My experience: I'm a "snowflake generation"/"zillennial" and I was super into kawaii/decora/fairy kei, basically very over the top cutesy j-fashions as a teenager. I especially liked the baby motif. I loved stuff with big pastel safety pins on it for example. However I felt I had to move away from it when cute tumblr got taken over by the "caregiver/little" age regression kink community. Especially DDLG. I felt like my online home was being snatched from me so I started to distance myself from something I cared about. And even though I still like cute pastel clothes to a degree I feel like I can never wear them without feeling like one of those people. (Even though as an adult I need to dress more practical anyway.)

Later on when I was in college one of my friends got deeply involved in an abusive ddlg relationship and I distanced myself from her completely. It hurt because she was one of the friends who got me into pastel j fashion and I felt like creeps had fundamentally ruined something like those clothes to the core. I felt like she fell victim because they were controlling her using interests she already had. That only reinforced my desire to reject things "for kids" to not seem weird and I feel like I stifled myself from taking part in things that would have made me happy, like wearing a heart on my shirt, dammit.

My questions for you all:

Did kink mess up anything you loved or make you feel like you had to change? And what is your opinion- Do you think something can ever be truly benign once it's associated with a kink?