I've been sitting with this for a week and I genuinely can't tell if I did the right thing or if I blew up my friends entire life over nothing.
I'm 17NB. My online friend, I'll call him T, is 16M. We've been friends for 3 years. I'll get to how we met because it's relevant and I know it's going to come up.
We met in a true crime discord server. I want to be clear up front: I think TCC (the part of the true crime fandom that romanticizes school shooters) is genuinely vile. Thirsting over the Columbine boys is not a personality, it's a warning sign, and I say that as someone who used to be in those spaces. I was 14 with way too much unsupervised internet access and a lot of stuff going on at home, and that scene found me before I knew enough to stay out of it. I got out maybe a year and a half ago. T didn't.
T's home life is bad. He gets bullied pretty hard at school. I think that's a big part of why he sank deeper into it instead of growing out of it like I did. He was specifically obsessed with Adam Lanza. Profile pic was Adam, sent me Adam memes constantly, the whole thing. I tolerated it. I shouldn't have, but I did, because I remembered being where he was and I didn't want to be one more person making him feel worse. I told myself I was the one thing keeping him tethered to something normal.
About two months ago he mentioned offhand that his dad bought a rifle. Didn't think much of it, they're rural, southern, his dad had been getting more into guns for a while, so that tracked. A week or two later we were on vc and he turned his camera on and showed it to me. He'd gone into his dad's closet and gotten it out. I told him to put it back. He laughed and said relax, he wasn't going to do anything, he just thought it was cool.
The bullying at school got worse though. He was venting to me almost every night. I was trying to be there for him, but he just became more hysterical as it went on.
Last Monday he started talking about a plan. Not in a vague way. Specific people he wanted to "make pay," that he'd use his dad's rifle, kept bringing Adam back up, kept saying he wanted people to remember his name. He talked himself down eventually, said he was just venting, thanked me for being there for him and that he was going to bed. It freaked me out so badly and I genuinely believed I had to tell someone, for his safety and everyone else's.
I had his address from a Christmas gift exchange we did last year, I knew the name of his high school because he'd complained about it a thousand times, and I submitted a tip.
I didn't hear anything for two days. Then one of our mutuals posted in our group chat that T's account had been wiped and that his sister had messaged one of them from his discord saying he'd been arrested at school Wednesday morning. Then one of them DMed me asking if it was me. I told them the truth.
That's when everyone stopped talking to me. They removed me from the group chat and either all blocked me or stopped replying to me. T obviously can't talk to me but two of the mutuals sent me long messages first about how T "wasn't actually going to do anything," that he was just venting like everyone in our circle vents, that I'd ruined his life over a bad night, that I of all people should have understood because I "used to be like that too." One of them called me a snitch. One of them said I'd basically killed him because of what's going to happen to him in the system now.
And the thing is, I understand why he'd be angry at me. If someone had reported me when I was younger for the things I said in those servers I would have hated them too. I know that.
But I keep coming back to: he had access to the rifle. He had named people. He had a person he was modeling himself after. He was getting worse, not better. And the people telling me he "wasn't actually going to do anything" are the same people who thought it was funny when he sent Adam edits in the groupchat.
I haven't slept right since Wednesday. I keep refreshing local news for his town and feeling sick when there's nothing, and sicker imagining there being something. I don’t know if I truly made a mistake.
AIO?