The new wave of hatred towards ALNST is causing me a lot of frustration.
Hey hey hey, guess who's making a new post TO COMPLAIN AGAIN, but this is about something a bit more personal and serious, so please stick around and listen.
Yes, I know Alien Stage is popular, and because of this, there are going to be a lot of people who will dedicate their lives to hate on it, I know that, but in this case (and in several others that I'll mention later) there's something that makes me deeply sad.
At first, I wanted to make a post about how people misinterpreted Mizisua, but surprisingly, I found a large number of haters who dedicated a lot of time solely to hate on Mizisua, and therefore everything related to alnst, including her fans, videos, and music, including Vivimeng themseves (which included quite unpleasant accusations about topics I won't mention, but you know, THAT kind of accusations). And these weren't opinions that garnered a lot of hate; rather, they were quite accepted and received thousands of positive responses. This just makes me wonder, WHY? What drives you to hate a product and everything related to it so much that you dedicate entire accounts to hate on it and accuse the creators of HORRIBLE things without proof, just to hate them?
...I mean, Vivimeng don't have a very public life and it's difficult to defend their "innocence" without sounding parasocial, but it's difficult to stay silent about it, MUCH MORE when it's not the first time that people have made things up about them and it all eventually lead up to very bad consequences.
What saddens me most about all of this is what it represents for queer creators. It would be easy to say that this behavior comes from homophobes or prejudiced people who want to see series like alnst cease to exist, but the truth is much sadder... We have people from our own community hating on and accusing queer creators of horrible things without any basis, saying that the work itself should never have existed, accusing the fandom of being "fetishists" or "closet homophobes," that everything related to alnst and Vivinos is objectively bad, and that if we don't accept it, then we're fanatics who can't take criticism, and basically comparing the existence of this indie YouTube series to literal IRL ATROCITIES (I wish I were joking).
But you know, this kind of excessive hate always follows a pattern. It's not my first day on the internet, so I can recognize what happens when something becomes popular enough:
The work starts to gain recognition, and then everyone praises it, saying it's one of the best things they've ever seen and recommending it. The fandom grows and becomes huge enough to include "cringe" or controversial people. The work ends, goes on hiatus, something happens to the creators, or it simply experiences a drop in quality. Some random person comes along and says, "Um, guys, unpopular opinion..." Everyone chimes in, saying it was never good and that the fandom is one of the worts that have ever existed. It becomes the new scapegoat of the internet, and hating on the authors and fans for no reason becomes common. The fandom practically dies or becomes very quiet, and the hate goes quiet too. A new popular work appears, and the same people who hated on the previous work say it was always good and use it to hate on the new popular scapegoat.
Yes, well, we already know how it works, but in alnst's case, something more specific is happening: hatred towards indie creators (specifically queer or "inclusive" creators). This is something I realized while watching Talking Vidya's (a Spanish-speaking YouTuber) video about "the cannibalization of indie artists."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeYP378WcdU&t=14s
(If you know Spanish or are interested in the topic, I recommend it) Even if I disagree with some points in the video and feel it oversimplifies several things, the video makes a great point about how the internet has been increasingly trying to destroy indie artists who create explicitly queer or inclusive content, waiting and anticipating the slightest slip-up on their part to have A REASON to hate them, and to treat the work and the fans like idiots. But the sad thing here is when the community buys into the story and joins in the hate, thinking that it will genuinely make them better people or that the hate is justified because it's for "fair" reasons.
This just makes me wonder, what are we doing? In other or larger fandoms, our mere presence causes controversy, and if we want to enjoy a ship or a headcanon, we are hated and mocked, with people from that spaces saying thet"This isn't a place for us, and we should do our own thing." But what happens when we do our own thing? That's right, our own community cannibalizes us.
This is simply sad. I'm an artist who wants to create explicitly queer stories in the future, and Alien Stage and Vivimeng have given me a lot of inspiration during a somewhat difficult time. Seeing an openly queer couple succeeding and creating memorable stories and characters, even in a homophobic and conservative country like Korea, fills me with emotion, and it hurts to see how easily people dismiss this.
I don't mean to imply that alnst is immune to criticism, that all indie creators shouldn't be singled out for anything, or that if you're part of the community you should like every work made by its members. Obviously not. I just want to encourage reflection on this, especially during Pride Month.
Ahhh, more long texts with bad English. Please forgive me, okay? I was less patient with this one while proofreading, but at least I hope I can share my frustrations with some of you. :c
Posted Jun 3, 2026, 1:39 AM UTC