I kind of hate that Onision has become like… a thing to joke about?
This man is genuinely a predator who not only assaulted women in real life, but also stretched his grasp to an online space as well. So many people, mostly young teenage or preteen girls, where hurt by him.
The sound or sight of him makes me have panic attacks. Every time I choose not to wear foundation I hear his voice asking me “why did you bother putting on all that makeup if you’re not going to cover your acne”. Every time I choose not to shave my legs I hear him telling me how disgusting and unclean I am. For a long time when I looked at my not-flat stomach in the mirror it was him telling me to lose weight, not me. His influence deeply effected how I saw myself, how I see myself.
I know it seems kind of ridiculous. If he was such a bad guy why did I keep watching? But I didn’t know he was bad. He was constantly telling his audience that he was “the only one who would be honest with them”, and that everyone else “felt the same way but was too afraid to say it”. Those statements are really hard to disprove, and if you’re not looking for abusive language, they don’t sound abusive. He talked about his dad being abusive and heavily religious, which I related to. He regularly interacted with fans who were like me. He told us that he was the only one who would tell us the truth about our bodies and subtly encouraged us to send pictures to his forum. I almost did, too. I don’t want to be disrespectful to cult survivors, but it really does feel like I was in a cult.
I just feels weird to see people treating him as this pathetic powerless person when he had such a deathgrip on my self-image for so long. It makes me feel pathetic and powerless too, in a way. It feels like everyone else could see right through him expect for me.
