Friend online I've known for 1+ year hates me because I spoke his first name

GregI

GregI

GregI

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I don't have much IRL friends so I've just been talking to people I met over online gaming/Twitch etc in verbal/text communication.

This particular friend is from another country in Europe and I've known him for like I said in the title, over 1 year. Probably closer to 2 now tbh.

I'm not a very outgoing person but I have no issue with letting people know my name, what I look like or anything else. I am very open about this to any one of my friends.

So after knowing this friend for 6 months or so, I realise I don't know his first name. You have no idea how hard it was to get this information. He made me guess what his first name was from an obscure TV show we both happened to see... I am not kidding about this. I could see he was very reluctant about me knowing his first name so I decided not to mention it again.

Anyway, we both play Fortnite with these other 2 friends from America we have also known for a long time (8-9 months roughly). I should note all 4 of us have never had a falling out and are constantly laughing and joking while playing, we played almost every day together. I was 100% confident we were all really good friends and played well together getting win streaks of 14+

During one session while being super relaxed and chilling I say something like "Johan can you check West?". Throughout the rest of the night he's very weird and doesn't say much. About an hour later we stop and then I get a message on Steam saying something like "Don't you ever use my name again or I'll delete you"... I'm like wtf. I was like so confused. That was 4 days ago. No communication since. He would message me everyday asking to play before this...

Am I wrong to assume that people that have known each other for awhile should be on a first name basis? I sort of understand if I said his first name to strangers but I said it to people he also considers friends in a private PS4 party chat... I just don't know what to do. Do I say "Sorry I used the name that everyone IRL refers to you (e.g. work/family) and I'll stick to calling you "*insert stupid online ID tag here*".

Anyone else had this with other online friends? How did you handle it? Do I leave it alone and just find other friends?
 
Honestly, just drop them, they aren't worth your time if they get weird about stuff like that.

I'd have no interest in trying to socialize with anybody that wants to maintain super online anonymity to the point of not telling you their first name.
 
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Tell him “your name is Johan, not James Bond”, then find someone else to play with. He doesn’t sound someone you can hang out if something this small get tick him off.
 
What a ******* weirdo. There's quite a few online (and IRL I guess) and probably one of the the reasons I don't make online gaming friends.

As the others have said, just drop them if they go bat**** about something so trivial.
 
He doesn't sound worth being friends with. You opened your post saying you don't have many friends so this may be colouring your opinion of him. But a crap friend is worse than no friend. If it were me then I'd certainly tell him he was unreasonable. Through common courtesy I'd probably apologise to him for letting his name be known online but if he then carried on being an **** then I'd just drop him. Life's too short to accept that kind of behaviour from people.
 
How old are you? This sounds like a teenager conversation. I can't think of a friend who's name I do not know :confused:
 
As you get older you will realise most people, including yourself, that game a lot online are in fact a bit special for one reason or another.
That's the reason we/they play a lot of games in the first place.
Everynow and then you will bump into a proper weirdo like Johan. Give him another chance but if he is persistently offended forget about him.
 
I'll throw in a different opinion that might shed light on the situation for you:

You badgered him into revealing personal information you knew he didn't want to reveal.
Eventually you defeated him and he gave you that information.
You then gave it to other people. Without his consent. Against his will as well, since you knew he didn't want that information revealed.

You'll probably be thinking that you're not in the wrong because the information isn't important. I can think of 3 problems with that counter-argument:

1) The information isn't the only issue. There's also, perhaps more importantly, the issue of consent. Or, more accurately, the lack of consent.

2) The information might not be important to you, but it obviously is to him and you know that. It's fine for a person to choose to reveal information about themself as they please. It's not fine to do it to someone else against their will. Making a choice for yourself is very different to making that choice for someone else, especially if you know that your choice is the opposite of theirs and you're imposing your choice on them.

3) If the information isn't important to you, why did you go to such lengths to obtain it? ("You have no idea how hard it was to get this information.") Either the information was important to you (which nullifies the whole "not important information" argument) or bending him to your will was important to you (which is much worse than revealing personal information).

If you still don't understand his position, try this thought experiment:

Think of some personal information about yourself that you would not want spread about. Something not directly harmful to you, but something you want to keep private or known only to a certain circle of people. It could be anything - an odd but harmless sexual preference, an unfashionable liking for 1950s musicals, whatever.

Imagine that someone badgered you into revealing that information to you.

Imagine that they then told other people.

Imagine that they didn't even understand what they'd done wrong because they genuinely didn't care about your choices for yourself and so saw it only in terms of their own choices - if they don't mind the information being spread, then they don't see anything wrong in the information being spread.



It's probably best to leave it alone and find other friends, but it would be polite to tell them that you won't ignore their lack of consent and give out that information to other people in the future. I'll assume you didn't do so in the OP for this thread and instead gave a fake name for them.
 
First you need to learn the difference between friends and acquaintances, then between normal acquaintances and ones of suspect maturity levels, and that's putting it politely!. Life will become simpler and less stressful for you ;)
 
Lopéz said:
How old are you? This sounds like a teenager conversation. I can't think of a friend who's name I do not know :confused:
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I can think of quite a few that I know their names but if someone uses them, I have to think who they're talking about!
 
Chris Wilson said:
First you need to learn the difference between friends and acquaintances, then between normal acquaintances and ones of suspect maturity levels, and that's putting it politely!. Life will become simpler and less stressful for you ;)
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Rather ironically I think it is you who needs to learn the difference between a friend and an acquaintance!
 
Give that man a swerve. You don't need people like that, especially given your situation.

If you want a group of people to play with who play Fortnite regular, you're welcome to join my gaming discord. There's about 70 people in it, with people who are playing Fortnite daily.

One of the first things we do is ask people's first name, then use their name when we're in a game. It's weird that the guy has an issue with that. Man sounds paranoid as hell.
 
Maybe the guy has a deep self hatred for his IRL self and uses online as his only release in life. You may have shattered that for him.

People are going to be weird online just like in the real world.

I know in the early days of the internet I wouldn't have dreamed of giving my name away, but now in the age of FB, Twitter etc, online is just an extension of reality and not an alternative.
 
Fubsy said:
Maybe the guy has a deep self hatred for his IRL self and uses online as his only release in life. You may have shattered that for him.

People are going to be weird online just like in the real world.

I know in the early days of the internet I wouldn't have dreamed of giving my name away, but now in the age of FB, Twitter etc, online is just an extension of reality and not an alternative.
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There's a problem with referring to "online" as "not the real world."

It's the same thing as far as I'm concerned, and I feel like pretending that "online" is anything but a means of communication, isn't mentally healthy.
 
Angilion said:
I'll throw in a different opinion that might shed light on the situation for you:

You badgered him into revealing personal information you knew he didn't want to reveal.
Eventually you defeated him and he gave you that information.
You then gave it to other people. Without his consent. Against his will as well, since you knew he didn't want that information revealed.

You'll probably be thinking that you're not in the wrong because the information isn't important. I can think of 3 problems with that counter-argument:

1) The information isn't the only issue. There's also, perhaps more importantly, the issue of consent. Or, more accurately, the lack of consent.

2) The information might not be important to you, but it obviously is to him and you know that. It's fine for a person to choose to reveal information about themself as they please. It's not fine to do it to someone else against their will. Making a choice for yourself is very different to making that choice for someone else, especially if you know that your choice is the opposite of theirs and you're imposing your choice on them.

3) If the information isn't important to you, why did you go to such lengths to obtain it? ("You have no idea how hard it was to get this information.") Either the information was important to you (which nullifies the whole "not important information" argument) or bending him to your will was important to you (which is much worse than revealing personal information).

If you still don't understand his position, try this thought experiment:

Think of some personal information about yourself that you would not want spread about. Something not directly harmful to you, but something you want to keep private or known only to a certain circle of people. It could be anything - an odd but harmless sexual preference, an unfashionable liking for 1950s musicals, whatever.

Imagine that someone badgered you into revealing that information to you.

Imagine that they then told other people.

Imagine that they didn't even understand what they'd done wrong because they genuinely didn't care about your choices for yourself and so saw it only in terms of their own choices - if they don't mind the information being spread, then they don't see anything wrong in the information being spread.



It's probably best to leave it alone and find other friends, but it would be polite to tell them that you won't ignore their lack of consent and give out that information to other people in the future. I'll assume you didn't do so in the OP for this thread and instead gave a fake name for them.
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How shocking, someone who didn't want you to know his name is unhappy that you both found it and started broadcasting it to break his anonymity to others around him.

Your obsession of breaking his desire to be anonymous is far more unhealthy than him finding comfort in being detached from his real name online.
 
He might not like his IRL name. It could be as simple as that!
The adult thing to do (if you feel the need to know why he is being like that) would be to ask why it bothers him one to one and then just simply acknowledge his request. Then apologise, saying you did not know it was such a big thing for him.
Or just acknowledge his request, apologise and leave him to his name foibles and get back to how things were.
Clearly you would like to get back to normal, so just do what is required to get back there.
 
Hotwired said:
How shocking, someone who didn't want you to know his name is unhappy that you both found it and started broadcasting it to break his anonymity to others around him.

Your obsession of breaking his desire to be anonymous is far more unhealthy than him finding comfort in being detached from his real name online.
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What thread are you reading, fam? Because you're not responding to anything said in this one.
 
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