This page will likely meet with some updates over time. It’s just a look at my personal regrets and feelings about my participation in Aristasia, and reading it may not interest most people. I still felt it necessary to explore these matters on this site. I’ve only written a little bit here so far (as of mid-November, 2024). I started this site roughly a year ago, and I feel as if I’m still figuring things out. I also believe some things might be best left without discussion until I’ve processed them a little more, but we’ll see. Until then, I’ll update this periodically.
It isn’t meant to be my flagellating myself online for having been an Aristasian. I do believe this situation was more complicated than that, for me, and many others. Aristasia hasn’t aligned with my values for quite some time and arguably never really did. I have major feels about it, but beating myself up publicly over it would be unproductive. Instead, I’m doing my best to sort out what actually happened, which is turning out to be harder than I expected, as this site demonstrates. Anyways.
Let’s just say I regret writing “Aristasian Consulate” on the whiteboard of my dormitory room’s door multiple times.
I regret becoming so deeply enmeshed in Aristasia without doing proper research, particularly when my own privilege and access to information later in the 2000s (at schools, etc) allowed me plenty of opportunities if I’d been less thoughtless. The older Aristasians undeniably hid movement’s past from us as newer, online members. We weren’t initially aware of the extent of their ties to fascist groups.
That’s not an excuse, though. Simply knowing “There’s some reason to believe some of these people corresponded with the BNP at one point,” should’ve been enough to give any sensible person pause. I didn’t pause - I just accepted the (majority of) the narratives provided by the core group. Those parts of the official narrative questioned (and there were a few, namely regarding their timeline and history), I mostly kept to myself.
I was raised “liberal” (for lack of a better term), but in an extremely rural, conservative small town in the United States. I don’t live in the United States now, but I did for many years. In my youth, I was even sometimes bullied for not attending any churches and coming from a non-religious family. When word got out that I found both Mulder and Scully attractive, things went further downhill. I was spit on, I was threatened, I was shoved around, but I know many, many queer people who experienced much worse during their formative years. It was helpful that my family was supportive. I grew up sheltered, both from wider perspective on these things, and from just how awful bigots can be.
Time passes, though, and one’s upbringing isn’t to blame after a certain point in cases like this. Prior to the early 2010s, my knowledge about wider LGBTQ and other social matters (beyond those I’d seen demonstrated) was patchy. This was pure willful ignorance because I had plenty of opportunities to learn by that point. That kind of raw, unashamed thoughtlessness can verge on malevolence, though it was unintentional.
I had access to academic resources, not just the Internet, after all. I could have “done more research,” as they say. Heck, I could’ve simply paid more attention in my university classes when the professor was telling everyone about Orientalism and the history of British colonialism. Even at the time, there were many openly problematic aspects of Aristasia I could’ve investigated in detail but did not, preferring to go thrifting and swish around in meticulously-coded outfits in Second Life instead…
You might be surprised, but I actually no longer agree with many of the conclusions I drew following the shift in focus towards anime and Japan. I’ve learned much more about what was really going on back then, and earlier with some of the precursor groups. My sympathy for many (but, of course, not all) of the so-called “Old Guard" sort has, in all honesty, faded, for one thing, but I miss the way the community was in the mid-2000s online.
Is escapism unhealthy?
The only true answer would depend on how you define escapism, and even then, one can expect a lot of nuance. In the past, despite my own beliefs, I compartmentalized heavily and quickly threw the word around. This showed a great degree of hypocrisy on my part, particularly when I took a mocking tone. I sometimes did, especially in private. Now, I only see something as escapist if it encourages a neglect of the present, the here and the now, negatively impacts one’s ability to relate to the world without counterbalancing benefits.
I embrace, to this day, many things that other people might call escapist. I consider myself a therian, and engage in many occult beliefs and practices, some of which are outré even for your average neopagan. To me, these things aren’t escapist in the same way Aristasia was. They enrich the weave I’ve formed with the rest of the world, whereas Aristasia wanted to cut away and secede from said world.
Aristasia, yes, has major escapist tendencies, and those only increased with Chelouranya. That was not why I left, though. I feel like that had more to do with simply not enjoying the anime that was pushed. The truth is, I enjoyed a lot of the escapism bits post-Bridgehead, as many people who feel othered in some way often do. That really does make my ultimate criticisms, later on, even more hypocritical. I ought to have shown more empathy here, either way.
This is especially true given the ample lack of nuance with which I employed the term escapist when freshly having left the group. It’s also worth noting that I put little to no effort into understanding why escapism was so central, and what forces within the movement might have prompted that. As with many aspects of Aristasia, I had every opportunity to at least try to look deeper into things (all things). I regret mocking the escapist tendencies of the group (during the Chelouranya parts and a bit with Goldenhead) rather than trying to understand the motivations.
While I do plan to address and talk about escapism as it relates to Aristasia on this site, I intend to proceed with this all in mind.
I regret lying about my age. This was extremely common in those days. We had a running joke amongst my (online) group of TV-watching loser friends about how we were all de facto nineteen publicly, even though we all knew most of us were in our early teens. Lying about your name and personal info online is sensible for a kid - or at very least not mentioning it. Lying about your age to access spaces designed for adults is, decidedly, unsafe.
We did it constantly in the early 2000s, but that doesn’t excuse it. It’s also rather unkind to the adults involved, many of whom are inclined to assume good faith. This isn’t really on them per se - doing deep checks in such a situation (ie, asking someone to “dox” themselves to gain access to an online space) isn’t tenable.
We see this with groups today who regularly get into trouble for using the “Are you a minor? Prove you’re not!” question as an excuse to gather personal information, ie, scanned IDs, phone numbers. - often from minors, sadly. Most sites just say something like, well, click to signify you’re not a minor. Things have not changed all that much in most online places. It’s not ideal, but it’s better than what (for example) the American Kids Online Safety Act proposes while still keeping the internet as free as possible.
Ultimately, it should come down to adults teaching children how to navigate the internet and putting breaks on it when necessary.
Some parents don’t do that, either because they don’t know how, or just don’t care. In the case of my own family, it was the former. In the early 2000s, the Internet was still rather new. I navigated it better than my parents even at a young age, which complicated things. I don’t exactly blame my family for any of the things I saw (and ended up part of) back then, because they did the best they could at the time.
I guess I don’t quite fault the Aristasians for believing me when I said that I was several years older than my stated age. That said, later on, post-Bridgehead, it became clear that the group had begun made attempts to actively attract younger people. Examples of this include the publication of stories like Goldenhead which, to me now, seem targeted at younger audiences.
The later, Chelouranyan focus on what can only be described as children’s animation also fit with this. I think this was, in part, because the group’s leadership had themselves developed a more child-like mindset over time, but that hardly makes it more appropriate. I was not recruited as part of that era, so it wasn’t a factor with me. It isn’t something I can conclusively speak on one way or another.