identity politics + narcissistic validation… that don’t really exist on the same level in the east (+ part of it is saving face culture, although idk how japanese anon boards are faring in this aspect), and asian drama generally doesn’t overspill to the western fandom unless it’s coming from kusomen types
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I could give a fuck about any of this fandom nonsense, cuz I don’t engage with any of this shit. But GODDAMN you hit the nail on the head with this.
Narcissism permeates so much of online culture today that I’m not surprised it’s so rampant in these spaces.
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I personally think it’s people who worship mana sama, but gazette fans are kinda crazy, and dadaroma. They happen to be my favorites I’m really obsessed with the gazette, though I stay away from the fans they are weird… I’m actually pretty new to vkei? Kinda- I got into it around the end of 2023. I seriously wonder if there are any vkei fans still alive in 2024… oh well. Whenever I tap about vkei, people have no idea what I’m talking about
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Being obsessed with Malice Mizer, Mana or Gackt is a big red flag to me. There is an certain kind of person in that fandom that really wierds me out. Used to be more common in the past tho, nowadays they moved to tiktok and are rarer in the wild
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It’s always been like that as far as my experience. VK is something only some of the more hardcore weebs/anime fans knew about.
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I totally feel this and handle things like that myself.
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I have to agree on the Mana/Gackt/MM obsessed people unfortunately.
I’d be a liar if I claimed that Malice Mizer is not the object of a lot of my own obsession (in much more of an “admiring from afar” and appreciating their art way than these individuals), but I’ve landed on a part of TikTok where I mostly block their fans. I try to have some empathy - most of the ones I block are just 13-15 year old kids and I definitely remember how I acted about certain bands when I was a lonely and bullied young teen, and I know that the vast majority of these people will grow up and cut it out within a few years like I did - the circle of life. It just really gets insufferable.
Same jokes (“Me listening to MM pretending to be a vampire,” “this vkei girl (Mana)… is actually a MAN!!! AND HE’S 50 SOMETHING YEARS OLD,” “me testing the “I listen to everything” person with -insert most normal sounding vkei song here-,” “Klaha come back,” posting this one video of someone from Golden Bomber(?) singing Gekka No Yasoukyoku with various cringe worthy captions) same misinformation, same weird arguments over Gackt, really weird parasocial statements. The repeated jokes are just a bit cringe and repetitive to look at as someone who is not a 14 year old, and those ones I simply block because I don’t want to see the content. Other things I see are downright off-putting and strange.
Unfortunately because I still interact with the small amount of decent vkei content on TikTok I still get pushed the other half of TikTok vkei content. A lot of them are also into Kaneto Juusei, Dadaroma, sometimes Versailles. There’s a few more but I can’t recall any of the others right now
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All the stuff above sounds like a regular tuesday in the european fandom circa 2005-2010 except back then there were more than the dozen vk fans we have left now.
In Finland the amount of people who’d sleep outside of the venue for some bands must’ve been inching close to three digits before the venues stepped in, and I remember walking past one of the parks in Camden for one of the shows and it looked like the coast of Calais with all the tents the weebs had pitched there. And I remember some shows from Germany where the outside of the venue looked like the police station from Assault On Precinct 13 with all the weebs waiting for the band to board the bus (yeah I did too, good times)
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Yeah I remember standing and waiting for despairsray after the show just to see them without make up.
And there were enough sleeping infront the venue too.
But past that, those deleted posts were unfortunately posts that targeted certain people on purpose. And even if we have threads like this, to complain, we don’t need finger pointings in here to pick out certain people.
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Dimlim, malice mizer, mejibray and gulu gulu
Ran into a couple of crazy fans of these bands. Altho i love all these bands its unfortunate that there are some fans that a bit too eccentric within their fan base
Mejibray: At this point MiA welcomes the toxic. Also met a fan who claimed they met MiA and knew someone who dated him or something. Mind you, i knew more about the band then her. Make that make sense 
Malice mizer: (Read other comments above)
Dimlim: I had met a fan who would non stop spam and talk about retsu like hes some sort of god or something it was really cringy. She would go into Retsu’s dms a lot and try to spam message him on multiple alt accounts. When retsu blogged about how he was depressed she thought that she was the cause of it and complained to me about it.
Gulu gulu: Heard rumors about why the band broke up and it was indirectly related to thier fan base. The overall comments i saw after their break up was enough for me to understand how incredibly toxic some of these fans were. Then again Ai isn’t a innocent cookie. He has rather… Some… questionable tastes on what beautiful art is considered. This was a debate that spawned a bunch of drama.
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I have recently been liking posts on differents social medias and interacting with some VK fans. Last time I did was like in 2015, but I kinda regret it lol now I think i’m just gonna back to appreciate Visual Kei by myself.
Some things never change and back in the days there were already ( always ) crazy/delusionnal/dumb/annoying fans but damn, I feel like a lot of K-pop fans turned to Visual Kei since then ( or are interested into both ) ( PS : Not like it’s a bad thing !!! except for the parasocial BS )
But I feel like some " radical " ones are projecting the Kpop fangirls culture into Visual Kei ( once again, not like VK didn’t have groupies etc.. before, but the fandom dynamics is definitely different now i feel like ).
Anyway, to give concrete exemples :
Gulu Gulu, Kaneto Juusei ( for some reasons those two hate each others lol i remember the beef between the two some years ago ) and, Jiluka !!! fans are the worst to me 
Those three fanbases are particularly cringyyyyy, delusional, and overall annoying and loud for nothing.
PS : Honmei is the new Oppa 
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Its cuz those 3 fanbases online are basically teenagers😭, i just avoid interacting with them
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back in my days on lj, it was definitely genre-related arguments between fanbases. why do you like that poppy colorful shit, the ero guro fans would ask. why are y’all so depressed all the time, the oshare kei fans would ask the nagoya kei fans. it was every day with this. and it’s like you can’t just enjoy the music no matter what it sounds like? dabble in different genres now and again? glad to see things haven’t changed with some of the younger/newer generation hahaha
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Might be an unpopular opinion, but I don’t think that certain bands have THAT much more of a toxic/cringe/crazy fan base than others.
There are two main factors with fans that act like this:
First and foremost, they are just way more visible than “normal” fans - they stick out of the masses in concerts, they are very active on social media, etc.
The second thing is age. Teenagers are much more likely to show behavior that other would see as toxic, crazy and cringe and they are also more likely to develop parasocial relationships and get too involved with their favorite artists. (Obviously, not all of them - but due to maturity, general brain development, life experience etc. it’s just much more common for teens to behave like that than for adults).
And Teenagers also tend to be much more active on social media, socializing with other fans and going to concerts. So if you look around on concerts and social media, one could think that the target audience for VK is in general quite young. But the poll in this forum regarding the age of us showed that at least on this board there are lots of adult VK fans, too. They are just much less visible out there.
Speaking from personal experience, I also had contact (through friends/acquaintances, visiting the same events, etc.) to some very cringey people who took their love for certain artists too far. Mind you, this is not just connected to VK, same applies to gothic and other subcultures. For example, the sister of one of my friends tried to “brand” herself with HIM’s Heartagram logo.
I’m quite sure nearly everyone of them “grew out” of this behavior, it’s just part of growing up.
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All fanbases suck because fanatic groups tends to have their head Up their asses. And when you put them together, stupid stuff comes out.
In VK, I have particular opinions about X Japan/Yoshiki fans and Plastic Tree fans.
Regarding Yoshiki’s, those fans come across to me as habing leaving behind any shred of critical thinking to a level I’ve only seen on religion or polítics. They simply have absolute faith in the Guy regardless of what is clearly happens and how that contrasts with what he ways.
The Pura fans I have interacted with have always present themselves as arrogant and gatekeepy.
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I don’t know about most but has anyone seen the comment section on Yoshiki’s facebook/insta/twitter accounts?
Middle-aged women giving unhinged vibes all around.
And i don’t have a clip on hand, but i’ve seen a livestream of one of his super expensive dinner shows and his fans there seem well and truly crazy. Like they paid A LOT of money to be there, and all sense and decorum goes out the window once he’s within 20 feet of them… And the guy doesn’t even care about his fans? Very strange imo.
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As a middle aged woman, yes, we can be as unhinged as 16 year old girls, the age doesn’t really change the simping.
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Do you also comment under your fav’s posts like this?
Yocchan
︎𝐺𝑜𝑜𝑑 𝑚𝑜𝑟𝑛𝑖𝑛𝑔︎𓈒𓂂◌( ˶˙ᵕ˙˶ )
I hope your day is going well っ ̫ ᴗ⸝⸝˘
Today i brought my puppyto the park(ง ˙˘˙ )ว
i hope your puppy is doing well
Take care(｡･･)ﾉﾞ see you♡*
The simping isn’t the unhinged part, it’s the way they type that looks crazy lol
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yoshiki haters will always be more cringe than yoshiki fans. i will be taking no further questions at this time.
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Maybe a bit cringe with the amout of emojis but overall wholesome.
Also, Yoshiki is middleaged as well so even if the comments were sexually unhinged, I’d prefer that over teenager writing that kind of stuff to him 
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