Ask me about being a schizophrenic teenager in a doomsday Otherkin cult.

Prester Jane · # ? Jan 15, 2018 00:16

Hello Ask/Tell. I come to you today looking for help in figuring out how to discuss a topic that has (against all my personal expectations) become incredibly relevant in todays social climate. While I have been very open in the past about my experiences with homelessness, mental illness, and being raised in a cult- I have generally only referenced my time being involved with cults during my late teens through early adulthood. These cults were ones I become involved with through my own actions, and I find many of my actions during this period both inexcusable and shameful.

This is in all honesty a topic I would never broach if it weren't for the fact that with the Alt-Right/Internet Neo-Nazi's I am witnessing the exact same self-destructive behavior and beliefs play out in a huge segment of our nations young people. I believe that these individuals can be reached and helped into living happier lives wherein they are integrated in society*- but doing so will require first an empathetic (if not necessarily condoning) understanding of their experience of the world and what is driving their behavior; from there I think it possible to derive methods to extract people from that destructive mindset. It is in pursuit of this goal that I choose to speak of my experiences here.

*I believe this because myself and several other individuals I was involved with as a cultist have all separately managed to leave our pasts behind and create lives for ourselves.

I based large portions of my Narrativist Framework (a conceptual framework for describing the behaviors and mindset of extremists) on what I experienced during my late teens through late 20's. During this time-frame (mid 90's to approx the start of the Great Recession) the Internet played an important role in everything that happened. I believe that I have observed the basic behavior we see playing out in what I will refer to as the Alt-Reich" (for simplicity sake) in several forms throughout the years. (First in the early Other-kin/psychic vampire communities, and then in the 9-11 Truth movement.) It is my personal contention that what is playing out in the Alt-Reich is an emergent human behavior that existed on the early Internet before it became weaponized by state and corporate actors on social media.

It is worth putting a caveat here that my own particular experiences are a more extreme version of what is playing out in the Alt-Right, and I will get into the reasons for that as this thread progresses. But the underlying pattern is in my view ultimately the same.

Also please let me declare strait off that this discussion will include a great deal of descriptions of irrational and bizarre behavior that was justified with what can only be described as antilogic. We were misogynists, we were a bit racist (although we didn't think we were) and we thought we were the secret masters of society. We experimented with various forms of magick and occultism and obsessed over "training" ourselves so that we would be ready for our destinies as great leaders in the apocalyptic clash between good and evil that was coming (one form was by by shouting DBZ phrases while swinging shinai at each other). We got into "wars" (often over the astral plane but sometimes in real life) with other groups of deluded cultists that were sometimes doing the exact same bizarre things at the exact same bizarre times.* It was the fact that we encountered so many groups completely disconnected form our own that really helped sell us all on the illusion, but at the same time it is the existence of these other groups (and some of the experiences we had with them) that leads me to content that what we experienced is rooted in something widespread in humanity and comprehensible (if not at all rational).

Of those I am aware of who were involved in these events most of us have since gone on to be formally diagnosed with either a personality disorder, a mental illness, or sometimes both. We lived in a delusional fantasy world and arranged our lives around spending as much time engaging with our fantasies as possible. I am not trying to justify or defend my actions or participation in the events I will describe- I am merely attempting to provide insight into the worldview and experiences that spawned these behaviors.

*We once by pure chance encountered into another cult-group in the dead of night while we were "astral projecting" at a tree in a nature park that featured in many local paranormal stories. Naturally both groups concluded that we were destined to meet (but for separate reasons) and incorporated that chance meeting into our respective shared delusions.

Looking back on that first cult, the one that formed in high school, is especially important to the discussion (and also the hardest for me to discuss). In hindsight (and after literal years of therapy) I have concluded that there were three main factors that drew that initial group together. These are:

1.) We were all social outcasts in our peer group, largely as a result of difficulties in communicating with our peers that were largely rooted in tremendous abuse and trauma.
2.) We all shared a lifelong history of living a double life because of the severity of the abuse occurring with our families. We all came from exceptionally dysfunctional families that out great emphasis on appearingfunctional.
3.) A history of psychologically dissociating as small children as a way of escaping the severe abuse we were experiencing at the hands of our parents/primary caretakers.

We all had very little capacity for interacting with our social peers (in more than a superficial way) who had not experienced the kinds of abuse/trauma that we had. As a result we were all social outcasts of varying degrees, that is how we first started to socialize with each other. We were mostly just very lonely and despite being well intentioned could not express ourselves to our peers- we also had certain interests that our non-abused peers simply could not relate too. For example the major source for what became that first cults delusional worldview (or Inner Narrative)was the recurring nightmares that we all suffered from (literally).

We all had very intense and very vivid recurring nightmares that featured themes of death and apocalypse. (In these dreams we would often be adults with super powers of some sort) These recurring nightmares were (on an individual level) a very important experience to us that we had never been able to share or discuss with anyone else before. We had all tried of course, but that sort of thing only made us appear even more creepy/weird to our peers and we all had stories of people who stopped talking to us after we tired to discuss those dreams. So finding an entire group of people who we could share this experience with openly was extremely cathartic and bonding. Talking about these dreams became a very popular activity amongst ourselves.

It did not take long for us to conclude that part of the reason we were so alienated was because of these dreams, and we also concluded that these dreams were visions of the future. Our peers made us all too painfully aware that we were different in some way, incompatible. The bond created by these dreams and our constant discussion of them provided a way for us to understand our unique (as near as we could tell) experiences- these dreams also presented an explanation. We were having visions of a future apocalypse that we would all play an important role in. Our peers could never understand the heavy burden we lived with, but that didn't matter. We knew we would rule over them as heroes and lords once the great war between good and evil finally kicked off.

So what I am looking for in this thread is a bit of help in figuring out how to talk about all this, and how to explain these experiences to other people in a way that allows them to understand what was going through our heads at the time. I have hundreds of stories worth sharing- I was involved in several cults over a period of <10 years. Important events played out both in real life (especially early on as it was the mid 90's and the Internet barely existed) and online in communities like Ezboards (a forgotten but important web 1.0 attempt at social media). I have stories that range from doing psychedelics in the basement of a bank building (the night watchmen was part of our cult) to watching people who had only known each other swing real (but very cheap) swords at each other in a "duel" over who had the more important destiny. (an obsession with melee violence was common in these groups) In the past on SA I have discovered that I can figure out how to talk about these things best by answering questions, that is how I learned to talk about Accelerated Christian Education or my mental illness/homelessness for example. And so I am looking here to repeat that same process with a period in my life that the participants who I still have contact with all refer to as "The Age of Crazy".

So please, ask away. I intend to be as honest and introspective here as possible, and although I will change a few details to avoid possible doxxing of people who are not myself in any stories I share I will change nothing of importance..

Prester Jane fucked around with this message at 17:21 on Jan 16, 2018

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eschaton · # ? Jan 15, 2018 02:06

Had you posted about this in the �my friend is married to an anime on the astral plane� thread, which ran for years and talked a lot about things like Borderline Personality Disorder? (That thread had the famous list of warning signs, including whether someone�s favorite color is purple or if they�re obsessed with �The Nightmare Before Christmas.�)

There was a poster in that thread who the thread actually helped get out of an online cult of some sort. I don�t remember all the details, but I�m pretty sure it involved �psychic vampires.�

In any case, that thread made exactly these sorts of shared delusions seem like a widespread phenomenon, where pretty much any dark and edgy fantasy had some group that would latch onto it, whether Vampire: The Masquerade or Final Fantasy VII. (The FFVII House was one instance of it, after all.)

Nebakenezzer · # ? Jan 15, 2018 02:07

^^ OK, please post this list

I've a question: did you grow up in a city? I ask because it sounds like the first group you were into all had similar psychological trauma, which would seem to me to be a pretty big coincidence in a smaller community.

Also: do you think (and this sounds like a pun, forgive me, it isn't) magic thinking had anything to do with the disconnect from reality? Magic thinking, IE the belief that by doing certain rituals you can control your own life, I think is pretty common in kids who don't have control over their own lives.

Nebakenezzer fucked around with this message at 02:10 on Jan 15, 2018

eschaton · # ? Jan 15, 2018 03:03

Found the original thread: Ask me about growing up with a girl who thinks she�s married to anime guys.

It�s honestly kind of amazing just how many people are like this, and how similar they are.

One of the non-anime people mentioned in that read is someone�s law school classmate who is a Sai Baba cultist.

Prester Jane · # ? Jan 15, 2018 03:04

Nebakenezzer posted:

^^ OK, please post this list

I've a question: did you grow up in a city? I ask because it sounds like the first group you were into all had similar psychological trauma, which would seem to me to be a pretty big coincidence in a smaller community.

I personally mostly grew up around a fairly rural cult prior to high school (high school is my only four years of proper education, prior to that I was either educated in a cult-school or homeschooled using cult materials.) That said the high school I attended did however legitmately have a very disproportionate number of students whom were both very intelligent and heavily abused. The reason for this was the high school I attended (which had also been the high school of a nationally famous serial killer- I had some of the same teachers) was at the time a magnet high school during a period of "open enrollment". Basically at the time (Ohio in the mid 90's) you could enroll to any high school in the state that would take you, that high school in particular had just received a very large investment from the community and was famous for its performing arts program to boot. (A huge portion of those involved in that first cult were heavily into performing arts.)

As a result of these factors my high school wound up with a very disproportionate amount of children whom were predisposed to engaging in this behavior. Naturally we interpreted our prescence in the high school as the result of fate arranging for us all to meet so that we could unlock our powers together and prepare.

quote:

Also: do you think (and this sounds like a pun, forgive me, it isn't) magic thinking had anything to do with the disconnect from reality? Magic thinking, IE the belief that by doing certain rituals you can control your own life, I think is pretty common in kids who don't have control over their own lives.

Oh absolutely yes. We all believed we could control the world around us, although generally with some combination of directed thought/meditation/astral projectin rather than a ritual. We occasionally cast magic spells or performed elaborate magical ceremonies but these were not necessarily "rituals" per say because they were always half-improved at least. (If not mostly improved.) We did however engage in a ton of glossolalia (we thought we were speaking the ancient magical language of "Enochian") whenever we cast spells or performed magical ceremonies.

I strongly suspect that this behavior was rooted in the reality that despite surface appearances we had each grown up with immense control/influence over our parents behavior. Pathological parents often make their children responsible for their emotional state, and this (subconsciously recognized) control over our parents emotions extended to a belief that we could control anything in reality if we just focused enough/said the right Enochian phrases.

eschaton posted:

Had you posted about this in the "my friend is married to an anime on the astral plane" thread, which ran for years and talked a lot about things like Borderline Personality Disorder? (That thread had the famous list of warning signs, including whether someone‘s favorite color is purple or if they're obsessed with "The Nightmare Before Christmas.)

Never posted in that thread and not familiar with that list, however several of the people I was in cults with have since been diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder.

The astral plane was a very widespread concept and virtually every occult/Otherkin group I ever encountered talked extensively about the Astral plane. I think I''ll need to make an effortpost or two just about the Astral plane because its actually a pretty complicated concept in terms of how we used it- but basically we all had castles on the Astral plane and had constant pretend wars with other groups on the Astral plane.

Sometimes those wars were more than just pretend though- I remember instances wherein Ezboards drama between occult groups resulted in first Astral warfare and spellcasting (obviously this had no impact but Jesus Christ did people love to start drama over events that supposedly occurred on the Astral plane) and then things kept escalating until someone's car got set on fire.

quote:

There was a poster in that thread who the thread actually helped get out of an online cult of some sort. I don't remember all the details, but I'm pretty sure it involved "psychic vampires."

So psychic vampires were really really really common in these groups and they were particularly common on Ezboards. (I am saying this as a former poster on Drink Deeply and Dream a psy/sang vamp forum that is now an extremely gated community but at the time was one of the largest occult forums on the Internet.) Psychic vampires believed they had to "feed" regularly off humans by siphoning "energy" (or some equivalent bullshit word for the same concept) from one individual and into themselves. Psychic vampires were kind of viewed as pretentious and a bit annoying- even within Otherkin communities. The real cultists in the vamp world though were the Sanguinarians (blood drinkers). These guys believed they needed to drink actual-factual human blood in order to stay alive and I new of several "houses" (groups living together) composed of Sanguinarians living with willing "donors". Even within the community these groups were notoriously problematic and chock full of predators. I remember for example Drink Deeply and Dream moderators had actually composed a "how to spot a fake vampire that is just trying to manipulate you for financial gain" checklist to try and protect the community. There had been a number of incidents of sociopaths convincing people that they were vampires and using the promise of "turning" to convince people to let them move in and do drugs/whatever on their hosts dime. When the host eventually kicked them out they moved on to the next victim like clockwork.

quote:

In any case, that thread made exactly these sorts of shared delusions seem like a widespread phenomenon, where pretty much any dark and edgy fantasy had some group that would latch onto it, whether Vampire: The Masquerade or Final Fantasy VII. (The FFVII House was one instance of it, after all.)

The Final Fantasy 7 house is a pretty good example of how widespread the phenomenon is and is one of the things early on in my therapy that made me start to toy with the idea of creating a theoretical framework to explain this behavior.

Also I lived in several houses that while not *quite* as abusive as the FF7 house was were certainly as delusional and into doing bizarre things in order to "train" our magical/psychic powers.

Cythereal · # ? Jan 15, 2018 03:11

Don't you already have a thread in D&D about this and your political stuff?

Prester Jane · # ? Jan 15, 2018 03:17

Cythereal posted:

Don't you already have a thread in D&D about this and your political stuff?

I have a thread in D&D about my Narrativist Framework (which is very heavily derived from these experiences) but this is mostly about the experiences themselves.

Boksi · Boksi Jan 11, 2016

So what did you guys talk about? Obviously your shared delusions and stuff, but did you talk about everyday stuff too? Was there a lot of socializing and fraternizing going on? Would you say it fulfilled people's needs for social interaction? And how did people, especially friends at odds with each other, handle infighting and breakups in the group?

Prester Jane · # ? Jan 15, 2018 03:55

Boksi posted:

So what did you guys talk about? Obviously your shared delusions and stuff, but did you talk about everyday stuff too? Was there a lot of socializing and fraternizing going on? Would you say it fulfilled people's needs for social interaction? And how did people, especially friends at odds with each other, handle infighting and breakups in the group?

We were our own primary social group. We talked about everything and a big part of what drove us together (and initially helped us overlook various warning signs/eccentricities) was the need for regular social interaction. We couldn't get regular social interaction from ours peers so we did our best to fill the gap ourselves.

As far as infighting went......well lets just say that my inspiration for the Compaction cycle was based heavily in how this group handled infighting and breakups (which were a regular feature. I am quoting the entire definition from my blog because I think it is particualrly relevant to this thread:

quote:

Prester'sPerspective]

Compaction Cycle: The compaction cycle is a major factor in how Narrativist groups function and is my term for an unrecognized (but very important) constant low level cycling of individual Narrativists through a variety of different Narrativist groups. The compaction cycle is of primary importance because it describes the trend towards radicalization in Narrativist groups, and even provides something of a barometer than can be used to approximate the general pace of and anticipate when a Narrativist group is about to radicalize. That is to say, when you see a compaction Cycle play out you know the group is about to radicalize further. The more frequently that compaction cycles are occurring, the more rapidly a given Narrativist group is radicalizing. This cycle is also important because it is a major factor in how Narrativist groups build common ground with each other when they are looking for allies. (It also plays a large role in the cross pollination of various strings of Narrativist thought.) To explain this facet of Narrativist behavior I will call forth the metaphor of a snowball. Specifically, a snowball made of that wet slush poo poo that is right on the border between being frozen and being a puddle.

If you have never gotten a chance to play with such a snowball then let me elaborate. By snowball standards they are heavy, awkward projectiles that travel slowly and are easily dodged. Even when you do hit something with such a snowball, the effect is minimal, usually a wet *punt* sound. This snowball then is a metaphor for the average Narrativist group when it is not under pressure. Unwieldy, awkward, not terribly effective, but can still get the job done. Put a Narrativist group under the pressure of "Narrative Dysphoria" (Defined in detail elsewhere) though, and things change.

Let us return to our wet snowball. If you take it in both hands and compact it, you will squeeze out a surprising amount of water. You will then be left with an ice ball. Although much smaller and having less total mass, an ice ball is a nasty projectile. Fast, accurate, hard to see coming, and can leave a hell of a bruise. To take this example a bit further, if you drop your new ice all in a pile of snow and scoop it all up, you will now have slush ball with an ice ball core. A better projectile than you started with, but not as good as the ice ball by itself was. However, if you compact this new ball down, you will squeeze out the water, and be left with an even larger total amount of ice in a solid ball at the core. Now you are creating a dangerous weapon indeed. And you can keep adding on layers of ice so long as you have a supply of snow, eventually getting a baseball sized projectile of solid ice that can really gently caress something up. Even though you lose much mass every time you compact the ball down, as long as you have a snowbank handy to keep dipping your ice ball in, you can keep adding more total ice.

Now back to Narrativist groups. An average Narrativist group when not experiencing narrative dysphoria is like our slush ball. A mixture of hard and soft members, since when forming Narrativist groups are like an annoying new Multi-Level Marketing scam. "We welcome everyone and anybody can be a success if you just adhere to our Narrative!" They will accept anyone willing to pay lip service to the groups ideals and show up to meetings. When not under pressure or threatened, Narrativist groups are much more relaxed and make a conscious effort to be welcoming to outsiders (some of whom are then selectively groomed for admittance into the ever-present-in-Narrativist-organizations "inner circle").

All such groups when under pressure (particularly Narrative dysphoria) however, start to drive softer members out. Stress rises, tempers flare. Rhetoric becomes harsher, group identity becomes more important, aggressive members start to scrutinize for any perceived flaw in the tribe. Eventually someone (or a group of someones) finds themselves on the wrong side of an internal dispute. It could be that they are genuinely at fault, it could not be, doesn't really matter. In the end they were guilty of the sin of not spotting the group think searching for a scapegoat fast enough and as a result they became the scapegoat and are summarily driven out.

This idea can be seen to play out over time on the (in)famous conservative political discussion forum "FreeRepublic.com", hereafter referred to simply as "Freep". This discussion forum is notorious for the compaction cycles that play out like clockwork every Presidential election cycle. Once the website owner (a gentlemen by the name of Jim Robinson) publicly announces his preferred option for the nomination for Republican candidate for POTUS this is treated as an official announcement of support. From that point forwards the owner of Freep simply bans any member who speaks up in support of of another candidate or criticizes the candidate he has selected. The remaining users on Freep have observably become noticeably and steadily more radicalized over time as a result- and the standards of the community have gradually eroded over time to the point where open racism has gone from being verboten to being essentially the socially acceptable default stance.

Returning once again to our earlier metaphor- with the "softer" members (or water in our slushball) compacted out, the remaining members are more radical overall. While the overall mass, or number of members has decreased, the remaining members are the ones who have proven themselves to be the most competent at falling in line and will prove less likely to disagree with the group think in the future. They have become like the Ice Ball.

Next the Narrativist group will enter a growth phase, and seek to add new "softer" members (or more snow/slush) who will be welcomed in while a semi-secret inner circle not so publicly makes all the real decisions. This addition of new members will continue until the Narrativist group comes under pressure or is subjected to narrative dysphoria, at which point a new compaction cycle will form and another member (or potentially small group of members) will be made into scapegoats for the group's failures and cast out. (In the metaphor of our slushball, this is another round of compacting the water out of our slushball once again and winding up with an even larger core ball of ice.) The remaining members will become more extreme/radicalized, and will then seek to add new members to the group once again.

The metaphor does not end here though, because we need to consider what happens to those outcast members. Most of the time (85% or so if I had to guess) they will go on to join another group. Since they are Authoritarians they will join another group that also follows the Grand Narrative. (While I would like to mention that this is how you get 9-11 truthers that become UFO nuts that become Objectivist "Captains of Industry" and then wind up being 9-11 truthers again over the course of a long enough period of time, I want to stay mostly with the Freep example.) The Freep members that join some other online Conservative community will be quite a bit more shy about rocking the boat. They will be more sensitive and more alert for changes in their new home-tribes groupthink. They will find themselves drawn to the new groups hardliners and will become more hardline themselves. Often, abused becomes abuser, and when this Narrativist group finds itself under pressure, (particularly narrative dysphoria) the formerly outcast member will be among the most vicious attackers of whoever winds up as the new groups scapegoat.

The overall trend here is that Narrativist groups swap members more often than many realize, and one groups rejected softie becomes the next groups hardliner. Just like our slush ball, the weak are driven out and the ice remains, then more members are added and the cycle repeats until eventually everyone is either a hardliner or has stopped associating with Narrativist groups altogether. I feel this is a good explanation for what we observe in the modern GOP. In raw numbers GOP voters/supporters are in serious decline, but the remaining members are rapidly becoming radicalized. Because of the Authoritarian takeover of the GOP over the past 40 years the less hardcore Republicans are being pressed out of group after group until they either become hardliners themselves or find no home in the GOP.

Think of the Grand Narrative as a sort of basic format that the Inner narrative will take, a set of hooks that you could hang any Inner Narrative on. So the more compaction cycles a Narrativist experiences, the more developed their Inner narrative becomes, which inevitably leads to the Inner narrative conforming more and more with the basic structure of the Grand narrative. As the conceptual confines of the Grand Narrative are embraced as a consequence of Inner narrative evolution, the Narrativist is compelled to more extreme forms of anti-social behavior, until at the highest levels the Narrativist feels morally justified in committing acts of violence. Think of it as a hypothetical scale from 1-10, with 1 being the lowest level of compaction and 10 being the point at which there is a strong compulsion to engage in acts of violence. (This scale is meant as a conceptual rough approximation to illustrate this concept.) As a Narrativist experiences more compaction cycles, the compaction level of their Inner narrative rises in response. Put a Narrativist through enough compaction cycles and the resulting Inner narrative evolution eventually they will experience a strong compulsion to commit acts of violence.

I must specify here that just because a Narrativist reaches a 10 on my hypothetical scale it does not mean they will become violent; rather, it means that they feel morally justified and obligated to commit acts of violence. Whether they engage in those acts depends mostly on two factions: 1.) how much social stability is there in the community in which the Narrativist resides, and 2.) how much encouragement the Narrativist is receiving from communicating with other Narrativists who are at a similar level of compaction.

Zemyla · # ? Jan 15, 2018 04:25

Oh, wow, you're the first person I've heard mention Ezboards in literally 10 years. Several Ezboards groups were a big part of my life when I was younger.

RandomPauI · # ? Jan 15, 2018 04:35

My "magical thinking" had me as the reason why everything was bad, hence I was the real enemy all along and if I could just stop being bad than things would be good.

What do you think causes some people to gravitate towards "the world is bad because I am bad" and others towards "the world is bad because of a conspiracy"?

Prester Jane · # ? Jan 15, 2018 04:53

RandomPauI posted:

My "magical thinking" had me as the reason why everything was bad, hence I was the real enemy all along and if I could just stop being bad than things would be good.

What do you think causes some people to gravitate towards "the world is bad because I am bad" and others towards "the world is bad because of a conspiracy"?

I've thought a great deal about this particular topic and I think I have a somewhat novel answer (at least as regards the cultists I have experience with): most of us started out believing much as you did- the world was bad because we were bad. We then moved on to "the world is bad because of an external force (as opposed to ourselves)" when the steady abuse of our parents conditioned us to ignore our own shame/guilt responses. If every single infraction is used against you to inflict maximum emotional distress and pain/shame/guilt then a child's mind will (sometimes but not always) simply start ignoring as much introspection as possible. One outward manifestation of that is that an external enemy oppressor (of some sort) is blamed for the misery being experienced in life instead of oneself.

Prester Jane · # ? Jan 15, 2018 04:55

Zemyla posted:

Oh, wow, you're the first person I've heard mention Ezboards in literally 10 years. Several Ezboards groups were a big part of my life when I was younger.

Ezboards is a worthwhile discussion in and of itself because soooooooo much of later Internet phenomenon had early versions of it play out on Ezboards. Case in point: The Sullon Zek jihad was very much a forerunner to the sorts of organized trolling/doxxing that have become so common on social media.

Cyberpunkey Monkey · # ? Jan 15, 2018 05:03

I'm going to riff on this a bit and see what social science words come out that you might use to be able to link your theories to other people researching deviant human behavior.

It seems like you were a part of a number of tightly knit in-groups linked by shared trauma. Your idea of compaction is actually pretty common in social groups. Even legitimate dominant culture groups have institutionalized intergroup violence (i.e. the military) That is really a normal part of human behavior. Human groups usually try to manage intragroup violence by directing that violent impulse outward...

You also might want to look into sociology of gangs, because it's probably very similar to what you went through.

RandomPauI posted:

What do you think causes some people to gravitate towards "the world is bad because I am bad" and others towards "the world is bad because of a conspiracy"?

It's been a long time, but I think Jungian psychology calls that spectrum neurotic (i am bad) vs character disordered (world is bad) if you want to find some more literature on the subject.

Cyberpunkey Monkey fucked around with this message at 05:10 on Jan 15, 2018

mistaya · # ? Jan 15, 2018 08:08

Did the cults you were part of tend to keep their leadership or did it change hands regularly? How did the members decide on their leaders, and did any of them do anything particularly noteworthy to gain the position?

Prester Jane · # ? Jan 15, 2018 22:10

mistaya posted:

Did the cults you were part of tend to keep their leadership or did it change hands regularly? How did the members decide on their leaders, and did any of them do anything particularly noteworthy to gain the position?

This is kind of complicated. Leaders generally became leaders as a result of having a more important destiny and/or having been the leader of our destined group in past lives. The person whom was the leader was often the leader because they were destined to be our leader.

Now what was actually happening was that there was sort a constant subtle social struggle between the various delusions of everyone participating in the group, and whoever (often through force of charisma or manipulation) could get the group to accept that they were the destined leader would be the leader. Typically in my experiences these groups often went through a sort of two-stage process in leadership. Initially the leader would be someone with a mixture of genuine charisma and Borderline Personality disorder. This leader would tend to draw more and more people into the group and help create/refine/formalize the groups shared delusions about itself. Eventually though this initial leader would eventually be replaced by an individual with Narcissistic Personality Disorder, and the old leader would often be forced out in a Compaction cycle.

I can remember one particular instance where this exact process played out (new leader with NPD had just used various social pressures to humiliate and force out the original leader who had BPD*) and the former leader was so emotionally shaken he wound up getting the cops called on him. He was at a public park wearing a hal-fassed (and very cheap) samurai getup, swinging around an oak boken in fake kata, and occasionally shouting at the top of his lungs "IN A PAST LIFE I WOULD HAVE HAD THEIR HEADS FOR THIS!!".

*Both of these individuals now have formal diagnoses and the person with BPD has done a wonderful job getting treatment and building a real life for themselves.

osirisisdead posted:

I'm going to riff on this a bit and see what social science words come out that you might use to be able to link your theories to other people researching deviant human behavior.

It seems like you were a part of a number of tightly knit in-groups linked by shared trauma. Your idea of compaction is actually pretty common in social groups. Even legitimate dominant culture groups have institutionalized intergroup violence (i.e. the military) That is really a normal part of human behavior. Human groups usually try to manage intragroup violence by directing that violent impulse outward...

I wanted to mention that although waht I call Compaction has long been noted in other theories, I have a particular word for it because it plays a very complicated role in a process that I call the "Radicalization Engine". (Also, not every form of institutionalized intergroup violence is necessarily a Compaction cycle, which is why I also use my specific term.)

Radicalization Engine posted:

1.) Narrative Dysphoria: When events in real life contradict the Inner Narrative, a form of cognitive dissonance is the result. A group of Narrativists experiencing this cognitive dissonance will resolve the internal conflict by collectively engaging in a Compaction cycle.

2.) Compaction Cycle: The process via which a group of Narrativists selects and then expels a scapegoat to resolve Narrative Dysphoria. The scapegoat may-or-may-not be actually guilty of any wrongdoing. The overall strong trend is that the more highly radicalized members of a group will target lesser-radicalized members of a group for expulsion during a Compaction cycle, resulting in hardliners remaining and accumulating whilst soft-liners come and go.

3.) Inner Narrative Evolution: In reaction to social stresses of a Compaction cycle as well as the tendency for more radicalized members to accumulate the wake of a Compaction cycle is often followed by modifications to the Inner narrative (both on a group and individual level). Adopting this more radicalized Inner narrative involves subconsciously incorporating Bypass Logic into a wider array of associated topics in the brain. This results in a steady simplification of overall thought and communication skills, a tendency towards an elevated (and often elevating over time) agitated emotional state, and an increased degree of separation from objective reality. Eventually this can result in an individual either becoming willing to engage in or willing to tolerate/ignore violence perpetrated against targeted minorities.

I post this ad frequently, but it really does a fantastic job of showing the Radicalization Engine playing out in an individual who was not a Narrativist initially:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qh3TeTxgNVo

Prester Jane fucked around with this message at 22:18 on Jan 15, 2018

chitoryu12 · # ? Jan 15, 2018 23:01

Prester Jane posted:

I can remember one particular instance where this exact process played out (new leader with NPD had just used various social pressures to humiliate and force out the original leader who had BPD*) and the former leader was so emotionally shaken he wound up getting the cops called on him. He was at a public park wearing a hal-fassed (and very cheap) samurai getup, swinging around an oak boken in fake kata, and occasionally shouting at the top of his lungs "IN A PAST LIFE I WOULD HAVE HAD THEIR HEADS FOR THIS!!".

How much of the delusion was fueled by imitating anime?

Prester Jane · # ? Jan 15, 2018 23:27

chitoryu12 posted:

How much of the delusion was fueled by imitating anime?

We stole from everything we could get our hands on/caught our interest.Anime was a major source, but so was things like Buffy:The Vampire Slayer and pseudo-archaeology snake-oil peddlers like Graham Hancock or the Flem-Aths. We kind of wove whatever was popular at the time (we were teenagers when this started) among our group into our delusions. Bits and pieces were added or subtracted over a number of years.

One of the ways that the anime influence on our beliefs manifested specifically were also practitioners of our own version of "Rad Ki" long before we ever heard the term. There were entire years where we regularly spent time "training" in the woods by swinging various melee weapons at each other while screaming anime phrases. We also did this for quite some time in the basement of a bank building that the (at the time) leader of our group was the night watchmen for. (We also drank, played D&D, and did drugs in that basement too.) Some variant of this sort of behavior was pretty common in such groups actually, common enough that I once witnessed a member of my group "spar with livesteel" (use cheap metal swords purchased through mail-order) a meber of another group that we had encountered by chance at an pagan church a few hours earlier. Like we went from just meeting these people at a public social function to hanging out at their house drinking while our groups respective Angelkin (we each had one) fought a "sacred respect duel" (they made that poo poo up on the spot, but that was also common) by swinging metal blades and screaming "Kaio-ken" at each other.

And to us this only reinforced how awesome and real this all was.

For reference sake this video is from an old Goon group that managed to talk a Rad Ki kid into accepting a challenge. While he isn't an Otherkin (at least that I am aware), believing that you had magical martial arts powers and/or the ability to fire off energy blasts was very widespread in these groups, and some homegrown variant of Rad Ki was usually how that delusion manifested.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=deg7jw4xmlM

Edit: If there is interest I could do a write up on the (extremely complicated and insane) Inner narrative that the high school group eventually developed for itself.

Prester Jane fucked around with this message at 23:38 on Jan 15, 2018

chitoryu12 · # ? Jan 15, 2018 23:59

Prester Jane posted:

Edit: If there is interest I could do a write up on the (extremely complicated and insane) Inner narrative that the high school group eventually developed for itself.

Oh yes.

Sweevo · # ? Jan 16, 2018 00:46

You mentioned this being a kind of shared group delusion. What sort of group size are we talking about? Does this kind of thinking inherently limit itself to very small groups because it tends to drive away anyone who's not willing to go all-in? When you crossed paths with other groups were they also a similar size, or did it vary considerably?

Prester Jane · # ? Jan 16, 2018 00:55

chitoryu12 posted:

Oh yes.

Okay, here goes. Since the entire thing evolved and changed a fair bit over time I am intentionally picking a point wherein it was at its most convoluted and insane.* For a rough timeframe we believed all this circa 2002 or so. (We had graduated high school by then but had remained a cult that spent all its time around each other)

*Some of this is going to be self-contradictory, but good internal consistency in our delusions was not really as much of a concern as one might imagine.

We were a reincarnating group of heroes that had lived thousands of lives together. This particular life was to be a very important one- the culmination of over 10,000 years of preparation. This life was when the (hopefully) final battle between good and evil, between heaven and hell, between right and wrong, would be fought. The war would start "when the veil (between worlds) falls"* and the differences in our souls from human souls manifested themselves into physical reality. This would have varying effects depending on the individual, but literal angel wings emerging (violently) out of our backs and the ability to shoot visible energy blasts from our hands (as well as a host of diverse psychic powers) were common themes.

*I am the originator of this particular concept in the Otherkin community, and it is still very widely held/used.

Our group had an especially important role to play in the final battle of coming war. You see, each dimension has a God, and the God of this dimension was an rear end in a top hat fucker who did not deserve to rule. While Satan certainly did not have what it would take to storm the gates of Heaven and destroy God (nor would that be a preferable outcome) he certainly had enough armies to at least assault the walls of Heaven (an event that would occur after several decades of constant anime-style warfare between individuals like us had ravaged the planet) and when that moment came that was when we were going to put our plan into motion. We were going to help one of our members (the only one who could actually wound a God) kill God, and then another one of our members would sit on the throne and become the God of this reality.

Our leader (whom had BPD) was the one who would kill God. He could wound a God because he was a Nephilim, the only one still reincarnating as a human. (The rest of the Nephilim souls were locked in Gahenna and/or destroyed). He wasn;t just any Nephilim thoughj, he was the Nephilim of the Archangel Gaberiel. That was why he was allowed to continue reincarnating- because his "spiritual father (Gabriel) had struck a deal to protect him from the fate the rest of the Nephilim had faced. (The deal was that Gabriel would remain head Archangel for a corrupt God he saw as unworthy to serve instead of joining the rebellion)

The member who would become the next God was also the person with NPD that a few years after this became the new leader. (Causing the previously described meltdown) This particular member was also the person who had killed the last God to rule over this dimension (a tyrant who had been even worse) and was extremely disappointed with how this current God had turned out. (Like several of our members, his participation in this conflict predated the existence of the human race that the current God had created.) he had the opportunity to become the God of this dimension when he had slain the previous one, but had instead passed on the responsibility. When this next God was slain (whom had protected himself specifically from being killed from this individual by corrupting Angels) he was intent on accepting his destiny to become a just God and remake this dimension into something much better.

Then there was our Angelkin- a guy from a super-duper crazy military family that had raised him to basically fight a suburban Red Dawn scenario. (His extended family also had ties to organized crime, a connection via which a few of us got mixed up in some real poo poo- but that is a different thread.) He had been a very highly decorated Captain of the Guard in one of the Angelic choirs, just beneath being an Archangel himself and nearly as powerful. But he was a purist who could not tolerate the hypocrisy of the God of this Universe, and so he had chosen to join the reincarnation cycle as a way of rebelling without "falling" and becoming a demon.

Next was myself. I was an archangel- or rather the equivalent of an Archangel in a different dimension. My God was a decent God and as such had designed his version of Archangels to operate with much more free will. I had come to this dimension to fight the previous God, returned to my own for awhile until I saw what a disappointment the new God had turned out to be over the last few millenia, so now I was back to try and fix this dimension once again.

Then there was our human host of a Demon Lord- previously one of Satan's most trusted lieutenants. He had come to his own conclusions that Satan's impending war on Heaven could only result in the destruction of Satan and Hell, so he had joined our group relatively recently, having only been with us for a few thousand years. This guy would "channel" his Demon Lord by changing his voice and completely acting out an over-the-top caricature of a spoiled demon-prince, and he was honestly so annoying about it sometimes that even we found it hard to put up with. This guy eventually wound up enlisting in the military and serving 2 tours in Iraq. Came back, went awol for a month, they gave him a diagnosis of schizophrenia and a slap on the wrist. He shortly thereafter went AWOL again (with like three months left on his service contract) and a year later they found him shacked up with a deployed MP's wife (who was also enlisted and an Otherkin)

Then there was an Otherkin whose true form resembled something like a "Spirit Were-Bear", but more muscular and vicious than that image could conjure. He wasn't sure how he had become detached from his won realm and gotten caught up in the reincarnation cycle on this planet. He hated the God of this realm though and wanted to see him replaced in any case, so that is why he had joined our group.

There were more members with delusions like those but I think you get the general gist by now.

We all believed that we had been arranged by fate to meet in this life (as we had in many lives before) so that we could train and prepare ourselves for the war that lay ahead. We expected that when the veil fell it would be a dramatic worldwide event- we wouldn't be the only ones with powers. (And the veil falling was gong to be caused by Satan's first attempt to invade this realm anyways) We loved to talk about how things would play out in the immediate aftermath of the veil falling- and in particular we loved making lists of which normal humans we considered worth protecting from the ensuing chaos and which normal humans were getting their chest vaporized with a punch. We spent many a late night staying up and talking about what building we would seize control of to use as a base of operations, who we would let in our little survivors colony, how we would feed and organize everybody, 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. This period of ruling over a small colony of survivors in the immediate aftermath would last around 5 years and mark the first portion of our participation in these grand events. Eventually we expected to get swept up in a greater war that would result in the destruction of our little colony no matter what choices we made (we had searched every possible timeline for an alternative), before ultimately getting involved in the breach into the realm of Heaven itself (where teh final battle would take place).

With all that said I think I am next going to try and talk about the Astral Plane and how taht whole kettle of delusion worked. I am happy to answer any questions or elaborate on the above though.

Prester Jane · # ? Jan 16, 2018 01:10

Sweevo posted:

You mentioned this being a kind of shared group delusion. What sort of group size are we talking about? Does this kind of thinking inherently limit itself to very small groups because it tends to drive away anyone who's not willing to go all-in? When you crossed paths with other groups were they also a similar size, or did it vary considerably?

In the context of the times (extremely early Internet) there are really two seperate group sizes worth talking about here, real-life groups and online groups. Real life groups tended to be smaller, sometimes only 3-5 individuals (tons of tiny little "We are the true 3" convents floating around) up to the larger ones of around 25 individuals. (Often these were part of larger Pagan church's and/or larger occult-related Meetup groups like ghost hunting or Wiccans) Online groups tended to range from a few dozen individuals at the smaller end to 700-800 on the larger Vamp/Otherkin/Paranormal Ezboards.

Now, before I go on I do need to caveat that Psychic Vampire and Otherkin groups do not exist like this anymore (and cerrtainly not in these numbers) but in my opinion that is because the sorts of individuals who used to be ringleaders for this kind of stuff (often with either BPD or NPD) are all mostly involved in the Alt-Right now.

Cases in point:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XN39Hu7vpys

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0D4TEKrqWE

As to how many members thses groups accrue, that actually depends more on how many individuals are vulnerable to this kind of thinking in a given population. When I was doing this stuff you had to go waaaayyyyy out of your way to be that socially isolated and to create a delusional reality, so cult groups like mine were fairly rare overall (but common in certain circles if you knew where to look.) There just weren't that many of us and we were often geographically spread out.

Nowdays though a great deal more isolated young men like I was (I am a transwoman but at the time I was completely in the closet to myself) are available in the population, and in addition to that instead of having to invest the personal time/effort effort of each individual/group inventing their own delusional reality hostile state actors like Russia are more than happy to do that all for them. (See Q Anon.) As a result we are seeing much greater numbers of much more unity among the Alt-Reich than there ever was among the early Otherkin cults.

Cyberpunkey Monkey · # ? Jan 16, 2018 01:42

Prester Jane posted:

The war would start "when the veil (between worlds) falls"*

Well, the Greek root of apocalypse translates losely to unveiling so...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apocalypse

Unload My Head · # ? Jan 16, 2018 03:05

My apologies if these have been answered before, or if they are too personal:

1) You mention being in a cult as a kid. Was it the same vampire poo poo, or a different cult and you switched up? Are your parents still in it? Did they join before you were born or did you have a 'normal' life for a little while and then they joined up?

2) How do people in cults deal with the blatantly obvious and inevitable failure of their schemes? Like, when the world doesn't end, or your ritual doesn't summon Beelzebub, or the holy war against the Jews doesn't start next Thursday, or whatever, what do people say about that? Is there an eternal system of kicking the can down the road ("Thursday after next you guys!") or do they blame someone else? What do people do as the years wear on and the failure becomes an obvious pattern?

chitoryu12 · # ? Jan 16, 2018 03:18

The angel stuff is kinda reminding me of my ex. I didn't tell her I found out, but she had been talking to an Otherkin friend of hers that she believed she was angelkin. I was silently horrified and started wondering to myself if she was schizophrenic.

I don't know if she's still into that since our breakup, but I do know that she's been embracing her hardcore BDSM desires to the extent of trying to get into scarification and branding.

Orange Sunshine · # ? Jan 16, 2018 06:51

This may be a shallow question, but did anyone you were involved with believe they were a dragon, or a popular fictional character like Buffy the vampire slayer?

Pope Guilty · # ? Jan 16, 2018 06:59

I knew some folks kind of like this back around 2000-2002 or so- always talking about "energy", which they could sense and feel and move with their hands, angels, demons, sigils. Seemed like just attention-seeking gothy occultism at the time- I certainly never heard anything apocalyptic out of any of them. The ones I'm still in touch with are all pretty well-adjusted now, though.

E-Tank · E-Tank Aug 4, 2011

How much was the 'otherkin' just people wanting to be special or different in some way, and how much was people who just genuinely believed the hype?

Nebakenezzer · # ? Jan 16, 2018 16:37

E-Tank posted:

How much was the 'otherkin' just people wanting to be special or different in some way, and how much was people who just genuinely believed the hype?

This is something I've wondered as well. I read a bit about Otherkin in Zack Parson's book "the dragon next door", and it seemed very similar to those people who believed they were reincarnations of famous people. Something about egoism needing validation. I have a psychologist friend, and psychologists make a distinction between people with delusions (like schizophrenics, who genuinely cannot tell the difference between their own imagination and reality) and people who tell lies to themselves but know on some level it is a lie, but have a motive to believe it.

Nebakenezzer · # ? Jan 16, 2018 16:57

Also Prester Jane, your 'compaction' theory is interesting. I've actually read similar accounts before, though in very different contexts. The first is in Political Science, in the book The Vestibule of Hell. It talks a lot about political partisanship, and how regardless of "side", partisanship wins over reason. Basically, most politics you have a tension between people who believe X in politics for rational reasons (IE it works better in the real world) and believe X because political ideology supports it. In times of stress or trouble, the move is either to revise your beliefs, or blame lack of ideological purity on the problems. (Leading to Compaction or radicalization, etc.) This is a problem in politics since this cycle almost always 1) plays to the strength of the worst members, and 2) sheds the rational "lets make this work in the real word" members. So the tendency is to shed rational politics (our political systems are set up under the assumption that rational discussion, compromise, and getting poo poo done in the real world are the driving values) in exchange for partisan absolutism. The author of the book uses the example of the French revolution, where the radicalization cycle lead to one guy, Robespierre, having The Truth. Actually now that I've had my coffee, a similar dynamic can be seen in the Adam Curtis documentary The Power of Nightmares.

Another releveant book you might like is more in philosophy: Alvin Hoffer's The True Believer. It's a short, highly readable examination of fanaticism, which leads to the conclusion that most fanatics are the same, psychologically - the ideology that the fanatic is willing to die for is ironically, window dressing.

Prester Jane · # ? Jan 16, 2018 17:16

E-Tank posted:

How much was the 'otherkin' just people wanting to be special or different in some way, and how much was people who just genuinely believed the hype?

An interesting question. For the people who were much more casually into the scene (the aforementioned "gothy occultists") they were mostly just teenagers experimenting with their identity. However for people involved with the groups I was involved with the whole Otherkin thing was less "trying to be special/different" and more "here is an explanation for why my peers treat me like an alien and I feel so cut-off from human society". In my particular case (as a transwoman)the Otherkin concept provided an explanation for why I felt so strongly that there was something "wrong" about my body as well as explaining why my peers had always been so strangely motivated to reject/harass me.

Pope Guilty posted:

I knew some folks kind of like this back around 2000-2002 or so- always talking about "energy", which they could sense and feel and move with their hands, angels, demons, sigils. Seemed like just attention-seeking gothy occultism at the time- I certainly never heard anything apocalyptic out of any of them. The ones I'm still in touch with are all pretty well-adjusted now, though.

In the circles groups like mine ran in "gothy occultists" were pretty common. They were mostly teenagers going through a phase that most of them grew out of in a year or three. Alot of the concepts and terminology they used originated with groups like mine, but they were generally much less interested in talking about an impending apocalypse.

Also worth mentioning here is that my group didn't talk about our apocalyptic beliefs outside of either our group or other groups like ours. (We believed that normal people couldn't handle the godawful truth.) From the outside we just looked like gothy occultists who had put a ton more effort into it than most.

Orange Sunshine posted:

This may be a shallow question, but did anyone you were involved with believe they were a dragon, or a popular fictional character like Buffy the vampire slayer?

I only met a few Dragonkin in person but knew quite a few online. In my experience Dragonkin tended to be the kind of person who would tell you all about their (self-diagnosed) Asperger syndrome and were really, really into anime. As far as fictional characters goes I knew a few people who believed that their soul originated in Universes that essentially functioned like certain anime's or fantasy/sci-fi settings, but the whole "Otakukin" thing really got going after I had left the Otherkin scene and become a 9-11 Truther.

Unload My Head posted:

My apologies if these have been answered before, or if they are too personal:

1) You mention being in a cult as a kid. Was it the same vampire poo poo, or a different cult and you switched up? Are your parents still in it? Did they join before you were born or did you have a 'normal' life for a little while and then they joined up?

I've written a few threads about the specific cult I was raised in. The most recent thread can be found here: "Republicans, Racism, and the Ritual Abuse of Children. The ABC's of A.C.E."

Basically I was raised in a facility that was designed to churn out brainwashed office drones meant to win the culture wars by taking over the GOP from the inside. I realize how absurd that claim sounds so here is a sampling of materials:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBUw4iWepk0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_2tCMlHEBI

quote:

2) How do people in cults deal with the blatantly obvious and inevitable failure of their schemes? Like, when the world doesn't end, or your ritual doesn't summon Beelzebub, or the holy war against the Jews doesn't start next Thursday, or whatever, what do people say about that? Is there an eternal system of kicking the can down the road ("Thursday after next you guys!") or do they blame someone else? What do people do as the years wear on and the failure becomes an obvious pattern?

Basically this is all resolved via Compaction cycle. Whenever something proves the group wrong the group will select a scapegoat and expel that person from the group (note, person expelled and stated reasons for expulsion are rarely rationally connected). Basically a group like this generally whittles itself down over time (into an ever-more-radical group) until the group either whittles itself out of existence or morphs into something scary.

Prester Jane fucked around with this message at 22:17 on Jan 16, 2018

Unload My Head · # ? Jan 16, 2018 20:04

Prester Jane posted:

Basically I was raised in a facility that was designed to churn out brainwashed office drones meant to win the culture wars by taking over the GOP from the inside. I realize how absurd that claim sounds so here is a sampling of materials

Ahh, okay. I remember reading one of your other threads about that from a few years ago. I do remember some similar trash being peddled by some of the more fundie people in the church when I was a kid, alongside the young-Earther anti-science poo poo and the Chick tract-level proselytizing. The similarities between the fundies and flat-out Nazi/authoritarian government is kind of amazing to watch. I became agnostic at a fairly young age (11-12-ish) but it's interesting to look back a couple decades later and consider what happened to the kids who stayed in that cycle.

Prester Jane posted:

Basically this is all resolved via Compaction cycle. Whenever something proves the group wrong the group will select a scapegoat and expel that person from the group (note, person expelled and stated reasons for expulsion are rarely rationally connected). Basically a group like this generally whittles itself down over time (into an ever-more-radical group) until the group either whittles itself out of existence or morphs into something scary.

You make a fascinating comparison between this and modern right-wing politics in the US. It seems shockingly similar to what is happening in the current administration. The smart people leave pretty quickly (Walter Shaub, Sally Yates) then they start jettisoning the doubters (Reince Priebus, Sean Spicer) and the true believers who have "failed" (Seb Gorka, Mike Flynn). Then you have a series of big failures so you publicly sacrifice the beloved son (Bannon) and pretty soon it's just Stephen Miller writing policy on the back of a Cracker Barrel napkin.

Club Sandwich · # ? Jan 16, 2018 20:27

Care to elaborate more on the Otherkin -> Alt-Right pipeline, if it's even possible to map out such a phenomenon? This is a connection I'd never seen mentioned before, but as soon as you brought it up it immediately made sense to me (especially in relation to that Styx guy, dude seems like he would have been/is still into some hardcore fringe nerd poo poo)/

Zeppelin Insanity · # ? Jan 16, 2018 21:09

Could you talk about the process of incorporating a new idea seen elsewhere, or poo poo made up on the spot transitioning into an actual held belief? How did it work? Did it feel like an insight into reality rather than something you just thought of? Was there a lot of competition on who could introduce more "cool" concepts? Were ideas being rejected and people told no, that's stupid and you're wrong?

chitoryu12 · # ? Jan 16, 2018 21:22

E-Tank posted:

How much was the 'otherkin' just people wanting to be special or different in some way, and how much was people who just genuinely believed the hype?

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.

It really is a coping method for people who can't or don't want to solve their problems. These problems can be numerous (mental illness, loneliness, unattractiveness, a bad home life, bad grades, etc.) but the key part is that they feel like life sucks and don't have friends or healthy coping skills. It's much easier for them to abandon reality altogether in favor of a happy delusion, and the established Otherkin community makes it easier than ever.

A big part of it is that members reinforce each other's delusions. Denying that someone is experiencing "phantom tails" or dreams of their true life as a wolf spirit in another dimension is taken as a form of gaslighting and makes you just as bad as their real world bullies, but it also means that they might start rejecting your stories as well. It's in everyone's best interest to believe everyone else uncritically to avoid being shamed and removed from the group.

Zemyla · # ? Jan 16, 2018 22:18

chitoryu12 posted:

It's in everyone's best interest to believe everyone else uncritically to avoid being shamed and removed from the group.

Speaking of which, Prester, were people removed from your local group of outcasts? If so, how did they take it? I would think that being rejected even by people who are rejected by high school society would hit them hard.

To be honest, I have no idea what normal high school social life is like.

Prester Jane · # ? Jan 17, 2018 16:47

Zemyla posted:

Speaking of which, Prester, were people removed from your local group of outcasts? If so, how did they take it? I would think that being rejected even by people who are rejected by high school society would hit them hard.

There were a number of people who were removed from our group of outcasts over the years (myself included), and in my case it shook me to my core. I dove deeper into my fantasies and withdrew from the world for months afterwards. It depressed me pretty badly, in retrospect. Looking back now I can say that getting Compacted out of that group was a big factor in my decision to become an over-the-road truck driver.

During my time as a truck driver I was too busy with work to worry about the Otherkin scene and that was when I stepped away from it for good. I did not however stop being a Narrativist. I turned out to have a talent for driving truck and was making 4x what I had ever earned before. I started reading Libertarian books I picked up at truck stops (some of the nicer ones basically have mini-malls in them) and embraced the "bootstraps" mentality whole-heartedly. At the time it made sense to my world experinces- getting a "real" job and busting rear end constantly had turned my life around and I thought that anyone who couldn't do that was just being lazy.

Fast forwards a couple years later to when I had learned the hard way that you could be both talented and hard working and still have it all ripped away from you and the boostraps fell from my eyes. I started poking around Libertarian websites and in the process of researching investing in gold I came across a conspiracy documentary called "America: Freedom to fascism" and I didn't stop watching conspiracy videos for a week solid. I became a 9-11 Truther and as it just-so-turned-out so had a bunch of my former Otherkin acquaintances. We started to form a little group that was planning/preparing for how to handle the impending uprising against the Illuminatti/Globalists. Then the old Otherkin-style bullshit (that we all swore to each other that we had matured past) started to replay itself and there were more long conversations into the night about who we would protect or what we would do when society collapsed and more Compaction cycles.

chitoryu12 posted:

A big part of it is that members reinforce each other's delusions. Denying that someone is experiencing "phantom tails" or dreams of their true life as a wolf spirit in another dimension is taken as a form of gaslighting and makes you just as bad as their real world bullies, but it also means that they might start rejecting your stories as well. It's in everyone's best interest to believe everyone else uncritically to avoid being shamed and removed from the group.

This was a huge factor and it played out in many more ways than just refusing to deny someone else's delusions. The trick was to incorporate someone else either doing something cool or playing an important role in your delusions. There was a ton of "I saw your dream form in the astral plane and we trained until we both hit a new energy level" type of stuff being said all the time. Having dreams/visions of the future wherein a member of the group played a vital role in some sort of awesome fightscene and/or power struggle was another popular one. Like many things in these groups its all sort of transactional- with more popular group members frequently coming out on top of these transactions.

This also worked with us using our "powers" around each other. I'll pretend that your crystal really is talking to you (and that I can overhear bits and pieces) if you will pretend that you can feel the "healing energy" that I am using on you.

Come to think of it there was one specific oddball behavior that I encountered in nearly every group like this- pretending that we were all fighting over the paths of pool balls using our various psychic/telekinetic powers. Sometimes it would be a game of pool that other people were engaged in, sometimes it would be a game that we were playing ourselves. Like this was a thing that happened anytime you went out playing pool with people in this crowd- the game itself becomes entirely secondary to the pretend magical pissing-match that is taking place. Whoever wound up winning the actual game didn't get near as many bragging rights whoever had demonstrated their powers in the most amusing/dramatic fashion.

Zeppelin Insanity posted:

Could you talk about the process of incorporating a new idea seen elsewhere, or poo poo made up on the spot transitioning into an actual held belief? How did it work? Did it feel like an insight into reality rather than something you just thought of? Was there a lot of competition on who could introduce more "cool" concepts? Were ideas being rejected and people told no, that's stupid and you're wrong?

For the most part which ideas got accepted and which got rejected was the result of the internal popularity contest more than anything else. The more popular you were, the more important your destiny and the more powerful you were allowed to be. Think of it as a freeform Vampyre: The Masquerade LARP that doesn't have an off switch. (LARPing in all forms was extremely popular with pretty much everyone who ran in those circles, but Vampyre was particularly popular.)

It was rare for someone's delusions to be outright rejected/mocked, but it did happen on occasion. In my experience it really only occurred when someone said something either so stupid or so insane that it made it hard for the rest of us to live in our own delusions. The most amusing example of this was an encounter with an Otherkin we met through a ghost hunting group. He introduced himself as a "Dolphinkin" and started talking about how hard it was to live life with these constant cravings for fish. Then he started doing what I can only describe as "Flipper-style glossolalia" which he claimed was the high magical language of royal dolphins. Even for us it was a bridge too goddamned far.

Club Sandwich posted:

Care to elaborate more on the Otherkin -> Alt-Right pipeline, if it's even possible to map out such a phenomenon? This is a connection I'd never seen mentioned before, but as soon as you brought it up it immediately made sense to me (especially in relation to that Styx guy, dude seems like he would have been/is still into some hardcore fringe nerd poo poo)/

Well, strictly speaking there are probably not many modern Otherkin who have gone over to the Alt-Right, but the sorts of people that I was involved with in the Otherkin community are the kinds of people who in modern times are becoming Alt-Right. That said the underlying idea here is that big clusters of Narrativists function as s sort of interacting ecosystem that passes members around as Compaction cycles play out. Just because an invidiual Narrativist gets forced out of a group during a Compaction cycle does not mean they stop being a Narrativists ("although that does happen on rare occasions), for the most part they just go find another (often very similar) Narrativist group to join. And when they do so they are much more likely to be a hardliner that forces someone else out during a Compaction cycle- very often abused becomes abuser.

The idea here is that over time a big cluster of aligned Narrativist groups will all radicalize each other as they pass members around, although they will not all Compact at exactly the same rate. Different layers of Compaction can often be observed in the same group of radicalizing Narrativists.. The modern Alt-Right is the result of this process in my view. Very roughly the evolution of the Alt-Right has been (each -----> represents a bunch of Compaction cycles) Internet Atheists----->Gamergaters----->Men's Rights Activists/Incels------>Alt-Right------->Alt-Reich.

As Otherkin have generally been seen as the ultimate form of special snowflake syndrome they have not usually gotten caught up in the Compaction cycles associated with right wing politics. (Although I can certainly see an individual Otherkin doing so) For some bizarre reason however this state of affairs has not proven true for Furries....

https://twitter.com/Toxikkitti/status/905558473349316608

chitoryu12 · # ? Jan 17, 2018 17:59

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.

Earwicker · Earwicker Jan 6, 2003

there are definitely nazi anime nerds.

Adbot · # ? Apr 25, 2024 17:40

Unload My Head · # ? Jan 17, 2018 18:35

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.

On the off chance this isn't a joke post, you can enjoy some light reading.

*edit: So now I'm literally reading a Naruto thread on Stormfront. Thanks a lot.