How did it become so popular anyway? The "So bad it's good" factor?
(Though to me it's just "So bad it's... bad.")
if you stick around for a decade then you're bound to get popular eventually
(but a large part of it has to do with the unprecedented popularity boom in 2015-2016 that led to the parody works of cookie☆ well and truly becoming cookie☆ itself. What started as cringe incarnate is now a distinct subculture of grating, offputting, self critical and reactionary media with crass humor. I can't think of any other community where someone can follow up their 40+ minute long treatise on creative freedom stifled by self sabotage with a deeply uncomfortable animation about using an onahole, and still be well recieved.)
if you stick around for a decade then you're bound to get popular eventually
(but a large part of it has to do with the unprecedented popularity boom in 2015-2016 that led to the parody works of cookie☆ well and truly becoming cookie☆ itself. What started as cringe incarnate is now a distinct subculture of grating, offputting, self critical and reactionary media with crass humor. I can't think of any other community where someone can follow up their 40+ minute long treatise on creative freedom stifled by self sabotage with a deeply uncomfortable animation about using an onahole, and still be well recieved.)
Marisa and Alice's Self-Contradiction is a great video in general as a lot of the points it makes apply to sub-cultures in general or even wider topics like being an artist in the digital age.
if you stick around for a decade then you're bound to get popular eventually
(but a large part of it has to do with the unprecedented popularity boom in 2015-2016 that led to the parody works of cookie☆ well and truly becoming cookie☆ itself. What started as cringe incarnate is now a distinct subculture of grating, offputting, self critical and reactionary media with crass humor. I can't think of any other community where someone can follow up their 40+ minute long treatise on creative freedom stifled by self sabotage with a deeply uncomfortable animation about using an onahole, and still be well recieved.)
answer
Speaking of Cookie, i did remember watching some voice-drama videos way back, one being Koishi's Nabe Party, the other being the summer festival, and some other, like the thankgiving one, the easter one and that other one with Marisa. It was a time that i didn't knew what cookie was, and i just liked them just for the voice-acting (it was also a time that i seen the fanimes based on touhou project like memories of phantasm and a summer day's dream, as well the M-1 grand prixes (the latter that kinda also introduced me into touhou), but at the same time, there were also some in japanese that i did saw once but never got the oportunity to saw them again (like one cookie episode in which sakuya, reimu, marisa, sanae and youmu got a sleepover and that reimu got sick, and another that had Nitori and Hina doing stuff). I did saw them all just like they we're like any other fanime... (or, video montage stuff like osana reimu or kkhta, except without being too sad or gory).
But then, i did saw the self-contradiction, and i was... "kinda" schocked (but not too much since, because i watched DITR a lot and read the guides, i was kinda expecting the same to happen, except that Yukari in this was actually a good girl rather than just a "evil villain" ) that cookie wasn't a part of the touhou community, but rather a sub-comunity of... "extreme" fans of the characters...'s voice actress, as well as their history too (i did read the wikia page of cookie, and i was kinda schocked that the manager of the very first cookie video (cookie kiss) kinda threated the actresses with something bad, making it seems that the voice drama were maded agaisnt's the voice actresses's will)
as well that would explain about most's of the stories's plot being "cheesy" and why those voice actresses weren't "serious" when recording the lines for the videos they uploaded. It was also interesting that in the cookie community, most people could get an "avatar" based on a certain character of thefranchise, and could get to have a male or female voice when recording... (something i did also learn in Self-contradiction, specifically with the sealing club's "cookie freaks", they "kinda" looked like renko and merry, but they got some "costume" change, kinda like they we're working on some corporation, as well, the voice sounded male despicted being female avatars.). But because of that, the characters themselves would lose everything that was them (canon stuff) and get repleaced with the author/artist's traits, story, and other stuff (maybe even also the already maded fanon stuff too, to give the characters more dynamics), making the characters just be the image, but their actions are the one being made by the people they cast in, making them feel like empty shells of themselves...
As well, we also see how's the life of a newbie in such a big, big community, and what do they do to get the attention for their fans (kinda like how i was back when i first joined danboruu, i first saw it as an outsider, but when i entered, i was attonished of everything it had, it's was kinda like a gold mine, and soo, i dig in through some of the stuff i like, and then, i did commenting too... some that did cause some "enemies" with some of the members, but they did gave me some advice on how to comment on stuff... and then, i did also started to upload thing too on the server, some got up, others got down, but i didn't fight back because i didn't want to give me a ban, soo i kept it for myself... and also, i did learn how to make pools for the images i uploaded and fav groups for the images i like...) these people are always curious of the surrounding they're in, and sooner or latter, they will become the very best thing the group would have... at least until someone else's who's better than them gets to steal their spotlight of fame... (it's also ties back with DITR, because in that same story/4-hours walfas movie, we get to see the lives of a gappy that entered a new place (gensokyo) and it stayed there for as long as they wanted, at least until they know that this place can be dangerous and death threats are a priority no. 1 on these sort of places... the only differences was that, while ditr/gensokyo the longest a gappy could live was like 3 months or so, in the cookie community, you could live like a lot of years on it, but it's not the same without it's dark side, such a the fundamentalists as well as getting banned from doing bad stuff on it too...)
my point is: try do some research of a community and read the guides before you enter if you want to avoid any troubles. as well, it's never to late to stop doing what you're doing and go "outside" to do something completely different (even if that would make you less what you used to know about, this is kinda like an example with some artists, in which they suddenly stop of doing a series and they started to do different stuff, like from another's series, or even their own original art too...)