Noah's server apology

<@&1521287830851031192>  Hey everyone, I want to address something that has come up recently in the community. Last month, a user named Jeff Piatt was kicked from the original discord server. Last month, Jeff DMd me asking to rejoin the old server, which in frustration, I replied telling him he could only rejoin the server if he paid me money. This was not the correct way to handle him asking me to rejoin the server, and I immediately regretted it in the moment when I said it, since this was me asking Jeff to pay money just to rejoin a server he'd been kicked from, which attempted extortion is no way to handle frustration whatsoever. I do want to clarify I didn't receive any money from Jeff in this moment, and the conversation shifted almost immediately after I said this, choosing instead to find out more about Jeff's mental condition, and why he spams, instead of just getting frustrated and demanding money. Regardless of how it came about, it was a wrong thing for me to state to him. I realized it then, and I realize it now too.

Instead of engaging with Jeff, the better way to handle it would have just been blocking him and keeping him blocked. Instead, I let my frustration get the better of me and attempted extortion against a disabled marginalized individual, which is never okay to do. I also do want to be clear, Jeff was a YouTube member and Patreon member of mine, and also recently tried to gift me a bunch of games on GOG. I've gone and refunded him for all those payments he made towards me and have him blocked, and also banned on my Twitch, and that will stay that way.

I honestly think there needs to be some real changes to how I handle things in the community going forward if I want to keep this space truly drama free, which I honestly do. A lot of my reckless actions have caused people in the server and around me to feel unsafe, which I don't want to be the case for anyone, since I want to help others, not cause them to feel unsafe. When this was all originally brought up on July 1, I invited Dickers to the server while stressed out, which only made things worse and caused More people to be stressed. In addition to this, while the situation was being discussed amongst the members, the mods and me began deleting messages from members discussing it and also timing people out and banning, which wasn't the right move at all. Now that I'm in a better headspace, it's much easier for me to discuss this fully, lay out what happened, and say what's going to happen in the future to make things better. In order to improve myself and how I handle things, I think I need to take an indefinite hiatus from YouTube, and just focus on Twitch and this personal discord server. I also do want to bring up here, since I've mentioned it on Twitch before, but I've been seeing a therapist over the past month, and it has thankfully been an avenue for me to talk about situations like this, and discuss better ways to respond to situations in general. I'll be asking about some things from this particular situation in my next session with them. I think Twitch has actually been a healthy avenue for me to keep advocating for autism, and I do think there are genuinely a lot of passionate and great people I know through there. I want to continue to be someone that can advocate for autism and mental health to the best of my ability, and I think this is the best way for me to continue doing that, and continue improving myself.  I know not everyone may trust me to do that, but I want to keep showing that I can be a light for other autistic people, like I have been before.

Thank you for being a great community, and I'm glad I could discuss this. I'm confident about improvement.