Tips for Hearing Your Tulpa

[fennecgirl]

(copied from my reddit post)

 

I have some tips for those who have trouble hearing their tulpa (besides “force more”):

 

• Get into a good state of mind for it. You can meditate if you want, or you can just sit or lie somewhere comfortable, close your eyes, and make sure you’re in a quiet place (if this isn’t an option, then put on headphones and listen to colored noise or instrumental music; both of these things will help block out the noise and shouldn’t be too distracting to most people). I’ve had some of my best, most vivid forcing sessions in this state because it makes it easier to focus and makes me more perceptive to my imagination. Ideally, you should do this when you aren’t tired to avoid the risk of falling asleep. This post may also be helpful.
  
• Thought ping-pong.
  
• Just listen and let them talk. Prompt them with a topic to talk about, and just let them talk. You might be surprised how much they have to say when given the opportunity.
  
• Proxy. I’ve been surprised more than once by how clearly I can hear a tulpa I can’t normally hear well when I proxy for them. If you’re proxying to encourage them to speak and to learn to hear them better, don’t say anything, just let them do all the talking. I don’t know why it is that sometimes I’ve been able to hear my tulpae more clearly while proxying, but it does work. If your tulpa is shy about speaking to others, then tie this suggestion in with the last one - ask them to talk about something and transcribe it.
  
• Make up a story together, taking turns saying one sentence at a time. If neither of you can think of a way to start it off, search online for story starters.
  
• Play word games. I’m not going to explain any here because this post is basically a wall of text, but I’ll explain how to play a few word games in a reply to this (here) in case anyone here doesn’t know any.
  
• Sing together! (credit to ThatFellowWithTheScarf for suggesting this)
  

 

I also have some advice for related problems people may have.

 

"Sometimes, I think I hear my tulpa talk, but then I think it’s just me!"

 

• First of all, are you worried that you’re parroting or that the tulpa’s words in question are just intrusive thoughts? If you think you might be parroting, read this. If you’re afraid what you’re hearing is just intrusive thoughts, then ask your tulpa if it was something they said or not. If they tell you that, yes, they said that, then trust them.
  
• Alternatively, read this.
  

 

"My tulpa isn’t vocal yet; everything they say is just me parroting!"

 

• Are you consciously parroting, or is it unintentional? If you think you’re parroting unintentionally, you aren’t, since parroting is something that is only done intentionally. You can't "unintentionally parrot"; any "unintentionally parroted" responses are either intrusive thoughts or legitimate responses that you mistake for parroting. See the previous piece of advice.
  

 

"I get too many intrusive thoughts, and it makes it hard to hear my tulpa!"/"It often sounds like my tulpa is saying multiple things at once, and I don’t know which responses are really theirs!"

 

• Just relax. Don’t stress out over it. If intrusive thoughts are interfering too much with communication that hearing your tulpa is difficult, then just take a moment to clear your mind and relax. I sometimes get so many intrusive thoughts that holding a conversation with my tulpae becomes nearly impossible, and, nearly every time that happens, taking a moment to clear my mind significantly reduces the amount of intrusive thoughts I’m getting, making conversation much easier or at least manageable.
  

 

"I never know what to talk about with my tulpa!"

 

• Talk about things that happened throughout the day.
  
• Ask your tulpa if they have any ideas of what to talk about. They might have something they’d like to talk about.
  
• Choose an activity to do together - playing a game, watching TV, doing crafts, surfing the internet, anything - and talk about what you’re doing as you’re doing it.
  
• Look online for conversation starters or interview questions and ask these to your tulpa (they can ask you some as well and comment on your answers).
  
• The story-writing game and word games I mentioned earlier are also helpful here.
  
• Proxying is also useful advice for this. If you’re having trouble finding things to say while talking to your tulpa, then let them talk with someone who does have more to say.
  
• Singing together is helpful here, as well, since you just need to follow along with the lyrics rather than thinking of things to talk about.
  

 

(As this is a collection of various tips rather than a proper guide, I'd like to submit this to Tips & Tricks.)

 

Changelog:

10/1/14 - Realized I accidentally linked to the list of word games again where I should've linked to Tips for those who are getting "parrotnoid" - whoops! Fixed it.

10/5/14 - Fixed broken url tag in the changelog. Added extra sentence to response to "parroting" problem for more clarification. Added link to Sands' post on absence of disbelief in response to first problem. Added link to SimplyNoise for example of colored noise. In first tip, changed "state" to "state of mind" for clarity and added link to this post. Added suggestion to sing together.

[sushi]

As for the rest, I do suggest you actually read what others write before you as we could easily reply to your textwall with the ones we already wrote, so you addressed none of our problems. But don't worry, I saw your point and from now on, I shall be using tulpaæeis as it's the newer word and more recent words obviously are more correct and should be used. Keep up with me, dictionary people! Thanks for showing me the light, Sushi, I will never be held back now!

 

No problem, Sands. It's all in a day's work for sushi!

 

Incidentally, I have read all the posts in this thread, and the pastebin, and I reread them all just now to make sure I wasn't missing the place where someone gave a legitimate reason. I wasn't.

 

Yeah, you could reply to my post with one of your posts. And I could reply to that post with my post, and we'd go on and on saying "Are not!" and "Am too!" until the end of time.

 

I do have one question though: if we accept guides with "tulpae" in them, why even bring it up? As I see it, this discussion of plurals has taken this thread far off topic, and nobody's mind has been changed in the least bit. I enjoyed your poor grammar paragraph (though you left out literally!), and I had some fun using Old English, but beyond that, half this thread has been a waste of time.

[Sands]

Well, honestly, none of us brought up that an older version is automatically right, so your argument seems completely off-topic and I don't really see how it even is a response to us when it's a completely different issue. Your argument that a more recent one is better and more correct is also very faulty as obviously we do have standards. Do they change? Yes. But that takes generations and depending on these generations, the way a word ends up being in the future changes. So no, right now tulpae is not supported by anything and a similar plural issue (octopi) is being corrected to a form that makes more sense linguistically, so I would feel like tulpae would share the same fate if it somehow became a bigger thing. It actually never managed to get big enough as the plural is already being corrected in our very communities as people realized it's a bit stupid.

 

Could tulpae be right one day? Possible of course. That would mean that the majority of those people who scream "tulpas" needs to die off so the new generation that prefers "tulpae" can change it. We'll probably never see that day as we will be dead, if it would even happen. I doubt it would as there is no reason for this plural, as we have explained many times.

 

We need to bring up this issue to the guide writers so that they and anyone else reading our comments understands it's not the standard plural even in .info (or the other tulpa communities). There are some people who just plain don't know, so it's our job to remind them that hey, here's a thing. It's also a way of telling a person that hey, you could do that but you could also do it in a better way. Using a plural that is grudgingly accepted by some doesn't mean everyone accepts it. A person who could be helped by this text might look away because they feel that the one who wrote the guide is a retard for not being able to even write English properly. If we didn't mention this to the guide writers, then we would be doing a pretty poor job and one day they could look at us and go "why didn't you say anything?!".

 

It seems like people quite liked that poor grammar paragraph, so maybe this all was worth it when at least a couple got some laughs. And at least Fennec knows exactly why we think it's silly, I hope. I am figuratively sorry for missing your favorite word though, this is literally the worst. Maybe next time when we're talking of tulpaæeis.

[sushi]

Your argument that a more recent one is better and more correct

 

I never said that.

 

Do they change? Yes. But that takes generations and depending on these generations, the way a word ends up being in the future changes. So no, right now tulpae is not supported by anything and a similar plural issue (octopi) is being corrected to a form that makes more sense linguistically

 

For the record, the Random House Dictionary includes tweet

- a very short message posted on the Twitter website: the message may include text, keywords, mentions of specific users, links to websites, and links to images or videos on a website.

, and googling

- to use a search engine such as Google to find information, a website address, etc., on the Internet.

, both of which were added in recent years and haven't taken generations.

 

The Random House Dictionary also includes octopi as a legitimate plural of octopus, and Opera's spellcheck recognizes it too. This is partly because although octopus is a Greek word, it was adopted into Latin. English got it from the Latin with the Latin plural. Octopi predates octopuses. Thus octopi does not serve as an example or parallel for tulpae at all. At least not until we start talking about tulpas in Latin.

Qui habet polypus tulpa?

 

 

there is no reason for this plural, as we have explained many times.

 

There is no need for the other plural either. Many Asian languages get by just fine with no plurals, and even in English we have moose, deer, sheep, and fish.

 

We need to bring up this issue to the guide writers so that they and anyone else reading our comments understands it's not the standard plural even in .info (or the other tulpa communities).

 

I believe more than half of us are from the United States. Should we tell people that use the word "colour" that it's not the standard spelling of our community? Should we tell people who talk in Finnish that it's not the standard language of our community?

 

It's also a way of telling a person that hey, you could do that but you could also do it in a better way.

 

"Better" is an opinion word. Obviously fennec feels that "tulpae" is better. I prefer "tulpas", but I have to admit that "tulpae" is easier to type -- the letter S uses the ring finger on a Qwerty keyboard, and the ring finger is always a little awkward. Of course E is even easier to type on a Dvorak or Maltron keyboard, but if I were using either of those, you'd have to tell me that I'm not using the standard keyboard layout of this community.

 

A person who could be helped by this text might look away because they feel that the one who wrote the guide is a retard for not being able to even write English properly. If we didn't mention this to the guide writers, then we would be doing a pretty poor job and one day they could look at us and go "why didn't you say anything?!".

 

I have to admit, this is good advice. I think this is what you've been saying all along, but it's not how I've read it. In the past you've said stuff like "This looks stupid." or "To some people, this looks stupid." I've always read that as "This looks stupid to me." or "To some people -- like me -- this looks stupid."

 

I do believe that last post of yours is the first time in the thread that anyone explicitly said that "tulpae" might cause non-GAT readers to stop reading. And it's true. And I agree now that it should be brought up.

 

I am figuratively sorry for missing your favorite word though, this is literally the worst. Maybe next time when we're talking of tulpaæeis.

 

Quite the contrary! While everyone understands exactly what fennec means by "tulpae", lots of people use "literally" in a way that means the opposite of "literally". And the worst of it is that this new meaning is now in the dictionary. That literally bugs me.

[Sands]

I never said that.

 

Well, I'm afraid it does quite read that way and it's like you're defending all things new because they're... New or something.

 

For the record, the Random House Dictionary includes tweet … and googling … both of which were added in recent years and haven't taken generations.

 

Indeed, sometimes a new word has to be formed because there are new inventions. But we are not talking of new words but of old words that are being changed in use such as tulpa. Tweeting to mean short messages, sure. But if I wanted to change that into twatting with the same meaning and force tweeting to die, it would take a lot of work.

 

The Random House Dictionary also includes octopi as a legitimate plural of octopus, and Opera's spellcheck recognizes it too. This is partly because although octopus is a Greek word, it was adopted into Latin. English got it from the Latin with the Latin plural. Octopi predates octopuses. Thus octopi does not serve as an example or parallel for tulpae at all. At least not until we start talking about tulpas in Latin.

 

Octopi is not the plural even in Latin, so it's something that was made up at some point. In Latin, even the nominative plural of octopus is... Wow, octopodes, who would have thought. Octopi is a really good parallel for tulpae as they both are non-Latin words with a random Latin plural slapped at the end, except that octopi is one that has actually generations of users behind it. Despite that, it is still constantly being pointed out that it is wrong. In our generation however, I doubt we will see the death of octopi as so many of us were taught it and many continue to use it as if it was right and many dictionaries have to follow (but not all).

 

This I feel is when we can decide if the octopi plural survives or not, depending what the generations after us are being taught. It could survive or it could die, but octopi is just as wrong as tulpae. It's actually pretty interesting if you compare the two, octopi is much older and has many people who use it and many who oppose it in the English speaking world... And tulpae is younger and is used in a much smaller community, but the way how some prefer it while others dislike it is pretty similar but in a much smaller scale. Maybe tulpae could become as "big" as octopi and even be accepted outside these communities, but as I said, I doubt it. It's already dying out.

 

There is no need for the other plural either. Many Asian languages get by just fine with no plurals, and even in English we have moose, deer, sheep, and fish.

 

I shall disagree. Yes, not every language has plurals though something like our fan favorite Japanese sometimes has to form plurals despite normally not really having them. See hito for one person and hitobito for people – and I do admit it's pretty cute to form plurals by saying the singular word twice. And it shows us that plurals are pretty important so that we can be clear of what we mean, as otherwise we need to use more words to explain what we mean. Many languages lack words or expressions of certain things and then we really have to start wasting precious words to explain what exactly we mean because we lack the words.

 

That's why I would advise against tulpa as the plural. If you asked me for help about something as you were having problems with tupper A and tupper B and I told you to talk to your tulpa... Then you could ask "which one?". Then I would have to say "both". But if I said talk to your tulpas, it would be 100% obvious. Also I find it funny how I addressed the fish plural earlier on these forums.

 

I believe more than half of us are from the United States. Should we tell people that use the word "colour" that it's not the standard spelling of our community?

 

Our official language on .info more or less is "English", not "American English". It kind of includes all of these different variations. If you made a rule that we had to speak American English? Sure I guess, you could even make a word filter to change the British forms to American ones. A bit silly but hey, you could do it. I know I already poke fun at waffles' Britspeak while he says I should be more British...

 

Our official plural does seem to be tulpas as all these forums that had tulpae in their name were changed to tulpas.

 

Should we tell people who talk in Finnish that it's not the standard language of our community?

 

Yes, if they come to .info which is an English-speaking (writing?) forum. This is mostly for moderation reasons as our moderators speak English and they would not know if rules are being broken when they don't understand the language. You wouldn't even know if they're dirty TERRORISTS planning to bomb some place and use your forum to set it up to try to get you involved.

 

It's also quite rude to speak languages the majority of the forum would not understand. So awful.

 

"Better" is an opinion word.

 

When it comes to language, I'd say the standard form is the better one. Unless you really want us to use silly sayings like doggy dog world.

 

Of course E is even easier to type on a Dvorak or Maltron keyboard, but if I were using either of those, you'd have to tell me that I'm not using the standard keyboard layout of this community.

 

Fun fact, Pleeb actually uses Dvorak I think. If he still does. It was some non-QWERTY at least. So off-topic I know wow but the more you know.

 

While everyone understands exactly what fennec means by "tulpae"...

 

Except people outside these communities who might be interested or are doing research and then bump into this monstrosity...

 

I hope you're not literally punching your screen every time someone uses literally wrong though. I'm literally dying here worrying about you while figuratively petting my cat.

[sushi]

Well, I'm afraid it does quite read that way and it's like you're defending all things new because they're... New or something.

 

Defending, sure. I'm saying things aren't wrong just because they're new. But I'm not saying they're right just because they're new.

 

Octopi is not the plural even in Latin, so it's something that was made up at some point. In Latin, even the nominative plural of octopus is... Wow, octopodes, who would have thought. Octopi is a really good parallel for tulpae as they both are non-Latin words with a random Latin plural slapped at the end, except that octopi is one that has actually generations of users behind it. Despite that, it is still constantly being pointed out that it is wrong. In our generation however, I doubt we will see the death of octopi as so many of us were taught it and many continue to use it as if it was right and many dictionaries have to follow (but not all).

 

Check your sources. I have three here that say "octopodes" is Greek, and "octopi" is Latin -- although two of the sources suggest that octopi is a bit like saying mouses or sheeps or something.

 

When it comes to language, I'd say the standard form is the better one. Unless you really want us to use silly sayings like doggy dog world.

 

Well, if you read that quote from the Jargon File, lots of people do enjoy saying such things like polygoose and Unices. It's wordplay.

[waffles]

Check your sources. I have three here that say "octopodes" is Greek, and "octopi" is Latin -- although two of the sources suggest that octopi is a bit like saying mouses or sheeps or something.

 

It's '-des' in Latin and Greek, according to Wiktionary, wherever they've pulled that from. It's definitely '-des' in Greek because the ending will go like 'πούς', which goes to 'πόδες'. Everyone I can find seems to say that the '-i' ending is mistaken, because the Latin imports the Greek and should follow the Greek.

 

I'm inclined to believe them but I'm not convinced. It's not a commonly-used word in Latin; I can't find it in any real Latin dictionaries, at least (Wiktionary lists it going to '-podes' but I doubt its veracity beyond how I'm about to justify that below). Apparently the more common Latin word was 'polypus', which pluralises to 'polypi' everywhere, despite the Greek origin 'πολύπος' going to 'πολύποδες' in most sources I can see (they have the same -'πούς' root as the 'octo-' nouns. That's pretty interesting because the same thing could well be valid for 'octopi', and lacking any use cases we can't be sure.

 

But guessing at what the dictionary editors considered when they asserted that 'octopi' was wrong, I suppose that lacking any usage cases in Latin that indicate which way the plural goes, we'd revert to using the Greek plural. And I'm inclined to agree, not least because that's the consensus among scholars, and I'm no scholar.

 

 

EDIT:

Replying to this reminded me how off-topic it was. If people, specifically fennec, want, this thread of discussion can be split off as one specifically about plurals.

[Sands]

Man we're so off-topic and no one even cares about this conversation so I feel like we should stop it soon as this isn't really worth a new thread. But it is pretty nice to have one of these GAT textwall threads again, huh?

 

Defending, sure. I'm saying things aren't wrong just because they're new. But I'm not saying they're right just because they're new.

 

So I do have your blessings to use tulpaæeis? Please say it is so.

 

Check your sources. I have three here that say "octopodes" is Greek, and "octopi" is Latin -- although two of the sources suggest that octopi is a bit like saying mouses or sheeps or something.

 

I would like to see your sources as I've yet to find even one that claims the Latin plural is octopi. Waffles has a better point by pointing out polypus, which does have the more common plural of polypi in Latin. Technically the -i plural is wrong as we're not looking at -us ending but -pus, but this seems to be another one of those cases where generations of use has made the "incorrect" plural the more common and "right" option. Again something that could happen to octopi (sort of happening) and tulpae, but with people being more educated these days, they kind of have realized the mistake.

 

We can talk about octopi and tulpae as plurals and say how they should be accepted or how they're wrong... But you know what, we have perfectly valid plurals for both of them that are more commonly used and something that no one can claim are incorrect: octopuses and tulpas. Why not use them?

 

Well, if you read that quote from the Jargon File, lots of people do enjoy saying such things like polygoose and Unices. It's wordplay.

 

I do hope that you realize people who use wordplay and/or puns never are trying to claim that these are the right ways to use the words (other than to make a point), so I don't really see how this is even a part of the conversation as it has nothing to do with it. Unless you want us to start using clawful cat puns. Just kitten, I'm not feline like it.

[Brassow]

Are you guys seriously arguing over Latin when the subject is about hearing your tulpa? Sands, by all means, feel free to argue. I would just like it to be in a different place than in the guides.

[Sands]

Yes, even though it's quite off-topic and went on for too long, the way one presents their guide is still something the GAT has to talk about so that issues can be brought up to the author and so that possible fixes can be suggested.

[Shadow_Empire]

This was a lot of help! I tried the proxying helps a ton and made it way easier to hear Cole! After the first attempting it I've been able to hear him clearly!