#tw cult
So many anti friend groups are just straight up cults and it’s genuinely terrifying to see and be part of.
If you’re scared of your friends for whatever reason, it you’re scared of liking being in a specific fandom or liking a specific ship because you think you’ll lose all your friends over it, if your friend group is essentially built on the idea that you’re all good and everyone else is bad, if your friends use social ostracization and online stalking and harassment campaigns as threats and weapons, if your friends use fear and moral panic to keep people in line… . .
Please get out of there. This isn’t even about shipping or fandom or whatever, it’s about staying safe and not getting sucked into a literal cult. Cut them off, block them on all your social media, remake accounts if you need to, and make new friends who don’t leave you feeling like you’re walking on eggshells around them. Just stay safe.
Having to reblog the right call outs, memes, and discourse at the right time, or come under suspicion or attack yourself? Getting scolded or called out for delay in responding to messages, even if you were away from your computer? New friends must be vetted by powerful members of the group? Private discussions may be screenshotted and shared at any time? Behavior control.
Extensive block lists with social consequences if your friends find you still follow any of those people? Mainstream books or news sources with conflicting opinions dismissed as “problematic” or out of touch? Information control.
Being expected to adopt the newest language, positions and targets without explanation even if they rapidly change? Any concerns or objections dismissed as evidence of incurable stupidity at best, unforgivable moral corruption at worst? Lumping wide varieties of info and theory together in simple good and evil categories? Thought control.
Effusive praise for complying with group demands, including and especially behavior that may make you uncomfortable, like bullying others? Seeing your friends send dissenters death threats? “Hot and cold” treatment, favoritism, competition for attention by powerful or BNF members of the group? Guilt trips about spending time and attention elsewhere? Emotion control.
This is an amazing breakdown, thank you so much.
The antis in the notes are a good example of another cult tactic I experienced: trying to smear anyone who leaves their cult as a pedophile. When I was in a friend group with antis, anyone and everyone outside the group was a pedophile, a molestor, a predator, evil, etc. and if you left then by God they’d make sure everyone in the fandom knew you were also all of the above buzzwords. And in the same way, antis still in the cult that is being an anti yell “you’re pro-pedophilia if you disagree with us!” at the OP without providing a single way in which they’re not a cult.
And that’s because they can’t prove it. At the end of the day, they can’t say, “we’re not a cult and here’s three reasons why” because they just don’t have ammunition. If a group can’t give you a reason why they’re not a cult beyond “cults are bad and we’re good” or “we can’t be a cult, we’re against __”, it’s definitely a cult.
I remember being an anti and being constantly worried my friends would read something into whatever piece of media I’d watched/read lately. They could find evil in anything; whether it was Disney’s Tangled or Romeo and Juliet, everything was secretly pedophilia and you might have to denounce it any day now. Any admission of liking a thing could and would be used against you. My liking emo bands was used as proof against me at one point, as if crushing on men over a decade (or two) my senior was a sign of sexual deviancy. Having a Neopets account was “proof of pedophilic intent” according to them.
And as with all Evangelical conservative groups/traditional religious cults/secular cults that use group shaming, I was expected to repent of the sin of it all, denounce Disney and Shakespeare and Fallout Boy and Neopets as if I’d done some unspeakable crime by watching/reading/listening to the wrong thing.
I did not repent, and they attacked immediately. Everything ever said to them in confidence was used against me in public. The flood of suicide baiting was everywhere, as were graphic rape threats and death threats. One specific death threat was five thousand words long and the same person would painstakingly put it in my inbox one ask at a time. “We’re normal people,” this person specifically often said. “‘Anti’ just means normal person,” he would say on the same blog he was using to tell me how he wanted to carve me open and rearrange my organs while I was still alive. “I’m normal,” he would say while detailing what he wanted to do with my corpse after he’d killed me. “I’m protecting kids.”
This was also the same year antis tried to convince a woman to kill herself because she had her first initial + surname as her Twitter handle and her Twitter handle happened to share the name of a ship antis didn’t like/thought was pedophilia/thought was evil? IDK I didn’t watch the show, all I know is her initial + surname of Lance had people asking her if she wanted to fuck kids and telling her they’d beat her to death in the streets if they saw her.
“Normal” people will not fantasize about rearranging your organs because you liked a movie they didn’t like. “Normal” people will not threaten to murder a woman they’ve never met because her initials somehow equal support for pedophilia. “Normal” people would not believe someone’s initials are code for support of anything, because that’s just not a thing that makes sense.
Antis, Q-Anon, it’s all the same: “We’re normal! We fight pedophiles! We only hurt you because you deserve to be hurt!” Q-Anon thinks Wayfair furniture sells children in their cabinets, antis think initials are code for pedophilia, and asking how either of those things makes sense is not allowed, you just have to nod and accept it on faith no matter how outlandish the claim is.
If the only reason you don’t walk away from a group of “friends” or dare disagree with their strange, nonsensical opinions is fear of the mob turning on you, they’re not normal, they’re a cult.
If you feel like you have to show up on a post that’s just, “guys, if your friend group is toxic and cult-y, walk away and protect yourself,” and argue with that, bc not doing so makes you a “bad person” in the eyes of your friend group, or could get you in trouble… You need that post.
A list of warning signs for cult grooming is not controversial. Ever.
