is there a built in threat?

[reguile]

Reddit probably is more user friendly to those who have already been on reddit for a while, that's fair. I've personally found the large number of groups here on the forum crossed with a low amount of activity to make me have to work to find where the activity is, and if I can't find the activity then there is no point in even being on the forum.

 

I think it's good to have categories, but they should be a thing you go to after seeing the activity on the site, rather than your "big first impression". New users might click through and see one active thread and a thousand dead ones, assume .info isn't worth bothering with, and just leave. Categories are a great way to "dive deep" or to only see what you want to see out of a bunch of different topics, but they aren't good for community interaction or quickly seeing new stuff to respond to.

 

I agree that facebook isn't a really strong viable option. It takes a brave soul to attack their real life image to tulpamancy, and I am certainly not that brave. I don't expect others to be that brave either. It could be a place to host ads, though.

 

As for disagreement, I think that people here in .info are very free to express disagreement. After all, you can say whatever it is you like by responding to a thread. But, unlike reddit, you aren't allowed to anonymously state that X person should not have their post be seen by voting it down. To express your disagreement you must express it in text, and in doing so, you make both your comment, and the person you are responding to, more visible rather than less. It ensures that in order for you to make a point, you must do so in a civil way and you always know that your words will be seen by everyone once you respond to someone. You cannot silently hound a person or a viewpoint and attempt to shut it down. To avoid that is a massive advantage of forum style posts.

 

If a person requires to be able to do the above to participate, then I think they should leave. It's a toxic and terrible behavior that sets people against one another and makes every post a case of wondering if you will be "liked" or "disliked" by the majority, not having any real mechanism for feedback on why what you said was or was not wrong.

 

I think your concept of internal satisfaction is good. I think that if you are really happy with yourself, and do not want to be on this forum, then you should feel free to abandon it without guilt. You should serve your own interests. If you wish to see this forum succeed, than that is great, but if you were just here for yourself, then that's good too. One person doesn't make a community, and if this forum dies it is because that death was meant to be.

 

I think in that sense, we attribute too much power to our actions. This forum lives because of the environment it exists in, not because the actions of individuals. It will exist where it needs to, and fade where it does not. This is my belief, at least.

 

I do find, more and more, that I have always interacted with this (the tulpamancy) community with a desire to find some form of friendship and acceptance.

 

I proxy that desire with, often grating, statements of opinion and attempt to "help" others by seeing my ideas spread. At the end of the day a lot of the drive behind that habit of mine is to see people say "wow, that was really helpful" or say "hey, I built onto what you were talking about/here are some of my own thoughts that you can really dig into and will help you out" which is much more likely if they've read and accepted my own ideals and habits. In that sense, I often undermine myself without the understanding that the best way to find acceptance is to ensure that you yourself are making others feel accepted/have a friend in you as well.

 

Provide the above for as many people as possible, and this community can be successful. Be friends to one another, and help those who aren't always good at doing so. I will come back to a community of friends every day for a year, but a community of enemies lurking in the shadows is no place to live.

[GrayTheCat]

I found about Tulpas through research and finally coming across the term "Tulpa". Before, I was looking for something similar to "imaginary friend" or "adult imaginary friend" or "imaginary friends weird" or whatever I typed in. I reached that point once learning that most imaginary friends went away around the age of 3 or 4, and being a college student I realized that my "adult imaginary friend" telling me he was real was not a thing people have ever posted on mommy sites about.

 

I didn't have a reddit or 4-chan connection, or anything like that prior. I knew about Lucid Dreaming and experimented with it before, but I never participated in any Lucid dreaming forums. I was intimidated at first and lurked around the forums for roughly a week, but I ran into some conflict and then I felt compelled to make an account and make a post for help. The only other forum I used prior was Stack Exchange, and Tulpa.info didn't look too different from that.

 

I know I'm not the average new user flocking into the community, but I felt like it might be worth mentioning how I got here. The biggest barriers for me were finding the magic word "Tulpa" and feeling like I can post in this community.

[Tewi]

I've personally found the large number of groups here on the forum crossed with a low amount of activity to make me have to work to find where the activity is, and if I can't find the activity then there is no point in even being on the forum.

 

View Today's Posts and View New Posts (if you don't visit as often). I'm worried that people not knowing these exist is literally hurting the forum's overall activity.

 

As a system who checks on Tulpa.info upwards of 10 to 25 times a day, every day, and has done so since 2014, I assure you "View Today's Posts" is the only way we managed to do that. View New Posts would work great if we ever didn't check for a whole day, which we don't.

 

We need to point these out in giant glowing rainbow text somewhere.

[solarchariot]

I like rainbows. Except the one with the aliens behind pretending to be a prism.

[Breloomancer]

View today's posts is definitely the best feature that tulpa.info has

[GrayTheCat]

I don't use "View New Posts" because it seems to only recognize something as "new" if it's less than 1 hour old, and half of the time it only shows 2 posts or 0 posts. I wonder if "View New Posts" should just be "View Todays Posts" , and "View Todays Posts" becomes "View Recent Posts" (~2-3 day span).

[reguile]

 

View Today's Posts and View New Posts (if you don't visit as often). I'm worried that people not knowing these exist is literally hurting the forum's overall activity.

 

As a system who checks on Tulpa.info upwards of 10 to 25 times a day, every day, and has done so since 2014, I assure you "View Today's Posts" is the only way we managed to do that. View New Posts would work great if we ever didn't check for a whole day, which we don't.

 

We need to point these out in giant glowing rainbow text somewhere.

 

It was actually you who told me about that magical link,else I probably wouldn't be here responding to you right now.

[Tewi]

I don't use "View New Posts" because it seems to only recognize something as "new" if it's less than 1 hour old, and half of the time it only shows 2 posts or 0 posts. I wonder if "View New Posts" should just be "View Todays Posts" , and "View Todays Posts" becomes "View Recent Posts" (~2-3 day span).

 

Cannot say how accurate "View New Posts" is. Used it once recently and it was fine, but way back in 2014 I believe Lumi tried to use it and saw it had missed some posts and so never used it again. View Today's Posts shows all posts within 24 hours exactly, however. For example, my post on Maple's progress report should disappear in 2 hours.