Hello! So, you already know what's going on based on the title. This is just a heads up. Out of my roughly 80 DM's I had less than half an hour ago, I have left 90% of them, and will leave the remaining ones as soon as I am able to. I'll present the information as an FAQ, because that's the format that makes the most sense to me now for some reason.
Why am I closing my DM's?
The short answer is to protect myself on here and make sure I stay safe. I know most DM's are harmless. In fact, all of the DM's I have gotten have been, and I am very lucky and grateful about that. However, all it takes is one bad or dangerous one before it's too late. I plan to cut off all of my DM's while I'm still ahead and before it happens to me. Sometimes, when something bad happens, people who are not affected have the mindset of: "Oh, but it'll never happen to me" for one reason or another, but I'd rather not take my chances and risk having that kind of stuff happen to me.
Like I said, DM's haven't been dangerous for me so far, but they can be. For anyone who remembers her, Ultraaviolet stated one of her reasons for leaving is that someone she did not know sent her a DM with her personal phone number or something like that. I forget the details. Everytime the mods/staff do something most people disapprove of, I hear stories about them getting extreme threats, or at least Ves. Even Monalisalove mentioned getting some of these threats as well. I logically know that the chances of these things happening to me are low, and maybe I'm just being paranoid, but I don't want to risk being another victim to this list. Yes, in theory, I could just keep my DM's open and report the bad ones, but I'd rather not get bad ones in the first place if that makes sense.
Why am I announcing this?
I am mostly announcing this so people don't get confused or the wrong idea. I don't want them to be confused as to why I'm doing what I'm doing. I also don't want to scare people who used to be in a DM with me. I'm afraid they'll think I left because I don't like them anymore, or somehow see them as a threat. I don't see anyone on here that way, but you never know and you do have to be careful who you trust online.
When am I closing them completely?
I do not know an exact date or time sadly, but expect them to all be shut down for the foreseeable future by the end of the weekend at the very latest. Most likely before then. I'll wait until my eight remaining DM's that are still open all know what is going on and have time to process and react to this information before I leave them suddenly and with no explanation.
Why am I closing my DM's now? Why not sooner? Why not later?
I am closing them now because I've waited long enough. The longer I keep them open, the more I fear I'm putting myself at risk to potentially get hurt one time. I first got the idea to close them a couple months ago, when Ultra left. ISaidISaid said that they advised everyone to completely close all of their DM's, as that's what they had always done, and were currently doing, and it worked well for them. I was still recovering from being legitimately scared from what Ultraa said happened to her, and the idea gave me a sense of security, so I mentally made a plan to do that.
You would think if I was so scared that I would have dropped everything and done it right away. And I would have, except I had some unresolved issues in my DM's. I had to tell person X this or person Y that and so on. Basically, I had some unfinished business I had to wrap up in there. Once I finished, I forgot though. Now, most of that business has been taken care of, except for a few last things, that I'll wrap up over this weekend. I don't want to wait in case I forget again.
How can I contact you now?
I'm glad you asked. There are many, many ways to do this. All of these will either be public or semi-public. I can usually be found in the Blink Guild, or sometimes the Once Cult, so it's a good idea to look for me there. To contact me there, tag me, then open up a spoiler and type your message inside. Label the contents inside as "Private" if you only want me to see them, but I can't promise they will remain that way. People open up spoilers, and curiosity might win over, or they may not read the title of the spoiler before opening it, just doing so on automatic.
In the future next couple of days (I hope), I'll create a thread specifically for contacting me. I'll reveal the details for how that will work when I create it. The general gist of how it works is if you have something to tell me, you find the thread, create a post, tag me and then make a spoiler. Label the spoiler with what you want to talk about, and put what you have to say inside of it. To respond to you, I'll quote you and respond. Or, if it's not super private, you don't need to put it in a spoiler if you don't want to, that's just an option you could do. Just follow all of the forum rules when leaving me a message there. On the bright side, at least if you contact me somewhat publicly in one of these ways, you get an akorn from it (for making a post), while DM's don't give you any akorns, so there's that.
If that's a bit too public for you and what you have to say to me/your tastes, feel free and leave a comment on my wall. That should work as well. My wall is still (at least for now) open to everyone. Plus, I check it somewhat open and do respond to people on there. This way won't give you any akorns though, but if that doesn't bother you, feel free to use it.
I suppose you could send me akorns and attach a message with them, and that actually would be private, but such a message would have to be very short and would cost you akorns to talk to me each time that way. Not that I'd be complaining about the extra akorns.
What if I really, really need to send a DM, and the message can't be delivered any other way?
Well, I'll take it one step at a time. Do stop and think though. If you have something that you really can't tell me outside of DM's for whatever reason, perhaps I shouldn't get involved. I don't want to be involved in too much drama, shading other users privately or so on. If it's not that bad, why can't it be said publicly (but within a spoiler)?
Let's suppose it's not drama related or negative though. What if I'm playing a Mafia game on here, and the person hosting it needs to send me a DM to let me know that I'm either the Mafia or traitor. What if I need to submit a Share Your Gifts submission in a DM? What if I need to have a DM to get badges? Those kinds of things, in which I have to use a DM and there's practically no way around it. I'm not sure, but I'll deal with it when I get to it. I may have to make one-time exceptions in such cases, but I'd prefer for those to be as seldom as possible and to involve a mod/staff member. I know there is a way to block people from sending you a DM (outside of blocking them), but I'm not sure it applies to mods/staff, so I'm sure they could still contact me through DM's even if I enable that.
Conclusion:
Please don't hate me for this decision. It was not one I made lightly, and I thought about it long and hard for a long time. I hope none of you will be mad or upset that I made it. I made it to stay safe. It's not that I no longer want contact with any of you, I do.
This idea and implementation are still in its rough draft phase. I know what I want to do and how I would like it to work, but I don't know how it will play out in practice. I'll just have to hope for the best. In the meantime, if you have any questions for me about any of this, feel free and leave a comment here and I'd love to answer it or clarify things.
Also, before I go, I feel obligated to say this: this is not meant to scare anyone. That was never my intention in making this. It was just to explain my decision and the reasoning behind why I made it. You are probably very safe and have nothing to worry about with your DM's. Plus, you can always report them. It is also not to look down on or shame anyone who does use their DM's. Heck, I used mine for nine whole months! Nine months! There is nothing wrong with using your DM's at all. Whether you use them or not, who you contact with them, how often you check/use them and so on is all up to you. Do what works best for you. This is just what I hope will work best for me. Have a great day/night!
