allessa ღ · @NotAllessa
14th Apr 2021 from TwitLonger
The truth behind me and Okward.
I'm sure most of you reading this have heard about the ongoing investigation involving Okward (Matt) and his retirement. I've heard/seen multiple different rumors going around, all of which are not true in the slightest. The most common one... "Matt is being investigated over an ADHD joke he made to Allessa." There's far more reasoning behind the investigation, and I want to tell my side of the story.
About one month ago, Matt had followed me on Twitter. He began to like/comment on a lot of my tweets until one night he had DMed me and initiated a conversation. He asked if we could play Valorant, then asked for my discord. I gave him my discord and we started a call. During the call that night, he had said several compliments towards me. Ex. I had called a skin I was using in Valorant "pretty", and he would reply with "No, you're pretty.", etc. And to clarify, he was aware of my age even before he had first DMed, I was 16 at the time and he was 19. One specific instance I remember about that night was when he was sharing his screen and he was showing me his liquipedia page, and I had noticed that he was 19 (turning 20 this year, in May.) After the call had ended, he ended up giving me his Snapchat and Instagram usernames, so I added/followed him on both platforms. I did not think much of it, as I have multiple older friends that are strictly non-sexual friendships, so I immediately started talking to him on Snapchat. He had asked to see more selfies of me, so I sent some, then asked for some back so I could see what he looked like. He had replied with pictures of him shirtless in the mirror (to show off his abs). I then asked him how old he was, and he stated that he was 17. I immediately knew this was not true, as I had just seen his liquipedia page and knew that he was almost 20. I immediately called him out on lying, and he tried to just play/laugh it off, and say that he was "down bad." I told him I did not mind his age, as I talked to him with a friendship in mind. He then stated that he did not care that I was 16 and that we were just "vibing" then. Over the next couple of weeks, he continued to make inappropriate comments every time we called or texted. For examples...
"I will blow your back out if you don't answer me."
"DUDEEE why must I be so horny and sad all the time"
"You are gorgeous"
"So when are we having a baby"
-Sent memes that would say "Send booty pics" etc...
As he made these comments, I never really engaged back/flirted back, as I thought it was inappropriate, but I did not want to say anything about it because I did not want to believe that he had ill intent. I just wanted a friendship with him, and I figured he would eventually get my hints that I was not interested like that.
Another instance that happened was when he commented sending me nudes. We played each other on iMessage, and I won. I had joked that I wanted a gift for winning against him, and he asked what I wanted. I kept saying "IDK, surprise me", as I wasn't being serious about wanting a gift and he was starting to annoy me. He then replied with "A dick pic?😂". I had told him that I was not interested in stuff like that, as I do not e-date or send nudes. I once again stated that I solely wanted a friendship. He laughed it off and tried to play it off as a joke. He pretty much did this every time he made an inappropriate comment. What I got from this was, "it's a joke until you say yes."
At this point, I felt that he had developed some type of feelings for me. Around this time, I was approached by a good friend of mine, who has known Matt for a couple of years. Our friend asked if I and Matt had a thing because they told me that Matt has never acted like this about a girl before. He had made multiple tweets about me, put me in his bio, and even went to the extent of having multiple matching profile pictures with me.
One night we were in a discord call together. He had to watch scrims, so he could not play unranked with me. I had asked him to stream scrims so I could try to watch it while playing, but as I have ADHD, it's difficult for me to multitask. He brought it up multiple times that I wasn't watching scrims, and he sounded somewhat upset/annoyed. After my unranked match ended, I told him I wanted to go play ranked with our friend. When I mentioned this to him, he sounded defeated and slightly annoyed. He said "ok, have fun with ______" and gave me a thumbs-up since we had our webcams on. I played with our friend for a couple of hours, and I had told them about Matt and how he was acted towards me when I told him that I wanted to play with my friend. That night, our friend messaged Matt on Snapchat and asked him if I and Matt had a thing because he was somewhat acting jealous when I mentioned other guys around him. Matt immediately became annoyed with them and started to bash on me. He stated that I was "annoying the fuck out of him" and began to explain how me changing my mind about what I wanted to do was annoying him. He became extremely defensive with our friends and tried to convince them that he was not interested in me like that, and he did that by acting mad about the situation. I then confronted Matt about him talking about me like that, and I told him it hurt my feelings. He acted as though he did not care, and we began to argue about what he had said about me. He then told me that he didn't have time to argue with me, and asked if I still wanted to be friends or not. I replied with a thumbs up, so he then blocked me and our friend. He also began to tweet about how he "can't trust anyone", referring to me and our friend. I told our friend about how Matt had been making inappropriate comments to me for weeks before that, and they recommended that I go to Parabellum to report him. They got me in contact with Parabellum staff members, and I explained the entire situation. This lead to an investigation and Okward then retiring.
I feel disgusted with him. I dealt with his inappropriate comments and gaslighting for weeks. I know that I should have said something to end it earlier, and I failed to do so. The situation definitely could have ended up way worse than what it did, but it still does not make this situation ok. I did not ask for this to happen to me. He should not have been inappropriately speaking to a minor. A minor can not "lead an adult on". His comments were inappropriate and he needs to take responsibility.
I wanted to share my story due to some negativity and rumors spreading around. I also want to prevent this from happening again, not just to me, but to anyone else in the community. It's important for people who have experienced this to speak out about it. I also hope that people who are currently experiencing something similar to me can realize that they do not deserve to be treated this way.