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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 |
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May 12, 2018 21:33
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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 |
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May 13, 2018 07:38
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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 |
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May 13, 2018 08:15
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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 |
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May 13, 2018 08:35
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