About YandereDev - When You Feel Lied To (TW: Heavy Vent)
I try to stay out of online discourse. I honestly think a lot of stuff is really petty and unimportant and just background noise.
But with what’s happened recently related to YandereDev… I feel like I should to talk about it this time.
If you don’t know, we recently got 100% confirmation from Alex “YandereDev” Mahan that he did have illicit and inappropriate interactions with children. This has caused the fanbase he has put together over the course of ten painful years to topple down and collapse.
And for all the stuff I’ve put up with relating to him and his game… for some reason, this time hit personally.
I was a kid when I started following Alex back in 2015. I won’t say exactly how young, but I will say, by every metric imaginable, I was young. I was autistic and reclusive and found comfort in the online world, so to see someone put so much effort into putting out something he hoped everyone would love. He wasn’t the start of my love for art, but he definitely pushed a large phase in my creativity forward.
For nine years, he went through controversy time and time again, and for nine years, I supported him. He was someone I genuinely looked up to- someone I thought was smart and funny and cool and good-hearted. Someone I wanted to be like.
But despite that, in the back of my head, there was something telling me he wasn’t worth trusting. Something telling me he was an incel or a creep, even if I didn’t know the words at the time. That only grew with time, as well as my general disgust at the kind of content I was subjecting myself to. And I had started to think it more consciously with each rumor and controversy, and I began resenting him more for morphing the person I became, whether intentionally or not…
…but this- this was it. This was the final straw. This was the moment I truly realized just how much danger I had put myself in. To think that someone I looked up to- someone whose work and voice had permanently etched itself into my developing brain forever- was nothing but all those horrible things I had told myself and so, so many others had tried to tell me too.
I will never blame my younger self for making dumb decisions- I know better now purely because he didn’t then. But, looking back on all of it now, there is one thing I wish I had known from the very start:
Trust yourself. When you feel something, say it. When something isn’t right, say it. You may not be 100% on everything, but you have a conscience for a reason, and you have a right to be happy, and you have a right to speak up for other people and yourself.
I’ve felt betrayed before- I know now I was just being dumb and taking things without a second thought, but I was hurt. The people I was told all my life to trust with my life turned into the people who I wanted to never see again, and I thought that they were targeting me when I had been nothing but nice to them, and I found it so hard to understand- and even now, even after I know those people have good intentions, I don’t think I do.
That was a dark time in my life. I felt mad all the time. I felt depressed all the time. I felt like my body wasn’t worth anything and that I was being both underdramatic and overdramatic at the same time. I felt like curling up into a ball and just… ceasing to exist.
I wish now that I would have spoken up then. But I know that if I was in little me’s position, even with the knowledge I have now, I would do the exact same thing.
But I want to make things right. For myself.
So today, September 27th of 2023, I, Príncipe, am leaving Yandere Simulator. For good.
I won’t delete anything from my channel- I wouldn’t get anything from doing that anyways, and though I don’t like it, I will have to live with that part of me forever, so why bother?
To the person that this man victimized, I’m sorry. I made this about me and refused to even mention you once in hundreds of words. But also, thank you. Thank you for being strong and speaking up and not giving up through all this. You’re so brave and I wish I could let you know that in a way that’s more personal than the bottom of a YouTube description.
To my followers, this will hopefully be the last time I ever say the name “Yandere Simulator”. I know that most people who view my content have no interest in that, but for the few who stuck around, I hope you understand.
And to Alex, it’s been fun. Really, despite everything I’ve said, I enjoyed being part of your community and following your game. I felt genuinely happy at moments. But it’s time to let go. I’ve given up and all I can hope now is that you get the help you so desperately need.
Thank you to everyone who bothered to read this all the way. Stay safe.
Príncipe, someuncreativity