In order to talk about what made me leave the anti cult, I need to preface this with what made me join it.
In about 2014-2015 or so, I ran in three major circles- (small)fandom, otherkin/fictionkin, and the general neurodiversity community. It ended up that a lot of my mutuals ended up being either young folks fresh to the sj scene and ready to drop anything anyone claimed was ‘bad’ at the drop of a hat, otherkin that only ever had been exposed to tumblrs hellpit of a community and thus had poor boundaries and thought they had to be ‘critical’ of past life beliefs, or had largely untreated ptsd and were making a lot of content related to living with and coping with trauma.
Each of these had a rapid downslide into anti-dom that forced you to also adopt those beliefs or be pretty much barred from the content and communities you wanted.
One fandom I was pretty active in was warrior cats, a high-drama fandom already, quickly gained a lot of cliques with the motto ‘im gay and im mean and I like revenge and people who arent Exactly as educated and opinionated as me about tumblr drama cant follow’ because radfem infestation. It was so bad that any person with over 200 notes on a drawing that wasnt just a silent art dumper was almost guaranteed to be an anti. It used to be quiet on tumblr, then bam! A bunch of 15-20 year olds rejoined the nostalgia train while half high on radfem juice and if you wanted to even reblog regular content, you had to express anti ideals, or at least be quiet on the topic in a way that indicated you were too traumatized to talk about it but were totally also an anti.
Meanwhile, the otherkin and fictionkin communities, getting ransacked by trolls and filled with people who just thought it meant ‘relates to this thing a lot and roleplays as it’ on top of the community rules for interacting with wider fandom or content creators from the lens of a past life(ie- Dont, and separate yourself and your past life/parallel life/whatever from the fictional media very similar to it, for that matter) being tossed out the window here, quickly fell victim to the ‘that gross pairing/fic is wanting ME a REAL person to be harmed this way!!1!!’. Id almost link the degradation of the meaning of otherkind and fictionkind and the careful boundaries that have been cultivated for years to anti culture through this ‘you are hurting ME!!!’ thing, considering a huge amount of those high on ID culture are also antis. But thats kind of off topic and I digress.
Meanwhile, radfems injected ‘kink is people making light of your YOUR trauma’ into traumablogger circles and things went from gallows humor, self help posts, and support chatter to quite a lot of ‘look at these people who get off on people being hit, getting off on the thing that traumatized me how dare they!’
Suddenly, with all the places I frequented going kind of batshit over shipping and kink, I was kind of forced to convert or lose all of the people I was sort of friendly with. And also, because people seemed very hurt about it, I didnt WANT to hurt them and soon ended up following anti focused blogs.
The blogs and their circles were pretty much cults. They isolated you, you could only follow if you werent following non-antis or you get blocked and publically ridiculed, they alternated shoving untagged triggering content into feeds and rewarding people for ‘braving’ the Problematic tags to get people to block, blacklist, and publically ridicule. They were cruel, fucked up, and held a creeping sense of paranoia.
They were also very rewarding. You had people who would back you up in ANY fight at the drop of the hat, they would all follow you and answer your ask games, promo you to their followers, give you that sweet sweet affection and friendly interaction, you always felt like you belonged… So long as you followed the rules and stayed Pure.
Id do anything for a friend, at that point of my life, and they touted themselves as the best of friends.
I got out because of the aro/ace discourse, actually. I noticed that a lot of blogs just. suddenly hated aro/ace people. I unfollowed the ones that didnt hunt you down if you unfollowed, and followed a bunch of those who supported ace folks.
Over time I noticed like half of the Inclusionists I followed were pro ship, and read their rebuttals. The hard evidence was sound and I slowly transitioned into anti-anti/pro ship places. As anti circles tended to have a high url-change rate, and discourse blogs have a roughly 1-2 year shelf life at the most, I steadily unfollowed them as they became 3 weeks/a month inactive and made a lot of posts about how I was ‘unfollowing a bunch of blogs so sorry if I unfollowed you’ and soon, I was left with only a few mutuals with anti leanings and nothing else. I went back to my old ships and was so much more psychologically stable for it.
It wasnt ever much of anything anyone really said in a discourse post that convinced me, in the end. It was more the ‘this is a fucking cult’ over the beleifs of the cult itself that got me out. The ‘hey we can both agree that ANY suicide bating is wrong and there is no reason for those people to be cruel’ was more effective than attacking the actual beliefs. Attacking the beliefs in any way just flings people into a blind hurt rage, especially with how we (or the circles I was in)were trained to respond to those arguments. Every other post on our dash was that, and you just, white it out after while, auto responding the same copy-pasted chanting they gave us as ‘resources’. You CANT listen. Not until you are on a topic that we werent trained to react messily to. Then you can begin to unravel it.
To be fair, not every anti has my experience, but for those who run with a hub Discourse Blog that when lurked on, shows cultlike behavior(which is most of the big ones with active campaigns), yeah there isnt really an argument that will work, we have been programmed, for a lack of a better word, to not really hear it once the topic comes up. And the big names themselves simply cant lose their grasp on their followers, not if they dont want all their careful work training their attack dogs to end with them mauled by their own pack. Im not sure at all how to try to rehabilitate them, or if its even possible, but I hope you find a way. Most of them are deeply upset people and they need a chance to heal, too.