This article intends to provide a 'very compact' description of the Cookie☆ phenomenon in a readable format, without the excessive footnotes and timestamps for specific events, which allows this article to read more like an essay instead of a hodgepodge of barely relevant items.

If you want a 'simple' definition of Cookie, the best that I've come up with:

“Touhou-themed bait-and-switch for Japanese gay porn that's built on internet harassment.”

If you 'still have questions', well, that's what the damn article is for.

Marisa and Alice's Cookie Kiss was an infamously bad collaborative Touhou Project fan video uploaded to Niconico Douga on February 14, 2010. As the Touhou Project community reacted with scalding criticism, it landed in the hands of Inmu fans, a subculture that makes fun of bad amateur Japanese gay porn which they discovered through a college baseball pitcher's scandal, but we're getting a bit off-topic here.

The project was directed by Hazuna Rio, an author of subpar yuri slideshow videos, who didn't like the Inmu fans flocking to it. Inmu fans tried to respect this, creating a separate 'Cookie☆' tag, then Hazuna Rio filed takedown requests which pissed them off. Nine months after the upload, the project's voice actresses started voicing their complaints about Hazuna Rio, some claiming sexual harassment.

With a pissed-off Inmu community, the internet was eager to dot-connect and found out that Hazuna Rio was apparently a man in his 30s. This revelation made the project's cast of mostly high school girls¹⁾ and all his expenses (e.g. airplane trip, dinner, high-class studio) look suspicious in retrospect, which was enough to run Hazuna Rio off on November 10, 2010, though he, most likely, simply abandoned the name.²⁾

After the project's first anniversary, the Cookie☆ community realized that they would die off unless they find new material to latch onto, experimenting with SanaTore, Cookie☆☆ S1, Kuso Inu☆, etc. They eventually latched onto Taisa's works, namely Cookie☆☆ S2, which kicked off the shameless trend of faux 'voice drama'³⁾ projects that wanted to seize the spotlight but failing to capture the essence.

Following Taisa's retirement, the Kusso☆ series, by Atouda Ako, stood out for being genuine Touhou Project shitpost parodies until he took a crack at the format with Kusso☆ S3, a monumental work which introduced many iconic 'characters'⁴⁾ that still permeate Cookie☆ MAD culture to this day. To close the decade, they had the community-organized HonSure☆, the foreign-made Easter☆, and Gorgonzola☆ by Shiriri.

However, the community has largely regressed by the tenth anniversary, with the Jiko Mujun☆ masterpiece showing how the scene devolved into petty ego dramas. It also doesn't help when you have an underage illustrator get doxed by the community she loved and commits rail suicide on June 13, 2020, adding to the decline as more people distance themselves from the subject matter altogether.

The community tends to dox nearly everyone (e.g. directors, voice actors, content creators, illustrators) that gets roped in, which has led to death threats, regular harassment, sexual harassment, and so forth. This became so bad that even some Inmu fans distance themselves from Cookie☆, despite inheriting their stalker tendencies, as persecuting voice actors is not comparable to documenting amateur porn actors.

As for Touhou Project, the Cookie☆ community gets their laughs by trolling Touhou Project fans, usually by intentionally misnaming Touhou Project characters with their equivalent voice actresses or pretending that Touhou Project is merely a lesser derivative work of Cookie☆. This doesn't work in the west, however, as the reverse occurs due to Cookie☆ being niche and obscure.

• 2channel - Sometimes on /streaming/, /gline/, /touhou/, and /mog2/.
• CTV☆ - The CyTube page, which surprisingly has its own wiki and Discord server.
• Niconico - Includes Niconico Douga, Niconico Seiga, and Niconico Live.
• Bilibili - Chinese-speaking community in general, unusually larger than you think.
• Iwara - The demand for adult-oriented Cookie☆ videos is… Well, it exists.

ZUN is aware that Cookie☆ exists, especially after BeatMARIO has constantly badgered him about it, but he has presumably been advised to feign ignorance, though he does get visibly annoyed later on.