It can be a big challenge when coming across a toxic "group" like you are describing. Unfortunately, people will go along with "shunning" because they are getting something "they" want by being on the good side of the "bully" or toxic individual that is making it a point to convince others to decide to "unfriend" someone and shun them. Sadly, this happens a lot in different workplaces and "groups" of people.

I worked as a temp for a couple of years and what was nice about doing that is that I got to observe different work environments and the way the people in these environments developed their social groups. It gave me a chance to be a fly on the wall because I was only a "temp" and that meant I was not considered a threat, and often I was invisible.

It sounds like the "threat" you presented was because you were gaining friends and a certain individual was threatened by that. That is why so much effort was put into creating "doubt" about you and gossip that doesn't reflect the truth about you. This can happen anywhere and in any group.

In my lifetime, I have watched some very "toxic" people collect a following. It NEVER ceases to amaze me. I don't really care to get too devoted to a group for that reason because I am not willing to "hurt and shun". It can be very challenging to learn how to "play nice" in the sandbox. If someone is working on getting others to think badly of you and you know they are lying and manipulating, it's important to learn how to develop your own skills of having "your" direction and staying "your" course of being pleasant in spite of. If a person is successful at convincing others of "lies" then what that really means is these "others" are simply not worth your time and investment. The only thing you can do is be "you" and be nice as a person and commit to striving in whatever your passion is understanding how "yes" you will come across others that may be threatened by you and take part in toxic behaviors to remove their sense of threat.

These behavior patterns are part of the human condition, you will never be able to "remove" this behavior in human circles. All you can do is learn about this reality and adjust yourself towards recognizing it and developing your own way of learning how to distance from how these behaviors are intended to hurt because of how someone feels "threatened".

When a person practices these toxic behaviors, often this is resulting from something in that person's past they are compensating for. Actually? This site alone is "full" of all kinds of personal histories that different individuals experience that "hurt" them. One time I visited the forum for NPD and read a thread called "how bad was it?". What I read in that thread was SAD. I read different stories about childhood emotional neglect and abuse. So, a lot of times the toxic behaviors you come across in others is often due to how an individual is compensating for something that person did not get in their childhood. Often the desire to "shun" comes more from how a person wants to rid themselves of a reminder of something that "hurt" them. Yet, this can be on such a deep subconscious level that this person isn't really completely "aware", they just want this threat "gone". This is one of the reasons behind, "narcissists don't know they are narcissists".

Ask yourself this question, "what do all children want?", answer, attention and praise. This is what "narcissistic feed is all about".
We all desire a degree of narcissistic feed.