This has been on my mind for a very long time now. TLDR at the end. Back in 2016, when I was in my second year of high school, I met a couple of guys who had a lot of common interests with me (regarding anime, video games, movies, etc), so I tried to start a friendship of some sort.

These guys had their own small friend group but even so they were still kinda ostracized or at least excluded from the rest of the class. Both of them were pretty introverted and nerdy (when it comes to studying and certain interests), so I kinda just talked to them when I could in the beginning, trying to integrate them in my main group of friends.

But one of those guys, "Paul", started acting really weird towards me. Every morning when I got there and it was just the two of us I'd say hi and take my seat. He would always ask "What are you doing?" and poke his head over me or my desk, which I didn't mind at first, but after a while it became very tiring. I would be finishing an urgent assignment, studying for an important test or just browsing some personal things on my phone and even when I showed absolute no interest in interacting with him, he would continue there pressing me and invading my personal space in a physical way (which I've always had a huge problem with, and he knew that).

Not only that but he would text me EVERY DAY. Like I said, when he got my number it was no big deal, we were talking normally and I was glad to have a friend with the same interests as me (since there were none in my main friend group). But after about 5 months or so, it got really annoying. I would tell him a lot of times "Oh I'll watch this video later when I can", "I'm studying right now", "I've got class now", trying to convey that I was very busy. Not only did that never work, but he would then absolutely flood my phone (like 20 messages in 10 minutes) so that I could answer later.

Also something I noticed after all this time is that he tended to be quite condescending when discussing our common interests with me (which I fucking hate). After I found reddit, I found the sub that described him perfectly, r/iamverysmart.

About a year went by with me trying to avoid interacting with Paul as a friend, I wanted to be a colleague at most, since he started getting pretty obsessive and being near him was downright uncomfortable. I know that I should have confronted him about me not wanting to be friends anymore, but I was so scared of hurting his feelings that I just tried to back away quietly.  Eventually, in like mid-2017, he stopped invading my space in class and the daily messages finally stopped. I was so happy, since this was my senior year and I really wanted to focus on getting into a good university, and I couldn't  handle anymore stress from him.

But then, in the second half of 2017, Paul started to flood two of my female friends (from that main friend group) with messages just like he did to me. The same behaviors of invading their space as well. They both are like me and didn't want to hurt his feelings, so they endured it. We graduated, he went to a public university,  I went to another one in a different town, and these two girls took 2018 to try again for the university they wanted (here in Brazil to get into universities you have to take a test at the end of the year and try to make through the cut). We thought it was all over, but no: he would still message them endlessly.

It got to a point where they were so stressed that they were afraid they wouldn't pass the test they were studying so hard for, because he would take so much of their time. I kept telling them to block him (I blocked him after they told me how they were so stressed), but they still didn't want to make him feel bad. 

Then, he started talking about his depression to one of the girls. She shared the messages in a group chat asking for help, and we were pretty scared about how he would react to her responses. We told her to tell Paul to seek psychological treatment, he kept saying he didn't need it, the conversation ended. After a while it was all the same again, and they both pitied him a lot, feeling really bad for him after that talk.

I spent about 3 months trying to convince them to block him, regardless of his mental state. 2019 rolled by and one of them got the courage to do so and blocked him yesterday, but the one Paul sent the depressed messages to hasn't. She's scared that he might do something crazy to himself if she blocks him, but I keep insisting that she does so, because her mental health has gotten pretty bad over this as well.

I personally don't think he would hurt himself, but these things can never be overlooked. I feel pretty shitty trying to cut some of the only friends Paul has off of his life, but they're my friends too and I feel they don't deserve to be someone's emotional crutch.

So AITA for advocating so hard for them to just disappear from his life? I don't know how to feel, he is really fucking annoying, but we were some of his only friends and he clearly has a lot of issues. Some friends told me that I was too harsh for cutting him off, and even after a whole year after doing so I still feel guilty.

Sorry for the long post, first one in here.

TLDR: Cut off all ties with former friend who turned out to be pretty obsessive and am trying to make my friends, the new targets of his obsession, do the same. AITA?