@Humanist321 Appreciation Post
IDK if I should bother with posting this at all because I don't want to give anyone the wrong idea about things, and I don't know if any of it matters anymore. But I think I'm just going to get it out of my system.
I joined ExperienceProject back when I was 13. I didn't have great social skills and I had trouble relating to people IRL, so it was kind of my saving grace. It kept me sane. I spent a lot of time arguing about religion, because that was a big source of turmoil in my young life. It felt good to hash out my differences with other people, feel superior, and find other people who agreed with me. I was probably pretty unpleasant to be around.
Back then, EP didn't have the same safety controls that EP has now. Adults would show up and talk to me. I became one of the volunteers there greeting newcomers. Some of them were overtly sexual off the jump. I remember there was one guy who had some body parts as their pfp (I don't remember), and their first message to me was, "Do you wank?" There was woman, probably middle aged, that sent me a picture of her tits with her face in it and asked for "a guy's opinion." I still remember the crazy look in her eyes in that picture. I politely told her I wasn't interested in talking to her.
There was this guy who would show up in my DM's who called himself Curmudgeon, and he would talk me up about how smart I was, how well I argued for my beliefs. He was this minister with his own secular Christian philosophy that I still don't really understand. His writings were always long and rambling. I didn't really get him, but I thought he was a nice guy. He would ask to counsel me about my sexuality, and he would do it pretty often. He said he'd done that with a bunch of young boys. I found that intimidating at the time, so I didn't do it. At that age, I felt not just embarrassed, but guilty about my own sexuality, so I felt like he was prying into a subject that could get me in trouble.
He actually told me his real name, Arthur Broadhurst. He's actually written some books, he has a blog. It's all shit-tier and he's seen no real success, but at one point he put a quote of mine on his website. So I have pretty good evidence that he was real. His account on SW is @Humanist321 If you look at his profile picture, it actually matches the picture of his younger self that he put on his autobiography.
I wasn't harmed by these interactions in any meaningful way. I didn't read them for what they actually were. I didn't do anything I regretted (outside of failing to report them). But I do think to myself about how odd it was from time to time. I've told some friends and I feel as though people overreact a little bit. Shoutout to Miram for spying on him with me and making me feel understood. (:
I reported him to the authorities far too late. The conversations from ExperienceProject had already been wiped with the death of the site. I never brought up the subject in public because I figured it might make him harder to track, if anyone was actually doing that work. He hasn't been online since 2024 (and his presence was sparse long before then), and I found out today that he actually died last year at the age of 89. I found an obituary in his name.
IDK what the point of this is. He can rest in piss I guess but at the same time I don't really care anymore one way or the other. Sometimes things just don't matter, and then they end quietly and you more or less move on. This is me moving on.
Part of me feels that without having somewhere to go to express myself as a kid, I would have just killed myself eventually. And maybe that's true. But at the same time, both websites and the governments of the world seem impotent to actually fix this pedophile problem that every minor online seems to experience. Perhaps the occasional loss of life is the price of safety for every other kid out there who might have suffered worse. Perhaps part of growing up is understanding that not every soul can be saved.
https://www.millenniumcremationservice.com/obituaries/arthur-g-broadhurst/
I joined ExperienceProject back when I was 13. I didn't have great social skills and I had trouble relating to people IRL, so it was kind of my saving grace. It kept me sane. I spent a lot of time arguing about religion, because that was a big source of turmoil in my young life. It felt good to hash out my differences with other people, feel superior, and find other people who agreed with me. I was probably pretty unpleasant to be around.
Back then, EP didn't have the same safety controls that EP has now. Adults would show up and talk to me. I became one of the volunteers there greeting newcomers. Some of them were overtly sexual off the jump. I remember there was one guy who had some body parts as their pfp (I don't remember), and their first message to me was, "Do you wank?" There was woman, probably middle aged, that sent me a picture of her tits with her face in it and asked for "a guy's opinion." I still remember the crazy look in her eyes in that picture. I politely told her I wasn't interested in talking to her.
There was this guy who would show up in my DM's who called himself Curmudgeon, and he would talk me up about how smart I was, how well I argued for my beliefs. He was this minister with his own secular Christian philosophy that I still don't really understand. His writings were always long and rambling. I didn't really get him, but I thought he was a nice guy. He would ask to counsel me about my sexuality, and he would do it pretty often. He said he'd done that with a bunch of young boys. I found that intimidating at the time, so I didn't do it. At that age, I felt not just embarrassed, but guilty about my own sexuality, so I felt like he was prying into a subject that could get me in trouble.
He actually told me his real name, Arthur Broadhurst. He's actually written some books, he has a blog. It's all shit-tier and he's seen no real success, but at one point he put a quote of mine on his website. So I have pretty good evidence that he was real. His account on SW is @Humanist321 If you look at his profile picture, it actually matches the picture of his younger self that he put on his autobiography.
I wasn't harmed by these interactions in any meaningful way. I didn't read them for what they actually were. I didn't do anything I regretted (outside of failing to report them). But I do think to myself about how odd it was from time to time. I've told some friends and I feel as though people overreact a little bit. Shoutout to Miram for spying on him with me and making me feel understood. (:
I reported him to the authorities far too late. The conversations from ExperienceProject had already been wiped with the death of the site. I never brought up the subject in public because I figured it might make him harder to track, if anyone was actually doing that work. He hasn't been online since 2024 (and his presence was sparse long before then), and I found out today that he actually died last year at the age of 89. I found an obituary in his name.
IDK what the point of this is. He can rest in piss I guess but at the same time I don't really care anymore one way or the other. Sometimes things just don't matter, and then they end quietly and you more or less move on. This is me moving on.
Part of me feels that without having somewhere to go to express myself as a kid, I would have just killed myself eventually. And maybe that's true. But at the same time, both websites and the governments of the world seem impotent to actually fix this pedophile problem that every minor online seems to experience. Perhaps the occasional loss of life is the price of safety for every other kid out there who might have suffered worse. Perhaps part of growing up is understanding that not every soul can be saved.
https://www.millenniumcremationservice.com/obituaries/arthur-g-broadhurst/
