One of the hardest things for second generation cult survivors1 to reckon with is the mixed feelings about one's childhood. No matter how awful the cult was, if you spent your childhood there then every happy childhood memory takes place in the cult. So when you try to condemn the cult, you struggle to say that it was "all bad" because you have so many happy memories of the cult and you are the person who you are today because of the cult. Every positive quality you have, the cult takes credit for. After all, did you not learn that while in the cult? Were you not raised by the cult to have that quality?
You can only see the actual experiences you had as a child in the cult. You can't see the childhood you would have had if your parents did not join a cult. You can imagine easily the absence of everything you have because of the cult, you can't possibly imagine the endlessly unspooling ripple effects of a life that took another path. The version of you who was never in the cult perhaps would have had a happy childhood too, and would look at your life and say "that cult would have stolen from me all of my happiest memories." But you don't see this. You only see your own life. After all, the version of you who was never in a cult also could have died in a traffic accident. Who can say.
It's so easy, then, to feel gratitude to an institution that stole your childhood and abused you. It becomes easy to attribute everything positive about yourself to the cult, and the cult is more than happy to take credit for it. It's impossible to know who you would have been otherwise.
But this doesn't only happen with cults. This happens with any community or place where you spend a significant amount of your time for a long enough amount of time. If you are in a knitting circle from ages 20 through 30, then that knitting circle will "be there for you" through "all of your ups and downs." That knitting circle will inherently become majorly impactful and important in your life because you've been in it for so long. You can easily see how they were always there through every life event, but you don't think about how if you had instead joined a bowling team for ten years that your bowling team would have also "been there for you through all of your ups and downs."
The same goes for a long running Dungeons & Dragons campaign, or any fandom. People will give a corporation like Wizards of the Coast credit for helping them meet their spouse. But the thing is, if you spend so much time in a space, then of course you would meet your spouse in the space where you spend the most time. If you had been in a different fandom, you'd have probably met your spouse in that fandom instead.
And this also applies to websites and social media. It was very emotionally difficult for me to let go of Mastodon when it became a place dominated by left-posturing kiwifarmers. After all, I had met two partners on Mastodon, one of whom holds the title of longest relationship I had ever been in. I met so many important people in my life through Mastodon. My brother met his spouse on Mastodon. I could go on endlessly about important life experiences I had because of Mastodon.
But also, I spent all of my time on Mastodon for the entirety of my post-college life until I left in 2021. I was living in a pretty rural area for three years and basically my entire social life outside of work was through Mastodon. What wasn't through Mastodon was through Twitter. Quite obviously, Mastodon and Twitter would have major impacts on my life, it was where all my time went!
I'm very grateful for having met all the amazing people I've met because of these two websites where I spent so much of my time, so of course I don't want to imagine a life without them. So, naturally, it leads to this conclusion of like "I'm so grateful to Jack Dorsey and Eugen Rochko for connecting me with the people most important to me in my life :)"
But Jack and Eugen don't deserve the credit. You deserve the credit for creating spaces for the people you'd connect with most within the spaces available to exist in. You deserve the credit for seeking out and finding the people who you would come to love and you deserve the credit for loving them and making those relationships work. You deserve the credit for growing as a person and learning about the world with an open mind. Twitter and Mastodon are not the cause of who you are today, they are the backdrop. They are where you met these people and became who you are, they are not why you met these people or became who you are.
A funny thing happens in the modern age where you will find yourself meeting the same people over and over again through different spaces and surprising shared connections. We are all pulled towards the places and people who make us feel whole. It is quite possible that if you made different life choices, you still might have met some of the same people. It's impossible to know.
It's impossible to know who else you would have met, what else you would have accomplished, if you had spent your time differently. If I had spent less time on Twitter and Mastodon, perhaps I would have spent more time reading books and writing things that I would try to get published through conventional means instead of posting as threads online the moment I thought of them. Perhaps that would lead me to meet people in writing and poetry communities. Perhaps it would have lead me down a completely different life path and the version of me in that life path would say "I'm so grateful for the Northampton Writer's Workshop where I met my wife and honed my craft to become the successful writer I am now. It was through writing that I met my community" and so on and so forth.
Or perhaps I'd have spent that time joining more offline community organizations. I'd have focused more on offline friends and stayed in that small town. Or maybe I'd join an online dungeons and dragons campaign and be so very grateful to Wizards of the Coast for helping me meet the dungeon master I'd end up moving across an ocean to be with.
Or perhaps I would get lonely much faster and leave that small town much faster and have ended up in Boston and through the local furry scene met my irl boyfriend anyway without the Internet. Then I would say "I'm so grateful to the furry fandom for helping me meet my boyfriend and my entire community who has been with me through ups and downs."
Or perhaps I'd have moved to some other city and met different people.
It's impossible to know. But the only constant factor is you. You built this life. You built who you are. Twitter Inc. did not turn you into a compassionate and passionate person who cares about injustice. Twitter Inc. did not make you transgender. Twitter Inc. did not make you an honest person who is enthusiastic about the things you care about. Twitter Inc. did not make you smart. It was important because it was a constant. It was the background to everything that happened. But you would have always found a way to care about the world. You would have always found a way to meet people who you would love and cherish. You would have always found ways to learn and grow as a person.
After all, there are plenty of people on Twitter who did not become intelligent funny left wing transsexuals surrounded with love. They, in fact, became stupid fascists surrounded by toxic communities that reinforce self hatred and hatred of others. That also happened on twitter for many people. In the same way that every day in Tokyo someone falls in love and someone else has their heart broken. Tokyo did not break their heart.
The cult I grew up in is where I had all my happy childhood memories. It is where I learned to be outspoken and unapologetic and oriented towards the collective good. But there are other 2GAs I grew up with there who went on to be selfish idiots. It's not why I had happy childhood memories, or why I am who I am. When I accept that, it makes it easier to accept those happy memories and cherish them, because I recognize they are not in contradiction with all the ways that the cult abused me. When I accept this, I can accept every positive quality in myself that the cult would take credit for, because having positive qualities does not contradict that the cult was abusive. It is impossible to know what other lives could have been. That's OK. Through every life I could have lived, I am still me, and you are still you. We would all be so very different, and yet quite possibly shockingly the same.
Anywhere you spend your time will be important to you, if you spend your time there long enough. That's OK. You do not owe that to powerful people who suck. You are the one who made it important. You are the one who accomplished all those things. You did that. On any other life path, you would have done something else worth being grateful for.
Recommended Reading: The Midnight Library by Matt Haig.
- 2GAs ↩︎