|
Thanks for the answer, but I meant something else by the question. I meant the process that goes from me making something up on the spot or seeing it in an anime or whatever, to me legitimately believing that this thing just happens to have been part of my destiny all along. How did that work, if at all?
|
#
?
Jan 17, 2018 19:56
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 2, 2024 23:10 |
|
|
This is with a read /listen in the context of this thread. This American Life on this type of cult recruitment basically: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sou...IzLFpJKdiSEvDyj
|
|
#
?
Jan 17, 2018 20:02
|
|
|
Unload My Head posted:On the off chance this isn't a joke post, you can enjoy some light reading. Obviously there's Nazis in the subculture (like every subculture that has outcast young men who can't get laid), but it doesn't seem to have penetrated the way that is has furries. You see furries showing up to conventions in thinly veiled SS costumes or Confederate flag fursuits, but the closest you see to generic weeaboos doing that are the Hetalia cosplayers (who are just genuinely ignorant of the implications of cosplaying WW2 Germany or Italy, because they're usually teenage girls). You don't see someone doing a WW2 German AU Black Butler cosplay, for instance. The Nazism is incidental to them being weebs, rather than intermingling.
|
|
#
?
Jan 17, 2018 21:04
|
|
|
chitoryu12 posted:I wonder how it came about that furries, of all loving people, ended up embracing Nazis so readily when other outcast subcultures like anime nerds haven't. Like you never see "Nazi Naruto" cosplays but Nazi Furs are everywhere. I think the furry subculture is so large nowadays it just makes sense that all kinds of weirdos would end up in it. Does anyone have the image of someone's fursona shooting, or helping someone shoot, Archduke Franz Ferdinand?
|
|
#
?
Jan 17, 2018 21:57
|
|
|
Prester Jane posted:how we would make sure the normal humans felt like they had some control over the decision-making process (they woudldn't actually, but we all agreed that creating the illusion of some control was very important.
|
|
#
?
Jan 17, 2018 22:48
|
|
|
I'm surprised Vampire: the Masquerade was so popular when Changeling: the Dreaming was basically an rpg literally about otherkin.
|
|
#
?
Jan 18, 2018 04:03
|
|
|
Vampire was a game about tribes of magical supermen, hidden from the world, engaged in byzantine political struggles, while Changeling had "is imagination Good or Bad" as an open question.
|
|
#
?
Jan 18, 2018 05:21
|
|
|
when I was like 10 years old a friend of mine claimed to secretly be a wolf-like creature from another planet (which was called "ice moon" but it was actually a planet in spite of the name) and me and a couple of other friends invented similar backstories and played along. for some reason there was a bunch of fencing with garden stakes also involved in this. that lasted like maybe a year at most and we forgot about it; occasionally we would do very basic roleplaying type games based on transformers or gi joe... like there was no formal game "system" per se we would just adopt the personalities of different transformers or whatever and yell and fight. everyone involved in this type of playing, as far as I know, grew out of it way before even being a teenager though a few of us nerdier ones did play some d&d in high school. however, it was a different world: there was no internet (that us kids knew about). none of us had even heard of anime, let alone had access to it (then eventually in like 8th or 9th grade people began passing around a tape of Akira). but when I read about otherkin and furries and groups like that I often wonder how things would have gone if me or my other friends had known about them when we were young enough that our imaginations were super convincing. seems like an easy way to not let go of things. Earwicker fucked around with this message at 16:06 on Jan 18, 2018 |
|
#
?
Jan 18, 2018 16:04
|
|
|
fantastic in plastic posted:Vampire was a game about tribes of magical supermen, hidden from the world, engaged in byzantine political struggles, while Changeling had "is imagination Good or Bad" as an open question. I'm actually surprised Werewolf: the Apocalypse wasn't a popular choice among the group as it is literally a battle against eldritch horrors and the corruption of humanity. On that note, and I apologize if this creates a bit of a derail, I storytell for a chapter within a large multinational Vampire chronicle and often see problematic behaviour from players, often power trips where they kill off public and active players who have a level of national or international renown; I'm not sure how your group played the game PJ but was behaviour like this something you witnessed, or is this simply a product that comes from LARP culture (I was having a conversation about this last night and I'm trying to figure out why these people are behaving the way they are). As a note I'm aware that at least one of these players is a full on Narcissist and I've enjoyed your breakdown of "supply" in the past; could that be a factor here?
|
|
#
?
Jan 18, 2018 18:24
|
|
|
Earwicker posted:occasionally we would do very basic roleplaying type games based on transformers or gi joe... like there was no formal game "system" per se we would just adopt the personalities of different transformers or whatever and yell and fight. wow, very same here. This "narrativist" stuff, along with my teen flirtation with MRA, are two big "there but for the grace of god go I" moments in my life.
|
|
#
?
Jan 18, 2018 18:51
|
|
|
I'm not sure the type of roleplaying we did is the same thing as "narrativism" at least not the way the OP here is describing. it never resulted in extreme behaviors beyond occasionally wacking each other with garden stakes a bit too hard. the line between fantasy and reality was never truly blurred, the games didn't affect other parts of our lives, no one (I dont think) actually believed they were a transformer or anything like that, we also didn't really have any unhealthy control issues going on even though there was always one person sort of in charge of the "universe" at a time. but I think it might have been different if it had been more of an isolated and online kind of thing also we werent really devoted to any particular universe or franchise the way that modern fandoms are. we basically just went with whatever popular cartoons were on tv at that time. I think these days people sort of throw themselves into a community based around a franchise and its a much deeper connection. especially now that media companies have been increasingly encouraging and capitalizing on this kind of behavior over the past couple decades. Earwicker fucked around with this message at 19:11 on Jan 18, 2018 |
|
#
?
Jan 18, 2018 19:05
|
|
|
Club Sandwich posted:wow, very same here. This "narrativist" stuff, along with my teen flirtation with MRA, are two big "there but for the grace of god go I" moments in my life. That is the very same way I feel about the modern Alt-Reich. I can see that high school group getting swept up in the worst of the Lost Boys and the like very easily. Earwicker posted:I'm not sure the type of roleplaying we did is the same thing as "narrativism" at least not the way the OP here is describing. it never resulted in extreme behaviors beyond occasionally wacking each other with garden stakes a bit too hard. the line between fantasy and reality was never truly blurred, the games didn't affect other parts of our lives, no one (I dont think) actually believed they were a transformer or anything like that, we also didn't really have any unhealthy control issues going on even though there was always one person sort of in charge of the "universe" at a time. but I think it might have been different if it had been more of an isolated and online kind of thing I have a personal hypothesis that the "training" we engaged in was the same sort of normal behavior in young children that we were engaging in as teenagers/young adults because of delayed social development issues. We were all severely under-socialized and had suffered some pretty horrendous treatment at the hands of our peers. For example the guy who believed he was a space bear had been tortured by high school seniors when he was an 8th grader- he had made the wrestling team and refused to go along with the hazing ritual they made all the 8th graders go through so he was punished something fierce. They hog tied him with jump-ropes and alternated between slamming an aluminum bat on the blacktop next to his head and repeatedly choking him out until he lost consciousness. (The Wrestling coach was aware of all this and turned a blind eye.) Many of us were also parentified children and had never really had much opportunity for the sorts of normal play and self exploration that other children had. We had a hard time separating reality from fantasy because our parents had forced us to live a double life for our entire existence. We were just doing what felt perfectly natural to us. Renaissance Spam posted:I'm actually surprised Werewolf: the Apocalypse wasn't a popular choice among the group as it is literally a battle against eldritch horrors and the corruption of humanity. Werewolf was pretty popular as well but was mostly played at homes with smaller groups. One of the big draws fro VtM was how large the groups playing it were. quote:On that note, and I apologize if this creates a bit of a derail, I storytell for a chapter within a large multinational Vampire chronicle and often see problematic behaviour from players, often power trips where they kill off public and active players who have a level of national or international renown; I'm not sure how your group played the game PJ but was behaviour like this something you witnessed, or is this simply a product that comes from LARP culture (I was having a conversation about this last night and I'm trying to figure out why these people are behaving the way they are). LARP's in general were pretty popular in those circles (Dagorhir and SCA were also pretty prevalent) but V:tM was the most popular in that scene. It was played pretty widely in the social circles we ran in. There were cultists like my group (although I personally wasn't much into it and only tagged along a few times), tons and tons of gothy occultists, many pagans/wiccans/Laveyians mixed in with the regular crowd of LARP'ers. Although I am only aware of one cult group (of psychic vampyres) that spun out of a VtM group- there was tons of inter-group drama (between cult groups) at times that played out in VtM. Targeting certain players for in-game harassment or murder (resulting from cult drama) was uh, most of the reason that certain players I knew would show up every week. The storytellers hated these players because they were always sowing chaos and ruining the fun of the game for no real discernible reason. Personally I think that the reason for this state of affairs being particularly noticeable in V:tM games was that the structure of VtM drew a certain crowd, and that certain crowd was chock full of types of people who ran in these social circles. I hypothesize that VtM's system of awarding greater character power for simple participation )as well as the size of the groups playing the game) draws this particular crowd in ways that other LARP games do not. quote:As a note I'm aware that at least one of these players is a full on Narcissist and I've enjoyed your breakdown of "supply" in the past; could that be a factor here? In my observation V:tM was frequently a place where people with type b personality disorders felt they had permission to let their dysfunction be put on public display. Pope Guilty posted:I'm surprised Vampire: the Masquerade was so popular when Changeling: the Dreaming was basically an rpg literally about otherkin. There was one guy who unsuccessfully tried to get a Changling game going for years. There just wasn't much interest, probably because: fantastic in plastic posted:Vampire was a game about tribes of magical supermen, hidden from the world, engaged in byzantine political struggles, while Changeling had "is imagination Good or Bad" as an open question. Jethro posted:So the group of people who had delusions of grandeur to give themselves the illusion of control over their lives talked about how important the illusion of control was for the little people? I'm having trouble coming up with words to describe this. Its certainly got some deep layers to it, doesn't it? I prefer to describe it with the term "ouroboros of delusion" myself. But perhaps there is a nigh-unpronounceable German word that better describes this sort of thing? Zeppelin Insanity posted:Thanks for the answer, but I meant something else by the question. I meant the process that goes from me making something up on the spot or seeing it in an anime or whatever, to me legitimately believing that this thing just happens to have been part of my destiny all along. How did that work, if at all? Okay, let me try to roughly convey how this worked. Lets say for example that I had just come across the theory that the Great Pyramid was actually a power plant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7RtnEghLVc I wouldn't set out to specifically incorporate this idea into the groups mythology, what I was actually trying to do was use this idea to improve my own social importance in the group by making my own destiny more important. So I might claim to have had a "vision" in a dream or something wherein (post veil-falling) I had activated the Giza power plant and used it to raise my own energy level- but simply claiming that I had the vision wouldn't be really enough to get the group to accept it. So I would claim that I had seen several other members of the group in my vision and I would assign them important/badass roles in the events that accompanied activating the the power plant. Often the people I had included in the vision would respond by stating that they had seen the same vision (but from their own perspective) and they would add more details to events that I would then verify as having played out in my vision as well. (It was sort of a transaction relationship) Once emotional importance/attachment to the events in that vision had been established in the group then the idea that the Great Pyramid was a power plan would be accepted.
|
|
#
?
Jan 18, 2018 20:21
|
|
|
Prester Jane have you ever read or seen The Wave? its about a high school teacher in the 60's who was trying to explain to his students how the German population could be turned to naziism, and he basically did so by starting a nazi-like cult as a social experiment which ended up more successful than he anticipated and got a bit out of hand. a big part of his strategy was targetting social outcasts and giving them positions of importance in the "movement". it happened near where I grew up. I think you'd find it interesting if you haven't read it.
|
|
#
?
Jan 18, 2018 20:31
|
|
|
I haven't read the book but I am familiar with The Wave. I actually used it in my D&D thread back in mid 2015 to argue the wild-rear end case that cult behavior like I had experienced in A.C.E. could influence political movements. I was not aware that he targeted outcasts and gave them important roles however, I guess that just means I really need to sit down and read the book.
|
|
#
?
Jan 18, 2018 20:38
|
|
|
Earwicker posted:however, it was a different world: there was no internet (that us kids knew about). none of us had even heard of anime, let alone had access to it (then eventually in like 8th or 9th grade people began passing around a tape of Akira). but when I read about otherkin and furries and groups like that I often wonder how things would have gone if me or my other friends had known about them when we were young enough that our imaginations were super convincing. seems like an easy way to not let go of things. 
|
|
#
?
Jan 19, 2018 00:59
|
|
|
Lowtax has literally given this explanation as the meaning of "the internet makes you stupid".
|
|
#
?
Jan 19, 2018 01:43
|
|
|
So you've mentioned the power struggle within your group and I'm curious to hear how it played out, especially in regards to the compaction cycle and the Engine as a whole. Would you be willing to tell us how that whole situation came about and its aftereffects?
|
|
#
?
Jan 19, 2018 16:51
|
|
|
Pope Guilty posted:Lowtax has literally given this explanation as the meaning of "the internet makes you stupid". eh kind of. I mean its 2018 so a ton of people who are just now becoming adults have been on the internet since they were little kids, and still only a pretty small percentage of them end up falling in love with sonic the hedgehog or becoming members of apocalyptic otherkin nazi cults. thats still mainly people who are socially isolated in the offline world, it hasn't become normal behavior yet. but outside of those extremes I do think there is a sort of increasing mainstream devotion to media and fictional characters in particular that is very new and in many ways cultlike, though in most cases not going into the extremes of OP's experiences. and it is interesting that certain elements of "fandom culture" like cosplay and fan fiction have become increasingly mainstreamed, not just because of the internet but because the corporate owners of the intellectual property involved figured out how to turn those elements into profit in huge ways. Earwicker fucked around with this message at 17:39 on Jan 19, 2018 |
|
#
?
Jan 19, 2018 17:26
|
|
|
Marketing has really become an ever-present part of our lives, and fandoms are just the latest success story of deliberately cultivated identity. There’s a whole marketing discipline of trying to catalyse the formation of communities around consumption of selected commodities and trying to steer them into taking media-friendly forms that act as both effective advertising to outsiders and a cult of competitive consumption to the insiders. There’s no doubt that producers of weeb stuff are funding showy weeb events in order to bring them to the mainstream, and same with the huge gaming events that get funded nowadays and so on. Anyway, my question: Did you already have the sort of vivid imagination that allowed you to construct fantasy worlds to live in, or did being in the group develop it? Or was it a bit of both, with the group allowing the line between reality and fantasy to become blurry and then disappear?
|
|
#
?
Jan 19, 2018 18:41
|
|
|
uncop posted:There’s a whole marketing discipline of trying to catalyse the formation of communities around consumption of selected commodities and trying to steer them into taking media-friendly forms that act as both effective advertising to outsiders and a cult of competitive consumption to the insiders. it's also a way of generating more content they can use to keep fueling the process. like 50 Shades of Gray started out as fan fiction and that made a massive amount of money. and on a smaller scale a lot of companies use fan art in various contexts
|
|
#
?
Jan 19, 2018 22:05
|
|
|
Fandom can function in the way religion does. I mean it's the same thing participation in myth.
|
|
#
?
Jan 19, 2018 23:07
|
|
|
What happens to these people as they physically but not psychologically grow up? Do they snap out of it or do they just become sad manchild adults or do they get really hard into drugs or do they just off themselves or something else?
|
|
#
?
Jan 24, 2018 21:31
|
|
|
Psychological theories of human development are psychological projection by the guys that produced them, not
|
|
#
?
Jan 24, 2018 21:33
|
|
|
Alvarez IV posted:What happens to these people as they physically but not psychologically grow up? Do they snap out of it or do they just become sad manchild adults or do they get really hard into drugs or do they just off themselves or something else? From what I can tell, people tend to leave these niche subcultures when they: - get caught off-guard by a painful external stresser that forces the individual to realize that their otherkin delusion hasn't actually protected them from real-world pain and isolation - have some kind of barrier that separates them from their subculture group (moving to a new school, getting ostracized from their subculture like PJ was, etc) - find affirmation from something unrelated to otherkin and drift away (intentionally or not). Maybe they move to a new school and make new friends and find new hobbies and just have less interest in otherkin culture. The other fact is that people-who-are-really-loud-about-being-part-of-niche-internet-subcultures don't always mix well with people outside of that subculture. The individual has to make time to hang out with these two groups separately, and as a result they might start drifting away from their otherkin friends. These three things don't always force people to leave their subcultures, but it seems to have been a factor for the people I've met who grew out of it. One of my friends "Kyle" was hardcore pagan until a decade ago--he joined the temple of Set, thought his cat served some Egyptian god, had a dragon-kin best friend "Nate," etc. Kyle won't tell me what happened, but he left the temple and cut ties with Nate for trying to get him to re-join. I've never asked for details because he always gets really sad thinking about it and he's still in counseling for CPTSD caused by the event that made him leave. Kyle recently got back in touch with Nate, but one of the terms of re-kindling the friendship was that they never talk about new age/otherkin/pagan stuff. Apparently Nate is now managing Parkinson's, and Kyle feels partially responsible--like, he was telling me that he thinks that the new-age thing makes Nate distrust doctors, and he wonders if maybe he somehow contributed to Nate's current condition by participating in the new-age-stuff with him years ago. I would say that Kyle may have swung from being highly interested in paganism to being highly interested in atheism, since he sometimes posts abrasive anti-religion memes on Facebook (thankfully, at least he really hates redpiller-style atheists). legsarerequired fucked around with this message at 03:01 on Jan 27, 2018 |
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2018 02:53
|
|
|
I knew people like this in high school. It’s like the same pattern plays out again and again in these stories: one outcast charismatic enough to lead and pull other outcasts into their group. We’ll all rule the world after it ends! In my case it was bullshit mind experiments that to me felt like “oh, this is a neat way to make up a story/RP” but they took it seriously. What’s interesting is when I was introduced to another friend of the group who attended a different school it’s like we made an immediate if unconscious connection that recognized “these people are toxic and dangerous, let’s be friends and slowly excise them from our lives.” Oh sure, we RPd and LARPed and all that ridiculous jazz, but at the end of the day it was a mostly free activity for poor nerds to do and a way to make up stories/OCs. I’ll never forget being out one day to come home and my father telling me the “leader” had come over (I never told him where I lived) asking for me months after I stopped speaking to him. I think this was freshman year college. My father was notorious for not trusting people just showing up unannounced but said “I just told him you weren’t home, I felt a little sorry for him!” Which to me speaks to how dangerously charismatic these people can be. He never tried to contact me again, thank God.
|
|
#
?
Jan 28, 2018 17:31
|
|
|
chitoryu12 posted:Obviously there's Nazis in the subculture (like every subculture that has outcast young men who can't get laid), but it doesn't seem to have penetrated the way that is has furries. You see furries showing up to conventions in thinly veiled SS costumes or Confederate flag fursuits, but the closest you see to generic weeaboos doing that are the Hetalia cosplayers (who are just genuinely ignorant of the implications of cosplaying WW2 Germany or Italy, because they're usually teenage girls). You don't see someone doing a WW2 German AU Black Butler cosplay, for instance. The Nazism is incidental to them being weebs, rather than intermingling. That's...extremely weird. The only thing I can add is this: Mycroft Holmes posted:i just found this threads next topic:
|
|
#
?
Jan 28, 2018 18:12
|
|
|
Also, I have a question for PJ: I've noticed that in a lot of rightwing religious thinking, there's a hostility to, well, rationality, because all it can do is undermine THE WORD, etc. With the sort of thing you've been describing, it sounds like not so much undermining logic, but completely replacing it with a narrative framework with its own internal logic. I guess my question is 1) can this logic undermine itself, or 2) is it that the narrative logic has to be shown to be irrelevant/bullshit/in some other way non functional? Also, did the "doomsday event" in the cult come to "pass" (IE somebody said they were wrong about the time?) One thing that the doomsday thing has in any sort of religion is that it is predicted to happen "soon" but never comes to pass - I always find it kinda weird that people can have the big-A Apocalypse on their calendar, and then just reschedule it when it doesn't happen.
|
|
#
?
Jan 28, 2018 21:23
|
|
|
Thought of this thread when I listened to this https://www.thisamericanlife.org/304/heretics
|
|
#
?
Apr 27, 2018 03:23
|
|
|
I have done a lot of dumb things on this forum but this post is going to be the dumbest by far. I was part of the Otherkin community for an extremely long time. 14+ years. I admin'd several IRC channels and was a notorious member of several message boards. I was also part of a group of otherkin who basically existed to troll other otherkin called Permanent. Almost everything Prester Jane is saying about the community is based on a complete misunderstanding of the typical social dynamics, or from the perspective of people who were effectively the bottom of the totem pole that all the other otherkin made fun of. The reality of the otherkin community is much more boring and quite a bit sadder. I have in fact, had multiple conversations with the infamous Shiro "On all levels except physical, I am a wolf" Ulv. I remember, me and several other admins trying to convince him NOT to do that interview at the time. He did not listen because otherkin and therianthropes are stupid. Also possibly the autism. He has pretty bad autism. Although it's a bit more complicated than that. Otherkin are stupid because they're building an immature queer spirituality in an extremely individualist society where the primary subcultural touchstones for online communities are pop culture, specifically fantasy stories.The vast majority of otherkin are LGBTQ+. Trans people in particular are massively over-represented. Indeed, the reason I stayed in the community so long and was convinced there was "something to it" was because of how wrong I felt in my own body. Turns out it was gender dysphoria and I am not very bright. But the otherkin community is primarily composed of young LGBTQ+ teens who are struggling to form a meaningful spiritual identity in a capitalist society that alienates them. It is no more or less complicated than that, and the vast majority of them grow out of it, but I have spent an obscene amount of time cleaning up messes caused by people like Prester Jane and Co. The reason I am posting this is that Prester Jane's elaborate and absurd theorizing is both wildly off the mark and as far as I can tell part of a deeply unhealthy obsession that is a symptom of the exact same kind of deranged thinking, the production of grand narratives to explain unpleasant or difficult experiences, that lead to her getting suckered in the first placed. I'm also maybe a little bitter because I had intervened in over 6 suicide attempts by the time I was 20, and a lot of those were caused by people and social groups like hers and so I am venting a little. Sometimes I still check in on the community to make sure the kids are doing alright. Most of them are. In fact, they seem more well-adjusted on the whole than they used to be. There is an openness and honesty about issues of mental health that wasn't present before.  What the average day on an otherkin message board is is thirty-thousand people asking if anyone can tell them if they have a kintype or if they're otherkin, some neopagan and occult topics which get a bit of traffic and tend to cause lots of argument, and a political message board that is on fire with dipshit arguments. Interspersed with all this are topics about "Aren't phantom limbs annoying??!?" etc. Misanthropy/Feeling superior to "normal humans" was roundly mocked. This was a way of establishing a social pecking order, which was this: Therianthropes(People who thought they had animal souls) Energy beings(People who thought they had the souls of energy beings, an extremely new-age idea based around the "astral plane") Mythical Otherkin(People who thought they had the souls of dragons, elves, demons, angels, etc) Fiction-kin(People who have anime souls) After this, you get basically a second bottom totem pole that is a duplicate of the first one, except they're all much crazier and think the apocalypse is coming or "the veil is falling" and they form these cults. Of course, the hypocrisy here is obvious to anyone outside the otherkin community, but inside this was VERY IMPORTANT. And was basically how you established social status. Otherkin spend a lot of time infighting and calling each other crazy. This is based in the logic of "If you know you might be crazy, you are probably not crazy." There was A LOT, and I mean A LOT of making fun of the kinds of people Prester Jane hung out with. It was actually one of the primary forms of humor and a huge part of group bonding. Like I said, stupid. Maintaining that weird internal balancing act is of course, extremely stressful and it is in fact unsustainable. Eventually otherkin move on to, in ascending order of frequency, either the more respectable parts of the neopagan and occult community with a more mature approach to spirituality, wholeheartedly embrace atheism and materialism, or just kind of let it all fade away. legsarerequired posted:. I was gonna say, I'm surprised he's still involved. The Temple of Set is a pretty serious group of folks. Their specific kind of crazy doesn't really run in that direction. In some of their orders otherkin are explicitly spoken out against. The infighting in these groups in an attempt to establish legitimacy is fascinating to me. And the experience of "mutual reinforcement" that Prester Jane refers is actually quite contrary to the norm in these groups, and in fact are the exact reason why there's so much infighting over who is "the most legit" in the first place. Hate Fibration fucked around with this message at 22:13 on May 12, 2018 |
|
#
?
May 12, 2018 21:33
|
|
|
The tendency among outcasts to "punch down" is as widespread as it is tragic. A lot of people have on some level bought into the idea that what they do/are is bad and wrong, but always argue that the threshold for unacceptability goes right below whereever they themselves happen to be. You often see it in the form of "I may be gay, but at least I'm not some freaky leather daddy", but it echoes all the way down the ladder to "I may believe that I'm a dragon, but at least I'm not some stupid Homestuck character."
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2018 22:05
|
|
|
at the same time I find this jumping of the gap from "I have the soul of an [animal, spirit, demon, mythical creature from some current or ancient religion/culture]" to "I have the soul of [specific fictional character/creature invented by an actual specific human being or company who, themselves, do not consider said character to be real]" to be really interesting. the former is a concept that can be found, in various iterations, in a variety of human religions and cultures throughout history. the latter is, as far as I can tell, a very new phenomenon and the most fascinating thing about it is how the actual creators of these fictional characters seem to be entirely left out of the equation. like there are now people who, in a way, worship Sonic the Hedgehog, who are attracted to Sonic the Hedgehog, who think they are Sonic the Hedgehog, to the point where that character is taking on the properties of some sort of demigod in certain circles like these otherkin or related groups.. but what about the designers/artists/programmers that created the character and the world he lives in? where are they in the mythology? as far as I can tell there is no equivalent for this in older spiritualities because no one wanted to acknowledge that any spiritual entity had a human "author". now the authors are alive at the same time as their creations. Earwicker fucked around with this message at 23:24 on May 12, 2018 |
|
#
?
May 12, 2018 23:19
|
|
|
It varies. Some otherkin consider their experience to be a purely psychological phenomenon, in which case they generally acknowledge the fiction as fiction. Others subscribe to some variation of the "many worlds" hypothesis, believing that the author either directly (though often unknowingly) channeled knowledge of a real place and events, or that by pure happenstance their fictional world happened to be identical to a real alternate universe - after all, goes the logic, if there are infinite universes, then all possible universes exist, including ones that are perfectly identical to popular works of fiction. Or not identical. Many fictives have complicated relationships to their canon, feeling that it in some ways misrepresents them or their world.
|
|
#
?
May 13, 2018 01:32
|
|
|
that is interesting, now that you mention this "many worlds" hypothesis and idea of authors unintentionally channeling these worlds, I can remember some novels I read from the 70's and 80's in which that kind of concept is often part of the plot, or kind of implied anyway. authors like Charles DeLint and Diana Wynne Jones. I don't know if these authors predate the otherkin movement itself but they certainly predate the internet culture being discussed here.
|
|
#
?
May 13, 2018 07:37
|
|
|
Terrorforge posted:The tendency among outcasts to "punch down" is as widespread as it is tragic. A lot of people have on some level bought into the idea that what they do/are is bad and wrong, but always argue that the threshold for unacceptability goes right below whereever they themselves happen to be. You often see it in the form of "I may be gay, but at least I'm not some freaky leather daddy", but it echoes all the way down the ladder to "I may believe that I'm a dragon, but at least I'm not some stupid Homestuck character." Yeah, it's a tendency I've been spending a lot of time trying to iron out of myself in my interactions in the queer community. If you look at some of my earlier posts in the trans threads you can see how intensely I was cleaving to respectability politics. I am, in general, tired of punching. And I have to stop myself from starting stupid arguments online often in order to get that fun rush. Earwicker posted:at the same time I find this jumping of the gap from "I have the soul of an [animal, spirit, demon, mythical creature from some current or ancient religion/culture]" to "I have the soul of [specific fictional character/creature invented by an actual specific human being or company who, themselves, do not consider said character to be real]" to be really interesting. I saw cultures with beliefs like that brought up a lot, but specific examples always slip my mind, could you provide some? I never really took the time to investigate the salient differences between those beliefs and the way they function in their respective cultures, and otherkin beliefs. I am sure it would be really cool and interesting! The variety of justifications people have is fascinating. Although seeing the discussion of otherkin identity as a coping mechanism is interesting, it's a little disconcerting that they can't bridge that gap and understand that coping mechanisms can be and more often than not are maladaptive. There definitely tends to be a different type of person whose attracted to the idea of being fiction-kin to the other more typical otherkin claims. And they more often than not are much more likely to employ the "psychological" understanding of their beliefs. This helps conveniently circumvent a lot of the thornier questions that naturally arise in such situations. The others are, as Terrorforge said people that claim that the works were "channeled" by the author, and evoke elaborate multiverse theories. What's especially unusual to me is that there's another version of this that happened/is still happening right now among pagans/new-agers/occultists. I am referring here to the rise/continued popularity of occult/ritual practices informed and inspired by the writings of HP Lovecraft. Although they tend to employ a bit more intellectual sophistication in their rationale, tending to be older, I can't help but notice the similarities between the two. On the other end of things, I had, in that community, profound experiences that I will spend the rest of my life grappling with the consequences of. Not all negative, some very positive in fact. But I'm still convinced it's a pretty unhealthy environment and belief system. The impact of the otherkin community is a bit of a chicken-egg problem too, cause it tends to not attract the healthiest most well-adjusted individuals around. It's fascinating to me how you get these miniature cults of outcast high schoolers that seem to emerge independently of otherkin, but profess similar beliefs. In these threads there always seems to be a large number of goons with stories about these groups that pop-up and narrow escapes and I often wonder "how many of these groups have I had brushes with?" "how many of their members have I had to kick/ban from IRCs and other chat rooms for misconduct?" The community was TINY after all. Earwicker posted:that is interesting, now that you mention this "many worlds" hypothesis and idea of authors unintentionally channeling these worlds, I can remember some novels I read from the 70's and 80's in which that kind of concept is often part of the plot, or kind of implied anyway. authors like Charles DeLint and Diana Wynne Jones. I don't know if these authors predate the otherkin movement itself but they certainly predate the internet culture being discussed here. DeLint and the early Urban Fantasy were absolutely ADORED by the older members of the community when I was around. Hate Fibration fucked around with this message at 07:50 on May 13, 2018 |
|
#
?
May 13, 2018 07:38
|
|
|
Hate Fibration posted:I saw cultures with beliefs like that brought up a lot, but specific examples always slip my mind, could you provide some? there are a lot of variations on it. there are hindu and buddhist and other belief systems that involve reincarnation and the idea that people could have been anything from animals to gods in previous lives, which adherents believe with varying degrees of literality - and in some cases believe they can remember or see these lives. there are forms of christianity and islam and other religions where it is believed that a person can be possessed by a demon or devil - or by God himself. (and then there's the whole thing with Mary being impregnated by God) and there are various form of animist religions in which a shaman will channel a spiritual or demonic creature in a way such that they are "taken over" by it. many not quite the exact same phenomenon as otherkin but still there are a lot of modes of religion and spirituality that involve humans either having some other entity within them or being in some other way deeply/spiritually connected with a specific animal, god, historic figure, whether as a past life or something that possess or lives within them somehow however I cant think of any earlier examples in which the entities are self-described as fictional Hate Fibration posted:DeLint and the early Urban Fantasy were absolutely ADORED by the older members of the community when I was around. how about Storm Constantine? Earwicker fucked around with this message at 08:09 on May 13, 2018 |
|
#
?
May 13, 2018 07:52
|
|
|
Earwicker posted:
Oh, yes I see what you are getting at! Although I'm not sure if I would count induced possession and invocation on that list, I can see why it's on there. I think the key difference here is the degree and duration of identification with that non-human entity. For example, in invocation the identification is typically total, and subsumes the ego and sense of self of the practitioner completely. With otherkin, this rational, mundane sense of self, in most cases, is still very much intact. This is why you'll often see the "mundane before magical" canard trotted out. But the duration of the identification is much shorter, and much more controlled. Whereas with otherkin the degree of identification can vary over time, see the beliefs about "mental shifting", it's typically fairly consistent but also extremely long-term in duration. With the Buddhist/Hindu examples you see almost the exact opposite.That is, the duration is typically indefinite, but the degree of actual identification is very small. But I can see what you're getting at. With the emergence of New Age beliefs systems in the US and Europe, especially with the influences of things like Theosophy that melded Eastern and Western spiritual concepts together, the emergence of something like a community of people with otherkin beliefs seems almost inevitable. Especially with the strongly individualist background radiation of Western culture. Earwicker posted:How about Storm Constantine Actually yes! There's a small group, a lot of members in Canada, still quite active I think, with many members heavily influenced by Storm Constantine and her work. The Wraeththu series in particular. They're called House Kheperu, they're headed up by the infamous Michelle Belanger. It's not like, an official part of the group, but an incredible number of people in that particular cult are highly influenced by it. I met a few of the members. They're not very respectful of people's boundaries and their meetups look like gatherings of goth tropical fish. chitoryu12 posted:There's a Tumblr blog called melted-snowflake that details life in the Otherkin community, as told by a former Otherkin who recognized it as a toxic environment. Interestingly enough, when I was involved it was the general consensus that melted-snowflake was a troll, given that there was no record of their activities anywhere online. Especially because they had a very distinct theriotype(what animal they thought they were) IIRC. Hate Fibration fucked around with this message at 08:46 on May 13, 2018 |
|
#
?
May 13, 2018 08:15
|
|
|
Nebakenezzer posted:One thing that the doomsday thing has in any sort of religion is that it is predicted to happen "soon" but never comes to pass - I always find it kinda weird that people can have the big-A Apocalypse on their calendar, and then just reschedule it when it doesn't happen. its kind of funny that these days Jehova's Witnesses are known mainly for being annoying by going around knocking on people's doors. prior to 1975 they were a doomsday cult. 1975 was the last of their doomsday predictions but they had several previous ones going back originally to 1914.. which was in fact a pretty hosed up year but the world kept on going. they still have a take on it but its a lot more vague https://www.jw.org/en/publications/magazines/g201209/fascination-with-doomsday/ Hate Fibration posted:With otherkin, this rational, mundane sense of self, in most cases, is still very much intact. This is why you'll often see the "mundane before magical" canard trotted out. I've never heard of this, what does it mean? is there some specific context to that phrase? Earwicker fucked around with this message at 08:28 on May 13, 2018 |
|
#
?
May 13, 2018 08:22
|
|
|
Earwicker posted:that is interesting, now that you mention this "many worlds" hypothesis and idea of authors unintentionally channeling these worlds, I can remember some novels I read from the 70's and 80's in which that kind of concept is often part of the plot, or kind of implied anyway. authors like Charles DeLint and Diana Wynne Jones. I don't know if these authors predate the otherkin movement itself but they certainly predate the internet culture being discussed here. In Robert Heinlein's later works (the "world as myth" stuff), he posited that fictional universes were "real" enough to be traveled to with the right technology... at least, within his own fictional universes. If I'm not mistaken, in The Number of the Beast, the characters speculated that the latest universe they've landed in might be the Star Trek or Star Wars one. (They definitely went to Barsoom.)
|
|
#
?
May 13, 2018 08:23
|
|
|
Earwicker posted:I've never heard of this, what does it mean? is there some specific context to that phrase? It's kind of like Occam's razor for the otherkin set. It basically means, "before looking for a reason related to being otherkin for something you experience, exhaust all possible sensible physical/psychological ones." It was applied extremely selectively course, even, sometimes especially, by the people who trotted it out most. One of the people I knew who brought it up most often was also convinced he had a second dragon personality who lived in his head and was evil, despite so many much more likely explanations for his behavior and feelings. But in this context, I brought it up specifically because in things like spirit possession and invocation, the practitioner typically has no such beliefs or reservation. The identification with the identity is supposed to be total and complete, with the practitioners actual life and identity rendered irrelevant for the rest of the ritual. It was a way of being a bit more specific about the differences. In retrospect, it's kinda irrelevant. Hate Fibration fucked around with this message at 08:48 on May 13, 2018 |
|
#
?
May 13, 2018 08:35
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 2, 2024 23:10 |
|
|
Hate Vibration thank you for posting and contributing your insight to this thread- I have enjoyed your posts and found them to be very interesting. That said I wonder if your lingering (entirely justified) negative emotions about the damage done by myself and groups like the one I was part of might be influencing your perceptions of what I have written here. I'm more than happy to engage with you but I need some clarification on what your actual criticisms of my work are. You obviously disagree with my work but at the same time you readily admit that groups like mine were a significant and influential portion of the Otherkin comunity. You also seem to not have been a part of those groups yourself and considered yourself superior to them (while you were stop an Otherkin). What I am trying to do is offer insight on how those crazy cult groups (that you admit were plentiful enough that mocking them was a "common bonding experience" for the groups you were involved with) operate internally. To try and at one for the damage I did by explaining what was going on inside our heads at the time. If you can give me a specific example of something in my work you object to I would be more than happy to answer it in-depth. (If you don't feel like getting into the weeds then feel free to ignore this post and keep making your excellent effortposts).
|
|
#
?
May 14, 2018 22:06
|
|