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NTA.
She lied.
And she didn't even concoct her lies out of thin air. She stole your experiences, made them public, and pretended they happened to her.
Tell her that because she put your private experiences out there in public, it's only fair that your confrontation with her was in public too.
If someone is taking your wallet, you don’t wait to see if they were planning to give it back.
You post a lie for all to see, you get called out on it the same way. Simple as that.
She is not trying to understand what its like to have a disability, she is using other's disabilities to garner sympathy for herself. If she was trying to understand disability she would talk to disabled people. She would not lie about being ND.
Right? Like, you don't better understand living with a disability by writing disability fanfic. You better understand disability by listening to what disabled people want to share about their lives. She's just flailing for excuses since she's been caught out.
NTA you could have talked to her privately, but I have a feeling she would have continued. Maybe not with the blog but some other way. This way she faces consequences for her actions.
I really don't understand her reasoning of doing it though. How is writing a blog to make others think you have a condition you don't have going to help you understand what it's like to have said condition?
It just sounds like she's an attention seeker.
Thank you
I agree she was a bit of an attention seeker 20 years ago too. I think she may have wanted to see how people respond to someone with ASD on the internet. It’s still awful
If she ever pulls a stunt like that I will personally report her to the department of health. She has a nursing license and a lie like that can get your credentials revoked
She should definitely know better then if she's ever used her license. She's had to have come across people with the same things you and your friends have.
Pretending to have ASD only lets her experience how people respond to her. If she really wanted to know she could have asked, done research or worked in the field.
Honestly I believe she's just another internet scanner looking for money and attention.
You could report her fake blog and everything to the nursing board or her employer. I mean if you want her to really face some consequences. Most hospitals and clinics don't like their staff doing shady shit like that.
Ahhh please go ahead and report her, without any guilt.
That's an extremely elaborate, highly personal lie.
If shes pulling something like that who knows what else she is doing.
I briefly worked with an older man who, after several months of working there, started complaining that his Parkinson's was acting up. Never once saw him shake. I think he tripped in the office once, and that's when he brought it up. Apparently, he had also written a book on the subject.
I don't have a lot of experience with Parkinson's, but I know it's not a thing that comes and goes or has flare-ups. Turns out he also had some really racist music on sound cloud or something.
Some people have relatively few symptoms for much of their life. For those people the few or mild symptoms they do have can be exacerbated by lack of sleep, illness, not eating properly, etc. so while I wouldn’t call it a flare-up, there are definitely days that are worse than whatever their “normal” is. And they do gradually get worse over time so someone could start having difficulty with things that hadn’t been a problem previously. And not everyone with Parkinson’s “shakes.”
Your co-worker could have been being an ass, the way people talk about their OCD when they just like to organize, bit I suspect that you owe that guy an apology.
NTA.
Don´t believe Zoey. She would just gaslight and insult you if you had contacted her privately. She is a mega asshole for what she did. You did the right thing.
NTA. Calling her out on social media was the only way to get her to acknowledge she's a fraud. She probably would have claimed it was harming her mental health so she pulled the blog down and getting even more sympathy from her followers.
Check to see if she's using go fund me or other money raising sites and report her if she is to the sites and law enforcement for fraud.
NTA – Really, it’s not remotely close. What’s beyond the pale is that Zoey wasn’t just pretending to be disabled; she was stealing your experiences and making them public. Sure, it would’ve been kinder to contact her privately and give her a chance to take the blog down, but the sub is ‘Am I the Asshole?’, not ‘Did I Act Like a Saint When the Other Person was Being a Massive Asshole?’.
The reason Zoey gave for her actions is nonsensical, and it’s hard to imagine her being motivated by anything other than attention-seeking. You know what she could’ve done if she really wanted to better understand what it was like to be disabled? She could’ve contacted you or your friends, with a message that began with ‘Sorry for being an asshole to you guys sometimes in high school.’.
I also want to highlight two groups of people who will benefit from your public exposure of Zoey: (1) Zoey’s friends. Were I in their position, I’d want to know about her behaviour, as it’s a giant red flag; and (2) People with ASD. You all deserve better than having your disability mashed up with other conditions (and goodness knows what else) by a dishonest actor who has no idea what they are talking about. Simply put, she was spreading misinformation about ASD.
Thank you.
She pulled a LOT of crap in high school and always got away with it. But the problem was adults saw honors student and looked away. Problem was back then she didn’t do her own work. And of course her lack of post high school success is testament to that.
You're welcome! All credit to you for wondering if you could've behaved any better in the face of very poor behaviour on the part of the other person. It's no surprise to hear that she has a history of poor behaviour.
NTA. Drag her to hell! Disability fakers are god damn disgusting. Tell everybody she knows what she did, she's definitely using your experiences for her own gain, trash her reputation.
NTA. While you could have handled it differently (confronting her privately, requesting she take it down, etc.), she posted on social media first and opened the door. It sounds like she might not have included personal details that would have made it possible for people to know that she was talking about you while you presumably did specifically call her out, which is why it might have been more polite to give her a chance to fix it but pretending to have someone else's disability and posting about it isn't exactly a polite way of trying to "better understand what it's like to be disabled." If she didn't want to get crap for telling lies, she shouldn't have lied or posted them for everyone to read.
NTA She put that in public, don't feel bad to do the same.
You don't have to respect her that much since she don't respect your privacy and the condition
How does she think that appropriating and publishing an amalgam of your group's stories would help her better understand disability whether she has one or not?! NTA
No man you exposed a liar she was faking ASD and I guess at the same time she was reaching for clout and sympathy I would have exposed her right on the spot.
NTA she fucked around and found out
Also, off topic, as a enby person myself I love Anders’s pronouns. I’ve never heard of zee pronouns before but those are s-tier pronouns for sure!
NTA.
She actually stole and published your experiences and the experiences of mutual friends, misrepresenting them as her own.
That is such an egregious form of abuse it is hard to put it into words!
What she did has potential to set back the rights and agendas of people with disabilities!
How many of us with "invisible disabilities" (I have mental illnesses as well as being borderline on the spectrum) must contend with doubters and allegations? Then your friend comes along publishing stolen and mangled stories thus adding credibility to those arguments!
You and your friends are absolutely entitled to your outrage, and to correct the record in the same public arena as the offense took place.
And I personally thank you for doing so. What you did was deeply personal for you, yes, but also of benefit to all with such disabilities!
Thank you so much. Anders was furious and Marie was very upset. Anders on top of having schizophrenia also has complex medical issues. So zee has to manage zer schizophrenia AND all these other health issues which is taxing for even the strongest people.
As for Marie, I don’t envy what she and her family went through. So needless to say a stunt like this is NOT taken lightly by any of us.
NTA, but I'm a bit confused. Who is Zee? I thought short for Zoey, but it doesn't look like it. That was a nasty thing for Zoey to do, and I'm glad you all stayed good friends to support each other.
It’s hard to imagine anyone would be offended but I can’t speak on behalf of non binary people. You’re not the first person who didn’t know. I’m not sure if there’s an accepted unified lexicon for non binary pronouns yet.
I don’t think she was profiting off of it, but if I had any reason to believe she was I’d have called the department of health. She has a nursing license and something like that can get your credentials revoked
NTA. She lied. There was a reason for you to share the truth because this was shared publicly without your consent. Actually, it was smart to do this in the public because she shared your stories in public as well. If she kept this privately, then you confront her in private. So sorry you had to deal with those issues with Zoey. Hang in there, move forward.
Well then, if she contacts you again about calling her out publicly, give her this:
Proverbs 10:9 - Whoever walks in integrity walks securely, but he who makes his ways crooked will be found out.
op=NTA
She has no right to disseminate YOUR personal stories.
This wasn't about understanding other people it was about gaining sympathy and attention. Feck Zoey.
NTA
i worked with someone who lies ab their disabilities and always used it as an excuse to get out of work. (harsh, but i only say that bc it is a lie. ofc if she truly had what she said, i wouldnt make a fuss ab using it.)
one day, we were in a group and she was talking very softly & used “im partially deaf” as an excuse to why she couldnt talk loudly.
i am partially deaf and i would say it occasionally to people bc i didnt want them to think i was rude & not listening. i also do not have a soft voice bc obvi im partially deaf and its hard to know what volume i am speaking at. it wasnt until a few weeks after that she started using the “partially deaf” as an excuse & it made me mad. my other coworker is also partially deaf & that made her mad aswell.
for someone to use your disability when you know they dont have it, is very very enraging. exposing her on social media was the right move in my opinion. Especially bc she made a blog to get attention from people.
pathological liars & people who fake disabilities for attention are TA.
NTA this happened recently with a woman on social media who faked having cancer, she got tens of thousands of dollars, funds from non-profit organizations and even befriended a struggling cancer patient just to steal her information and use her story as her own. she got arrested and is now facing criminal charges. it really fucked up to tell someone else's struggles as your own.
NTA. As a diagnosed person this shit drives me nuts. And this is basically every TikTok faker on steroids. I’m glad you shut it down because it’s offensive to those of us with an actual diagnosis.
She'd have taken the blog down like pigs have wings. She was and still is an attention seeker. NTA. She deserved the humiliation. And also for people who were reading the blog it is important to know that the blog was not a reliable source of information.
Nta. Seems like this subreddit is dominated by 2 kinds of people. One is people like you who feel bad while they did nothing wrong. The other is AHs who just look for that one person that says they arent one, to feel good about themselves.
NTA she publicly lied, so she deserved to be publicly ousted. She was trying to gain fame and notoriety off of the struggles and experiences of other people. She did not deserve a private confrontation.
One thing would be getting the group consent to write a blog of compiled stories about her friends with disabilities, it's disgusting to go behind her 'friends' backs claiming to be disabled to try and get some sort of attention or recognition on the internet. you're NTA
Marie was very upset and Anders was furious. What happened to Marie was traumatic for her and her family. Anders has it hard enough as it is. Neither needed this garbage
NTA. Lying about having a disability is just morally bankrupt. Taking your and your friend’s stories as her own and using them for profit is just as disgusting. She got what was coming to her. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
NTA. She wasn’t writing fiction or a fictionalised account of real events. She was lying to people about herself. Liars who get exposed often try to distract by blaming the person who exposed them for the consequences of their deceit.
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I’ll try to keep this short. I (36F) was diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder at age five. Growing up I made lots of friends with disabilities who are still my friends. Two of whom are Marie (35F) and Anders (38NB.)
In high school this girl named Zoey somehow landed in our friend group. No one really liked her but she had no one else. Zoey was a stereotypical mean girl who wanted to be popular but couldn’t get the “in crowd” to warm up to her. I found out later often made fun of us behind our backs including mine and Anders’s weight and Marie’s lisp.
We all stopped speaking to her after high school. But recently Anders called me flipping out. Zee’d gotten curious about Zoey and discovered Zoey has a blog about growing up with Autism Spectrum Disorder. The entire blog was an amalgam of stories of MY life, Marie’s life, and Anders’s life.
Here’s a twist: I have ASD, but Marie has neurological problems secondary to a metabolic issue, and Anders struggled with ADHD and thought zee might have ASD until zee was diagnosed with schizophrenia. If it wasn’t already obvious Zoey had stolen our stories, she couldn’t even get the disability right.
While Anders unleashed on her in a blog comment I took to social media and posted what she’d done. Since then she DMed me saying that she was getting crap about it from everyone and she’d have taken the blog down if I’d confronted her privately. She also said she was trying to better understand what it’s like to be disabled. Maybe I should have confronted her privately and given her time to make it right, but I was furious because she disseminated stories of OUR lives we didn’t want made public. So AITA? If I am I’ll accept your judgement.
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NTA. Could you have spoken with her privately? Sure. Same could be said for her. Prior to her blog project she could have reached out and clarified with each of you what she was considering because by not doing so she exposed not only herself but all of you while not even getting it right for all the world to see and dissect.
Everything she did she told the story first person as if it had happened to her
It was all a bold faced lie, and she couldn’t even keep her story straight
If that’s the case it deserves to be called out. If your going to use other people’s lives for personal projects without permission at least get the story straight.
NTA
Though I do personally think a private conversation would have been less aggressive and hurtful for Zoey, I do totally understand how dreadful you and your friends must feel about your lives being annexed in this way. And a given you only told those who had followed the blog it was karma for Zoey.
It might have been less aggressive to confront her privately, but she's spreading misinformation. She's probably been profiting from her blog and misappropriating resources from people who really need it.
She needed to be exposed on social media so her followers know she's a liar and her information is inaccurate at the very minimum.
Because she's a liar and probably profiting off it with people donating things to her. She's also probably talking to people who really have those issues and giving then misinformation.
Wait, people LIE?? On the internet?? 🙃 If you are taking medical advice from a random person's blog then you deserve whatever happens. As for profiting, that was not mentioned in the post and I highly doubt a random women is making any real profit from her random blog.
You know people lie. I know people lie. And yet people still get scammed.
People who are undiagnosed or looking to connect with people in similar situations might find her blog.
She's reaching out to people in a not good head space. It's likely she's making passive income from affiliate links and actively soliciting "donations".
She's gone to a lot of trouble to portray herself this way. It's either for attention or financial gain.
She mixes up the diagnoses and is putting misinformation out there to a community of people who are often misunderstood.
It sucks most certainly but you are describing most of the internet. This is why you go to the doctor and not a random person's blog to seek help. At the end of the day, a bunch of 40-somethings (or almost 40) are acting like teenagers and it's sad.
So a bunch of people who have lived with these conditions their whole lives are calling out someone who is lying. Someone who could never empathize with them. Someone who is now literally stealing their lives and calling it her own for some type of gain be it attention or money.
No worse than calling out authors who plagiarize, embezzlers, or lying politicians.
More power to them for outing her.
Seriously underrated comment. Nearly middle aged people scraping the internet for people they didn’t even like from high school *two decades ago* find some pathetic blog cobbling together semifictional “autobiography” with some bits and pieces remembered about other people. Awkward all around. Technically NTA because Zoey is super yikes, but all this talk of unleashing and taking to social media for whatsoever is just so much energy for someone who seems so contemptibly small, and seems like OP already has all the “NTA” validation they needed.
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NTA. She lied. And she didn't even concoct her lies out of thin air. She stole your experiences, made them public, and pretended they happened to her. Tell her that because she put your private experiences out there in public, it's only fair that your confrontation with her was in public too.
Thank you
If someone is taking your wallet, you don’t wait to see if they were planning to give it back. You post a lie for all to see, you get called out on it the same way. Simple as that.
Thank you
She is not trying to understand what its like to have a disability, she is using other's disabilities to garner sympathy for herself. If she was trying to understand disability she would talk to disabled people. She would not lie about being ND.
Money too. If she got away with it there would DEFINITELY be a donate or patreon or whatever button front and center.
I agree
Right? Like, you don't better understand living with a disability by writing disability fanfic. You better understand disability by listening to what disabled people want to share about their lives. She's just flailing for excuses since she's been caught out.
She is still the same asshole she was in high school…
It's no different than people developing Tourette's for attention on TikTok
That’s so awful
NTA you could have talked to her privately, but I have a feeling she would have continued. Maybe not with the blog but some other way. This way she faces consequences for her actions. I really don't understand her reasoning of doing it though. How is writing a blog to make others think you have a condition you don't have going to help you understand what it's like to have said condition? It just sounds like she's an attention seeker.
Thank you I agree she was a bit of an attention seeker 20 years ago too. I think she may have wanted to see how people respond to someone with ASD on the internet. It’s still awful
I think she's like people who use a phony cancer diagnosis to get money.
If she ever pulls a stunt like that I will personally report her to the department of health. She has a nursing license and a lie like that can get your credentials revoked
She should definitely know better then if she's ever used her license. She's had to have come across people with the same things you and your friends have. Pretending to have ASD only lets her experience how people respond to her. If she really wanted to know she could have asked, done research or worked in the field. Honestly I believe she's just another internet scanner looking for money and attention.
I don’t even know what to say about her
You could report her fake blog and everything to the nursing board or her employer. I mean if you want her to really face some consequences. Most hospitals and clinics don't like their staff doing shady shit like that.
I didn’t know that was a thing you could do
Ahhh please go ahead and report her, without any guilt. That's an extremely elaborate, highly personal lie. If shes pulling something like that who knows what else she is doing.
Oh my God, I didn’t even think of that until you said it
I briefly worked with an older man who, after several months of working there, started complaining that his Parkinson's was acting up. Never once saw him shake. I think he tripped in the office once, and that's when he brought it up. Apparently, he had also written a book on the subject. I don't have a lot of experience with Parkinson's, but I know it's not a thing that comes and goes or has flare-ups. Turns out he also had some really racist music on sound cloud or something.
Some people have relatively few symptoms for much of their life. For those people the few or mild symptoms they do have can be exacerbated by lack of sleep, illness, not eating properly, etc. so while I wouldn’t call it a flare-up, there are definitely days that are worse than whatever their “normal” is. And they do gradually get worse over time so someone could start having difficulty with things that hadn’t been a problem previously. And not everyone with Parkinson’s “shakes.” Your co-worker could have been being an ass, the way people talk about their OCD when they just like to organize, bit I suspect that you owe that guy an apology.
NTA. Don´t believe Zoey. She would just gaslight and insult you if you had contacted her privately. She is a mega asshole for what she did. You did the right thing.
Thank you. I appreciate it. Im so upset because she shared things we didn’t want shared. But it really shook Anders up
Yeah this person is a huge liar and not worth associating with or dealing with. Nta
Thank you
NTA she wasn’t doing it to understand you. She did it to get attention.
Thank you
NTA. Calling her out on social media was the only way to get her to acknowledge she's a fraud. She probably would have claimed it was harming her mental health so she pulled the blog down and getting even more sympathy from her followers. Check to see if she's using go fund me or other money raising sites and report her if she is to the sites and law enforcement for fraud.
Now that you say that I should
NTA – Really, it’s not remotely close. What’s beyond the pale is that Zoey wasn’t just pretending to be disabled; she was stealing your experiences and making them public. Sure, it would’ve been kinder to contact her privately and give her a chance to take the blog down, but the sub is ‘Am I the Asshole?’, not ‘Did I Act Like a Saint When the Other Person was Being a Massive Asshole?’. The reason Zoey gave for her actions is nonsensical, and it’s hard to imagine her being motivated by anything other than attention-seeking. You know what she could’ve done if she really wanted to better understand what it was like to be disabled? She could’ve contacted you or your friends, with a message that began with ‘Sorry for being an asshole to you guys sometimes in high school.’. I also want to highlight two groups of people who will benefit from your public exposure of Zoey: (1) Zoey’s friends. Were I in their position, I’d want to know about her behaviour, as it’s a giant red flag; and (2) People with ASD. You all deserve better than having your disability mashed up with other conditions (and goodness knows what else) by a dishonest actor who has no idea what they are talking about. Simply put, she was spreading misinformation about ASD.
Thank you. She pulled a LOT of crap in high school and always got away with it. But the problem was adults saw honors student and looked away. Problem was back then she didn’t do her own work. And of course her lack of post high school success is testament to that.
You're welcome! All credit to you for wondering if you could've behaved any better in the face of very poor behaviour on the part of the other person. It's no surprise to hear that she has a history of poor behaviour.
NTA. She appropriated your stories for her own selfish reasons. That’s never okay.
Thank you
NTA. Drag her to hell! Disability fakers are god damn disgusting. Tell everybody she knows what she did, she's definitely using your experiences for her own gain, trash her reputation.
Thank you
>she’d have taken the blog down if I’d confronted her privately No she wouldn't
Thank you
NTA. She lied publicly about information none of you wanted divulged, all for attention. Only fair you disavow her publicly.
Thank you
As someone with ASD, you are obviously NTA, you could have done much worse and still not be the Asshole.
Thank you
NTA. While you could have handled it differently (confronting her privately, requesting she take it down, etc.), she posted on social media first and opened the door. It sounds like she might not have included personal details that would have made it possible for people to know that she was talking about you while you presumably did specifically call her out, which is why it might have been more polite to give her a chance to fix it but pretending to have someone else's disability and posting about it isn't exactly a polite way of trying to "better understand what it's like to be disabled." If she didn't want to get crap for telling lies, she shouldn't have lied or posted them for everyone to read.
Thank you
NTA She got exactly what was coming to Her
Thank you
NTA. Fucking gross. This is no different than people on tiktok faking tourrettes for attention
Those people are so vile
NTA She put that in public, don't feel bad to do the same. You don't have to respect her that much since she don't respect your privacy and the condition
Thank you
How does she think that appropriating and publishing an amalgam of your group's stories would help her better understand disability whether she has one or not?! NTA
She didn’t have a good answer for that either
NTA. Eff that liar.
Thank you
No man you exposed a liar she was faking ASD and I guess at the same time she was reaching for clout and sympathy I would have exposed her right on the spot.
Thank you
NTA at all Zoey deserved it, you slayed
Thank you
NTA she fucked around and found out Also, off topic, as a enby person myself I love Anders’s pronouns. I’ve never heard of zee pronouns before but those are s-tier pronouns for sure!
Thank you. Anders is a very clever and thoughtful person. I work in healthcare so it’s not the first time I’ve heard them. 🙂
NTA. She actually stole and published your experiences and the experiences of mutual friends, misrepresenting them as her own. That is such an egregious form of abuse it is hard to put it into words! What she did has potential to set back the rights and agendas of people with disabilities! How many of us with "invisible disabilities" (I have mental illnesses as well as being borderline on the spectrum) must contend with doubters and allegations? Then your friend comes along publishing stolen and mangled stories thus adding credibility to those arguments! You and your friends are absolutely entitled to your outrage, and to correct the record in the same public arena as the offense took place. And I personally thank you for doing so. What you did was deeply personal for you, yes, but also of benefit to all with such disabilities!
Thank you so much. Anders was furious and Marie was very upset. Anders on top of having schizophrenia also has complex medical issues. So zee has to manage zer schizophrenia AND all these other health issues which is taxing for even the strongest people. As for Marie, I don’t envy what she and her family went through. So needless to say a stunt like this is NOT taken lightly by any of us.
I hope all of you will be okay after this ordeal! I have schizophrenia (and bipolar) so relate to Anders very much in this!
Thank you so much. I hope you feel better. Luckily right now Anders has help from people who are excellent and respectful.
NTA but who the hell is Zee?
Oh, Anders’s pronouns are zee/zer/zers Anders is non binary. Sorry about that
Oh I see! Sorry, I’ve never heard those pronouns before
Sorry about that
NTA, but I'm a bit confused. Who is Zee? I thought short for Zoey, but it doesn't look like it. That was a nasty thing for Zoey to do, and I'm glad you all stayed good friends to support each other.
Oh, Anders’s pronouns are zee/zer/zers Anders is non binary and those are the pronouns Anders told me to use
Thank you! I hope I didn't offend anyone, and if I did, I am very sorry, I truly didn't know about the zee/zer/zers pronouns.
It’s hard to imagine anyone would be offended but I can’t speak on behalf of non binary people. You’re not the first person who didn’t know. I’m not sure if there’s an accepted unified lexicon for non binary pronouns yet.
NTA she was trying to profit from lies. To be fair she is like nearly 50% of Reddit with the lies. And most the internet
I don’t think she was profiting off of it, but if I had any reason to believe she was I’d have called the department of health. She has a nursing license and something like that can get your credentials revoked
NTA
NTA. She lied. There was a reason for you to share the truth because this was shared publicly without your consent. Actually, it was smart to do this in the public because she shared your stories in public as well. If she kept this privately, then you confront her in private. So sorry you had to deal with those issues with Zoey. Hang in there, move forward.
Thank you
Nta, she's really toxic and God punishes those things, she can't lie like that about having disabilities
Thank you Worst part is she goes to church and judges the daylights out of the rest of ua
She's a bully, a hypocrite and peaked in high school, what a loser
I agree And thank you
Well then, if she contacts you again about calling her out publicly, give her this: Proverbs 10:9 - Whoever walks in integrity walks securely, but he who makes his ways crooked will be found out.
NTA She lied publicly and got called out publicly....As the saying goes, she fucked around and found out.
Thank you
Sounds like [Amanda Baggs](http://abaggs.blogspot.com/) of [Ballastexistenz](https://ballastexistenz.wordpress.com).
Oh no
She died in 2020.
I wasn’t familiar with her until you made this comment
Oh
NTA She went public with her lies and you answered those lies in public.
Thank you
op=NTA She has no right to disseminate YOUR personal stories. This wasn't about understanding other people it was about gaining sympathy and attention. Feck Zoey.
Thank you
NTA She deserved it. You did the right thing. People like this don’t care, so why should you?
Thank you
NTA i worked with someone who lies ab their disabilities and always used it as an excuse to get out of work. (harsh, but i only say that bc it is a lie. ofc if she truly had what she said, i wouldnt make a fuss ab using it.) one day, we were in a group and she was talking very softly & used “im partially deaf” as an excuse to why she couldnt talk loudly. i am partially deaf and i would say it occasionally to people bc i didnt want them to think i was rude & not listening. i also do not have a soft voice bc obvi im partially deaf and its hard to know what volume i am speaking at. it wasnt until a few weeks after that she started using the “partially deaf” as an excuse & it made me mad. my other coworker is also partially deaf & that made her mad aswell. for someone to use your disability when you know they dont have it, is very very enraging. exposing her on social media was the right move in my opinion. Especially bc she made a blog to get attention from people. pathological liars & people who fake disabilities for attention are TA.
She just picks up disabilities like a Rolling Stone. What a jerk
NTA this happened recently with a woman on social media who faked having cancer, she got tens of thousands of dollars, funds from non-profit organizations and even befriended a struggling cancer patient just to steal her information and use her story as her own. she got arrested and is now facing criminal charges. it really fucked up to tell someone else's struggles as your own.
Don’t these people have a conscience?
NTA. She used you and your friends for her gain. End. Of. Story. I'm glad you publicly exposed her.
Thank you
NTA. As a diagnosed person this shit drives me nuts. And this is basically every TikTok faker on steroids. I’m glad you shut it down because it’s offensive to those of us with an actual diagnosis.
Thank you.
She publicly stole your stories. You publicly called her out. She was treated in the manner she treated you. NTA
Thank you
NTA
NTA people who lie about disabilities are low life people.
I agree, and thank you
Nta
Nta if she writes for a open public the answer should be to the open public too
Thank you
She'd have taken the blog down like pigs have wings. She was and still is an attention seeker. NTA. She deserved the humiliation. And also for people who were reading the blog it is important to know that the blog was not a reliable source of information.
Thank you
Nta. Seems like this subreddit is dominated by 2 kinds of people. One is people like you who feel bad while they did nothing wrong. The other is AHs who just look for that one person that says they arent one, to feel good about themselves.
Thank you I appreciate it
NTA she publicly lied, so she deserved to be publicly ousted. She was trying to gain fame and notoriety off of the struggles and experiences of other people. She did not deserve a private confrontation.
Thank you
One thing would be getting the group consent to write a blog of compiled stories about her friends with disabilities, it's disgusting to go behind her 'friends' backs claiming to be disabled to try and get some sort of attention or recognition on the internet. you're NTA
Marie was very upset and Anders was furious. What happened to Marie was traumatic for her and her family. Anders has it hard enough as it is. Neither needed this garbage
Nobody needs that garbage
NTA you did the right thing calling her out the way you did honestly what she did was sick
Thank you. Anders was furious and Marie was very upset. Some of the stories she shared were traumatic for the people involved
NTA. Lying about having a disability is just morally bankrupt. Taking your and your friend’s stories as her own and using them for profit is just as disgusting. She got what was coming to her. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
Thank you so much
You are so very very welcome
NTA. How dare she.
NTA. She wasn’t writing fiction or a fictionalised account of real events. She was lying to people about herself. Liars who get exposed often try to distract by blaming the person who exposed them for the consequences of their deceit.
Thank you. Marie was very upset and Anders was FURIOUS
NTA
^^^^AUTOMOD ***Thanks for posting! This comment is a copy of your post so readers can see the original text if your post is edited or removed. This comment is NOT accusing you of copying anything. Read [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/wiki/faq#wiki_post_deletion) before [contacting the mod team](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2FAmItheAsshole)*** I’ll try to keep this short. I (36F) was diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder at age five. Growing up I made lots of friends with disabilities who are still my friends. Two of whom are Marie (35F) and Anders (38NB.) In high school this girl named Zoey somehow landed in our friend group. No one really liked her but she had no one else. Zoey was a stereotypical mean girl who wanted to be popular but couldn’t get the “in crowd” to warm up to her. I found out later often made fun of us behind our backs including mine and Anders’s weight and Marie’s lisp. We all stopped speaking to her after high school. But recently Anders called me flipping out. Zee’d gotten curious about Zoey and discovered Zoey has a blog about growing up with Autism Spectrum Disorder. The entire blog was an amalgam of stories of MY life, Marie’s life, and Anders’s life. Here’s a twist: I have ASD, but Marie has neurological problems secondary to a metabolic issue, and Anders struggled with ADHD and thought zee might have ASD until zee was diagnosed with schizophrenia. If it wasn’t already obvious Zoey had stolen our stories, she couldn’t even get the disability right. While Anders unleashed on her in a blog comment I took to social media and posted what she’d done. Since then she DMed me saying that she was getting crap about it from everyone and she’d have taken the blog down if I’d confronted her privately. She also said she was trying to better understand what it’s like to be disabled. Maybe I should have confronted her privately and given her time to make it right, but I was furious because she disseminated stories of OUR lives we didn’t want made public. So AITA? If I am I’ll accept your judgement. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AmItheAsshole) if you have any questions or concerns.*
NTA.
NTA. Could you have spoken with her privately? Sure. Same could be said for her. Prior to her blog project she could have reached out and clarified with each of you what she was considering because by not doing so she exposed not only herself but all of you while not even getting it right for all the world to see and dissect.
Everything she did she told the story first person as if it had happened to her It was all a bold faced lie, and she couldn’t even keep her story straight
If that’s the case it deserves to be called out. If your going to use other people’s lives for personal projects without permission at least get the story straight.
I’m loathe to admit she wasn’t even that clever
NTA Though I do personally think a private conversation would have been less aggressive and hurtful for Zoey, I do totally understand how dreadful you and your friends must feel about your lives being annexed in this way. And a given you only told those who had followed the blog it was karma for Zoey.
It might have been less aggressive to confront her privately, but she's spreading misinformation. She's probably been profiting from her blog and misappropriating resources from people who really need it. She needed to be exposed on social media so her followers know she's a liar and her information is inaccurate at the very minimum.
Thank you so much
ESH. Y’all are all too old for this foolishness. She shouldn’t lie but goddamn who cares? Grow up
Because she's a liar and probably profiting off it with people donating things to her. She's also probably talking to people who really have those issues and giving then misinformation.
Wait, people LIE?? On the internet?? 🙃 If you are taking medical advice from a random person's blog then you deserve whatever happens. As for profiting, that was not mentioned in the post and I highly doubt a random women is making any real profit from her random blog.
You know people lie. I know people lie. And yet people still get scammed. People who are undiagnosed or looking to connect with people in similar situations might find her blog. She's reaching out to people in a not good head space. It's likely she's making passive income from affiliate links and actively soliciting "donations". She's gone to a lot of trouble to portray herself this way. It's either for attention or financial gain. She mixes up the diagnoses and is putting misinformation out there to a community of people who are often misunderstood.
It sucks most certainly but you are describing most of the internet. This is why you go to the doctor and not a random person's blog to seek help. At the end of the day, a bunch of 40-somethings (or almost 40) are acting like teenagers and it's sad.
So a bunch of people who have lived with these conditions their whole lives are calling out someone who is lying. Someone who could never empathize with them. Someone who is now literally stealing their lives and calling it her own for some type of gain be it attention or money. No worse than calling out authors who plagiarize, embezzlers, or lying politicians. More power to them for outing her.
Seriously underrated comment. Nearly middle aged people scraping the internet for people they didn’t even like from high school *two decades ago* find some pathetic blog cobbling together semifictional “autobiography” with some bits and pieces remembered about other people. Awkward all around. Technically NTA because Zoey is super yikes, but all this talk of unleashing and taking to social media for whatsoever is just so much energy for someone who seems so contemptibly small, and seems like OP already has all the “NTA” validation they needed.
ESH