Otherkin showed up 100,000 years ago when modern homo sapiens developed. I seriously doubt you can isolate a single decade of queer acceptance so long ago.
You're just engaging in the time honoured trope of calling something new because you, personally, didn't know about it when you were young, and now you think learning about new kinds of people is scary. People said it about gay. They said it about bi. They said it about trans.
Right, so we both agree someone who says "I'm not a man or a woman, I'm a cat" is nonbinary. So why force queer people to live in reality when they say it hurts them? Sadism?