My older brother has been pathologically mirroring my identity for the past 3 years

Me- 29m. him- 32m.

My parents raised us all into being sport children, but at the age of 10 I finally realized I never wanted to play sports, and had been more into listening to music which lead to me wanting to learn how to play an instrument. So i convinced my parents I wanted to quit playing sports, and began my path into creating music. Throughout my childhood years I became heavily into art, niche interests, horror, I basically became the black sheep of the family. Was playing in punk bands all through out high school, did graphic design, was so open minded with different things, at age 18 I started getting tattoos and eventually got most of my body inked up. Through out my 20's I did all sorts of art creating and music production, but finally stuck with graphic design being my main point of interest to this day, and solo music making was a side gig of mine.

My older brother stayed on the sports path, became very jock-like, honestly bullied me throughout my childhood constantly making fun of me for being different. Mimicked frat boy behavior, was easily influenced by his friends (aka everyone on his sports teams) and would do anything it took to fit in. He had gotten into a lot of trouble with women (lots of SA), would be a compulsive liar, and lacked a true sense of empathy and emotions. He was "too cool" for anything if that makes sense, like suffering from toxic masculinity.

(BTW we had both had eachother added on instagram for a while, which is where I posted most of my artwork on. His profile was very "college fraternity boy" aesthetic I guess the way to call it, basically just pictures of him and a guy friend at a party wasted etc. This sort of matters because we weren't huge texting people or "friends" with eachother that much to begin with because of his routes he chose in life- but it comes back later)

So 3ish years ago he had a seizure after I believe having a small drug overdose of some sort which lead him to being impatient. From there on out is when this crazy "change" happened. Months later I'm at work and view his instagram story, he had gotten a huge throat tattoo. I was honestly so shocked, it was very gothic style and just seemed so random and out of character of him. Come to find out, he became best friends with a person VERY similar to me - covered in head to toe tattoos, did music production and graphic design, dressed similar to my style, (also happened to be a tattoo artist) etc. Fast forward to months later he's gotten practically everywhere on his body tattooed, and its not like any unique designs or things that reflect what he likes- it was all just cybersigilism which is basically just patterned filler with not much thought process behind it. (Not judging anyone who gets it but for this matter it seemed to make sense since my bro didn't have much interests to begin with). Come to find out, its his new best friend (now roommate at the time) doing it all for him for FREE.

So yea I found this unusual but I didn't let it get to me too much, until I kept noticing MORE weird things. So he deleted all his IG posts and started uploading edgy style photos that showed off his tattoos, whatever right? Until I see a comment of a girl saying "haha we haven't stopped calling you styro since!" (nickname is changed for anonymity reasons). which also was what he had changed his name on IG to recently at the time. NOW, my solo music page was under the name SPYRO (again name changed for anonymity, it's way different and more complex than that) for 6 years at this point.... And I even had let my close friends already call me that nickname too. He had landed on giving himself a nickname so similar to mine that only ONE letter was changed, but still said and sounded the same exact as mine.

At this point I became so uncomfortable and started noticing patterns with his behavior, style, "interests" that all started meshing into just what I was into. -Not to mention, growing up he NEVER wanted to go to any of my bands shows, or care about anything I liked-. I decided to finally delete my instagram because I was too weirded out by this (I was already not really vibing with social media as much anymore to begin with so it was that extra boost I needed for me to just get offline).

Fast forward to months later, he texts me "hey dude I'm thinking about getting the word you have tattooed over your eye, the same word in the exact spot as you, would that be cool?" I straight up told him "Uh... NO!". I began explaining how that felt creepy to me and made me beyond uncomfortable, and that I "get if" if you're influenced by me but that was beyond crossing the line. he said "nah its cool thats why i asked, i already have another idea anyway" and got a very similar word, same font etc. I was so done with him at this point and was tempted to just block him but I didn't

3 months ago. He calls me to "check in on me" and explain he had to move back to our home state (his living situation with his tattoo artist got messy I guess) and goes on this speech about how he ALWAYS felt connected to me and that we should just get our own place and yadda yadda, that me and him were truly the black sheep of the family etc. It was super strange and I had already been living with my girlfriend for 5 years. I had tried talking to him again about how I understand he seems influenced by me and if he wants to genuinely connect with me, he can talk to me like a human being and just treat me like a normal person, if he wants music suggestions all he has to do is ask (stuff like that). Anyway he now all of a sudden wants to get into graphic design, asks me what program I use. I tell him its more about the creator and less about the program, like you have to go into this stuff with ideas and what you WANT to make. He didn't seem to understand that concept, because he has now started using an AI program where you type in prompts and it creates imagery for you. He found one that he pays for monthly and while it's definitely more on the professional side of AI imagery making (not like the cheap google ones) it's still a huge slap in the face for people like me and other real artists who actually put effort into it, not just typing "create me this image with this and that". He has now turned his IG into posting that kind of shit now which is disgusting and lazy.

We are now at the final straw of mirroring. He has, since the other day, changed his online handle to- you guessed it- my handle I was using for the past 9 years. BUT he changed the letter "O" to a Zero in it. It genuinely upsets and hurts me because the handle I had was a song title from a favorite band of mine growing up that no one else had online, it had actual connection to me. It's not some vague or "generic" username, there was genuine reasoning behind it. And my brother has about 2k followers so this isn't like 50 people seeing this.

I don't know if he thinks he can "get away" with this and try to sneak this by me because I'm not on IG anymore, but I texted him a screenshot of it to him and just had the text saying "???".

I am getting sick of this secret "stalker" feeling he has on me. I guarantee you somewhere down this line someone had told him to maybe be more like me, or try to get into hobbies and compared his life to mine and maybe it struck a nerve in him, I have no idea. But he's doing this all wrong, I could have been his friend, now I just want this to all go away. It's bad enough for someone who's not your family member to act this way, but for your own OLDER brother to do this?

Thanks for listening to me vent. I just needed to let this all out because I fear this "small" but revealing stuff I only know about is nothing compared to the bigger picture of what he's doing or acting like IRL when I'm not there.