My Love/Hate Relationship with Venus Angelic (-_-;)・・・

Content warning: mentions of abuse, addiction, self-harm, crimes, and hate speech

Hi, everyone! Thank you so much for reading my first lengthy post! I am not much of a blogger, but I like to post my thoughts every now and then!

Today's thought revolves around a content creator who I used to love and adore, and now I am not sure what to think. Her name is Venus Angelic. For those of you who have never heard of her. she was a Swiss YouTuber who was one of the main faces of the living doll trend back in the early 2010s. Her most famous video is a BJD makeup tutorial that skyrocketed her into popularity.

I actually did not start being a fan of hers until 2018 (very late to the party, I know) when I came across the episode of My Strange Addiction that she was on. From the moment I laid eyes on her, I wanted to be like her. She was not afraid to be openly into anime, pink, and cute characters, which were things that I kept to myself at the time. Back then, I was embarrassed to like these things because no one else around me had those similar interests. Many teenagers like to fit in, and I was no exception. However, Venus was such a breath of fresh air for me and my gateway to learning more about different Harajuku fashion styles that I am still a fan of to this day. I also felt inspired by her to start learning Japanese, and when I was in my third year of college, I actually did study abroad in Japan since my Japanese was high enough for the university my school partnered with. (Side note, but my Japanese unfortunately sucks now compared to my Mandarin, and I forgot most of what I studied...)

Because of those reasons, I wanted to know more about her. I watched all of her videos and did a ton of research on her. That is when I went into the deep rabbit hole of her story. To make it short, her mother was very abusive and developed a co-dependency on her. Because Venus was also very sheltered, she unfortunately did not develop the needed skills to function properly in adulthood, especially without her mother. As a result, she ended up marrying a fan who crushed on her since she was 13 and he was 19, and she ran away with him to escape her mother.

Unfortunately, her life slowly went in a downward spiral from there. She had an illegal weight loss surgery, cheated on her husband with another man who she has accused of some horrible stuff, developed an alcohol addiction, got in trouble with the law multiple times, encouraged fans to self-harm to prove their loyalty to her, and even got deported from Japan. There was a period of time during all of this where she was in recovery and seemed to start getting better, but before anyone knew it, she kept moving further and further into her spiral. She is now homeless and has spent a lot of time drunk-posting online. Unfortunately, a lot of it included hate speech and slurs. She also was accused of posting csam in a now-deleted Discord server.

When you see all of this from someone who indirectly gave you the confidence to be yourself and introduced you to so many of your long-lasting interests, you have two feelings at the same time. On one hand, my heart breaks for her. She is clearly not mentally well due to the experiences that she had in childhood. I am honestly hoping that she seeks recovery again and will be rooting for her if she does. But on the other hand, she has said and done some pretty vile things over the last 2 years. Even if she sought help and made a full recovery, I do not think a sincere apology would be enough to move past everything that she did.

This is where I am stuck. I cannot help but feel nostalgic for the "old Venus" as her earlier videos are still a source of comfort for me. I also am a huge fan of the living doll trend and like to incorporate elements of it within my own personal style. At the same time, however, I recognize that she is only a little over 4 years older than I am, and as adults in our mid-late 20s, we know better. I definitely would not consider myself as a fan anymore, but I cannot bring myself to hate her either. Who knows? Maybe she was always this horrible, and her drunk posts just exposed that. You never really know someone based on a curated persona.