My Thoughts on Tumblr as a Community
Copied from a forum thread and given permission from the admin to post the quote.
3/14/2019 NOTE: There are many things in this post I no longer quite agree with, and I've even re-phrased and re-written small parts of this to better reflect my opinions now. I no longer even use the word "Tumblrkin" let alone feel like they're something to be avoided. I also care less about terms like "kins" and make jokes with terms like that all the time, now. I'm no longer really a defender of "gatekeeping" the same way I am here. I've generally loosened up and tried to focus on bigger picture things. BUT, I think it's good to keep this essay up, because it shows the progress of my thoughts and frustrations with "otherkin" being seen as the central way to identify as nonhuman, and I was clearly moving in the direction I am, now. So I'll keep it up, because there's still some good in this.
_________________________________________
3/14/2019 NOTE: There are many things in this post I no longer quite agree with, and I've even re-phrased and re-written small parts of this to better reflect my opinions now. I no longer even use the word "Tumblrkin" let alone feel like they're something to be avoided. I also care less about terms like "kins" and make jokes with terms like that all the time, now. I'm no longer really a defender of "gatekeeping" the same way I am here. I've generally loosened up and tried to focus on bigger picture things. BUT, I think it's good to keep this essay up, because it shows the progress of my thoughts and frustrations with "otherkin" being seen as the central way to identify as nonhuman, and I was clearly moving in the direction I am, now. So I'll keep it up, because there's still some good in this.
_________________________________________
Quote from: Scandiacus on March 03, 2016, 01:36:18 PM
...To start with an anology, let's say you have an auditorium full of diverse people, and one person who knows them all and can point you toward anyone. Anyone can find anyone. The more people who come in and crowd the auditorium, the more people can know about the other people. Now let's add in that people can tell a story or make announcements, and if enough people like it, you can take it up to the stage, where the vast majority there will hear what you have to say. Other than the one person who knows everyone, this place has no supervision. So everyone starts to know everyone else (or at least about everyone else), and people and their beliefs start to get on everyone's nerves. Most people who are involved in one community, but not another will know only the minimal about the other community, which can lead to misconceptions. Then there are people who learn only the minimal about a community, and believe they are part of that community, despite not knowing enough to really know for sure. So they start believing that they are part of this community without any real reason, and eventually come up with their own ideas. Their friends see what they are doing, and start to do the same.
This is, in my opinion, Tumblr in a nutshell. Most of the otherkin on the site have had no background in real otherkin communities outside of Tumblr. For this reason, they have not learned the ways people in the past have soul searched and worked hard to understand their identities, nor have they learned the terminology. Instead, those on Tumblr have formed their own terminology (which isn't terribly grammatically correct, in my opinion). With no moderation, but a search bar that allows you to find just about everything, misconceptions are easily developed, and I'm of the opinion that this sort of publicity is just something the otherkin, therian, fictionkin, and related communities are just not ready for. The public won't accept us yet as anything but a laughing matter.
So the Tumblrkin aren't really to blame entirely for their lack of understanding. It can be irritating, yes, but without any formal guidelines, they are welcome to identify as they please for now....
___
Cut to the relevant parts. This is largely how I feel, and what I think is wrong not with Tumblr 'kin, but trying to have an otherkin community on Tumblr at ALL. The site is open and tag-based. The community there is a revolving door and people are constantly streaming in and there is no gate. "Gatekeeping" is demonized but it's literally necessary and forums used to gatekeep themselves, saying to each person coming in, individually, "oh this sounds like you fit us, welcome" or "here's some resources since you're questioning" or "this term doesn't quite fit your experiences but here's one that does so you can talk to people with the same experience." It's not keeping people out, it's directing them to the place they're looking for.
But on Tumblr, you literally can't do that. Unless you post something over and over in the tags, it will get lost. There are no threads archived, no information saved, no conversations that can be easily found and contributed to as they come up. Anyone can post anything and its become a giant game of telephone, passing one watered-down definition from person to person until we have...well, what we have now. It's better than it was, but it's still a trainwreck.
I'm also constantly angry at how people on Tumblr have elevated otherkinity to the Highest Status of Validity and Realness. Many people with copinglinks or who are otherhearted or have synpaths or fictionflicker experiences are reluctant to stop calling themselves otherkin because they feel like it makes them "less valid," which means that not only are those of us with those experiences who *want* separate terms and communities to actually be able to discuss our unique experiences in end up being alone and called ableist for "trying to kick mentally ill copingkin out of the community" or something with our terms instead of. Yknow. Trying to coin terms to describe our own experiences and find others who share them. I have only ever felt invalidated in my non-kin alterhuman identities by people on Tumblr who think we're a throwaway community.
I do think there have been good things to come from Tumblr. We have terms now like alterhuman, copinglink, other-hearted (resurrected from an older term that deserved more attention), and synpath. I've been able to sort out feelings I've had since I was little thanks to this, and hopefully they'll become more used and talked about.
And since I've been able to recognize my experiences with these terms, I've actually started to understand things Tumblrkin talk about that I never understood while trying to process them as otherkin experiences. I notice a lot of them seem to be experiencing fictionflickers, or may have strong synpaths, and since they don't have those words and the dominant identity language is all 'kin, they end up lumping it all there.
The other thing, though, that you mentioned, is their detachment from the *entire rest of the communities and their histories.* I think that really gets to me more than anything else. I've collected pages on pages of personal sites and writings, I can find threads I remember on Werelist in 5 minutes, I remember when animal-hearted was coined and exactly who coined it and where the term came from. I am in love with these communities because they've given me identity and friends and have added something meaningful to my life. And now I feel like I'm watching it all crumble away. People don't care anymore. It's all aesthetic and "kins" and revolving doors of no-introspection-involved unconditional validation of anything regardless of if it fits or not. No one knows anything about where we came from. I see younger 'kin referencing the community's age to rebut trolls, but I bet they couldn't tell you more than "it began in the 70s" because they only hear it through what's passed around the tags. When history is brought up, including the history of what "otherkin" and related terms have always applied to, they don't give a shit and will actively tell you that and say "things change" when they have no clue how inorganic and forced their "changes" are to the alterhuman communities. Adding terms like alterhuman and synpath? That's evolution of community. Cramming all vaguely related experiences of connection to anything under the label of "otherkin?" Not a community evolving.
The worst thing is that some "Tumblrkin" are nice to talk to and have experiences in common with me, but I'm constantly afraid of talking to anyone from Tumblr who calls themselves kin because I'm afraid that if I point out the different experiences and different terms, that they'll freak out on me, or get upset, or call me "trukin" of all things. And that's sad, because I really want to have discussions and experience sharing again, and these people don't seem to want that.
Tl;dr: Tumblr is a horrible website to try and operate a community like ours from, this has contributed largely to the crap on Tumblr, and it's frustrating how much we could discuss if people would just stop putting otherkin identity on a pedestal above all other alterhuman identities.
...To start with an anology, let's say you have an auditorium full of diverse people, and one person who knows them all and can point you toward anyone. Anyone can find anyone. The more people who come in and crowd the auditorium, the more people can know about the other people. Now let's add in that people can tell a story or make announcements, and if enough people like it, you can take it up to the stage, where the vast majority there will hear what you have to say. Other than the one person who knows everyone, this place has no supervision. So everyone starts to know everyone else (or at least about everyone else), and people and their beliefs start to get on everyone's nerves. Most people who are involved in one community, but not another will know only the minimal about the other community, which can lead to misconceptions. Then there are people who learn only the minimal about a community, and believe they are part of that community, despite not knowing enough to really know for sure. So they start believing that they are part of this community without any real reason, and eventually come up with their own ideas. Their friends see what they are doing, and start to do the same.
This is, in my opinion, Tumblr in a nutshell. Most of the otherkin on the site have had no background in real otherkin communities outside of Tumblr. For this reason, they have not learned the ways people in the past have soul searched and worked hard to understand their identities, nor have they learned the terminology. Instead, those on Tumblr have formed their own terminology (which isn't terribly grammatically correct, in my opinion). With no moderation, but a search bar that allows you to find just about everything, misconceptions are easily developed, and I'm of the opinion that this sort of publicity is just something the otherkin, therian, fictionkin, and related communities are just not ready for. The public won't accept us yet as anything but a laughing matter.
So the Tumblrkin aren't really to blame entirely for their lack of understanding. It can be irritating, yes, but without any formal guidelines, they are welcome to identify as they please for now....
___
Cut to the relevant parts. This is largely how I feel, and what I think is wrong not with Tumblr 'kin, but trying to have an otherkin community on Tumblr at ALL. The site is open and tag-based. The community there is a revolving door and people are constantly streaming in and there is no gate. "Gatekeeping" is demonized but it's literally necessary and forums used to gatekeep themselves, saying to each person coming in, individually, "oh this sounds like you fit us, welcome" or "here's some resources since you're questioning" or "this term doesn't quite fit your experiences but here's one that does so you can talk to people with the same experience." It's not keeping people out, it's directing them to the place they're looking for.
But on Tumblr, you literally can't do that. Unless you post something over and over in the tags, it will get lost. There are no threads archived, no information saved, no conversations that can be easily found and contributed to as they come up. Anyone can post anything and its become a giant game of telephone, passing one watered-down definition from person to person until we have...well, what we have now. It's better than it was, but it's still a trainwreck.
I'm also constantly angry at how people on Tumblr have elevated otherkinity to the Highest Status of Validity and Realness. Many people with copinglinks or who are otherhearted or have synpaths or fictionflicker experiences are reluctant to stop calling themselves otherkin because they feel like it makes them "less valid," which means that not only are those of us with those experiences who *want* separate terms and communities to actually be able to discuss our unique experiences in end up being alone and called ableist for "trying to kick mentally ill copingkin out of the community" or something with our terms instead of. Yknow. Trying to coin terms to describe our own experiences and find others who share them. I have only ever felt invalidated in my non-kin alterhuman identities by people on Tumblr who think we're a throwaway community.
I do think there have been good things to come from Tumblr. We have terms now like alterhuman, copinglink, other-hearted (resurrected from an older term that deserved more attention), and synpath. I've been able to sort out feelings I've had since I was little thanks to this, and hopefully they'll become more used and talked about.
And since I've been able to recognize my experiences with these terms, I've actually started to understand things Tumblrkin talk about that I never understood while trying to process them as otherkin experiences. I notice a lot of them seem to be experiencing fictionflickers, or may have strong synpaths, and since they don't have those words and the dominant identity language is all 'kin, they end up lumping it all there.
The other thing, though, that you mentioned, is their detachment from the *entire rest of the communities and their histories.* I think that really gets to me more than anything else. I've collected pages on pages of personal sites and writings, I can find threads I remember on Werelist in 5 minutes, I remember when animal-hearted was coined and exactly who coined it and where the term came from. I am in love with these communities because they've given me identity and friends and have added something meaningful to my life. And now I feel like I'm watching it all crumble away. People don't care anymore. It's all aesthetic and "kins" and revolving doors of no-introspection-involved unconditional validation of anything regardless of if it fits or not. No one knows anything about where we came from. I see younger 'kin referencing the community's age to rebut trolls, but I bet they couldn't tell you more than "it began in the 70s" because they only hear it through what's passed around the tags. When history is brought up, including the history of what "otherkin" and related terms have always applied to, they don't give a shit and will actively tell you that and say "things change" when they have no clue how inorganic and forced their "changes" are to the alterhuman communities. Adding terms like alterhuman and synpath? That's evolution of community. Cramming all vaguely related experiences of connection to anything under the label of "otherkin?" Not a community evolving.
The worst thing is that some "Tumblrkin" are nice to talk to and have experiences in common with me, but I'm constantly afraid of talking to anyone from Tumblr who calls themselves kin because I'm afraid that if I point out the different experiences and different terms, that they'll freak out on me, or get upset, or call me "trukin" of all things. And that's sad, because I really want to have discussions and experience sharing again, and these people don't seem to want that.
Tl;dr: Tumblr is a horrible website to try and operate a community like ours from, this has contributed largely to the crap on Tumblr, and it's frustrating how much we could discuss if people would just stop putting otherkin identity on a pedestal above all other alterhuman identities.