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The original was posted on /r/amitheasshole by /u/Inevitable-Ear-3753 on 2024-01-23 14:51:27+00:00.

I (22F) have a younger sister named Mabel (20F). Growing up, Mabel was always very academically inclined. However, she was also always shy. She got bullied a lot in grade school for reasons such as being “too fat” “too weird” “too crazy” “a crybaby” “too ugly”. Mabel just wanted to show up and get her responsibilities done to the best of her abilities. She had some friends but has since lost contact since leaving grade school for high school (she had no phone at the time).

When she was in 4th grade, a few boybands came onto the scene. That was one of the more difficult years as that was one of the peaks of bullying she endured, plus our parents were getting divorced and her teacher at the time favoured the boys who bullied her. She did admit to trying to fit in during this period. She started listening to them and they seemed to help her get through these hard times. Once finished all schoolwork, she would listen to their music and read as much as she could about them to learn as much as she could about them. She is still a walking encyclopedia about these bands to this day, and since then LOTS more information about the individuals in the bands and stuff has been coming out. She sometimes tends to harp on things for too long or monologue about them, and this was no exception. When asked to talk about something else, she would go quiet, though she says its hard for her brain to think about other things outside of school sometimes because she really loves the bands.

There was also an incident in high school where two girls were gossiping about her in front of our mom at the grocery store, calling her “weird”. There’s one who I suspect envies Mabel because Mabel had better grades than she did, especially in English. Also, a guy that she liked was staring at Mabel’s butt and not her and that made her upset.

Mabel is now in a prestigious university and doesn’t see any of them. I noticed that others were nice in high school, though it didn’t seem like Mabel tried to get close to any of them. I thought uni would be a good opportunity for her to learn social skills and branch out and make friends.

Recently, she and I were on the train, as I work near her uni and was thus helping her find classes and stuff (also there have been crime incidents on public transport so I wanted to keep her safe). A uni classmate came up to her and said “Hello” and Mabel was sharing how her Christmas went. The classmate then proceeded to ask Mabel about band C, the least mainstream of the bands she liked. Mabel said she didn’t have time to check as she had been busy. They then proceeded to talk about their classes and TikTok.

I asked Mabel why she was talking about band C with classmates, as I told her she shouldn’t because the topic is niche and I worry that her peers would find her weird for liking that band. I asked her who mentioned band C first, and she said she didn’t remember. She also talked about them at our Halloween party. AITA?