"WIBTAH" if I block a longtime friend even though we’re in the same Discord friend group, and blocking him probably won’t fully solve the issue?
I’m 27F, a professional artist and online college art professor. One of my longtime online friends (I think 25) recently graduated art school, is currently unemployed, and wants to become an art professor as well. We’re both in the same Discord friend group, which is part of why I’m conflicted. Even if I block him, I’ll probably still see him around because he can still read my messages in the group chat and respond to them.
For a long time, I thought we were close, but over the past year, I’ve started noticing a pattern that honestly makes me tense whenever I see his name pop up.
One major issue happened when I started running a fan charity art calendar project that I created from scratch.
He basically inserted himself into a leadership/mod role, then started trying to completely change the scope of the project. What started as a straightforward fan charity calendar suddenly became him pushing for things like turning it into a full Kickstarter, planning for it to be a company with annual releases. expanding it beyond the original concept, and even talking about taking a cut of the money. Besides the fact that profiting off a fan project is legally questionable at best, it completely went against what I had pitched to artists from the start, which was a low-key charity project to protect our forests.
He also wanted access to my Instagram account so he could monitor my DMs and communications with artists and applicants, which made me really uncomfortable.
One of my actual artistic requirements for the project was that applicants needed to be able to create full illustrations, including backgrounds. It’s a calendar, so I wanted finished scenes, not floating character portraits.
He got upset about that and accused me of wanting all the artists to be “clones” of me and said I was being anti-diversity because requiring backgrounds might exclude some artists. For context, backgrounds are something he personally struggles with, so it felt like a projection.
Eventually, he quit the project (a huge relief to me), and after that, started making vague posts/comments that felt aimed at me.
Around the same time, I started noticing this wasn’t just about the project.
I’m an online art professor, and one day I was venting in the group chat about one of my students saying they “didn’t own anything metal” for a metal still life assignment. I said something like, “They could literally use a fork, spoon, or even the same lamp they used for the previous assignment.” (I responded more politely with those suggestions in my email to the student)
Instead of treating it like normal teacher venting, he immediately accused me of being ableist. His reasoning was basically, “What if the student has an intellectual disability?”
There was zero evidence of that. The student had never disclosed any disability, there were no accommodations involved, and it felt like he was inventing hypothetical moral issues just to turn a normal conversation into an accusation against me.
Shortly after that, he made a vague social media post complaining about “ableist, lazy art professors.” It felt very obviously aimed at me, given the timing and context. The chat had been very active but after he posted that it went dead silent, and when he wasn’t getting the reaction he wanted, he quietly deleted it. (I took a screenshot of it, though)
What really pushed me over the edge happened recently in our group Discord.
I’ve been dealing with some painful reproductive health issues. It’s been invasive, stressful, expensive, and honestly scary. It's in regard to cancer. I mentioned some of it in chat because I thought I was talking to friends.
Instead of empathy, he immediately started debating my medical situation.
At one point, he confidently told me that a procedure I was pursuing was illegal. It's completely legal, and I had a similar surgery before.
Instead of backing off, he pivoted into talking about “privilege.”
He started lecturing me about how being able to pursue treatment, advocate for myself, get appointments, etc., was “privileged.”
Then he specifically said that I’m petite, white, and “helpable looking,” which the last one honestly felt incredibly condescending and uncomfortable. It felt like, instead of acknowledging that I was in pain, he was reducing a really vulnerable medical situation where I was being denied medical care into assumptions about my appearance. He then went on a rant about how, as a trans Latino man, he would never get the same treatment I am (also not getting).
I tried explaining that yes, healthcare access is unequal, but when someone is actively in pain, maybe that’s not the moment to turn it into a moral lecture.
He doubled down.
At that point I finally told him that I felt like everything between us was becoming an argument for no reason.
His response was that he didn’t know if he could be friends with someone who couldn’t handle “honest opinions.”
I told him that was fine, but that if that’s how he felt, I just needed him to start leaving me alone.
The problem is… he hasn’t.
He still inserts himself into conversations, still comments on things involving me, and I still feel tense whenever I see his name pop up.
Anything as small as wishing everyone a happy Mother's Day this morning resulted in him responding that I'm privileged to have a decent mom because his parents are abusive. This is the first time I'm hearing of this.
I’ve also watched him do similar things with other people. In college, he apparently got extremely controlling with classmates during their grad show and tried to control what people put in their portfolios because he didn’t want anyone making him “look bad.” When some of those classmates stopped being friends with him, he reportedly accused them of ableism, tried to get the school involved, and pushed for serious disciplinary consequences, including trying to get them expelled.
Some people in the group chat have privately messaged me about their concern for how this person has been treating me and has been so dismissive of me recently. But none of them have stood up for me publicly in the moment. Besides, his boyfriend apologized to me about it.
At this point, I’m seriously considering blocking him just for my own sanity, but because we share a Discord friend group, blocking him probably won’t make him disappear and might create drama. Does anyone have other ideas on how to handle this, or am I totally off track and actually in the wrong and privileged and ableist and fatphobic and stuff?