This all makes sense when you frame it as a bunch of teenagers looking for an excuse to exclusively eat junk food
fifty cents, December 28, 2014, 11:49:26 pm
Except the pine needle tea and the worms.
I feel like it's less looking for an excuse, and more people who already mainly eat junk food having a miniscule reference pool.
Also, as someone who, as a dumbass kid, would've been into this stuff if I'd had tumblr at the time, most of it is just kids trying to deal with internal issues and a sense of not belonging. It's a lot easier to deal with loneliness and being terminally weird and awkward when it's because you're secretly a super awesome thing that's cool, especially when there's a group of like-minded outcasts who accept you and get your jokes and think you're neat (as long as you all reinforce each other's delusions). Otherwise, your choices are narrowed to "I'm fundamentally broken and will never be happy because I'm not like other humans," or, "the fundamental assumptions I've built my social interaction around are broken, and now I have to relearn how to human from step 1, and will never be happy because I won't be at the same level as my peer group ever."
Honestly, I doubt most of the people involved in otherkin will sustain their silliness past early adulthood. A lot of it is just conformity with a social group; once they've got better access to multiple social circles, they'll be a little less inclined to keep up the delusion solely for the sake of not being alone.