'Should I tell my brother he's gone viral? His ex-wife wrote a popular slam article about him.' UPDATED 2X

"Should I [30F] tell my brother [34M] that he's gone viral? His ex-wife [30F] published a popular article about how sh#$ty he is."

You know how your Android homepage pulls articles it thinks you would like to read into a feed? Today the robots brought me a very dubious present: an apparently popular article featuring my ex-sister-in-law (let's call her Eve) from one of those Facebook-driven clickbait sites. The article is about my brother.

I don't wanna link it, as it uses her real name and photos, but for context, it's got 33,000 shares, and a video that highlights the story has almost 2M views. It's meant to be a love story about her (real) profound struggle to leave her first husband (my brother, who we'll call Jim) to be with her current partner.

She seems very happy with the new guy, which is great. But she felt the need to introduce the story by painting my brother as a fat-shaming, dream-crushing, emotionally abusive bastard. She repeatedly returns to her misery as his wife as a refrain. Let's be clear: Jim's not a fat-shaming, dream-crushing, emotionally ab#sive bastard, and nothing in this article revealed anything worrying about him to me.

(I know more about the situation -- from both Jim and Eve -- than I honestly want to.) Jim feels things very deeply but sucks at talking about it. His big expressions of love usually involve kind acts he never mentions to anyone, and he hates spending money. Eve feels deeply too, but her approaches clashed with his.

She always scaled the highs and lows of her life into public epics, and her big expressions of love usually involved big gifts. They got married very young. She walked out on him after 10+ years. They're both much better off. He still blames himself for almost everything.

The melodramatic article is pretty par-for-the-course Eve. But as you might deduce from the above, Jim is a profoundly private person. He cares very much how others see him. I want to curl up and die just thinking about how much he would want to curl up and die reading this article.

Jim and I weren't super close growing up, but we are now. Like a lot of siblings, we're simultaneously polar opposites and the same person. I act more like an Eve than a Jim -- case in point, I'm asking about this on reddit -- but he and I react to emotional situations in very similar ways.

If something like this was out there about me, I would want to know, especially since real names and photos are involved in the article. He's not named, but it's a small town. I would be devastated if my loved ones knew and didn't tell me. I live in another state. I have no idea if he knows about the story.

Jim isn't a heavy Facebook user, but it's an important news source to a lot of his friends. My family has a bad habit of hiding things in order to (theoretically) protect loved ones from pain, so I can't really ask them. My personal impulse to tell him is at war with the family habit, and I genuinely don't know which is for the best. Help, kind strangers?

TL/DR: My brother's ex wrote a popular clickbait article outlining how miserable he made her when they were married. My brother is very private and very sensitive. Should I tell him?

The internet had a lot of questions and comments.

Fleaslayer wrote:

I think you should let him know that you saw the article, that you thought it was unfair to him, and ask if he's aware of it. If he does already know, he might appreciate a sympathetic ear. If he doesn't know, he would probably much prefer to find out from you than someone he isn't as close to, who might not choose their words carefully.

OP responded:

Thank you very much. This is the way I'm going -- I appreciate the advice on softening the blow while being honest.

arbeitic_arbotic wrote:

This seems outrageously far fetched. Is your brother a British prince or something? How would Google even know to recommend some clickbait obscure article about people in another state?

OP responded:

Lol, yeah, it's all a bit wild to me, too. She writes for the township paper sometimes, and usually I get those articles in my feed. Yesterday another local paper featured her in one of those "reverse parades" teachers have been doing because of quarantine, and I clicked on it -- I assume that's why Google decided to look for more stuff involving her.

GameboyPATH wrote:

"I don't wanna link it, as it uses real names" Is Jim's full name listed in the article? How easily could one deduce that the brother you personally know as Jim is the same person that this author, Eve, is speaking about? I'm not a lawyer, but depending on the nature of her writing, it may be slander, if her statements are both specific and falsifiable. Talk to a lawyer.

But regardless of the legalities, if your understanding of the popularity of the article and Jim's social media network suggests that either he, a friend, or a professional colleague could get a hold of this article and its contents, you should warn him.

This could allow him advance notice of knowing about the article before someone whose opinion he cares about finds out. He can then be prepared for any questions, concerns, or backlash he gets. But if you think it's not popular enough for that situation to happen...then it's up to you.

OP responded:

Thank you for the response! I should have clarified -- it contains the full names and photos of his ex and her new partner, but my brother is fortunately only referred to as the "first husband". You wouldn't have to do much sleuthing to Google her name and find his from wedding announcements, etc., but it's not literally written in the article.

After receiving lots of feedback, OP shared an update.

EDIT: Thank you all for the advice! I'm calling him tomorrow, after recruiting a close friend who can be there in person (at a socially safe distance) to talk after, plus asking his wife to take the call with him. Some people have asked about the emotional ab#se thing. I'm very, very confident about my understanding of our situation, but I'm not comfortable sharing all the gory details here.

I've removed a couple of my comments below; I feel like I said too much. I'm trying to avoid attacking Eve's character more than my explanations already do, plus avoid trying to "prove" my brother's innocence for people unwilling to take me at my word by dishing out even more stuff about his private life, especially since it's all out of context.

To hopefully satisfy the curiosity a little bit without being too huge an AH: the article and its content are part of a long, documented pattern of Eve's choices in a variety of life areas.

Jim has only had supportive, positive relationships outside this one, and has since gotten remarried to an awesome woman who never hesitates to communicate openly in a healthy way. BUT people who do report ab#$e should always be heard and assumed to be honest, and their accusations should be seriously and fairly investigated.

A week later, OP shared an update.

As positive an update as there can be! My brother (aka Jim), his wife (aka April), and I video chatted a couple of days ago now. Long story short: they already knew, and he's toughing it out like a champ. They've been showered with support from all sides, which probably makes him more uncomfortable than ever, but he seems to at least appreciate the good intentions.

We took a couple minutes alone, and Jim seems more worried about the extra stress this inevitably puts on April than about himself, for better or worse. He told me he knows that it's all bull, and that it doesn't feel quite real.

I flailed around trying to ask him to please call if that ever changes, since I can reality-check with him from the Era of Eve the Ex. I hope he would, though I'm not sure how realistic it is to expect that or to assume that he wasn't just putting a rosy lens on it for me. April was able to tell him first. One of Jim's friends called her soon after the article caught fire to check on them.

She looked it up and talked to him right away. It's no one's first experience with Eve's choices, unfortunately. April's amazing, and there really couldn't be anyone better to process this with him. They ended the call because the kids were climbing him like a jungle gym begging to play Legos, so they're already doing a great job helping him focus on the things that matter.

Thank you again for all your help, good internet strangers!

TL/DR: My brother's wife had already talked with him, and they're both tough stuff in the face of adversity. Hooray for family!

EDIT: This isn't a parable about how poor, innocent men constantly have their lives ruined by horrible women through random accusations of assault. That parable is a BS narrative concocted by cis, straight men who don't know how to cope with company at the top of the hill. This just happened to be the situation we were in. Needed to say that. Cheers!

The comments kept coming.

sweadle wrote:

I've had people spread nasty rumors about me. The truth is that people like Eve tend to overplay their hand, and work a little too hard to get their side of the story out. I was young and thought I needed to share my side, but I didn't want to get into a back and forth and the crazy people who lie always win at being louder.

So I said nothing, and waited (on the advice of people smarter than me) and people eventually figured out what kind of person the rumor-spreader was, and saw them do the same thing to other people. So, my name was cleared with no effort on my part, and I seemed much more believable because I hadn't run out in an effort to clear my name and engage in the he said/she said

I've seen it work since then too. A boss accused me something horrible and career ruining. There is a legal battle, so I'm not saying ANYthing back, or commenting on it anywhere public. Meantime, she's free to blackball me all around town.

Well...a few more years she was fired for misconduct, and then fired from her next job too. Now she's totally out of the field, and I look like the patient saint who let the storm blow over without stooping to her level. Your brother sounds awesome. Tell him to keep on keeping on, and Eve will dig her own grave.

No_Category_3426 wrote:

I feel like if OP really believed in taking abuse allegations seriously and thinks not doing so is a "cis straight male" conspiracy, they would have done more to verify the abuse claims rather than "well she's the type of lie about it and my brother is super kind so it can't be true."

Straight_Paper8898 wrote:

Yeah…if your public declaration of love involves mentioning your ex - I don’t want it or you.