Is AUTHOR wrong in the post ? POST : This happened about a couple years ago when we were around 14 and I've changed any names included.

So, the guy in question I'm calling Jake. He was a super quiet and nerdy guy, the type who wanted to be a librarian as a job, and while he definitely wasn't popular he had a small group of close friends. I sat beside him in a couple classes due to our second names and he was a really nice guy who was actually really funny.

During lunch one day he was hanging out outside with a large group. They were messing about and another guy ended up falling on him and licking his face on accident (I have no clue how as I wasn't there). Anyway, from that the 'ship' was immediately born. Everyone was joking that the two were together and by the end of the day like 40 people were in on the joke. Someone created a ship name for them (it was 2016) and people wrote it on their files and never left them alone about it.

Jake was obviously made really uncomfortable about it, but the other guy found it kinda funny, so the joke kept on going. Everyday people (including me) would ask Jake about his 'relationship' and he would tell us to stop but in a joking way, so it continued. After a couple months the joke died off, but Jake had already become more reserved, but no one really noticed due to how quiet he already was. After a few weeks he stopped coming to school. His close friends were taken out of class a couple times but didn't tell us why. He deleted all his social media and just fell off the face of the earth. I heard from one of his friends that he developed social anxiety and doesn't like to leave his house anymore and is now homeschooled.

He had some underlining issues before this but I think this is what set him over the edge and I can't reach out to him because he deleted everything. It only dawned on me recently what happened and the part I might have played in this. AITA or do you guys think there could have been another reason for him dropping out?

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TLDR: A classmate developed social anxiety and dropped out of school possibly because of a joke that went too far that I was a part of.