I'm trying to write that basic, "what is tulpamancy?" article but I keep returning to the same thought: "If someone comes up on the street and asks you, 'what's tulpamancy?', you should say, 'No clue.'"

[Jamie]

I really do find it hard to conceive of a situation where I wouldn't try to dissuade a total "normie" from tulpamancy. Now if someone came up and confessed, "I'm a tulpamancer, I started two months ago," I'd be instead excited most likely, although I still think I would not reveal that I have a 3 year old tulpa: at least not immediately. 

 

Quote

I'm trying to write that basic, "what is tulpamancy?" article but I keep returning to the same thought: "If someone comes up on the street and asks you, 'what's tulpamancy?', you should say, 'No clue.'"

 

I guess I assume something funny there: that anyone who reads a "What is tulpamancy" article will inevitably be thinking, "I want to make one" or "How do I make one?" or "I'm going to make one." All[most all] of us clearly had that thought at one point, and most of us probably had it while reading a "What is tulpamancy?" article. At least I did! And while I don't regret tulpamancy at all, I do increasingly feel that it is not easy to make it net-positive and many people believe their tulpamancy experiences to be positive when they are, in actuality, net-losses for their social, emotional, mental, etc. health. Whether that is more directly via tulpamancy-induced mental dramatics and community-based drama, or more indirectly via a tulpa being a poor replacement for external social contacts and connections and a potential distraction. Why work on developing a tulpa when you ought to develop yourself? 

 

Spoiler

 

[Lucilyn]

we actually agree, for any given random person we would not encourage them to make a tulpa, though we're more than willing to teach anyone about what tulpas are

 

it's the same way we wouldn't recommend somebody start playing video games if they don't already, but obviously we have nothing against gamin' and will talk about what games are good or not and enjoy them together just fine y'know?

 

for the average healthy happy whatever person, the things a tulpa can do for them are probably not as good as if they spent that time around other actual humans or did whatever productive activities for their mental health and happiness

 

buuut, for the sorts of people who know full well they don't plan to make drastic changes like that or can't or just don't think they'd help as much as having a mental companion, then same again @ we're totally on board to help teach them how to make a tulpa and how to live happily with them and stuff

 

yeah, I think the video game comparison is good, I'm gonna let that speak for me

Edited September 6, 2021 by Lucilyn

[Cassidy]

Can you write about how video games are great and how to best enjoy video games without inciting people who don't play video games to start playing video games? Is it even a concern? 

[Lucilyn]

We're perfectly okay with people choosing to play video games or make tulpas on their own, especially when they've already read something like what I just said about whether it's overall beneficial for them or not, we're not really out to micromanage people's lives and choices y'know

 

as long as the information is out there that it's not always 100% the best possible option, that's enough for people to make well-enough informed decisions I think

 

though how much someone emphasizes the good/bad of making a tulpa totally varies by person, we're like the true neutral on a scale ranging from people who think there's zero downsides to having a lifelong mental companion to share your life with, to people who consider tulpamancy an unhealthy coping mechanism to deal with lack of social interaction

 

so I guess where you guys lie and how you describe the potential benefit/not-benefit value in your article is up to you

Edited September 6, 2021 by Lucilyn

[September13]

Some profound thoughts Jamie and Lucilyn. Truthfully, I don't think the vast majority of people should try tulpamancy. It's a combination of very specific needs and desires that bring us to tulpamancy, plus the mindset needed in order to put forward not just the effort but the rigor to do it correctly. It's like you have to be dysfunctional enough to want it but not so dysfunctional that you'll damage yourself trying it. As evidenced by the frankly mentally ill people who come in and bounce out in short order, having done nothing to help their condition and much to hurt it. And the video game analogy is fitting. If I had a chance to do my life again I'd only play 10% the video games I did. I can't blame my younger self for getting into games; in the 90s we didn't have "gamers" in the modern sense yet, just kids who liked playing on their segas and nintendoes, and niche hobbyist nerds. But honestly it's just child's play. It's a simulation, simulacra, blah blah Baudrillard whatever lol. Same thing for NSFW stuff too but I'm not going to get into it for obvious reasons. It's like, I'm not going to try to get anyone into games, but if they already are, hey, I can give them endless amounts of Civilization strategy, show them every shortcut in classic Sonic games, building tips for Minecraft, etc. With tulpamancy it's much the same thing. While I think for 99% for people it's not a good idea, but for the small few who think they will benefit from the practice, I'm happy to share the knowledge that I've learned and point them in the direction of more experienced people. Because Tulpamancy really does help some people, like me for instance. Simmie has saved me in more ways than I can accurately explain, even to this group.

 

Anyway I hope that was articulate enough, I am both sleep deprived and drunk right now lol. But this hit my buttons. (In a good way!)

[Jamie]

Thank you for your guys' opinions. And I'm glad it hit your buttons (in a good way!) I have really been thinking about how much you say "this is what tulpamancy can and could and even I think should be" vs. "this is what tulpamancy is nowadays, this is the common experience, this is the nitty gritty of what the community looks like." 

 

The video game example is pretty good, but I just now thought about language-learning. The number of people who go "yeah I'm gonna learn Spanish/Italian/ASL/Latin/etc" and flippantly look at some Duolingo and never end up learning Spanish, and people who took 1 or 2 years of something in high school and can barely form a sentence now, probably doubles or more the amount of people who successfully learn that second language. But do you write about language-learning and talk about that? The people who don't cut it? It's really a matter, at least to me, of how much you call the "failures" valid examples of the thing. Are the people who flirt around the edges of /r/Tulpas and forget about it within 6 months as much of "tulpamancers" as bastions of the community? Or even people who will only be around for a few years, or people who fly off the rail and say "it's actually alters" etc? Is someone who played Minecraft once or twice a "gamer" as much as someone who has hundreds of hours in a variety of games? If you're writing an article, "What are gamers?", I know which group I would actually talk about: even though casual gamers vastly outnumber "real gamers." 

 

I think we're at a point where I simply do have to include that, for a lot of people in a lot of corners of the community, tulpamancy will look or be almost or entirely indistinguishable from roleplay or other fictional activity and that those people outnumber the "real gamers" of tulpamancy. That's not common here, before people get salty at me, but go look at the tulpa Amino, which has nearly 1k members (assuming the general principle that 90% are lurkers/dead, that's still like 100 people.... children), or go look at some of the Reddit. I have to say, "I'm not servicing those people. Whatever those people are doing isn't whatever I'm trying to teach here." When I try to write keeping EVERYONE in mind, I want to go crazy lol, because the rules are so different depending on what you're actually doing. 

 

 

[Ice909]

Everyone has brought up some amazing points, and the gaming analogy is really sound. Allow me to offer my two cents-- 

 

More so when we were still new to tulpamancy, we tried to get our friends and such into it. We (Specifically, I) were new to it all and didn't have a good grasp on things. We just wanted people to talk to about this cool thing.

We did(and still do) a very similar thing with gaming. I would try to get people into gaming because I wanted people to talk to about gaming stuff. I didn't think much of it, because I was young, and I didn't realize just how time consuming and unproductive gaming is compared to other hobbies.

 

Nowadays, while I'm still guilty of bugging friends to play games, I'm more careful about it. I don't ask my non-gamer friends because, truth be told, it probably wouldn't be a good fit for them. But if you're an already gamer friend? Dude you should totally play twewy! Same thing with tulpas. If the person knows about tulpas and is interested, I'll help them 100%, but I won't even try to kinda push it onto people with no exposure, because it's not fair to them. Peer pressure is a real thing. It wouldn't be fair to pressure someone into something potentially very debilitating. 

 

As far as the "who's your audience" thing, that's a good question. The people who are really into gaming, or in this case, tulpas, are the minority. If my friend plays minecraft on their phone and that's all, I'm not going to nag them to play Warframe. If my friend knows I'm plural and is chill with it, I'm not going to start sending them guides and advice and such. 

 

If I was writing "What are gamers?", I wouldn't be talking about facebook moms that play Minion Dash or whatever, I'd be talking about the people that play games more like WoW or CS:GO or DOTA 2 or something. I'd mention the casual audience, of course, and I'd likely give some time to describe why the "casual" majority is as large as it is relative to the "hardcore" minority, but it wouldn't be my main focus. 

 

If I was writing "What is tulpamancy?" I would mention those smaller communities full of less-experienced systems that frequently come and go and all that jazz, but the majority of my time would be spent describing tulpamancy as "we", the "hardcore community", so to speak, know it, because the people that call themselves "tulpamancers" and have meant it for a while follow that definition. That's getting confusing, so let's go back to the gaming analogy. 

 

If I was writing the aforementioned "What are gamers?" article and spent my time focussing on the kinds of people that play Candy Crush and such, I wouldn't be accurately depicting "gamers". Do you think those Dragon City players consider themselves gamers? Unlikely. Do TF2 players consider themselves games? Almost certainly. 

 

Do those "try it for a month then dip" people consider themselves tulpamancers or systems? I don't think so. Does Breloomancer consider themself a tulpamancer? Without a doubt. 

 

I believe I've made my point sufficiently. Thank you all for your time. This is a very interesting topic, indeed. 

[KruegerMeister]

On 9/5/2021 at 10:41 PM, September13 said:

Some profound thoughts Jamie and Lucilyn. Truthfully, I don't think the vast majority of people should try tulpamancy. It's a combination of very specific needs and desires that bring us to tulpamancy, plus the mindset needed in order to put forward not just the effort but the rigor to do it correctly. It's like you have to be dysfunctional enough to want it but not so dysfunctional that you'll damage yourself trying it. As evidenced by the frankly mentally ill people who come in and bounce out in short order, having done nothing to help their condition and much to hurt it. And the video game analogy is fitting. If I had a chance to do my life again I'd only play 10% the video games I did. I can't blame my younger self for getting into games; in the 90s we didn't have "gamers" in the modern sense yet, just kids who liked playing on their segas and nintendoes, and niche hobbyist nerds. But honestly it's just child's play. It's a simulation, simulacra, blah blah Baudrillard whatever lol. Same thing for NSFW stuff too but I'm not going to get into it for obvious reasons. It's like, I'm not going to try to get anyone into games, but if they already are, hey, I can give them endless amounts of Civilization strategy, show them every shortcut in classic Sonic games, building tips for Minecraft, etc. With tulpamancy it's much the same thing. While I think for 99% for people it's not a good idea, but for the small few who think they will benefit from the practice, I'm happy to share the knowledge that I've learned and point them in the direction of more experienced people. Because Tulpamancy really does help some people, like me for instance. Simmie has saved me in more ways than I can accurately explain, even to this group.

 

Anyway I hope that was articulate enough, I am both sleep deprived and drunk right now lol. But this hit my buttons. (In a good way!)

Sorry if I'm misunderstanding your post, but do you mean that everyone who gets into tulpamancy does so for mental or emotional health reasons (anxiety, loneliness, etc.)? What about people who self-report something to the effect of "I decided to use myself as a guinea pig to see whether tulpamancy was possible"?

[September13]

5 hours ago, KruegerMeister said:

Sorry if I'm misunderstanding your post, but do you mean that everyone who gets into tulpamancy does so for mental or emotional health reasons (anxiety, loneliness, etc.)? What about people who self-report something to the effect of "I decided to use myself as a guinea pig to see whether tulpamancy was possible"?

 

The majority probably do get into tulpamancy for personal reasons or mental/emotional health. But I'm sure there are people who get into it just to see if it's possible too.

[Glaurung26]

I do notice a common anchor of mental/emotional health for those in it for the long haul, though not exclusively and I've only seen a small slice of the pie over the past like 2-3 years. I think having a friend that will always be there with you and know you quite intimately flaws and all, yet still accept you is an extremely powerful draw. I made mine to be my helper and assistant and we just kind of kept that up indefinitely. She's not my slave. She doesn't have to help me, but she enjoys doing it and hasn't gotten good at playing support for me. Like an athletic person enjoying sports. I think tulpamancy should be practiced in a way that's personal to the host. What fits their needs and life situation. Even if it's just to have a new friend for no other reason than making a new friend. I also wouldn't say that this is for the majority of people. I don't want to start sounding like a purist, or like I want it to be a super secret society, but maybe tulpamancy should be for those that seek it out and want it with their heart.