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If you are still close with any of your childhood friends, the chances are you’ve seen them go through plenty of phases in their lives. Whether that was an emo phase or a LARPing era, a baking obsession or a year-long deep-dive into ACOTAR, they’ve changed in little ways throughout your friendship – and all the while, you’ve been by their side, supporting their hobbies in a non-judgemental way.

Obviously, that doesn’t mean that you had to be invested or interested in their new interest or hobby too – friends don’t have to be clones of one another, after all. But if you listened while they passionately talked about their new fascination, giving them the space to be themselves and be passionate about something they cared about? Well, you deserve the title of Excellent Friend.

Long-term friendships are collections of these eras, just as long-term relationships are. And if you’re spending time with the right people, you’ll both accept each other – because even if you couldn’t tell Dumbledore from Gandalf or a Space Marine Intercessor Squad from a Stormtrooper Garrison, your friend can, and that is what is important.

However, the friend in this story is struggling to accept that her long-term bookish friend is changing and has a new hobby to spend her time and money on now. And in the heat of emotion, she said something that she would quickly come to regret.

Read on to find out what happened.

AITA for calling my friend a pick me?

I (20, female) am friends with Anna (21, female). We’ve been close since ninth grade and have always been friends since then.

Anna and I are book nerds – at least, Anna used to be. We bonded over several of our favourite authors, and libraries were our hangouts.

Anna became less and less into books when she started dating her current boyfriend.

They’ve been together for two years and I’m happy for them, but I’m also wary of him sometimes.

Let’s see how Anna has changed since meeting her boyfriend.

Anna is a gamer now because of her boyfriend. He introduced her to Overwatch and she got addicted for weeks, then they tried playing other games like Fortnite, Valorant, Nintendo games, you know all those.

Which is fine, but then Anna started getting into the frankly misogynistic “gamer girl” aesthetic.

She sent me pictures of her gaming PC that she entirely built herself and just spent money on expensive figures and decorations for it. It’s also all pink. She bought pink mice and now has a collection of pink keyboards.

She also changed her avatars on Discord to anime or video game avatars. She seems really into the aesthetic of girls who are pressured into a super feminine role as a gamer.

Now, this friend is concerned about Anna.

I started wondering if her boyfriend is pressuring her into that role, so I reached out and let her know that it’s okay to still love books and you don’t have to be those gamer girls who are just obsessed with pink.

She said that she just has new hobbies right now, but she still loves books and she doesn’t mind hanging out with me.

I told her I’m sad she doesn’t hang out anymore because it feels like her boyfriend is just forcing her to play games.

Yikes! Let’s see how Anna responded to that.

She got really defensive and said her boyfriend has helped her get really good at games and build her gaming aesthetic. To be honest though, I don’t get those gaming aesthetics where you spend $1000 on decorations, posters, and a parts inside of a PC that you’re never going to even use.

I said that it feels like she’s contributing to a misogynistic image of female gamers and it feels ‘pick me’-ish.

She responded by calling me a judgemental ******* and that she can invest in any hobby she wants.

But am I really wrong here? She was never super into pink or interacting with guy gamers online in Discord 24/7 so it comes off as pick me to me.

AITA?

It feels like she simply cannot accept that Anna’s character has evolved, and she has new hobbies now.

Sure, there’s a chance that her boyfriend is pressuring or influencing her, but to accuse him of this with no evidence isn’t okay.

And as for insulting her choices? That’s not friend behavior.

Let’s see what the Reddit community made of this.

This person thought she’d got it all wrong.

And others thought she might be jealous of Anna’s newfound hobby.

Meanwhile, this Redditor called out her accusations of misogyny.

Maybe this woman thinks that Anna’s behavior and the cash she’s dropped on a pink gaming setup are out of character. Perhaps she’s concerned about her friend being coerced into a lifestyle that she doesn’t want to follow. But honestly, it really doesn’t seem that way. Anna is clearly excited about her pink computer and the way she has set everything up, hence she’s sent these photos to this woman.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a DJ who promised to do his sister-in-law’s wedding, but says he’ll back out if she insists on including AI songs.

The truth is that yes, her boyfriend has got her into gaming. That’s not an unusual thing, for partners to influence one another’s hobbies – after all, in order to get into a new hobby, we have to be exposed to it somehow. Anna didn’t know she liked playing video games until her boyfriend introduced her to them; maybe she’d never played them at all. Now, she loves them. Where is the harm in that?

Honestly, it feels like this concern for Anna is a front for some feelings that the woman hasn’t processed. Maybe she misses her friend – the old one, before her personality and hobbies evolved. The pair will be spending less time together now, but that is normal. In the end, we all change over our lives. The friends who can’t accept the way you change? You grow apart. Those that do? They could be friends forever.