A few days ago (Friday), just another turn of the page. At least, if you believe life is like that (even in a social game like VRChat). Myself? That page needs a very, very long time to
turn (depending on the severity of the situation). And personally, this is as severe as one could go. For what happened, most with a high IQ would just report and move on. But, I’m not smart.
Trying to be the hero in this story, nearly ended up costing me a $200 headset. And I’ve been shaken over it ever since. Thankfully it’s perfectly normal to feel this level of insecurity after a traumatic moment (such as being robbed, and/or have a gun put to your head), where I feel no longer safe even in a Friends+ world.
*heavy sigh*
—
Right.. this all started on a typical Friday in Kovo’s Discord server. Having come back a day earlier after getting my thoughts back under control from last weeks.. *rolls
eyes* mistaken love. I’ve substantially edited that post, by the way. I’m watching meme compilations on Youtube, and uploading pictures of the video that I thought were hilarious.
Kovo suddenly DMs me, warning about this unofficial avatar stealer by the name of ‘Frostbitefox˸3’. I decided it’s enough to post this as an announcement (to get the word out). Get into VRChat later on in the evening. And after the game putting me in a public instance of a world where I could had sworn I saw Kovo and Vale in, I’m now in another world with Vale and a few friends.
They all leave, except for one named ‘Yellowjack’ (a guy who’s name will be said many times in this story). Kovo appears sometime later, yet the game shows him being offline.
I decide to friend Yellow (which to this day I’m 50/50 it was a bad mistake), since he’s Kovo’s friend.
So now we’re in this world with these two-seater buggies that you can drive in. They started getting bugged after awhile, and Kovo was trying to think of another world to check out. Suddenly, the supposed avatar stealer shows up. ..Fuck me! And this is a Friends+ world. Kovo and I quickly switch to public avatars, but he feels since the guy was hiding behind one of the cars, he had already stole our avatars.
Yellowjack on the other hand, stayed in the same avatar as before. Managed to get him away from the guy, telling him about we feel this person’s an avatar stealer. He said how he has avatar cloning off, and didn’t seem bothered.
–
Hmm. Suspicious. Then the guy dropped a portal and Yellow went in. Kovo stopped me from joining them, telling me to join him in a call. Uhh, why? This avatar stealer is getting away! Don’t you want to follow them?! For the longest time, it felt like we were sitting on our hands instead of doing some investigative work.
I decided to follow Yellowjack, hoping I could catch this supposed avatar stealer
red-handed. Or at least, try to figure out why this person managed to join us. Aka, I wanted to be the hero. As much as I wanted everything to fall into place (aka an RP script).. life sadly doesn’t work like that.
Joined the world, and saw the two together. Managed to get Yellow away from the guy and tried to conduct my investigation. And yes, he is friends with the guy. He also hasn’t seen anything suspicious with the person.
Hmm. Curiouser and curiouser. Could Yellow be blocking me from revealing the truth, defending his buddy? I need to dig deeper, and try to expose this Frostfirefox guy. I tried to get him to reveal all of his avatars, seeing if he would slip up and then I’ll have him.
–
At the time, it seemed he was falling for my ‘clever’ trap, as he showed all of his avatars.
Then.. things started not going to the RP script as more people I’ve never met, entered the instance. At first, it seemed everything was cool. Kovo appeared in the instance, along with one of my friends. The guy walked off to another area of the room we were in, and I whispered to Kovo that I haven’t seen anything suspicious. I was almost convinced that this was a false positive, and we can rest easy.
Then, someone named ‘OPNR’ walks up to me and asks, why I was asking the guy to show all of their avatars. I tried to play it cool, saying that I was just curious as I just want to make friends. …Unfortunately, he didn’t buy it. Kovo spoke up, saying how we’re looking for someone.
I stood there, a bit nervous. The guy turns his back, then turns and walks up to me, and the last thing I saw was a texture ball being shoved into my face…
Well done, ‘hero’. He just FUCKING CRASHED YOU!!
—
*groans pathetically*
Ohhh the feelings I have (and not a single one of them are positive): “You fucking DUMBASS!! WHY didn’t you fucking listen to Kovo?!” And I deserve all of it. There’s no excuse of what just happened. I tried to be someone I’m not, all because I’m tired of always being a team player. I’m a Leo, I’m supposed to LEAD! But hey, I did. I lead myself to failure. All I did, was get in the way.
Such feelings of suicide flood my mind, but still no guts to carry it out. All talk and no action. Why was I even born? ..Bleh. I wish I saw the silver lining from this, but I see only blackness.
“Maybe then I’ll fade away, and not have to face the facts!”
“It’s not easy facin’ up, when your whole world is black!”
*sigh* You can say “we all make mistakes”. And okay, fine. Yes, we all do. And I’ve definitely learned from it. The problem is, this isn’t going to be the last time this’ll ever happen. There will always be people who are desperate enough to steal my avatar.
That’s not the problem. They take it, and I see it, they get pwned by the admins. Problem solved.
What worries me, to the point I’m too scared to move or talk (even to my friends), is the chance there will be a relapse of what happened, to ‘finish me off’ for what I put that guy through of having him show all of his avatars. Even though I got all of those potential stealers (and possibly crashers) blocked, who’s to say their friends aren’t going to come after me as revenge?
The fact it happened in a Friends+ instance, I no longer feel safe, and now highly paranoid around everyone (even my friends).
–
Probably just overreacting as I usually do, and what happened only served as a warning not to be something I have no qualifications of being (like a black eye). And just like a black eye, it takes time to heal. And I got no one that would say “don’t get into fights you can’t win, you silly goose!” (while trying to sooth the pain). Just like my ‘break up’ with Lunar, I had no one for that either.
Except with that, I knew there would be no revenge. This time.. I’m not so sure.
But you know what’s worse? The fact I got in the way, Kovo never managed to confirm that any of them are actual avatar stealers, only that he heard one of them whispering about stealing avatars. That’s still not proof enough to report to the admins. If I had not been there, he probably would’ve had it (and been the hero in bringing down a group of stealers).
–
On top of that, he had two issues to deal with. One being a sudden stomach flu, and the other having that one friend who joined being seen in the pictures as possibly being an avatar stealer. This was something that even if I wasn’t there, would had been
prevented.
Vale, with a kind heart, managed to clear the name of that friend (even going to Kovo’s friends to make sure). Yellowjack though, it’s unknown. I debated if I should unfriend him, but.. for the time being, I’ve decided to leave it alone (just incase if his buddies see this as some kind of challenge, and haunt me in my dreams).
.
Overall, given the circumstances… I’m just, extremely fortunate that no damage happened to my headset. Though Vale claimed that I could had sued that ‘OPNR’ guy for damages, I seriously doubt that (given what had happened). One thing I wish I could had done, was report the fucker for crashing me. But I can’t, because it’s my dumbass fault that he did
it (as that’s what the admins are going to see, and tell me).
The only way to overcome this irrational fear, is to join public worlds (and try to say “hi”). As they say, the only way to get rid of a fear, is to face.. it–
*decides to hide like a pathetic coward*
This uh… this is going to take longer than I thought to get over. I think I’ll stay out of the game until I no longer feel my ‘life’ is in danger. Or, maybe just stay off VR, because I don’t think they can crash you in Desktop mode. But I bet Vale’s going to tell me differently.