someone just replied to me on a thread and i responded to their post, but when i submitted my post the ping went through as "user not found" even though the user just posted right above me less than an hour ago. they are not frozen, because they don't have a line through their username. hovering over their username just gives a broken image. trying to visit their profile (whether by clicking their username or typing the url manually) just redirects to mine, like it does when you're trying to look at the profile for a username that is not in use. searching their username via the 'search subeta' box provides absolutely no results.

the thing is, their post is there; their avatar shows up; they even have two forum stars. i haven't encountered this with any other users. this doesn't even seem to be a forum issue; it's just like... they don't exist somehow. anybody have ANY clue what the deal could be with that?

the user changed their username and because the cache is slow, their new username hasn't shown up yet on the forums

I followed their UID from their HA into their recent posts to get their username

oh huh idk why i didnt actually consider that but...ok.