Aesthetic Ethnostate: The Very Real Pipeline From 2020 Animal Crossing Player to Brutal Fascist Dictator
- Rowan Wiley '27
- 5 days ago
- 3 min read
The very same people who were once dominating TikTok for-you pages with their ‘cutecore Animal Crossing islands’ have now become fascist figureheads, a trend that experts cite as both common and inevitable.
2020: a time marked by isolation, tragedy, and most universally experienced of all, boredom. With nowhere to go and most non-essential face-to-face interaction being discouraged, much of the nation found itself in an odd position. With these constraints in mind, some began to turn to an item of childhood comfort and nostalgia, video games. These games allowed escape; escape to wartorn worlds, endless puzzles, and island retreats. Conveniently, Animal Crossing’s latest installment, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, was there.
ACNH (Animal Crossing: New Horizons) was released in March of 2020, just a week after quarantine was announced. The game was a national sensation, with players worldwide praising its “calming vibes” and “charming atmosphere.”
Sects of players began to emerge within this gaming culture: fishers, collectors, turnip traders, and the most influential of all, the builders. The builders dedicated hours of their newly freed up schedule to perfecting every last little detail of their islands, utilizing what limited furniture the game offered in order to match their islands ‘theme.’ Many popular themes during this time included seasonal islands (Christmas, Halloween, etc.), royal islands, cityscape islands, and more. Players built entire cities out of trash cans and lava lamps, castles from simple brick walls and hat stands.
The creativity of these players, it had seemed, could be limited by nothing. However, there was one aspect of the game that stood in the way of these otherwise perfectly curated islands. The villagers.
A crucial aspect and main appeal of the game since its conception, the villagers serve as the populace of a player's island, meandering about watering flowers and doing yoga. As the game progressed throughout the years, as did the number of obtainable villagers of all shapes and sizes, with ACNH amassing a total of 417 possible residents. The residents who move in are typically randomized, with limited ways to truly control who takes certain plots of land. For the builders, this became a problem.
“He was just so.. Ugly. He ruined the entire aesthetic with his dumb devious face,” details a former player, describing her encounter with villager Moose. “My island was fairycore, yeah? It was cute! I had frogs and bunnies and stuff, but then came along this ugly little sideburn-having mouse. He just… I’m sorry, I don’t think I can go on,” added the anonymous player, who later described herself as bursting into tears at the memory of the terrorizing mouse.
For these players, though, a solution arose as rumors of one simple trick began making their way throughout the community. The strategy was simple: harassment. In hitting villagers with nets, invading their personal space, and becoming an overall annoyance, players attempted to convince these unconventional villagers to vacate their homes.
This seemingly innocent motivation of having an “aesthetic island,” however, may have more repercussions than initially suspected.
“It’s an ethnostate,” one researcher comments. “Just because it’s pink or cutecore doesn’t make it not an ethnostate,” she added, remarking on how normalized this trend of harassing unappealing villagers into hiding.
This realization became a joke of sorts amidst fans, with one Redditor replying to a post announcing an all-deer island with “congrats on the ethnostate!” What began as a joke, though, is beginning to take on a more worrying form.
Numerous reports of children as young as seven striking friends, classmates, and in rare cases even strangers with bug nets simply because their outfits or appearances are “ruining the aesthetic.”
“Ruining the aesthetic of what? Burger King?” One victim who would like to remain anonymous comments, describing the confusion experienced when she was suddenly approached in the middle of a meal and whacked with a net.
The rise, experts say, comes as little to no surprise for those who have spent time studying the trends. With regularity comes desensitization, similar to that which experts were previously worried about in the case of games like Minecraft encouraging youth to punch trees and “yearn for the mines.”
Many fear, however, that this issue may only escalate. “First it’s villagers, now peers, and then what? Entire countries?” one such concerned onlooker commented.
Nintendo has neglected to comment on this matter, maintaining its position as a family-friendly and wholesome game platform. For now, there is little more to do than wait and watch as yesterday's cutecore island influencers become today’s leaders of the modern rise to fascism.
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