☆lainbear☆ sleepville · @lainb3ar
26th Jun 2020 from TwitLonger
On dmbrandon
I vanished for a reason. I could no longer handle the narcissistic abuse from dmbrandon.
When I first started modding(late 2013) for dm I felt special and accepted. The friends he had were so loving, loyal, and familial. They were the reason I stayed around for so long, I didn’t want to lose them. I’m sure you’ve seen evidence of the way that dm has purposely buried and demonized anyone near him who he deemed as a threat. He severs any connection you have to the people around him if you don’t act exactly the way he wants.
My friends were juice and when he invited me to any of the juice meetups or dinners I felt accepted and part of the group. Which was always followed up by “You’re not juice.” He used it as a way to manipulate me and control them. The words still sting to this day. Yes there is Juice Gaming and that is a separate thing. He used Juice as a way of describing his inner circle of friends he trusted and knew would be loyal to him. Dm always had the expectation of loyalty to a fault and anything said would never be repeated to anyone outside of the conversation or of juice. Everything he said to me he expected to be said in confidence and not repeated ever. He used this to make me feel like he trusted me with his “secrets” even though he never opened up to me unless he was spewing stories to manipulate my views on things. He never saw me as a friend. He saw me as a tool to control the masses and attract others to his stream.
The second I was no longer useful to him, he began to push me away. I needed a source of income. I received a job offer at a shitty retail company. At this point he decided that he needed someone else to wait on him hand and foot. This was Salem. I felt ousted and replaced solely on the fact I couldn’t be there constantly. He would yell at me to shut up in voice chat on stream. It was extremely hurtful and painful. Events like these would happen repetitively and I would blame myself for being annoying and useless. I started to self isolate myself from dm and from my friends in juice. I felt so unimportant and just bad at gaming. I continued to show up and moderate because I felt obligated. I spent most of the streams silent in voice comms because it felt less lonely and makes it easier to know when the chat would flair up because of the aggressive actions of Brandon. Every time there was a new mumble or discord came into relevance I was afraid I wouldn’t be invited. I didn’t have the money to sub and figured I’d end up being left behind.
I spent hundreds or even thousands of hours moderating a chat I hoped I could turn around into a loving community only to be undermined by its streamer. I would actively chat and create conversation because dm would always be “too focused on playing” which is true but he really didn’t care unless his viewership was rising or tanking. Occasionally he would see something in chat he would take offense to and make a spectacle of it. Sometimes people would end up banned randomly for no reason and I couldn’t five them one so I would unban them. The amount of backlash any moderator including myself for unbanning someone was extremely volatile.
So I made the ban log. I used it as a way to become irreplaceable so I couldn’t be forced away from my friends in juice. I aggressively tracked all the bans made in chat. If they weren’t in the log we would know we could unban them. Any time Brandon banned someone the mods would keep track of it so we would know what to do. It was a form of self defense. Many of those bans were valid for inflammatory remarks, others not so much morally but by dm’s guidelines that’s what he wanted. There would be people he wanted banned and never ever unbanned under any circumstances purely on the basis that he hated them. Those people when he would do mass “unbannings” would stay banned.
In another attempt to try to build a community I created jcomm. It was never meant to be what it became. Dm hjacked it and used it to feed his ego and prey on those who admired him and he could use to get ahead. I’m sorry for that. He wanted all of the juice kids’ communities to be apart of that clan. He wanted everyone to be under his influence.
This is where I could see the difference between him and the other members of juice. They never fully agreed with all of the things Brandon did. Many of the people he did not want them to be associating with still would show up on their streams and hang out. They still continued their relationships with some but not in the public of Twitter or on stream. On the rare chance that dm wasn’t streaming and was able to watch or be in chats he would ask them why they were still associating with “these people” calling them trash etc. This was the key reason why his concept of jcomm never worked. The communities of the streams of the juice kids always stayed separate. Too many viewers didn’t like dm or didn’t want to be associated with him. I found myself becoming ashamed of him and how he acted but still tied to the volatile cycle of fleeting acceptance.
I started taking solace in communities I had been a part of before and new ones I had become a part of because of juice. Any time one of these outbursts took place from dm I had people to support me. I started to see how I wasn’t his friend and I was just someone who could be easily replaced. The amount of pain and anguish this caused me still persists to this day. I spent an entire summer trying to work through it by running and lifting weights often times crying and still finding time to moderate while on the treadmill. Slowly I removed myself from his stream and avoided places online he would be able to see me. I haven’t been to his stream in who knows how many years.
I went to smite worlds that year on my own dime. I spent time with the communities that I loved and was hit in the face with the fact that I was no longer important or invited or accepted. I was looking for fats and knocked on one of the rooms that juice members were staying in. Inside was dm and his wife playing games with the current mods. It cut like a knife. Later on was the juice party. When I tried to go up to the private area to see juice kids dm told me I wasn’t allowed to. I tried to brush it off but instantly started bawling and ran off to the bathroom. His wife tried to console me by telling me that he only prioritized Salem because she was always available for him.
The last event I attended I was left behind in a hotel room because everyone except me and a mutual friend of fats had been invited to the dinner that night including someone that wasn’t actively a mod or involved with his streams. I tried my best to not be upset but shit runs deep. I don’t remember what or how but later I found out he had said that it would have been fine if I had come.
About a year later he blocked someone who I am close with and was a mod before me for being upset while allied was sick. Of course he had his own head so far up his ass he didn’t even consider as to why they felt that way. I stopped communicating in any form with him after that.
Because of my own insecurities I haven’t felt important enough to come forward with any of this information but figure it should be out there so fuck it.
Thanks for listening,
lainbear