I'll start with some necessary context - A few days prior to the incident I was at Yellow Jack with some TFA during a hotzone, it was mentioned over radio that Ballas were trying to tax people so I drove past one of the Ballas and overheard them saying something along the lines of "have you paid tax?" to a person who proceeded to hand them something (probably cash), I drove up to him and asked what he was doing and he responded "nothing" and drove away which annoyed me and was in mine and others opinions baiting (since they were taxing people on another gang's turf to try and get a reaction) however everyone I brought it up to believed staff wouldn't do anything about it so I decided to not bother reporting it.
Now moving onto the actual incident... Me and two other members of TFA were selling at a hotzone at the Vineyard when Ballas turned up and attempted to tax us which we believed was a joke (due to a misunderstanding in an agreement between Ballas and TFA) so we carried on selling. They then proceeded to shoot one of us which resulted in me shooting at them and I was shot and downed and was called a "stupid retard" which caught me off guard (
https://medal.tv/games/gta-v/clips/l4u4wnaExCzf9PgaV ). Due to me being annoyed with their baiting from the situation a few days prior, them seemingly baiting again on this situation (due to our misunderstanding of the agreement) and being called a retard I overreacted. At the time, I was very annoyed and rather than give myself time to take a break, I instead reacted without thinking. After this is when I made bad decision after bad decision.
I was revived by the NHS after being found by a police officer at the Vineyard then went to Ballas turf with the intention of shooting them. I briefly spoke to two of them outside of the car wash and then I shot one, I was then shot myself and they handed me over to TFA at Yellow Jack who took me to Sandy hospital. I then returned and shot them again and died. Once I was downed, I then crashed the game of two Ballas members using my dev permissions. I have no way of justifying this or my actions prior, I acted out of frustration and rage and am still disappointed in myself for getting so wound up over the situation.
I then disconnected and switched characters, spawned a sniper, teleported to a roof and downed 2 Ballas and 1 TFA whilst invisible. After this I realised how bad I had fucked up and decided to ban myself to stop myself from causing additional harm. Every decision I made throughout this was impulsive and switching characters and banning myself was no exception. I again have no way of justifying my actions, but my reasoning at the time was based on resentment for Ballas.
After I had calmed down, I told a staff member that I accidentally banned myself and was subsequently unbanned and logged back into my Justin Smith character and was taken to pillbox by Ballas.
Also during the time I was downed at the Vineyard I made a forum report on Ballas due to me being annoyed of their constant baiting however I realised not long after I was unbanned that it would be best to delete it to allow me time to write out a proper explanation to send to management informing them of what had happened without any initial publicity. However unluckily for me one of the ballas replied to the post 1 minute after I had edited the post which resulted in me scrapping the DM I had originally typed out and me just sending the report link and a summary of what had happened.
To focus on your main questions of what happened and why, I overreacted to a word in a game because I had an inability in the moment to control my emotions and that only spiralled as each situation happened. Since the incident I've had time to reflect on the situation as a whole and have spoken to friends who have given me advice on how to manage emotions so I don't react like this again. I've accepted people may or will say things I don't like, but more importantly than that, I've learnt in this time that I shouldn't have taken it as a personal attack. They were just words in a game and I now see that for what it is.
I also want to apologise to those who I inconvenienced on the day, and also to those who I was not truthful with sooner. My time away has given me plenty of opportunity to look at this with a different perspective.
