Last night, I decided to unlist my video about Veronica. Now, I’ve deleted it. This is because I’ve come to the realization that it was incredibly stupid, unnecessary, and counterproductive to talk about Mark and his relationship publicly. To begin with, the call I set up with him before the video didn’t really help at all. Even if I told him he could leave at any time and told him what it was about immediately, bringing him in like that would obviously make him hostile from the beginning. I only came to see that recently. I should’ve just spoken to him by myself without any preparation. That’s what I’m planning to do after this post goes up. As for the relationship with V, I didn’t have the right to pry and should’ve left that alone. I wanted to help because I’m an optimistic idiot that hates the idea of people suffering, especially ones I’ve known for a good period, but I really don’t know the extent of the relationship. I have my judgments about it as an outsider looking in, having spoken to several people who were closely involved who believed it to be terrible, but assumptions are cancerous to making a solid video, and I had way too many, even with what I had. I didn’t see that until it was pointed out.
To be honest, throughout the video production, I was iffy about the whole thing and kept showing it to more and more people who kept encouraging it, so I thought I was doing the right thing, but I’ve come to see I was wrong. I keep hearing that I didn’t think about how this would affect people at all, but I wanted to get as many perspectives as I could, and I kept receiving positive feedback. I tried not to create an echo chamber by showing it to people who had no involvement as well as ones that did, but in the end, it didn’t seem to help. I went on a livestream last night to discuss my new thoughts, which were still developing at the time, and for those that have seen it, they know I was a mess. I was conflicted about taking the video down or not for the sake of the other people, like Doobus, who were helped through its production. And after the video’s release, I received 6 or 7 DMs from new people who were scared to speak about V or Sonny who are/were friends of Mark as well, but were emboldened by my video to do so. It made me believe the video had attained a new meaning beyond what I initially created it for, but regardless, Mark is at the center, and on that front, I completely messed up. It taints the rest of the video and what it wants to say. I still believe Sonny and V are incredibly toxic people that have done bad things, seemingly way more than I was aware of, but that doesn’t make the video worth keeping up. I want anyone who’s had experiences with them to feel like they can, but that video shouldn’t be the parriah for that kind of thing in the first place.
I’ve heard from a lot of friends what they think I should do. Pushing back and forth. Up and down. Release a statement. Don’t say anything. Go on the livestream. Get off the livestream. Say this. Say that. Don’t say this. Don’t interact with that person. Talk to this person. It’s been a back and forth like that since I started working on the video. I brought people on to help. Took them off. Found evidence. Dropped evidence I didn’t think was substantial enough. Rewrote the script a million times… But now I’m gonna do what I think I should after hearing from everyone: I’m taking down the video, encouraging anyone that’s scared to speak about V or Sonny to do so, stopping what I started, and talking to Mark one on one. I’m not a drama hungry person. I hope I haven’t irreparably hurt everything around me. Thanks for reading.
