All i gotta say is teach em young
My love for yaoi started at a very young age i was about 10 or 11 and smut wasn't anything i was new to but yaoi and bl manhwas literally changed my life i started reccomending it to my sisters and my very close friends now it's become a drug that i can't get out of my system and i don't wanna go to rehab.
booty
Messages
i wish i never got into yaoi manwha anime or whatever in the first place, as crazy as it sounds it literally made my life go to shit, finding myself depending on this stupid fuckass fiction no way you are literally saying ‘teach them young’ when all this does is destroy them, closing their gap from reality to the point where they cant even differentiate it.
Sorry to cause confusion in the title when i said "teach em young" i was talking about the toxic stuff we probably all of went throught when we first found shit like porn and yaoi for the first time, it was a reference to the fact that we were exposed to his type of stuff at such a young age some by curiousity and others because the adults around them didn't give two fucks, i also want to close this whole thing but at the same time i'm so addicted i can't do a whole week without reading that gay shit
hard relate. i see this whole experience as a net negative on my life/my personal development/growth as a person. i think the drug comparison OP makes is kind of scarily apt bc i have been trying to "get clean" and it is so much fucking harder than what i'd have expected. my life is pretty empty bc i spent an ungodly amount of my teenage years reading manga and fanfic. so when i put it down, i have no structure to cling to, because all these years it did nothing for me. It's all I have ;-;. Yaoi is empty!!! Life is kind of empty too but it's better than Yaoi!!! Choose Life!!!!
i also left a long ass comment on this post but the "i dont wanna go to rehab" thing tells me OP might be in too deep
mb bro i thought you genuinely meant to just introduce it to them but nah u hella right though, just wishing i had restricted internet access when i was younger
good god the way you explain things just hit the spot girl you sure got a way of explainin experiences fo sho but yeah the most ive been clean from yaoi n all this shit was prolly only a week, which op couldnt do but i did think about it every single second, like making my own interpretation of shit when im trying to fall asleep or just WHATVERE NONSENSE
it sounds like you really need a break. your experience sounds utterly exhausting, and it's so relatable it kind of scares me. it's like every waking moment you're on a rollercoaster and you can't get off. and every time you go back to yaoi that's just more fuel for the ride. What you need is to switch gears. the rollercoaster thing has happened to me sometimes when i get really fixated on something. I guess my biggest advice to you is to think, are these thoughts/behaviors helping me, or giving me any value? Why am I doing this? Or if you recognize that your thoughts are getting repetitive/obsessive, sort of shock yourself into switching gears with some new stimulus. Just force yourself to do something completely unrelated, watch something completely unrelated, get up and take a walk outside. Even just read something super boring, a textbook could work. And if you can't do it, force yourself to be conscious of your decision and not just mindlessly plunge back into the rollercoaster.
I also struggled with a video game addiction-- I thought "I put in 500 hours in this game. What did I get out of that?" and realized there was nothing of real value in 99% of games. There is artistic value in some games, but I don't think designing them as an addictive experience is ethical. Because most games are designed to just eat up all your time. They want you invested, and ready to pay, and putting in your hours, but you don't get anything from that. We just want more, more, more, from everything. There's no "final satisfaction" that can ever come from games, yaoi, fanfiction... Consumer mindset.
this is really sad. i fell down the same rabbithole at the same age and am only recently making my way out. it's been so hard!! maybe stop talking about it so much to other people in your life? they probably aren't as into it as they might seem. this is overall i think not the most enriching thing we could do with our time. it might provide a temporary relief but so does a cigarette.
i've been trying to restructure my life prioritizing activities that give me lasting benefits, with real value that accrues over time. yaoi is at its worst an opiate for some great pain or perhaps just emptiness and lack of purpose in your personal life. Sure people can have a healthy relationship with cigarettes, but yaoi can be so much more time consuming than cigarettes! it demands a lot more attention. in terms of literary or artistic value most yaoi is equivalent to hallmark movies or even just cheapy pornos. There are a few shining exceptions to this rule of course, but yeah, mostly crap. Especially manhwa?
Anyway, I'm not sure if you're at this point in your journey with BL, yaoi, fanfiction, smut, what have you, yet. You might still be quite young and at 14,16, I was too weak to pull myself out of the vortex, although I'm glad I didn't dull my pain/emptiness with something more harmful physically or financially. But I lost so, so much time. I will never get back all those hours I spent reading yaoi/fanfic, in the years where my brain was most primed to learn, absorb new rich information, grow, I was just reading fluff and dust. Just trash. I came to terms with the issue at 18 and have since been trying to get clean so to speak.
Did yaoi shape me into the type of person I want to be? I think media has the power to shape a person, and I don't really like the person yaoi shaped me into. Largely empty. I wish I'd read more real books, with real, powerful ideas, that enriched my understanding of diverse areas of human experience. Not just... i don't know what most bottom-of-the-barrel yaoi even has to offer... Diversity???? Thrills? Soap opera shit?
This is a warning, maybe you're at the same page as me maybe you aren't. Maybe you have a healthy realtionship with yaoi (though your comparison to a drug reminds me of my own experience).
In any case, i felt like evangelizing just this once. Sometimes we can get stuck in echo chambers (this site, fujo culture at large, tumblr) that dont even explicitly encourage this sort of empty consumerist behavior, because it seems so naturally good and fun to obsess over. And I wish that I'd started to consider the consequences of this way of spending my leisure time much earlier, that I would have been ready to accept a new perspective isntead of stubbornly digging my heels in.
It's N E V E R too late to change, but it can be LUCRATIVE to spend your early years well, engaged in activities (as an active participant not just a spectator) that will help you transform into who you want to be in the future. I imagine you don't want to be a fujo at 20? 25? 35? There are old lady fujos out there. It could be possible in some nihilistic edgelord delusion to respect people who've done this with their lives, but if you want something else, then you aren't going to get there automatically. Life is about input and output. And if your input is yaoi your output likely won't be ideal.
Even if you decide "yeah i get joy out of writing fanfiction/drawing manga" (not a passive activity, so kind of better?) then you will still be better off consuming real shit, and putting the emphasis on creating. Go for like a 15 consumption/85 creation ratio to start with. Reading a great novel after you've tried writing one yourself is surprisingly a much more enlightening experience than just reading one itself. You'll appreciate the skill in art so much more once you've tried your hand at it.
all in all, the best HP fanfiction is written by people who've read more than just 7 books. You need to be a person to make things. input/output. You can't be empty. and yaoi is one step away from emptiness my friend..
Sorry that this was crap.
silly enough for me to say but you actually got me thinkin bout my life in shi, just how long ive been rotting away reading the same shit over and over again for what?? entertainment?? satisfaction?? i shouldve stopped when my sister found out all those years ago, she gave me a clear warning to not do this shit again and here i am, 3 whole years later. it genuinely pains me that with all this time ive been spending on this site i could have been getting top marks in class making my mother proud and not worrying about my future by prioritising that time for study and revision and now all i can think about is the manwhas ive read and inputting that in my daily life, i dont even think i can go a day without thinking about it. that cigarette expression you used to describe this is literally how it is. my whole life basically revolved around this dumb ass shit. and the worse thing yet is that i know what im doing is wrong, i know this is literally chipping my life away slowly yet i crave it more i grow tired of it, like an addiction to nothing but half-heartedly lust, its silly i know but damn you got me thinking.
you people are so wise had to break a tear to this one but really anytime i look back at it i wonder what i love about it so much i don't only read yaoi for the porn i also read a few for the plot and somehow it gives me mix emotions i wanna go back to being innocent so badly rn
tldr at bottom
yeah, plot can give you some nice emotions. i know exactly what you're talking about. i loved reading tragic stories where i could feel my heart clench at a painful scene. i think it's a form of catharsis, especially when we're dealing with pain in our real lives, having this simple story to clutch to can be a release. i also think feeling connection and relatability with characters can be part of it too-- again, making up for an absence of people you can emotionally relate with, open up to, and share feelings with irl.
it's almost worse than how i think men get addicted to porn, because i think women (at least i'm assuming you're a woman?) get an emotional release from yaoi that's not just pure pleasure -- which is much harder to move away from. it's a feminine tendency, makes me think back to grandmas addicted to watching hallmark feel-good movies and those sappy commercials for kids with cancer.
but in the end i think recognizing how addicted you are is a good first step. i have so much regret for all the time i've spent on yaoi.
the fact that i came back to this site again is because i'm in a dark place right now... and i think all the people who come here instinctually without even thinking that what they're doing might be moving them further away from their goals, that it's a substitute for what they really need, are all in dark places too, without knowing it. fangirl culture /fandom culture completely ignores this and declares fandom as healthy with no further investigation. All the fun discussion and sharing what makes you squee and what you think's hot and bonding over this shared interest- it can be a very fun diversion/distraction. but it's not healthy
if you're in a dark place right now, i would say the first step is to face your problems. stop relying on escapism.
1. Imagine your future, what kind of person do you want to be? What kind of relationships do you want to have? Do you have new skills, more charisma, art, writing, music, science, coding, math? What brings you joy in life?
If you have a hard time imagining a joyful future, optimism/dreaming/positivity will be something you need to practice. I think relying on internet jollies for our joy can block out all other sources, since it's so fucking easy to get this empty meaningless pleasure from yaoi. Warm fuzzies...
again with the drug comparison, if you've ever known anyone addicted to heroin, fentanyl, other opioids, they start to abandon all other parts of their life except those that are directly related to getting them that next hit. Joy from spending time with their family? From getting a promotion at work? From creating something beautiful? From helping others? All of this joy isn't as intense and simple as the heroin. So they restructure their lives so it's absolutely optimized towards getting that next hit, and nothing else.
The movie Trainspotting (recommending viewing for anyone struggling with addiction, although yaoi addiction is definitely less severe than heroin) sort of woke me up to this. Addiction isn't something that we fall into completely on our own, eventually having a social circle who all have their lives arranged in the same way that you do starts to reinforce your own toxic behavior. All your surroundings are doing it too, so you don't bother to question it.... The analogue of that for yaoi would be like, having a fujo friend group or being online in fandom spaces, twitter, tumblr, instagram. Just spaces centered around squeeing, that for many substitute for any real friendships.
TLDR; i'm begging and pleading with you. Think about your goals. Don't forget about them. Don't fill the void with meaningless warm fuzzies. don't forget about the kind of person that you want to be, what kind of relationships they have, what skills they have, what they've accomplished, what they are able to do. And don't forget that every second of your life you are becoming someone, and what you do with your time determines who you will become. Prioritize creation over consumption, it's more difficult but more fulfilling.
If i could give someone else all the years i've lost to yaoi it would make my wasted years a little more worth it. Don't try and drop it all at once, don't try and replace it with something you hate, find something you actually love doing that isn't a temporary pleasure. Something that enriches your life and you as a person. Creating art and writing I think is an excellent release, but there's community service, studying (most people don't enjoy this unless they're very aligned with their goals, so that might not be possible rn), just so much beyond reading yaoi.