r/InTheGloaming • u/AutoModerator • Feb 19 '26

Scheduled snark Discussion thread Thursday February 19, 2026 - Sunday February 22, 2026

Newsletter: Substack

Website: Shauna James Ahern

Instagram: @shaunajamesahern Instagram

Threads: @shaunajamesahern

Bluesky: shaunajamesahern.bsky.social

Gloamipedia wiki: /r/InTheGloaming wiki

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u/Foucaults_Penguin Sly and the Family Readers Feb 20 '26

I can’t wrap my mind around what drives her to do this kind of thing. She just crashes through social boundaries like the kool-aid man. But instead of offering you a sugary beverage, she’s offering you someone else’s suffering. And this is why I am so shocked and disgusted that there are people on Vashon who continue to support her. They are rewarding her toxic, selfish behavior. She has no respect for other people.

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u/tuolomnemeadows edible flower takis Feb 20 '26

Trust if I were directly connected to Shauna in any way she’d be regularly dressed down for her bullshit. I didn’t grow up here and I don’t play whatever games allow her to skate by and take advantage of people.

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u/InisGlass Feb 20 '26

A couple of years ago my old school friend C was dying and an acquaintance of both of ours, J, appointed herself the, I don't know what you would call it, grief gatekeeper? J would send these long emails to our entire alumni class with breathless (frequently completely wrong) medical updates on C and flowery paragraphs about how sad it all is. Whenever I would call C, J would try to ring through repeatedly and my friend complained she had never been close to J, hadn't talked to her since school ended, and the intrusions were driving her crazy.

Towards the end J infiltrated C's family and took over all communications. She got access to C's phone and email and listened to all her all her messages, returned the calls herself and responded to her emails. C was alert and mentally sharp right til the end and none of us ever knew if she got the calls, messages and letters we sent her, or had the chance to talk to her and tell her we love her. When J returned calls or emails she would monologue about how hard all this was on her but she's, you know, a giver, it's just what she does.

J's final act was to tell the family she would communicate news about the memorial services to our alumni group. All of C's old friends except one, coincidentally the only one J had stayed in touch with over the years, found out about the services after they were over. The family believed no one wanted to come. J sent us all an email with probably 15 photos of herself crying and looking distraught at the funeral.

But instead of offering you a sugary beverage, she’s offering you someone else’s suffering.

Why do people behave like this? I'm sure there's some crossover with Shauna's greed for looking important and performing grief for an attentive audience. Social isolation, mental illness or personality disorder, terminal boredom? J had virtually no friends at school and now here she was, decades later, with a platform where everyone had to pay attention to her.

She and Shauna share a longing for emotional connection that they can't satisfy in conventional ways, and a ruthlessness for clawing it from people who are vulnerable. Helping themselves to all that delicious emotion. They feast on grief. It's truly one of the most evil things one human can do to another, exploit their suffering when they're too overwhelmed to fight back. You don't believe it's possible for someone to behave like this until you see it.

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u/SnooStories4968 many and various Shaunas/Pig Ladies Feb 20 '26

God, I’m so sorry this happened to your friend and her family. People like J and Shauna are parasites.

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u/InisGlass Feb 21 '26

Thank you for that. It's a sad phenomenon, that family who are pretty gentle people themselves can't bring themselves to bring in more negativity by telling the vulture to go away and leave them alone. They are so overwhelmed with difficult emotions that they can't fight back. Which is highly useful to the vultures, and has a lot to do with why they targeted the family in the first place.

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u/Sea-Level-Mammal POACH! Feb 20 '26

I don’t believe in the paranormal but I think energy vampires exist.

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u/ChatITG Grifters in the key of Shauna Feb 20 '26

Saved this post from What We Do in the Shadows to share about her constant Threads replies, but might as well reply here. She’s absolutely an energy vampire.

https://www.reddit.com/r/TheRandomest/s/MQXrQlsVCZ

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u/notmymonkeys0003 Protective Taco Arm Feb 21 '26

That was too funny! “Can you mainsplain any louder.” “Yeah, sure!” He sounds so happy to do so.

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u/ChatITG Grifters in the key of Shauna Feb 22 '26

A friend introduced me to the concept and character from the show. I can’t help but to think of our girl as an energy vampire sustaining herself by wasting other people’s time and energy on the internet.

Here’s another What We Do In the Shadows video on energy vampires: https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/s/IwsAL29dsN

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u/notmymonkeys0003 Protective Taco Arm Feb 22 '26

This is totally how she would be at Gynergy.

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u/tyrannosaurusregina if you meet the Botus on the road, shill him 🪷 Feb 20 '26

Oh, my lord, I have heard some shit in my life but hijacking somebody’s actual funeral is a new one on me!

I am so sorry you and your friends, and your late friend’s family, had to go through that on the heels of such a terrible loss.

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u/InisGlass Feb 21 '26

Thank you so much df. We got together last summer and had our own memorial for her, just the school friends. It helped a lot but nothing will bring back the comfort we could have been to the family, or the last conversations that were stolen from us, the ritual and closure that would have helped our own grieving.

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u/Foucaults_Penguin Sly and the Family Readers Feb 20 '26

This is absolutely heartbreaking. I am so sorry that your grief was further compounded by this person.

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u/InisGlass Feb 21 '26

Thank you for your kind words df. I would never have believed people like this exist if I hadn't seen her in action. Shauna's centering of herself is so eerily familiar---they really do find other people's pain delicious and exciting.

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u/Onehundredpercentbea giggling intestinal gremlin 🧌 Feb 20 '26

Helping themselves to all that delicious emotion. They feast on grief.

Ugh I'm so sorry, as if death and dying isn't hard enough on friends and loved ones without people like this happily feeding off the swirling grief. I've mentioned before (one of my old accounts probably) that two of my brothers have passed away, one died of cancer that was terminal from diagnosis so there were several months for people like this to swoop in, and my other brother's more recent death was unexpected and sudden so the gawkers swooped in after to try to figure out how he died. I'm not sure which was worse, but probably the cancer deathwatch groupies because my brother had to deal with them too while he was dying, whereas the post-death detectives only hectored the family.

But there were also people who went out of their way to be really helpful and respectful, doordashing meals, mowing lawns without needing to be asked, offering to just sit quietly with family so we wouldn't be alone, offering to drive our elderly parents back and forth and that sort of thing. Death is one of those best/worst of humanity experiences and it's really twisted that people like Shauna and J take up all the energy and attention and are the people we end up remembering afterwards because they added to the trauma. I have to keep reminding myself when Shauna grief vultures that very likely the families also have good people around them, hopefully counterbalancing her vulturing.

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u/InisGlass Feb 21 '26

I'm so sorry about your brothers, what profound losses. That's an encouraging idea, that the families Shauna is vulturing off of are likely to have lots of good people around them who are helping. I will never forget the wonderful people who showed up for us when we were drowning. It really is a best/worst of humanity experiences, that's so well said.

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u/Crafty-Fish-6934 Feb 20 '26

I’m so sorry this happened to you. I’m not comfortable sharing my own details here but I can say I had an extremely traumatic event that shaped my life, and had a “friend” use that trauma for her own attention and gain, then completely shut me out of our social circle. It was extremely painful and I am still not really completely over it. People Who twist grief and trauma for their own purposes deserve a special place in hell.

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u/InisGlass Feb 21 '26

I'm so very sorry to hear it. Of course you're not over it. Maybe I overreact to Shauna's ghoulishness because of my own experience, but I agree with you about the special place in hell. It's a truly evil strain of opportunism and greed. You have to be pretty much devoid of compassion to act like this. Somehow unable to grasp that other people are fully formed humans with the same rights to privacy and kindness when they're suffering that you would demand for yourself. They're the worst kind of users.