Hopefully this won’t be too long, but I do have a tendency to get wordy. This is a throwaway account as a couple coworkers know my main.
I’ll start out by saying I (24M) do not like my face being on social media, especially when it’s not mine, and especially especially if it’s someone who I’m not even friends with. Bonus especially if it’s on a platform I’m not even on.
I had a coworker (18F, Sally) who would occasionally record videos for her TikTok or SnapChat or whatever on the clock. I remember one instance when she and her boyfriend (17M Danny) were doing a dance and I saw that I ended up in the background .(Edit: To clarify, she showed me the video because she thought me being in the background was funny.) I respectfully asked her to delete the video. She told me she would, and I believed her.
Unfortunately, a couple months ago she was in a tragic car accident during a severe rainstorm that ended up taking her life. I attended the funeral since I was invited, but I was never close to her. I still work with her sister (16F Sasha).
Well, a couple weeks ago while at work, Sasha was showing me some of Sally’s old TikToks. Which included the video of her and Danny that had me in it. I got mad, since I had told Sally to delete it. I asked Sasha if anyone had her logins to delete the video. Sasha said no.
So I made a complaint to TikTok. I gave them the situation and requested the one video to be removed. Well, they removed the video alright.
By nuking Sally’s whole TikTok channel. She wasn’t very popular, but you know. She’s dead. She can’t make any more content now. I think Sasha put two and two together about the timing and she and Danny have been accusing me of getting her whole channel deleted on purpose. Which wasn’t my intent, I just wanted myself off the channel. I don’t even have a TikTok. The other teens at work are giving me the cold shoulder (I work more in kitchen so it’s annoying but tolerable).
The way I see it, it’s an unfortunate consequence of Sally not respecting my wishes. I would have asked TikTok to delete the video regardless of if she was alive or not, considering she never took my original boundary into mind in the first place. I really do feel bad, because like I said, all those videos are lost forever now.
So Reddit, AITAH?
Edit: I’m seeing a lot of mixed judgements, and taking it all into perspective, I feel like while my reaction was justified, the results make me TA. I’ve already decided to make Sasha and her family a casserole and to keep apologising. It’s not like there are no more social medias of Sally, but I do feel genuinely awful about inadvertently causing the deletion of one of them.
YTA hilariously callous.
YTA and I think you might be a narcissist.
YTA. You focused on a very small amount of potential harm to yourself at the cost of real harm to others.
YTA. Nobody cares about your face in the background of a video. Literally NOBODY.
YTA.
Sally can’t delete this TikTok, she’s *dead.* It’s unfortunate that she didn’t delete it when she was alive, but a few seconds’ footage of your face in the background of a video that is decidedly not about you is just not worth removing Sally’s friends’ access to this source of memories about her. Sally didn’t experience any “consequences” for not “respecting your boundaries”, her friends did after her death.
YTA. Your coworker was showing you videos of her dead sister, likely as a coping mechanism, and your response was to get mad about being in the background and make a formal complaint to TikTok?
I get not wanting to be on social media. While I wish she had deleted the video after speaking with you, her dying in a car crash is the point at which you’re supposed to drop it.
Omg, you’re a massive A. YTA x ♾️. All of those memories and videos, her voice, her smiling face, are all gone. Gone. Nothing left there for her parents, friends, and family to see anymore. “The way I see it, it’s an unfortunate consequence of Sally not respecting my wishes.” Are you fucking kidding??? All over one video of you way in the background, not even tagged or anything. JFC. There are no words for what you are.
YTA. No one is paying attention to your ass in the background of a Tik Tok. But her loved ones could have regularly checked the videos when they were missing her.
Congratulations you a rando no longer have a glimpse of your face in the random background of a low count dance video.
Her family and friends have lost recordings of her voice, smile, possibly her laugh forever. She will never grow older and this is all her parents, friends and family had left of her living memory. But hey the gummermint can’t see your rando face in the background. You stole something irreplaceable from them.
YTA I hate to break it to you but all you e successfully accomplished is taking down a dead teenagers account that didn’t have much following because you were in the background of a clip. Second piece of bad news is that your face and body are recorded on innumerable public and private cameras EVERY. SINGLE. DAY and this is the case for the entire duration of your time on this planet.
Your face is everywhere and you don’t get control over it. Every store, every shopping center, every parking lot, and a significant number of private residences record every time you move. So yeah you totally won big in your request that resulted in the removal of that account
YTA. You’re a monumental AH.
Everybody knows that you’re the one who reported the TikTok account because, guess what, the only people still viewing those videos are the people who are specifically looking for them to relive memories of their loved one.
You decided to callously report a video because you don’t like that you’re in the background, not even the subject of a video or anything. You could have also used your critical thinking for a moment to realize what the possible outcomes could have been.
Even if only that video was going to be deleted, you’re deleting one of the remaining memories of a recently deceased person because you feel mildly annoyed. And now that you found out that you are the cause for the entire account being deleted you’re too chickenshit to apologize to her sister precisely because you don’t want to be confronted over what you did.
I honestly think you’re a pretty crummy person all around.
YTA. If you don’t understand the monumental damage you just did to this family, it can’t be explained to you. It was one video on a dead profile that wasn’t even popular to begin with. I don’t care that it wasn’t your intention, and neither do they. This outcome was predictable. They also don’t want your casserole.
YTA
You can’t expect that you’ll never be in the background of a photo/video.
And your request, while reasonable, wasn’t a high priority. She likely forgot and then was in the accident.
But you made it a big deal. Her sister is showing videos as a memory of her dead sister and your response…to get mad that you were unintentionally in the background.
The end result makes it worse. Now she doesn’t have any of those videos of her dead sister.
Outside a handful of mutual acquaintances, no one even knew who you were in the video, nor likely cared. To give an example, do you even remember anyone in the background of a tv show scene, movie, or photo or photo of something like a tourist attraction?
You are going to likely be in the background of a LOT of pictures unless you’re a hermit or in a burka. That’s just…life…now that everyone has a camera in their pocket.
So it’s not all about you. The vast majority is NOT about you.
YTA
Starting off with your throwaway handle, you decided to go with “deadgirlticktokhelp”? That’s callous.
Not to mention, you state in another comment, you were barely in the background “My face is visibly in it for maybe 3-4 seconds because I was glancing over, but I was not prominently in the video.”