Is AUTHOR wrong in the post ? POST : TL;DR someone asked me if they could save my art (in a particularly odd manner). Bluntly told them why I wouldn't let them and they did their own AITA in the general chat. Chaos ensued.

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I go on many public Discord servers purely to share and discuss art that I or others have made. It's absolute bliss to know that people appreciate and would love to get art from me.

However, one specific server that I had joined recently irked me. I wasn't particularly in with the general userbase and not very many were involved with the art community and the general etiquette. Regardless, I posted a work in progress of my art, hoping for a few bits of appreciation or discussion.

One user (let's call him Poe) comes in and tells me minutes after that my art was cool. Poe likes it, and wants to save it. Normally I'd be fine if it were a trustworthy server, but something about Poe's approach just really... creeped me out. It's quite hard to describe it without sounding hostile. It gave out red flags that I'd noted down as the general characteristics of an art thief. Deciding it's better safe than sorry, I left him hanging, deleted my art, and left the server altogether (also due to how ticked off I got with the userbase.) As an artist who's had to bust art thieves, it feels awful to just think about being in that situation.

While I was done with directly interacting with that server, my friends (who still were inside just to watch how things went down) kept sending screenshots of daily events they found funny. Over the course of the next two or so days the occasional Poe-asking-to-do-X-with-art screenshot came up. Examples included Poe asking artists if he could digitalize their art (in the same creepy manner), which only reaffirmed my paranoia. Today, my friends told of how some people gave a user some critique on their art. Poe had basically told them their opinion was invalid because they weren't artists.

That was the last straw.

I wanted to give my two cents on his statement, so I joined again, never intending to post any media. I told Poe that the mentality he had doesn't hold up logically. No one needs to be a chef to know that they're being served a bowl of literal piss, right?

Poe missed the entire point.

He asked me to show my art. I told him, word for word:

"you’ve seen it before

i’m not posting them again because the way you asked to save mine in the past was creepy and suspicious

i don’t know you, based on your behaviour i can’t trust you (easily), therefore i’m not taking any risks for my property to be stolen"

Poe was confused about this. I explained who he initially knew me as. Poe then proceeded to do his own AITA in the general chat, acting as if I couldn't see him.

In the moment I went to explain my side, he was explaining that he was just trying to be nice and respectful to the artist (again, creepily.) I told him that while he might have been genuinely trying to be nice, it horrendously backfired on him. Poe then goes into complete damage control and says it was a joke, and to not be triggered. (I'm not quite sure how responding calmly is being triggered either.)

Soon enough, it turned into a full scale argument. Poe's friends argued points that seemed real iffy to me. Meanwhile, some other guy argued that they weren't seeing it from my side. Poe was still trying to say "it was joke!!!" Either way, it was an absolute mess.