Did you know some people are so scared of success that they self-sabotage?

This is what happened to a woman’s friend… I mean, this is what a woman’s friend did to herself. The problem is, when they were discussing the subject, her friend was upset about how she views the situation.

Was she rude to her friend? Should we just let people learn from their mistakes?

Read the full story and people’s take on it.

AITA for telling my friend she ‘ruined’ her own comic and career by being stubborn during her mental health breaks and not letting anyone help her?

I (23f) have a friend (Jane-26f). In 2018, Jane started posting her own comic to a mid-sized comic app.

She also posted it to her tumblr page. It did fairly well on its own, and she had a fairly dedicated community.

In 2020, someone made a fandub of the first chapter and it was apparently so cringe, an edit of the fandub got reacted to by a very big streamer and within days, Jane’s comic went from 10k views per chapter to upwards of 40k.

And those numbers kept getting bigger.

It was a lot.

At it’s height, she was getting 120k (ish) reads per chapter.

Jane decided to ride the wave of popularity and long story short, she was able to quit her ****** job because tips, commissions and patreon were paying her better than her actual full time job.

In 2023, she took a break from the majority of her online obligations.

She still completed the commissions but didn’t take any more for around 4 months.

She was slacking.

She came back for 3 months after that in early 2024 and then took a ‘temporary hiatus’ again that she only came back from in Jan 2026.

I also want to say that this was a multi-media project.

Jane had commissioned me to make an official OST for the comic that I got the profits from.

So while I was mostly on the sidelines, I had a vested interest in keeping this project alive.

It also should be noted that during this time, I was offering to help upkeep her social medias (Instagram, Tumblr, and Twitter) so her fans would get engagement and the comic wouldn’t fall into obscurity, but she said no.

Mistakes kept piling up.

She posted something on Instagram (her most popular ‘regular’ social media) and despite having 300k followers, her post got 2000 likes.

She called me really upset that she isn’t getting as much engagement as before.

I reminded her that she still has a lot of followers across multiple platforms and she isn’t starting from scratch. But she’s still upset.

Since February, every conversation we have has devolved into her complaining about the view count.

A couple of days ago, she realised I still get the occasional payment from Bandcamp for the OST I made for her. She asked how.

Simple math…

I said I’m active on my social medias and promote the album. And that if she did the same for her comic, she’d see more engagement.

It turned into an argument where she tried to blame me for her lack of engagement and I snapped at her and said that if she hadn’t been so stubborn during the hiatus, she wouldn’t be in this ‘mess’.

A ****** thing to say, I know. And now Jane is mad at me.

I tried to apologise but she won’t talk to me.

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AITA?

Her friend got too comfortable and didn’t ride the wave. If she should be mad at anyone, it would be herself.

What did Reddit think?

A reader shares their thoughts.

A second opinion.

Food for thought…

Another reader chimes in.

Exactly.

Yikes, she got too comfortable and assumed no one would leave. Nowadays, it takes actual work to make sure people get reminders of you and your content, especially on Instagram. The algorithm wants what it wants.

You can never take anything for granted… Sometimes you really only have one shot at making a project succeed, so you have to give it your all and fast.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a woman who was stunned when her friends finally admitted the reason for their falling out.