As someone who has been “exposed” online on the scale of millions of views before, I wanted to provide a first hand perspective of what it’s like and the torture Bella is deservedly going through. I quickly found that I was writing a novel though, so I want to stress the one point that I don’t think many people recognize.
One of the worst parts of this sudden and abrupt merger of your online life and your real life is the forced recognition of your actions. If she’s anything like me, then part of the way that she was able to justify or live with herself through all of the horrible things she’s done is with the mentality that the online world is not the real world. It’s easy to believe that you can do whatever depraved shit that you want, and as soon as you don’t want to deal with it you can just nuke the account. Your sins are washed clean. It was never real. You can go on living your happy life and forget everything bad you’ve done. As much as you all want to believe she is a demented person who lives her day to day life constantly thinking evil thoughts - it’s probably not true. There is probably a very normal portion of her that lives the majority of her day like a regular person while she occasionally taps into her darkest desires through a different part of her brain, usually online. Many of you are pointing out how insane it is that she’s still using discord rather than more personal conversation methods after all of these leaks, and I strongly believe this is because she’s still trying to maintain the idea that everything happening is just this online person, not who she really is. It is an incredibly effective coping mechanism.
Once your doxxed though? That entire safety net is ripped away. The mental division you created is removed and you are forced to recognize and deal with all of your actions. And when I say this I don’t mean dealing with the external consequences of your actions - not things like public ostracization or even legal consequences. Those pale in comparison to the mental effects. It’s the mental toll of coming to accept that those twisted actions are part of who you truly are, not just a separate online persona. Fuck all matters about your parents finding out or being kicked out of school, the worst part of this is finding a way to live with yourself after your mental escape route has been closed.
You’ve always recognized that the things you’ve done are bad, but you’ve done so in a disassociative way, almost as if you’re looking at someone else. But when that someone else is doxxed as being yourself? You’re immediately flooded with years of grief and remorse over all of your actions. The full weight of your deprivation hits you all at once as your personal day of reckoning comes and you struggle to understand how you’ve done all of this. You lose recognition of who you even are and before long you have only one self evident truth. You hate yourself.
I say all of this to let you all know - none of your insults or the external consequences of your doxing mean anything to her in comparison to the things she is thinking about herself now. I know she is trying to cover things up and misdirect with disinfo, but that is surface level. On a much more real level she is slowly beginning to navigate the crumbling of her mental psyche as her internal coping mechanisms are ripped away from her. Her self loathing will destroy all motivation and ambition that she has and she will fill her days looking for ways to numb the world around her in an attempt to forget who she is. One of the only things that brings me joy in my personal experience of this is knowing that there are people like her who are experiencing it even worse than me.
Bella, I genuinely hope that this is all just me projecting my own situation, but if not, I wish you luck in your journey of self hatred.