AITA for showing up to my friends cosplay themed 30th as Phoebe Buffay?

My friend Rachel’s 30th birthday was this past weekend. (Obviously not her real name, haha) We’ve been friends since college and work in the same industry (a boring one, lol) so we’ve stayed close. I helped with some of the logistics but was not a host or anything.

Rachel has always been into fandom stuff, always has shows she’s watching, fanfiction she’s writing or reading, fan theories and fan projects. I am not much of a fandom person. When I watch shows, I don’t get very invested or engage with fan theories. I also don’t tend to like shows where there’s a big fan following. From what I can tell, it’s mostly stuff that’s like fantasy, science fiction, or paranormal that happens. Forums for shows I like tend to all be “This character is over hater” or “X is a bad person” The closest I’ve come to anything like that is watching a few episodes of Star Trek with my dad as a kid. I usually like real life dramas or fun light-hearted shows like Sex and the City or Friends. (I know the “cool” thing these days is to make a big show about how you don’t find Friends funny, and truthfully I haven’t seen an episode of it in years, it’s just an example.)

For her birthday she asked everyone to show up in cosplay from your favorite series. I will say most of our social group is similar to her in that they like this sort of thing. I’m one of the few odd ducks out. I tried to think of something I could dress up as, I saw some Tiktok of a girl showing off her Phoebe Buffay inspired outfits, and I had a few similar things in my closet, so I went with that.

When I showed up, Rachel greeted me and then asked me what I was dressed as because she didn’t recognize it. I told her. She didn’t know the name, I explained, and she made a funny face and said “I guess that kind of counts?”

I didn’t think about it again until later in the evening when Rachel was talking to everyone and thanked them for coming and saying she’d had fun talking about the cosplay costumes with everyone and how everyone did such a good job, “Except Jessica… but it’s okay, you definitely might have tried!” It’s not like everyone laughed or anything but it was so awkward.

I ended up leaving a little while later because it just felt… off. A couple of days later, Rachel and I were texting and she said “Btw next time I’ll help you pick so you aren’t embarrassed.” I feel like she’s implying that I SHOULD be embarrassed.