Wait, is this real?

For a long time I thought it was all a joke. “Hey, wouldn’t it be funny if we made these little 2D anime characters do sexy stuff?” A giant prank that everyone in the community was in on but me. Turns out it’s not. Gacha Heat is a real thing and some people are super into it.

By the way, I’m gonna be using “Gacha Heat” to refer to both Gacha Heat and Gacha NSFW. I know that they’re technically different, but the difference between the two is so minor, they may as well be the same thing. 

Defining Gacha Heat.

So what is Gacha Heat? If you’re reading this you probably already know, but for the 6 of you who don’t, Gacha Heat is content made with characters from the Gacha Life or Gacha Club apps, except it’s also porn. You can recognize it immediately: the characters almost always have a blushing, cross-eyed, drooling expression called “Ahegao”. No idea how to pronounce it. 

Your initial reaction is probably disgust. How could someone take these cute little anime-looking creatures and turn them into porn? Or did I just answer my own question with the word “anime”? Doesn’t matter. Point is, it’s pretty gross.

How it happened.

I think Gacha heat may have been unavoidable. I mean, all the pieces were there. You combine a character customization game with a demographic that’s currently undergoing puberty and hasn’t figured out how to deal with it yet. A demographic that’s constantly looking for media to contextualize those feelings, and for ways to express them. Frankly, we should have seen this coming. Gacha heat wasn’t a tragic accident, it was inevitable.

But “inevitable” doesn’t mean “good.” Gacha Life and Gacha Club are still mainly directed towards children. The prevalence of pornographic content means that eventually children will invariably stumble upon something they shouldn’t be seeing. I’m sure many already have. 

When does sexy stuff become creepy?

As a general rule, I have no issue with sexuality in media. Sexuality is a key part of life, and to deny it is to deny a significant part of the human experience. Much of the greatest art has centered around it.

But these works had a much more profound and nuanced understanding of the sexy-times. They might address issues that are left unsaid or help people to better understand their own relationships. 

Gacha Heat is a lot more superficial. It tends to focus on the surface-level stuff, which always amounts to porn. Worse still, a lot of it seems to delve into some very fetishistic fantasy. My problem with Gacha Warmth is not, “Oh no, what if a kid sees a boob?” My problem is that the kid will see a Youtube video titled, “Alpha Boy + Softie Girl + Cat-Femboy UwU part 7,” or whatever and think to themselves, “Oh, is this what sex is supposed to be?” It’s not. 

Why it matters.

Early experiences in the pre-teen and early teen years will often affect a person’s sexuality into adulthood. If they’re exposed to something too niche and too early on without any context, they might end up with a warped understanding of their own sexuality. This can be fixed through therapy, but many kids either won’t have access to it, or lack the self-awareness to know that anything’s wrong. We can’t possibly know how constantly showing this stuff to a 10 year-old will affect their lives going forward. 

Okay, so what do we do?

I’m actually not 100% sure on this one, but I know that something needs to be done. People don’t change just because you want them to. And I’m not talking about things like the “Gacha Heat Police” or anti-gacha heat subreddits. Those aren’t helping. 

We may have to rely on the online platforms themselves, as hopeless as that sounds. Youtube, Tiktok, Reddit, Instagram, and Twitter. Dear God, twitter is a Gacha Heat-hellhole. I might do a video or article, something to make them more aware of what it is and what the harm might be. Typically they haven’t been very reliable on these sorts of issues, but this might be the only way to deal with it. 

Actually, that might be pointless. If there’s anything I’ve learned from the past 8 months of being on Reddit and Discord, it’s that these online platforms don’t give a shit. Even getting them to act on cases of sexual harassment and grooming is a goddamn nightmare. But I won’t get into that now. That’s a much bigger topic. 

Another option is to get parents involved. These online platforms need a reason to care, and the only thing that seems to move them is fear of public vitriol. Nothing packs more vitriol than a wave of angry Karens.

Use one evil to defeat another? I feel like I’m on the right track, I’m just not sure if parents are the right answer. I dunno, I’ll think about it.