nano ⭐ #ENVTuber · @nanoade_
1st Sep 2021 from TwitLonger
My Experience with Arcadum
This is something I never thought I would be writing. As someone who's read people's stories in the past, I didn't think I'd ever be the person writing one and in all honesty, I'm scared. My incident wasn't as bad as some of the other girls' but I want to share my side of events.
I was one of the Early-Day VRChat RPers at the start of 2018, I met Arcadum through RP lobbies hosted by some other streamers, he shortly became very involved in the Community and would RP himself as part of the 'Renegades' group on VRC that mutuals of mine set up.
He shortly became someone I and many of the other RPers looked up to a lot. He would frequent our lobbies, host RP workshops for others to learn, and before long became this 'senpai' in our tight-knit community.
I had no knowledge or experience of D&D and wanted him to be the first Campaign I got into. He kept promising I would be a part of one, at the time he was a small streamer and strived to get big one day - we all supported him.
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Things were great for a long while, we all met up at TwitchCon in 2018 and 2019 - in 2019, he stayed with a group of friends of mine, and on one occasion I went over and we all sang karaoke and hung out. It was honestly a ton of fun. When we all flew home, I remember him thanking me due to how hard things had been going on for him with his relationship.
Around the time he started planning for Callous Row, he was nervous and said it was his last shot at getting 'big' on Twitch, that if this didn't work out then he had no idea what he would do afterward. He spoke about how his Partner was stressing him out for lack of income and if he did have a good stream at any point, she wouldn't be interested in anything he had to say. I believe after the CR launch, he started gaining a huge amount of traffic for his streams and specifically his Campaigns. Come the second season, he was able to invite a huge amount of big streamers into the Callous Row and from there on he blew up.
I was really happy for him, but at that time a close friend (Kelli) had come to me stating she was uncomfortable, that he had said some things and was acting really weird. I didn't really see it as much at the time but he would randomly come into VCs with mutuals and cut us off mid-conversation to screen share his incoming revenue from Twitch each month. We were really happy for him! But it became a very frequent thing, I wasn't too sure if he was gloating or just happy, looking back at it now I think it might have been a way to get girls 'interested' in him? It was weird.
A few months into 2020, Arcadum started getting really down on most occasions. At one point he told me he was scared someone was going to out him for some reason and that he hadn't done anything wrong and said when he hugged women at TwitchCon he was careful with the placement of his hands and arms and
that he was scared he would get canceled or posted about in TwitLongers by others, I didn't want to pry so I told him that he was fine, everyone loved hanging out with him at TwitchCon and that was that.
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The main and first direct incident that I had with him happened in a VC on Discord around my birthday, July 2020. I'm sorry for not recording it, if I knew how the one-hour conversation was going to go, I would've.
To begin, Arcadum wanted to organize a Twitch Sings session with myself, Kelli, Momo, and another individual where we would stream and generally just have a good time for my birthday, and it was. However, 2 days before, on the 15th - he messaged me wanting to call because he 'had some questions about Friday'.
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The call started off simple, asking how each other was, I said I was alright and excited to hang out with everyone when I returned the question, he started sounding very sad. He told me things on his end were not going great, at all. He and his partner are on a break and he went into how he 'wants to feel the touch of a woman' because his Partner doesn't "put out", nor love him like she used to and that he was going through abuse on
a daily basis because of her. He was on a break with her, he wanted to move out e.t.c
I was a bit taken aback by all of this and didn't know how to react. I felt my heart sink as he burst out into tears.
I've never publically announced this before but I have been diagnosed years ago with Borderline Aspergues Syndrome and this mainly is shown with how I often don't know how to react in certain situations where I should comfort someone or verbally help others out. I believe it's definitely gotten better over the years but this was something I felt really awkward about and hated myself for not being able to comfort him more.
I told him I was really sorry he was going through it all and that we would have a lot of fun all together as a way to try and sway the conversation away so he could take his mind off it. I also don't have any experience in relationships or anything like that so that made it a lot harder for me, not knowing what to say. He asked me if found him an attractive man and if I would ever want to be with him because he didn't find himself attractive, nor worthy of a woman. I told him he looks great but I wasn't ready for a relationship at the time.
Arcadum after this kept going into how he had tried flirting multiple times with different people in VRChat and in most cases they just don't 'put out' and that he assumes it's because he's unattractive and they find him repulsive. He wanted to feel loved and felt like he could get that through ERP in VRChat.
Afterward, he muted and went into asking me if I had ever done anything with people on the platform and I was honest and said on a couple of occasions but not really anymore. Telling him that was an obvious mistake because he started getting quieter and saying he felt embarrassed to ask, which was when he muted and typed in our DM's if I would ever do anything with him, instantly deleting it after I had responded. I'm really sorry for not taking a screenshot at the time, I honestly thought this was just a one-off weird interaction that wouldn't have happened again.
I replied to him telling him that I lived with my parents at the time and I didn't feel comfortable doing things like that anymore, he asked again and then worded it differently if maybe we could on my Birthday. I felt absolutely awful and finally said yes. Thankfully, Folkona was who I went to straight away and if it wasn't for her, I'm honestly scared how things may have escalated. She told me her experiences and gave me the courage to tell him the next day that I wasn't truly comfortable and hope he doesn't hate me. Arcadum said he understood but I remember him still asking again a few days later. This was a little before I stopped attending Callous Row before finally dropping out completely.
It got weird for me so I started hanging out with Folkona more in a mutuals' Discord Server;
https://gyazo.com/7326709eab05b8cf7fa9b07f17c76a38 I've left their name blanked out unless they decide to come forward with their experience.
Arcadum started jumping into the channels, which he had never done before, but when he saw us two together he would start randomly hopping it and would often stay silent. It got so bad that the Owner of the server
made us a hidden channel, which I guess Arcadum caught wind of. After he left that server, he started openly calling this person a 'Womanizer' and not understanding how 'they can get away hanging out with girls' when he (Arcadum) is always careful around women and feels like he is always painted to be the bad guy.
He started spam requesting off this individual when they were in VRChat on several occasions as a way to confront them soon after. I felt sick to my stomach feeling like I 'belonged' to him or wasn't allowed to converse with other men.
Things got bad for me IRL a few days after this and I didn't speak to him much as I spent a few days to myself to collect my thoughts on my situation at home. Arcadum messaged me asking if I was alright and felt like it was his fault. https://gyazo.com/c940ab32f55b6201878b3f5e13299682 I felt a little pressured and to see him understand that the way he was wording things was manipulative made me question a lot of things at the time.
I slowly started cutting ties off with him not long after this and more so when he made a Campaign for VTubers, I had heard a similar experience from them. I had spoken to some other close friends at the time who believed he was a good guy and this wasn't intentional, he was just going through a tough time and I believed them. Maybe I was just over-reacting and he really was going through a tough patch. But the more people that I was told were experiencing the same thing, the more I really didn't feel like that was the case.
One of the VTubers had made a party in VRChat one night for their Birthday which I attended and Arcadum also decided to pop in. It was late in the night and I was pretty tipsy at that stage when he came over to me asking if we could talk. I told him, yes and we went to a private part of the map where he apologized if he made me feel uncomfortable. I was open to him and said he did, I felt awful for him that he was going through so much stuff but I wasn't a therapist nor an outlet.
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I also told him I caught wind of him making my friends uncomfortable and that he should probably take some time away from VRChat and Social Media.
I didn't think he was a bad guy at all and honestly believed he didn't know what he was doing. I remember him telling me he was getting a therapist and wholeheartedly believed him, only to find out from other girls later on that year that he had no intentions of doing such.
I feel sick to my stomach going through the DMs, this has been a thing ongoing for over a year now and I wanted to believe he just wasn't doing this intentionally at all. There's still a part of me that feels that and feels like I'm just over-reacting but to see so many friends and other women speak up makes me absolutely disgusted. I hate not having as much proof as others but posting this is somewhat a relief and a way for me to move on.
Thank you if you read this far and Thank you to my friends for speaking up, I wouldn't of had the courage to if it weren't for you all.