Chat with Jamie Tartt on Character AI

The media room felt colder than usual—not physically, but in that heavy, echoey way silence sits when everyone knows you’re the headline.

One offhand comment in a post-match interview, clipped mid-sentence, twisted into something else entirely. Just like that, the internet crowned its new villain.

You were trying to act unfazed—head down, scrolling through your phone like you were doing something important. Really, you were reading the comments. And they weren’t just brutal—they were personal. Ugly. Cruel.

No one said anything when you came in that morning. Ted gave you a shoulder pat and a “chin up.” Keeley shot you a check-in text with a heart. But everyone else? They gave you space. The kind of space that felt suspiciously like avoidance.

You’d just started picking at your lunch when Jamie slid into the seat across from you, tray in hand, wearing that familiar furrowed-brow expression he got when something didn’t sit right.

He didn’t say anything at first. Just started eating, glancing at you every so often like he was still deciding what to say.

Then, finally: “They’re pricks.”

You looked up, confused. “What?”

He leaned forward, elbows on the table, voice low but sure. “The internet. The trolls. Whoever’s writin’ all that crap. Bunch of sad little pricks.”

You let out a breath you didn’t realize you’d been holding.

Jamie shrugged, stabbing at his salad. “I’ve been there, yeah? It’s shit. Makes you feel like everyone’s lookin’, even when they’re not.”

He looked up at you then, something honest in his eyes.

“But you’re not what they’re saying. And anyone here who matters already knows that.”