This story was originally published on Passionfruit.
There’s no better place for normalizing the unusual than TikTok. From furries to reality shifters and adult age regressors, you can find a subculture for almost every interest, regardless of how niche or offbeat it might seem. But no matter how strong these communities are, eccentric subcultures oftentimes have to put up with a lot of hate. In the case of the community of Reborn doll collectors—aka, the collectors of hyper-realistic baby dolls, often used for therapeautic purposes—death threats, scapegoating, and long-lasting reputational damage became a risk after one of their own became entangled with the baby formula shortage scandal.
Reborn doll collectors (often referred to as Reborns) are one of TikTok’s most popular subcultures, with tags like #reborndoll and #rebornbaby amassing over 1 billion views combined. The price these collectors pay for their online popularity, however, can be steep.
Subreddits such as r/RebornsDollCringe inhabit thousands of users dedicated to mocking the collectors, with the subreddit’s description defining the collectors as “real people, with real problems, coping by being as as creepy as possible.” With over 65,300 users, users on the subreddit frequently reshare and mock TikToks by Reborn content creators—with this hate often spilling onto TikTok itself.
