Nobody is "cancelled" If you take anything away from this, please let it be that there is always more than one side to a story. This is only my side. I couldn't speak with Dean or tell him about this video because he blocked me everywhere, which he is well within his rights to do, so keep in mind that at the time I'm typing this, he hasn't gotten to explain his side yet. I hope you can afford him the respect and space to learn and grow. If you choose to send anyone hate, you are stooping down to the very level you are attempting to criticize.
Please be kind and civil to one another. Thank you.
Edit: He's issued a statement on Twitter and I've heard that he is taking a break from being online for now, so I'm not sure if that is all he would like to say on the matter so please still be mindful that you may not have heard his side of things fully yet. Also, I believe Kurtis is NOT involved. I only mentioned that he blocked me after things spread and reached Dean to explain why I believed Dean was already spinning things differently to people. Kurtis does not condone the things that were said, and he says he blocked me for an unrelated misunderstanding. Kurtis has unblocked me and apologized privately.
And sticking this at the end here as an optional read. Warning, it's long. My opinion on the privacy of the matter:
I’m aware that from a perspective, I publicized a joke made in private that missed the mark.
I wanna reiterate that I did provide full context, and it was the very context of this “joke” that made it much worse to me. There was no joking tone. Nobody was laughing. It was his immediate reaction to Grace’s message, and I was shocked. In my opinion, it requires an extreme leveraging of benefit of the doubt to see this as just a joke without any truth to it at all.
Later, when I lost that benefit of the doubt, everything changed to me. I felt I owed it to Grace to tell her. I initially asked her not to share it, but she shared it with her friends for the same reason I had shared with her, and I now completely agree with and stand behind her reasoning for doing so.
Once it spread out of my control and reached Dean, he confronted me and denied it part by part, changing his story along the way to match me as I reminded him of what was said and how. He and Kurtis blocked me at the same time and then, after that, I got word from group chats that they were telling people everything was fine and that Dean was handling this with me privately. Which was untrue.
I had no reason to trust Dean after experiencing many things, including him talking poorly of his own friends behind their backs to me. I had every reason to believe the truth was being twisted. In posting my video, I was speaking up for myself and for the supporters I believed were being manipulated.
I don’t control what Dean says. Just because the things he said were in private, doesn’t mean I have to agree to be silent and compliant. I didn’t know he was going to say that. Grace deserved to know. And, in this state, it is legal to record a conversation between two parties as long as one party, one, consents. And it is journalistically ethical to share this conversation if it uncovers needed transparency.
I was put in a tough position where I had to choose between protecting someone who I didn’t believe had good intentions or being honest and respectful to my friend, and in turn with everyone else once it spread way further than I originally meant for it too. It was a choice I had to make, and it’s ok if anyone disagrees with it.
I ended the video saying I could be wrong in my judgment of the series of events, but I explained everything I went through and made it clear that people could make their own judgments.
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