I’ve known my friend Alice since college, and she’s always been the kind of person to go out of her way to compliment and befriend people. In fact, the reason we met was because she found me on twitter, saw that I went to the same school, and thought I was “really cool”. She sent me a bunch of messages which were all very flattering, and we ended up becoming friends.Fast forward to today. We both graduated from school, and we both moved to LA to find jobs in animation (we don't live together though). I’ve noticed that Alice is very focused on who she can befriend on twitter and how many people see the art she posts on her account. It’s not rare for her to retweet her own work up to 10 times a day, even going back to retweet stuff she made a year ago. She talks a lot about “fame” - whether it’s her art getting a lot of attention or someone from the animation industry following her, she always seems focused on how many people know about her and which “cool” people she’s friends with.To preface this next bit, there’s a couple of events I need to expand on, apologies if this gets long!Alice made a portfolio piece to try to better her chances at getting hired. She showed me her work to ask for feedback, and I thought it was very good, though there were some technical errors and general critique that I brought up, but ultimately told her it was good work. She was hesitant to accept my critique (a lot of “yeah but”s), but once her friend who works in the industry told her much of the same things I did, she seemed to agree with the critique. At the time, I felt like she valued her “famous” friend’s word more than mine, but I think maybe having someone else confirm the critique made it more valid in her mind.The other thing that happened was that a group of friends and I planned a dinner together because one of the friends in that group wanted to show us a recipe. It was 5 of us, so it was a pretty small gathering. Alice only knows one of the people in this friend group through me; the other people are just a group that I met a while ago online and now that we all live in LA we like to hang out. Alice doesn’t know anyone else in the group, but she knows that they all work in the industry. When I mentioned that I was going the dinner thing after she asked what I was doing that day, she seemed upset that she wasn’t invited. She messaged a mutual friend of ours about how she feels like I take her for granted and our friend messaged me separately, saying “you should talk to her”.After a lot of prodding, she brought up how she felt like she wasn’t included in things I did, and that she feels she is "more supportive of me than I am of her". She also brought up the critique I gave her, saying that she felt bad that I gave her constructive feedback instead of just complimenting her work but that ultimately it was appreciated.I explained to her the nature of the dinner plans, and how it wasn't the best situation to introduce her to these people, since it was a private gathering we planned ourselves, not a big get-together. There's also been times where I've been invited to parties by mutual friends while she hasn't, and I think that also makes her feel like she's not included.I also asked her what I could do better so she feels I am being supportive of her. She didn’t really bring up anything, saying that she felt it was “petty” that she was feeling this way. I told her that even if she felt it was petty she should bring it up so we can come to a solution, but she was hesitant to bring anything up.That talk hasn't sat well with me; her comment that she felt I wasn't supportive enough came off to me as "you don't like/comment on my art enough on twitter". I'm willing to accept fault, but from my perspective I've tried to lift her up when possible and also gave her tips to get hired on multiple occasions. I don't usually go out of my way to like/comment on tweets, so it's not like I'm ignoring her while complimenting other people. The more I think about her behavior the more I start thinking that maybe all she wants is to be surrounded by people who do nothing but compliment her and her work, in addition to her feeling "cool" for befriending so many skilled people who have a lot of twitter followers because they work in cartoons.Some more scattered thoughts: once she broke 1,000 followers on twitter the first thing she did was say how she's "famous now". She also goes out of her way to DM artists that follow her back to say "hey, i like your art!" which at first read to me as a kind gesture but she does this so often and with the same exact format that I can't help but feel like she's trying to fish compliments out of people, especially because once they compliment her back, she rarely continues the conversation.I feel bad for thinking all of this, because sometimes I feel like I'm a conspiracy theorist connecting things that aren't really there. I started to think that maybe she befriended me so I could be one of the "cool people" that give her compliments. I have to admit all this seems pretty dumb, but I don't want her to either fall into a spiral of needing strangers' validation or befriend people she doesn't really care for, just so she can get attention.TLDR: My friend is hyper-fixated on who follows her on twitter, how many "famous" people she's friends with and how many likes her posts get. Her need for validation and attention has come to the point where she feels I'm not being supportive enough and that I'm taking her for granted.Should I try to help her break out of this behavior? Should I just let her live her life? Am I looking too deep into this? Any comments are super appreciated. I like Alice and I believe she is a good person, but this behavior is really scummy if it turns out her intentions are self-centered. via /r/relationships https://ift.tt/2pNDT3t
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