Cosplay Community is filled with an amazing artist, enthusiasts, and outgoing otakus that love to dress up as their favorite character and have fun!
Cosplayers take so much effort in designing their costumes, finalizing their make-up, getting ready for the event, carrying themselves throughout the event with confidence and elegance. It must be so much fun to cosplay!
Mariah “Momokun” Mallad is one such cosplayer who was getting popular around 2017. She is a plus-sized cosplayer, she was very close to the heart of the cosplay community. She attended a lot of conventions, cosplay events, etc. as her favorite characters.
Why does The Cosplay Community Hate Momokun?
After some incidents back in 2018 the cosplay community grew to hate her. Why does the Cosplay Community Hate Momokun?
Incidents at LVL UP Expo 2018
LVL Up is a Video Games and Anime Convention held in Las Vegas, Nevada each year. It is a famous convention for all cosplayers, video-game enthusiasts and of course anime fans.
Momokun, at the stated time was a popular cosplayer and would attend these conventions very often and many a times post a lot of content on social media from these conventions and even stream to Twitch.
So at this particular event, Momokun had evidently sexually touched two different people, a guy trying to visit a booth and one of her female cosplayer friends.
While playing a fairly normal game of Truth and Dare and recording (maybe streaming) it with one of her friends, a guy could be seen in the frame trying to browse through the items at her booth.
Instead of informing the person by tapping on their shoulder, you know as any normal person would, Momokun grabbed the guy’s ass.
She was immediately confronted by a person off-camera pointing out that she just grabbed his genitals but she proceeds to shake it off by saying it was just to get him out of the way. This was the first incident at the expo.
At the same expo, this time streaming on Twitch with two of her cosplayer friends, she grabs onto the breasts of one of her friends and calls them squishy.
She then tries to grab the breasts of the other person who is holding her phone but this person swats Momokun’s hand away reminding her that it is live on Twitch!
These two videos went viral after this event and thus began the hatred for Momokun in The Cosplay Community.
Twitter Expose
Around the start of July a brand announced on Twitter about how they were getting Momokun to attend their booth at an Anime Expo by Creators Guild.
This tweet led to a barrage of sexual harassment accusations. A lot of people spoke up about incidents similar to those that happened in LVL UP Expo.
Cases of Momokun, grabbing inappropriate parts of another person’s body, pulling their top down, touching sensitive areas emerged from these tweets. There seemed to be a ton of people who had similar experiences with Momokun and now they had a platform to speak fearlessly.
As a result of several accusations, the brand and the expo had to heed public demand. They made several tweets in response to the barrage and obviously canceled her meet and greet in order to control the damage but the fire had already spread.
The Blame Game
After the surfacing of several such incidents on Twitter Momokun issued a comment on the subject matter through her Instagram handle “@btsmomokun”. I wouldn’t call this an apology, it was more like damage control.
She realized that she had wronged people and had offended a lot of people in The Cosplay Community. She posted a series of stories on her Instagram and she seemed to be taking this matter lightly.
She blamed her actions on a disease, ADHD. She stated that because of her suffering from ADHD she can’t think properly and gets all touch feely and publicly harrasses people. Now that is the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard.
She later issues a public apology video, in which she still tries to blame her actions on ADHD. The apology video is piss poorly made, in low quality and even feels forced at times.
Current Events
After being cancelled by The Cosplay Community from events, expos and other gatherings she turned to other platforms, mainly social media to get out her content to her auidience.
Momokun has been active on Instagram ever since the incidents in 2018, she has been constantly creating content for her audience.
After her official apology the community decided to give her another chance, this is very controversial and the public opinion being that she is not held accountable for her crimes, in her place, had it been a guy, he would’ve probably faced several lawsuits and would be canceled forever.
In conclusion, the cosplay community has forgiven Momokun and she has been given another chance at the events and expos.
