I'm scared to make his thread, but I think it's important, and I don't give a shit anymore: Predators will use ANYTHING to groom you, and they'll prey on your weaknesses. It's not easy spotting them, because often, they'll pretend to be your friend.
cw: talks abt online grooming

There's this narrative going around that I think is dangerous, and it's that "it's easy to spot predators cuz of someone's content" First of, if you don't trust someone because of their content, that's fine, you can block/unfollow whoever you want, please take care of yourself!

However, this narrative has opened a simple way for predators to lure in victims: They'll tell you that they are the "good adults", you can trust THEM and only them, come join our adult-run server for minors etc
This is not a theory, this has sadly already happened several times.

I think it's important that everyone not only learns to recognize when they're being creeped on, but also that they are allowed to leave, because predators tend to force you to stay in a conversation that makes you highly uncomfortable. I'll use what happened to me as an example:

When I was 14, three different men tried to get me into sex chats, despite knowing how old I was. Two of them were thankfully easy to ditch, but the third one was more insidious. It's kinda long so I'll put it as a pic. Warning again for creepy comments.

NONE of these people were suspicious at first. What I'm trying to say is that most predators will not appear in front of you showing their fangs. They'll make you feel safe first, pretend to understand you, slowly try to make you comfortable with the idea of talking about sex -

with them, make it sound like they wanna "help" you with your shyness or whatever, want you to send pics so they can tell you how hot you are at age 16, encourage you to draw/write out sexual things you want for them, shit like that. They will figure out what works for you.

Common phrases like "You're so mature for your age", "You're not (self-loathing thing you said about yourself), I would kiss/date/touch/fuck you", "Why are you so shy, do you not trust me?", "Don't be a prude, we're just talking" etc. are HUGE RED FLAGS.

Please, PLEASE understand that most predators will try to make you feel safe first, and that's why it's so fucking hard to actually recognize them online. If you feel unsafe, please get away from there, because of COURSE there are people who carry their creepy tendencies-

on their sleeves, I'm not saying they don't exist at all. But if you do feel safe, don't blindly trust people either, and allow yourself to leave when those people make you feel weird too. A real friend wouldn't guilt you into sharing sexual shit with them.

I think it's dangerous to say that people, who explicitly don't want minors to interact, are always predators, when the ones being outed as creeps are SO OFTEN people who encourage minors to please interact with them because they're "one of the good adults".

I'm sorry that this thread is so uncomfortable, I was uncomfortable writing it too, but if this helps even one person, I'm glad. I'll go away for a bit because I'm a bit shaky after this, but please be careful online, for your own sake.