College Cults

...and some thoughts about 'em.

I recently read Donna Tartt’s THE SECRET HISTORY. I enjoyed it while I was reading it—the writing was nice and crisp and the parts about being from California and exoticizing the East Coast were fun. (I grew up on the East Coast and always thought of California as an exciting, glamorous and alien land. Sometimes I’ll still be driving through my neighborhood thinking how amazing it is that I live with palm trees.)

I ultimately found the whole book-

MEGA SPOILERS!

-kinda disappointing, though. It introduces a fantastic element, or at least an element of mass hysteria—a bacchanal that really puts you in an altered state! but after this revelation, most of the book is about anxiety and day-drinking. After the murders, the college kids mostly sit around jawing, worrying, and showing off their erudition, and I wanted to know what the deal was with the bacchanal.

MORE LARGE SPOILERS

We never find out what the deal was with that, let alone get some kind of big supernatural manifestation at the end of the book. Everything just sort of peters out.

I suppose this might have been the whole idea, that transcendent experiences might only knock once or twice in your life, you get all fired up, you murder a few of your classmates and then you have the rest of your dreary life to look forward to, the “waste sad time,” as Yeats would say.

Leaving the audience frustrated instead of ending with a bang is what makes it Real Literature and separates it from a hack job like MOBY DICK.

The characters in THE SECRET HISTORY were all pretty amusing and resonated with me, as they combined extreme book-learning with a complete lack of sense. I felt superior to them, but maybe I shouldn’t, because I too was in a cult in college.

Well, I was on the periphery. Without going into too much detail, it was a nerd drama so extreme that there are several hours of youtube devoted to it. It was a group of people who thought you could marry anime characters by writing fanfic about them and thinking about them REALLY HARD. My best college friend was very deeply into this, and then she fell in with an extra culty, very online Svengali and compulsive liar, very much a recurring type of the sort featured on the BLOCKED AND REPORTED podcast.¹ She would influence lonely college kids by acting as a sort of anime boyfriend facilitator.

I’m not sure how much I really believed in this…I think, even then, that if an outsider asked me how this all worked, I’d admit that it was a glorified combination of playacting/meditation, but honestly, I found it seductive.

I was really nerdy, shy, overweight, and bespectacled. I liked men, but I was so awkward around them that I assumed I would never be able to talk to real guys, and the idea that I might be able to shortcut the three D’s (dating, dieting and domestication) and go straight to having a gorgeous (but regrettably, non-existent!) boyfriend, was genuinely appealing.

I had a few snippy online conversations with Svengali where I tried to play along, but, thank goodness, she never got her hooks into me. I’d like to say it was because I was very clever, but mostly it was a combination of outside factors, chance and laziness.

1. When I was done with my first four years of college, I went off to art school on the West Coast, removing myself from these people spatially.

2. A lot of the kids in the anime cult were alienated from their parents, who didn’t share their interests. In several instances, the parents were stodgy, unsympathetic Christians, if their children were to be believed. My parents were Catholic, but both of them were always happy to discuss doctrinal matters in detail with me if I had questions. My parents also didn’t watch a lot of anime, but my dad was at least opinionated about it! We also watched tons of live-action Asian movies, so if I wanted to have a conversation about my interests, I didn’t have to go to online boards full of crazy people to talk about them…I could talk to the crazy people in my own household!

3. Most of the folks in the cult were into one particular anime, and I thought it was merely alright. I had a crush on a different anime character. At the time, I was into TRIGUN. I liked Vash the Stampede—the spiky hair, the humor, the long red coat…oh, that coat! Alas, when I went off to animation school, I learned about frame rates. I realized Vash’s frame rate was too low (a cost-cutting measure typical of underbudgeted 90’s anime) and that it just wouldn’t work out between us.

   

1. Highly recommend! Also, for another take on toxic female playacting, check out Peter Jackson’s HEAVENLY CREATURES.