I came to last.fm believing in the myth of musical kinship—that shared taste would birth connection, that compatibility percentages measured anything real. I spent hours carefully crafting messages to users whose libraries mirrored mine, convinced that mutual devotion to the same obscure bands meant we'd found each other across the void.

Most never responded. Those who did offered brief exchanges before vanishing. The few who seemed genuinely interested in continuing eventually ghosted mid-conversation, leaving me to wonder what I'd said wrong, what invisible line I'd crossed.

The platform promised community but delivered performance. Everyone curating their listening like a gallery, scrobbling for the aesthetic of it, collecting artists like trophies rather than practicing devotion. Connection was transactional: you liked my taste, I validated yours, and then we moved on.

I left not in anger but exhaustion.

The energy I poured into reaching out returned as silence.

There's a strange grief in discovering that "community" has become content. Music forums have become engagement farms. Discord servers where everyone speaks but no one listens. Spotify algorithms that prioritize virality over vision.

I watch people claim to love artists while never mentioning specific songs, albums, lyrics. Love reduced to brand loyalty. Fandom as identity performance rather than actual devotion.

I don't mourn what never was. I mourn what I thought could be.

We were mutuals once. Friendly exchanges about concerts, age, the relief of turning thirty and finally understanding yourself. Then came the accident—scrolling high, muscle memory betraying intention, an unfriend I didn't notice until morning. I apologized. She unfriended me back. I added her again. It may have happened twice. The second time, she didn't return.

I panicked, scrubbing my comments like I'd committed some unspoken crime. Deleted my account. Disappeared. Made a new one that lasted two weeks before I reactivated the old profile, sent apologies into silence that never responded. Then she added me back. No explanation. No acknowledgment. Just there again, as if nothing had happened.

It didn't sit right—the unanswered apology, the random re-add, the refusal to communicate. So I left. Started fresh months later, avoided her entirely, never interacted. And then—after months of silence—she blocked me and accused me of stalking.

The absurdity compounds: echoes of herself boosting every word. Unblocking me to see if I'd posted about her. Reading a vague remark as a direct attack. Following me to Tumblr to continue the accusation. All that energy directed toward someone who wasn't engaging at all.

I've always liked watching drama happen to other people. When it happens to me, I only want out. The exhaustion isn't anger—it's the quiet realization that no amount of good faith, clarity, or distance matters once someone has decided you're the villain in their story. You become the obsession while being accused of obsession. You retreat, and the retreat itself becomes evidence.

So I left again. Not in protest, not in grief—just fatigue. Some spaces aren't worth inhabiting, no matter how much you once believed in the communion they promised.