Thanks for the read. I didn't believe people were honestly capable of being 'hidden assholes' like this until I met my first gf. Fantastic first two months, a desasterous third month in which she continually used her crocodile tears to make me shut up about things I wanted to calmly speak about with her that I didn't quite like, ignored me and in the end broke up via text claiming domestic abuse, which never happened, then ghosted me so I couldn't even get any kind of explanation.
For the first couple months of dealing with the emotional rollercoaster I figured it might be some kind of weird misunderstanding that we could just clear up if she would just talk to me once, so I made the mistake of contacting just a couple of the people around her, who never heard anything about this stuff. She ignored two mails I sent over the course of two months, but responded to my third where I made it clear how this entire thing bothers me still and that I'd like to just clear things up for once so I could get her out of my head. She responded to nothing of that, but to the fact that I contacted a couple of her friends and threatened to sue to me for 'defamation' - even after I made it clear that I'd have been okay if she lied as long as she admitted it now. And that from someone who I trusted very deeply before, to whom I opened up in a way I never opened up to anyone before. She's also someone who needs to be center stage in her student teams, dyes her hair an amazing red (looks great, but y'know, it's attention seeking too) and for some reason or another the main character in her first bigger student project turned out to look just like her (I doubt it was her idea but she certainly is great at making others fancy her).
This shook me for quite some time and it was a huge motivator for me to question life, people and myself. I learned a lot about people and how deep the hidden abyss can go.
I don't really know anything about this Zoe Quinn and I think some of the posts here are deragatory, but at the same time this story about Alec Holowka feels way too one-sided for me to just 'believe'. She isn't claiming rape (from him, afaik), she is claiming abuse in an otherwise consensual relationship. While this, if true, is really bad since I know how that feels like, it's not the same as rape. Delicate situations in relationships can become very tricky and evolve into something where perspectives differ completely. This is not supposed to mean that abuse or rape would be acceptable as long as the perpetrator thinks he is doing good; introspection is key and mandatory. But it's easy to mix up signals when people become dishonest with each other and this can spiral out of control very quickly. If she is a known liar or narcissist, this certainly doesn't give me grounds to take her story, if true or not, at face value.