The Element of Secrecy

[Sock]

I cannot lie, I do enjoy posting my artwork, and I enjoy seeing others posting their own work, in fact I wish more people would do so.

 

There is a certain comfort of being among like-minded people, may it be in the hope of finding someone who experienced something similar to you and has more experience with it, or just knowing someone out there knows what things are like concerning a certain aspect of your own life. I know I spent a good deal of time checking around on multiple blogs before coming back here just because I did not understand what was going on in my mind, and was eager to make sense of it, something I'm still working on.

 

Of course, you do have a point. Things can go too far, and you can be too open about what happens, thus leaving yourself vulnerable to mocking and derision. It's something I've been aware of myself for a while, and it does affect my posting style.

 

I'm not sure if others really find what I post educational or useful or uplifting, but I do post with the hope that it is in some way. I personally haven't found too many around here who I could see and say "This guy knows more about things than I do", but I can still find their experiences and viewpoints either interesting or useful in someway. But the point remains, there is a level where too much is shared.

[Luminesce]

Humans naturally feel a need to share their experiences with others. It's how we've developed into societies, how we advanced from basic hunter gatherers in the first place. No one person is as great as many.

 

But I know what you're actually talking about, and you're right. In fact it was a meme in the early days of Tulpa.info that people spent more time talking about their tulpas than actually spending time with them. That seems to be a product of this age of technology - social media. When my grandma showed me pictures of my younger parents and uncles and aunts from an old photo album, that was something special. So of course, if you can put that on facebook for even more people to see much more easily, why wouldn't you? Well, I don't even need to finish this thought, I think you get it already. The value decreases, importance is desensitized, yet at the same time you become addicted to the feedback and reactions of others so readily available. There are some truly beautiful, hilarious, touching, and so on images on Imgur. But we only see them for a day or so because they reached the "front page".

 

There's nothing wrong with sharing those photos. There's nothing wrong with posting awesome pictures you took to Imgur. And really, getting some likes or upvotes or whatever feels good too. But "All things in moderation" as they say.. Some (not me) can give this same argument for alcohol. For video gaming, for any activity. All in moderation. Because that controls its importance. Good food is only good food while it's better than normal food. When you get used to having chocolate and

disgusting

fat-cake things, you've ruined what was special, making it the norm. Now that value is gone, just like a drug addiction, what once made you feel great is now required just to meet living standards.

 

 

I agree that this can apply to tulpas. I'd write another paragraph in summation of previous ones here on the topic of spending time with your tulpas as opposed to thinking of them as tulpas and how you can talk about them to others... But I'm one of those people that already doesn't. I mean, I never really saw it as a positive thing, but our experiences are almost all kept to ourselves (as we find it too difficult to do them justice in words). Even our progress report isn't up to date on how Tewi's basically the only reason my life is going anywhere right now, taking care of all the important things I've lost motivation to keep up with again. Or that Flandre and I are happier together than ever, and she's working really hard to try and accomplish lucid dreaming (for me..). And there's nothing wrong with sharing those things if I choose to. But if I were to blog about everything we did, I feel like everything we did would have its standards or expectations raised, whilst desensitizing how special the events really were.

 

 

But anyways, I don't find that relevant whatsoever. That was purely in reply to you, Iscariot. I don't feel like it's too big of an issue for the general members here. And Melian seems to exist based on attention no matter who it comes from, so I don't count her either. There seems to be an alright balance on the forum.

 

Of course, I won't comment on the IRC.. But you sort of did yourself already. You're probably not wrong.

[J.Iscariot]

Oh, uh, I'm not really talking about IRC. Every post I've made about IRC ended up biting me in the ass, the past is the past and it's stuff I don't really think of anyway, bringing it up is like bringing up how the ant farm that's 100 miles from my house is growing, doesn't concern me, I was more talking about the internet community as a whole, more precisely the reddit community. My comment wasn't really aimed at anyone in specific, it's just the way people are overall, and I agree with most of what you've said anyway. I can't really sanction people for being people and feeling the need to express themselves like that, the way I was raised, though, I could never express myself at all and had no freedom of speech or expression for that matter., as a kid. I don't get it when people speak of rights they don't really have in the first place and act entitled, we're all equals in my books, and this is starting to make less sense the more I type, so I'll... just... stop. Yeah. That works. Just my opinion even though I am aware most people will refuse it and just put it aside.

 

To what Sock said: Eh, most people don't share their art because they think that it's not good enough. Besides, as I told you in the past, you're pretty talented, so it works well for you.

 

In the end, as long as you're content and can have consistency in that sort of... contentment, that's good enough.

 

I like reading your posts, Cottonwell. You always have something interesting to share, so.... keep that up.

[Luminesce]

*cough*

I have seen tulpas live off interaction online with no other activities, I've seen tulpas meme all day.

*cough*

 

Wasn't referring to your history on the IRC, just the fact that that^ is a lot of what I myself saw there.

 

 

Also oh. I forgot something relevant. I've had a subconscious urge to "share" Reisen (and the others to a lesser extent) with people around me for years. I only recently got over doing it, really because I only recently realized I was. Up until my name was changed to Luminesce, I had a habit of putting Reisen's name and form... everywhere I could. My usernames in many, many places are still Reisen in some form. My Minecraft skin is Reisen... and so is my username, ReisenInaba. My avatar on basically every site was Reisen or periodically another of my tulpas, and still is save here and Skype where it's usually a picture of the moon. I started to realize I did it just under two years ago maybe, when I was doing my best to make my character in the Attack on Titan Tribute Game look like Reisen. I didn't see it as a problem, but it made me think about how my first instinct given any creative platform was to try to make Reisen in some way. Pixel art on Minecraft, character models in things as obscure as Guns of Icarus, avatars on sites, my usernames, and not the least by any means my $100 Max's Severed Head on TF2... Which is basically bunny ears. Which I 100% do not regret by the way, it's my most prized virtual possession. Since I've got 2200 hours in the game and counting, it's earned its value.

 

Subconscious, though. I didn't even know I was doing it. I didn't tell literally anyone about anything my tulpas and I did. At most I told a few people they existed. Apparently some part of me wanted to share them with the world, though.

 

Still do, maybe. But I prefer to satisfy that by letting them actually interact with the world. Nothing is more fulfilling than seeing someone thank Reisen for her advice, or Tewi or Lucilyn having fun (in their own very, very different ways). I like Flandre getting some outside exposure just in general too. As far as I can tell that's the absolute healthiest way to "share" your tulpas with anyone, should it be possible. I've never been the type to put my personal life out there just to get attention, unless there was reason to. A lot of people seem to get use out of my personal experiences here, though. And I hope my tulpas can feel that same thing some day, maybe even moreso.

[Vos]

'If any of my friends bring up the topic of tulpas, which they have before, I'm willing to discuss it with them, but there's nothing worth sharing about the people in my head and the experiences we've had -- if I do talk about something, it's usually in a more general sense. I think that some of the people in my head are less secretive than others, and that's fine, but we've agreed to not answer certain things if they come up, probably because of how others in the community would view us. It sort of feels like, as time goes on, all of us are becoming less open. I don't know if that's a good thing, but hey, it probably doesn't matter all that much.'

[Lucilyn]

I never really thought about being secret. 'Cus I talk to all you guys on the internet just fine. But I guess, I don't really interact with people in real life even though I'd want to because it's not really me. It's Lumi's body and his friends and family and stuff.. It's his life basically. I just kinda accepted that. That sounds really sad. But I'm not sad, I'm happy just fine. Switching is fun but I don't even need that really. When Flandre figures out lucid dreaming then we'll be able to do way more than you can in real life anyways, and we can do it together too in our own bodies.

 

 

Am I a secret? That's really weird to think about... Being a secret person.

 

"not known or seen or not meant to be known or seen by others."

 

No that's definitely not true. I'm not a secret. But some people don't know about me because it would be weird and they probably wouldn't accept me. Maybe I'm just a really big secret that only some people can't know about. No, I'm not a secret, that doesn't make any sense. Something isn't secret just because no one knows about it.. it's just undiscovered.

[Guest Anonymous]

@J. Iscariot,

 

You think too much. I love blogging bout random stuff because it is fun. I like the attention and the interaction. I like to socialize online. My host David likes to share my stupid, silly daily shit as much as I do. A few people actually enjoy reading it.

 

That's it. It isn't complicated or even that big of a deal.