I suppose this is a statement clarifying some details in the wake of me permanently leaving the community. I am not here to profess innocence, just to explain how things became what they did, and how I endeavoured to improve myself since. I cannot blame anyone for any distrust they have formed, or for seeing me in a different light. The best I can do from this point onwards is to be honest, mature in accepting responsibility for and addressing what was raised, remove myself from the GD community, and move on in life.
I will start by being blunt. If you have seen the original document with screenshots of the DMs between Hinds and I from 2020-2022, I can confirm that those screenshots are real. For those who did not see the document before it was taken down, during this period Hinds and I had communications that were sexual in nature, including us exchanging contentious artwork, of which I am sure you can understand the nature of given the context of what Hinds was exposed for. At the beginning of these interactions, I was 17; this continued until I was 19. I want to make multiple things abundantly clear:
1. At no point during our communication was I aware that Hinds was doing anything worse than engaging in viewing this sort of artwork. I found out with everyone else that they had lied about going to therapy and improving and it still sickens me to know what was going on behind the scenes.
2. The artwork shared never depicted or emulated depictions of real people or characters that were known to represent real people.
3. I do not condone the act of exchanging such artwork, and this version of myself that I thankfully have matured out of also makes me feel ill and very deeply dirty.
4. It never got any worse than this type of exchange.
5. Hinds and I are relatively similar in age, though, he was (AFAIK) a bit older than me and it has been said to me that he may have groomed me by taking advantage of my existing proclivity for this sort of content – something I will explain further later on.
6. The screenshots highlight numerous repetitions of me ensuring that media was deleted after the fact and referencing migration to Telegram. During this time, I still lived at home, and I had a somewhat controlled upbringing. I was very conscious of my Discord being checked, and I knew that my parents were aware that Discord was my main platform of communication online. Even if the exchanges were sexual in a manner that was entirely acceptable, I would feel the same about my privacy in such an environment.
I wish to clear my name, not in the sense that there was no wrongdoing, but in the sense that since what was depicted in the leak document had occurred, I had endeavoured to improve myself, with some life-changing factors driving that to happen. I will start from the beginning and explain things sequentially.
Anyone who has been a part of the GD community long enough is aware of just how prevalent it is for people to be exposed for analogous reasons (though usually much worse than this case, unfortunately). I have been in and amongst the community for roughly a decade now, if not a bit longer. Shamefully, some of these instances of people being exposed had me as a child thinking “how bad could this art really be?”. The saying goes; curiosity killed the cat. I should have looked at it and thought “yeah that’s bad” and moved on, but it was at a really inopportune time during my sexual development and progression of maturity and stuck with me in a manner I now liken to being infected. I am genuinely ashamed that at some point in my life, this was something I had a proclivity to seek out. The point I am establishing though, is that I was secretly and privately dealing with this far in advance of any untoward interactions with Hinds.
As a teenager I was pretty much a loner, spent a lot of time online and did not hang out much with people at school or elsewhere; it was obvious that I was less social than most. This led me to have some very unhealthy attention-seeking tendencies and attachment issues online, which only worsened when COVID hit in 2020. I had been friends with Hinds prior to 2020 on Discord, chatting like normal, but when shit hit the fan globally it shifted from friendly to sexual, and I latched onto it because of how I was. From there the dam broke pretty quickly regarding Hinds being convinced to be honest about the sort of media they would look at in these instances. Again, this is something I latched onto, for two reasons:
1. I had not imagined anyone else would be like me, with this awful proclivity to look at this sort of media, but with no intent to go further, or harm anyone ever. I may have had some very unhealthy and abhorrent qualities for a child, but I was still kind, to a fault even. I was extremely naïve to believe that Hinds was the same, given what he has been proven to do.
2. I was an incredibly stupid, lonely and horny teenager with basically no self-preservation instinct, a severe lack of maturity, and no sense of consequence. I just did not put due thought into how this would be an unbelievably bad thing to engage in.
Once this started, it was hard to stop. It was addicting in an unhealthy way, and we were enablers for each other, I believe. I held onto this awful situation as one of the few things that was not being monitored or controlled by someone else. It is one of my worst regrets; I wonder if things would have been different for others that were since affected by Hinds, if I were to dig deeper and convince them to admit to worse actions which I could then appropriately raise. Maybe not, however, as from memory the re-exposal of Hinds featured extensive conversations with others where they enabled each other to fantasise about and do far worse things.
The turning point was starting my first long-term relationship, with someone who I had not met online. She genuinely got me to understand what truly deep love feels like. Once that started, the sexual conversations with Hinds ceased, and normal conversations also eventually stopped altogether (and before that point were extremely infrequent). It was also at this time that I realised I needed to get my shit together, because what I was doing was wrong, and not sustainable. I imagine a common question will be asking what I actually did to change; I endeavoured to completely cut myself off from that sort of content and have been cold turkey since 2022. I have also seen two different therapists since, both for other issues I have faced over my lifetime, and to address the core issue of concreting self-improvements so that they are guaranteed to not be temporary. I am now confident in myself as a better person who will not engage in abhorrence of that nature ever again. I use the thought of a future together with my partner, and wanting to keep my loved ones happy, as motivation to strive only ever to be better in all aspects. We are still together, and yes, I have been honest with her about this situation, as I have with my closest other loved ones. They deserve nothing less than the truth, as do all of you.
Regardless of my improvement, I understand that things will never be the same regarding my presence in the community. After explaining myself to those involved with the leak and prominent reposts of it, I agreed to leave permanently, and have since been focusing on systematically erasing Brittank88 from existence. I will never come back, I have no way to come back, and I genuinely do not wish to come back. I am choosing to do the right thing and leave, even though doing so and erasing an identity, friendships, connections, projects, etc. I built up for over a decade is one of the most emotionally devastating things I have ever experienced; I rarely cry, but I cried myself to sleep that first night and have been mourning that loss since. I hope this will be seen as a genuine effort to prove that I have changed and will be keeping that change for the betterment of myself and the people I care about, and an acceptance of the consequences of my prior actions, even if it is the hardest thing I have ever done. For the sake of my loved ones, who have done nothing wrong and deserve peace, please do not try to find me again.
For those who considered me a friend and now have a tarnished outlook on our time together, I am truly regretful. I am sorry that your trust was broken. I can only promise here that my kindness was real, and it has always been real, and when I told you that you deserved better, or were doing well, or were important, that was real as well. I am heartbroken that in a sense those I have tried to help may end up worse off as a result of my actions. I have never wanted to and will never want to hurt others, even despite the egregious errors in my judgement that have led to this outcome. I selfishly hope you will forgive me, but to me it is more important that you heal, even if you hate me and would rather have never met. I understand. Goodbye.
