A farewell to the tulpamancy community.
Mar. 9th, 2018 12:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quandary_lionsSo after about four years in the community, we're stepping out. Unfortunate that it's come to this, but it is what it is.
About why: it's a lot of factors, honestly. As time goes on, we find ourselves disagreeing with more and more of the things presented in tulpamancy--not with the practice itself, but with various cultural elements of the community. How tulpamancy is presented, how tulpas themselves are presented and treated. As a system who does have tulpas but whose majority type/origin is DID, we've wondered a lot about whether our experiences are relevant--we don't feel confident speaking on things like creation and such from our own experiences anymore and have to crossreference frequently.
After a tremendous collapse about two years ago, we've been busy rebuilding our collective life. We've found communities, friends, and loved ones beyond tulpamancy, beyond plurality even. We've been rapidly relearning a bunch of technical skills we'd forgotten, and we've been learning how to relate to others, inside and out, in healthier ways. (Don't be old us, kids.) All of this has been eating most of our time and energy.
We currently have too much on our plate. Career, family, health. Overworked and overstressed. Something needs to go.
We haven't been able to keep up with the community as much as we feel we should. We miss things in modqueue. We can't read every comment like we used to, and that means stuff flying under the radar, which means inconsistent modding on our behalf. The Discord is linked closely to the sub and yet we're not even in it.
There's a lot of squabbles inside our head about the community. People disagreeing with how to moderate stuff, how to talk about stuff, how much to get involved, etc. While squabbles are just part of the territory when it comes to living with others, this was distinct in the way it genuinely, consistently strained several of us.
All of this meant that we've been lowkey thinking about resigning for a while.
A few days ago, it came to our notice that a prominent member of the tulpamancy community was engaging in predatory behavior, which we and some other staff investigated ourselves. If you want to know who and what was going on, ask us for access here on Dreamwidth--we'll likely be making an access-list locked post later. While we believe we handled it as well as we could have, the whole incident hit far too close to home for us in many ways. It brought up all of our misgivings about the community at once, along with a lot of past things we've experienced that were all too close to this, and overall made us profoundly sick at heart.
This was the tipping point. We've discussed this among ourselves, and none of us feel right staying, much less holding a position of leadership in the community after this.
Several of us have written up our individual goodbyes here. Take care, and thank you for the support over the years.
---
Q. What will happen to Tulpa.io?
A. It's not our site, actually, but we do have a major hand in it. We're wondering whether we should retain any direct involvement in the community at all and are currently figuring that out with the other admods of the site.
Q. Will you continue to be involved with the rest of the plural community?
A. We're distancing ourselves from there as well--actually, already have. While we don't have the same fundamental disagreements there as we do with aspects of the tulpamancy community, we've also seen a lot of attitudes and behaviors that just don't sit well with us. We still feel very powerfully about plural advocacy, but it's something we've decided is best done solo or alongside individual systems, rather than from within the community.
Q. Will you be doing any future projects related to tulpamancy/plurality?
A. Planning on it, just solo/not-high-involvement stuff like blogging about our experiences and opinions. And writing guides focused more on improving system skills and communication, rather than tulpa creation. Maybe a webcomic?? the possibilities are endless
Q. Where can we keep up with you?
A. Right here, on this Dreamwidth. If we do any noteworthy plural community stuff, it'll be mentioned here. We are also discussing remaining on plural.cafe. (there's a slim chance that we might crosspost to tumblr, but most of us would rather not touch the site with a hundred-foot pole.)
About why: it's a lot of factors, honestly. As time goes on, we find ourselves disagreeing with more and more of the things presented in tulpamancy--not with the practice itself, but with various cultural elements of the community. How tulpamancy is presented, how tulpas themselves are presented and treated. As a system who does have tulpas but whose majority type/origin is DID, we've wondered a lot about whether our experiences are relevant--we don't feel confident speaking on things like creation and such from our own experiences anymore and have to crossreference frequently.
After a tremendous collapse about two years ago, we've been busy rebuilding our collective life. We've found communities, friends, and loved ones beyond tulpamancy, beyond plurality even. We've been rapidly relearning a bunch of technical skills we'd forgotten, and we've been learning how to relate to others, inside and out, in healthier ways. (Don't be old us, kids.) All of this has been eating most of our time and energy.
We currently have too much on our plate. Career, family, health. Overworked and overstressed. Something needs to go.
We haven't been able to keep up with the community as much as we feel we should. We miss things in modqueue. We can't read every comment like we used to, and that means stuff flying under the radar, which means inconsistent modding on our behalf. The Discord is linked closely to the sub and yet we're not even in it.
There's a lot of squabbles inside our head about the community. People disagreeing with how to moderate stuff, how to talk about stuff, how much to get involved, etc. While squabbles are just part of the territory when it comes to living with others, this was distinct in the way it genuinely, consistently strained several of us.
All of this meant that we've been lowkey thinking about resigning for a while.
A few days ago, it came to our notice that a prominent member of the tulpamancy community was engaging in predatory behavior, which we and some other staff investigated ourselves. If you want to know who and what was going on, ask us for access here on Dreamwidth--we'll likely be making an access-list locked post later. While we believe we handled it as well as we could have, the whole incident hit far too close to home for us in many ways. It brought up all of our misgivings about the community at once, along with a lot of past things we've experienced that were all too close to this, and overall made us profoundly sick at heart.
This was the tipping point. We've discussed this among ourselves, and none of us feel right staying, much less holding a position of leadership in the community after this.
Several of us have written up our individual goodbyes here. Take care, and thank you for the support over the years.
---
Q. What will happen to Tulpa.io?
A. It's not our site, actually, but we do have a major hand in it. We're wondering whether we should retain any direct involvement in the community at all and are currently figuring that out with the other admods of the site.
Q. Will you continue to be involved with the rest of the plural community?
A. We're distancing ourselves from there as well--actually, already have. While we don't have the same fundamental disagreements there as we do with aspects of the tulpamancy community, we've also seen a lot of attitudes and behaviors that just don't sit well with us. We still feel very powerfully about plural advocacy, but it's something we've decided is best done solo or alongside individual systems, rather than from within the community.
Q. Will you be doing any future projects related to tulpamancy/plurality?
A. Planning on it, just solo/not-high-involvement stuff like blogging about our experiences and opinions. And writing guides focused more on improving system skills and communication, rather than tulpa creation. Maybe a webcomic?? the possibilities are endless
Q. Where can we keep up with you?
A. Right here, on this Dreamwidth. If we do any noteworthy plural community stuff, it'll be mentioned here. We are also discussing remaining on plural.cafe. (there's a slim chance that we might crosspost to tumblr, but most of us would rather not touch the site with a hundred-foot pole.)
