the risk of people saying things like “Context! You’re intentionally leaving out important context!” was far too high.
But first, because this is so draining, I’m going to go get some food and play a few rounds of Starcraft II.
Let’s Start at the Beginning
There’s so much context I could give here that it’s hard to decide what to include - I’m absolutely not going to flood you with an 83-page document like Duncan Sabien has created about me - I wouldn’t expect you to read that. Nor would I want you to.
Here’s the original, live document that Duncan Sabien has created about me. Fair warning to check the edit history if this is still live - I wouldn’t be surprised if Duncan were to update the document in response to this post.
In case of that eventuality, I’ve already made 10+ copies of the document as he’s been compiling it; here’s the latest version I have made my own copy of, dated, 9/5/2024 9:12PM PST - unmodified, uncommented - feel free to browse it - but I’d like to draw your attention instead to
this document. Right here. This is the important link to click in this blog post.
Importantly, I gave the following people access to see the comments as I’ve been working on the document for the past ~3 days or so:
I won’t name the people in order to respect their privacy, but I did feel like it was important to point out that I did absolutely give the opportunity for Duncan to entirely privately comment back and forth with me on this contra document - for about 72 hours - and that he has not engaged with me.
That’s way more than he’s done for me - as he’s blocked me on facebook, his blog, everything possible, before making this document, which like -
Dude. If you’re gonna make a public, 83-page document about how I’m a terrible person and blast it out to the world, at least have the decency to not actively be trying to block me from seeing it. That’s what we call a dick move.
There’s Just Way Too Much To Go Into Here
So I’ll cover the preamble, and let you decide from there. I’ve commented 16 of the 83 pages in the document with corrections. So much of it is personal drama. I hate that! But Duncan’s the one airing this out in the first place, so I’m placing the blame squarely on him for not doing the due diligence of checking his facts before he blasted this trash out into the world.
The below is pulled verbatim from the document.
Sigh. There’s so much to unpack there.
So let’s unpack it. I’ll just copy and paste the comments from the google doc and let that do the talking. Here goes!
The Part Where I Dissect Duncan’s Shitty Abstract
You're not my doctor, as far as I know you're not even a doctor, and making this claim is paramount to, or perhaps actually libel.
You need to retract this claim, Duncan.
[I am not manic, Duncan’s never met me in person, and has no basis to make this claim. I have a doctor that I see regularly, who prescribes me medication for the only condition I have, which is adult ADHD. I’m happy to talk about this stuff - I think it’s important that we normalize talking about mental health stuff, so I do it with my friends and I’ll probably make a blog post about it in the future.]
I don’t think Duncan knows what “a boundary” is.
It’s definitely something that I often talk about with friends, that I - as a polyamorous, ethically-non-monogamous person, have extensive experience with, in terms of both defining, respecting, and understanding them. The way Duncan’s used this term makes me think that he doesn’t actually know what a boundary is.
Here’s a blog post I made many months ago about boundaries - hopefully he (and maybe you, if you want to!) can learn something about them.
I have no idea what evidence he’s pulling this from. But let me direct your attention to a facebook post I made earlier this year:
This is the public version of the post. Here’s a link to it, in fact!
Cheers to my facebook friends who have the guts to agree with the public posts I make, and more cheers to my facebook friends who have the guts to comment on them for the world to see - I really like standing up for my beliefs in view of yes, the entire world - which is why I so often make entirely-public facebook posts.
(But yes, I know, some people are in the awkward position of not wanting their families or employers to see their beliefs, and I get that - which is why I often double post, one friends-only, and one public for the world to see)
I wasn’t able to find the friends-only version of this post that I made, and this blog post has already taken more than 8 hours of my focused attention, so I won’t continue to search for it - but, notably, three pieces of information that are significant about who commented on this post:
Several of my friends wholeheartedly agreed. It was a well-received post.
Notably, one particular person very much disagreed. This guy - Misha Gurevich - is kind of an important person to remember, because he’s commonly been a host of events that I’ve wanted to go to in the Bay Area, and was a photographer for the Manifest event that I was banned from.
He really, really didn’t like my post. Said something about how it disrespected the love that one feels for a partner. I respectfully disagreed - I really do love my friends that much. It’s fine if he doesn’t.
(This seems to be a key inflection point in how I started being perceived by others in the Bay Area - but as I’m not privy to those conversations, at all - remember, I haven’t had a single chance to present my case - it’s hard to tell.)
This guy is a common host of events and if he took this and ran with it, it would explain a lot about what people may have heard of me, and their weird/uncomfortable biases towards me entering spaces.
As far as “lovebombing” goes, I mean, look - I do compliment my friends a lot. They’re great. They should know that they’re great. Some of them struggle with self confidence issues way more than I do, I wanna support them. But lovebombing?
No way in hell. That’s not me. Duncan, you’re way off the mark here.
This isn’t something that I do. This is something that I have done, especially after I broke up with my now-ex-gf and was floundering around for support - after my friends kind of fucked off - and I was trying to re-establish a support network.
(Notably, my ex-girlfriend, my sister, and my mother literally secretly conspired behind my back to hide/steal my Adderall medication, literally broke into my house during my move, and were all around COMPLETELY TERRIBLE for my mental health while claiming to trying to help; this is why I LITERALLY HAVE SECURED A RESTRAINING ORDER against my mother, lest she try to “help” again. If you disagree with the necessity of this, then you don’t have enough context, and you can fuck right off - thank you very much.)
Just very obviously not true.
I’m not the one who compiled an 83 page document here; I’m not the one who’s in Duncan’s Discord spying on his messages (though he’s got a spy in mine, per what I’ve seen in said 83-page document), and I’m not the one who’s been messaging Duncan’s friends trying to turn them against him - but Duncan is. And has been.
This is just…blatantly not true.
Duncan Sabien is - I thought - a rationalist.
He’s - I thought - worried about grand-scale things like “will AI maybe potentially kill all of humanity, too?” like I am.
And so him to be making these claims is just.
It’s so much, man.
This post is already so long, and I’m already so exhausted by trying to defend myself.
I think I may stop it here. It’s too much!
The friends who know me well know that I am a safe person. Those who have spent even a day around me know this, too!
Duncan Sabien, shame on you, and let me know when you’re ready to apologize.
Let Me Tell You About the First Friend I Made When I Moved to the Bay Area
This friend is special.
This friend is one of the sweetest, most caring people I’ve ever met.
I met this friend through Tinder, like I do with many of my women friends out here in the Bay Area; often times we’ll go on dates, we don’t vibe well enough romantically or sexually to keep dating, and so the relationship transitions to friendship.
It’s great! It’s wholesome; it’s nice.
This is how I met Creatine, as I will pseudo-nickname her for now - after the topic that her recent masters’ thesis was on, that I attended, at the unfortunate cost of $200+ (because even though most of her family wasn’t there, the staff at the conference didn’t really want to hear about how chosen family was just as important).
Creatine is awesome. She’s a bodybuilder (recently attended a competition for this in South Lake Tahoe), she’s a fitness instructor, she loves science, she plays the piano, and she makes music. She’s the kind of person I get along with really well.
She and I have been friends - close friends - since I moved out here and went on that first date. We vibed over our mutual love for the TV show Chuck.
As an experienced polyamorous person, she often came to me for relationship advice - which I freely gave. I’ve been in a lot of relationships, and I’ve learned a lot of things.
Creatine started dating a guy, ten years older than hear (which is fine), who’s an alcoholic (which is not fine), who can’t control his emotions (which is not fine) and who was emotionally abusive to her for more than half of their relationship. I know this, because she trusted me to look at the things he sent her and evaluate them - unfortunately, she’s not great at holding strong boundaries in relationships.
(But she’ll get there - she’s a strong woman, she just needs practice holding boundaries.)
And so she’s been showing me - and sometimes my exgf - these texts from her angry, alcoholic, now-thank-fuck-ex-boyfriend who lets his kids play with guns unsupervised (and by the way - HATES my guts, because I see who he is) - and she’s wanted to break up with him for ages.
And I’ve encouraged this.
For ages.
And she finally did, and I was really proud of her for that.
Dude’s a piece of shit. The way he treated her made me so goddamn angry, it’s what prompted me to write notes-on-shadow-self - about how I could probably have manipulated her to break up with him earlier - if I wanted to.
About how I probably do have the power and the friends and the resources to get him fired, or in legal trouble, or change the outcome of his court case(s) - if I wanted to.
And do I want to?
Yeah, of course. He’s a piece of shit.
But that wouldn’t be right, so I withhold my actions, and let my friend choose her own path, because taking away someone’s agency is one of the worst things we can do to them.
(Because consent is really fucking important.)
So Duncan Sabien, shame on you for messaging her, “warning” her about me in her time of grief after breaking up with her angry alcoholic emotionally abusive ex boyfriend who lets his kids play with guns unsupervised, and perhaps next time you feel the need to intervene? Maybe have lunch with me first.
That’s the offer I made to this guy. He refused, probably because he knows that I see who he is.
I really hope my friend will come back to me someday, and re-evaluate the events of that breakup night through a different lens - through the lens of me, who, at getting a text of “hey I’m breaking up with [now-ex-bf] tonight”, realizes that the following events happened in sequence:
There’s more to this story, but that was the last time I saw my friend for quite some time. And in between seeing her at the club - and making sure she was safe - and dropping off some COVID tests on her front porch - Duncan Sabien struck up a conversation with her - per what I’ve seen in the 83-page-document - and started warning her about me.
Duncan Sabien, you don’t know me at all. Shame on you.
I think this is where I will end the post.
I care a lot about my friends; I do a lot for them.
When they’ve been accused of various horrible things, I literally call them up and ask them their side of the story - everyone should get a chance to have their side heard.
It pains me so much that they have not done the same with me.
Don’t trust Duncan Sabien.
(would you believe that he’s never even tried to go to therapy? ridiculous.)