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Critique on the decline of a community


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Yes, this is a problem, and, one that I have thought about. Not only will this not be a problem, it is a non-issue once you think about it. There will be an influx of new people coming on the IRC, most likely in June. Why? Because schools let out, more people will come onto the internet, and, by that, more people will discover tulpas.

 

I do not believe you've thought about it enough. Or at the least, you have not observed the issue this stagnation brings.

 

There is a major issue with you post that convinces me you have not thought things through: The people you're complaining about, the people who have insta-tulpa, the people who have all sorts of wild stories, are often new users. The people who are likely to "circlejerk" are young, and find a place to be open online. The people who ask the same questions over and over again are new users, being unfamiliar with the phenomenon and wanting to know the ins-and-outs without needing to lurk the board. Truly, the entirety of the issues that are being complained about are issues that were brought in by newer users who had little understanding of what the site was made for, and what the goal of the userbase originally was.

 

Your solution to the problem is to bring in more people who will cause the problems being complained about in this thread.

 

On the other hand, you view the idea that older users either leaving or becoming useless as a non-issue, and do not seem to see how the lack of a role-model, or of sober conversation borne from people who have experienced, considered, and examined the phenomenon could cause things to become even worse.

 

 

Also doable. We already discussed how to do that in the IRC last night. We just need more topics, but, we also need to make this place presentable for the new users. Why? Because without that, even with the advancement of our topics, the site will stagnate.

 

And, regardless of what you believe, this forum and the IRC are here to help people who want to make tulpas, so therefore, we need to cater not just to the old users that we want to stay, but the new users, because they are part of the reason we exist too.

 

It is not about catering to the older users, it's about getting the older users to open up and actually consider the things that have happened to them, rather than running away, or becoming stagnant. If this does not happen, I believe the problems described in this thread will not only continue, but grow worse due to the inflex of new users. The subject matter will continue to stagnate, people will continue to post questions that have been answered, and the people who growled and grumbled about roleplayers will only close themselves off in to a clique, and continue to growl and grumble.

 

EDIT:

 

 

I'm going to be truthful to you: I myself have run in to issues and experiences akin to this. I dealt with it on my own and kept it private, as I knew talking about it on forum would be useless at best, and would get me marked as "roleplayer" at worst.

 

What I see here are people sharing and trying to make sense of a situation that potentially falls under the knowledge base a site like this can offer. But instead of trying to understand it, or wondering what can cause it, you're writing this experience off as roleplaying because it doesn't fall in to your own experience or idea about what the phenomenon is, which is apparently unquestionable.

 

This is stagnation in action.

 

Seriously, I was expecting something truly wild, or unbelievable. A person having a problem with a mental figure in their head can even be witnessed in people practicing lucid dreaming or even active imagination. In those cases, much more wild and unlikely things are taken with actual thought and consideration as to it's meaning, to the potential improvement of the subject's psyche. If this is considered roleplaying, the community will die quickly.

 

EDIT #2:

 

I believe the above also reveals a huge problem about the board's obsession with trying to weed out roleplaying: The above issue seems to be a person who mistakenly considered a lesser to mid-grade figure as a full, self-sustaining tulpa just because they act and talk, which many lesser and mid-grade figures can do. Instead of trying to explain this idea to them, further trying to understand the issue and potentially help a person in need...they are instead marked as a roleplayer and considered an undesirable, thus to be shunned and removed.

 

Speaking from personal experience, I feel the field of lesser thought people is something that should not only be defined, but actively explored. But I feel this will never happen, because folks here have a bizarre, binary attitude concerning these things. It cannot be an instance of mislabeling something that is not quite a full consciousness, instead it must be a malicious instance of roleplaying. With an enviroment like that, how are we to increase our knowledge base? How are we to learn anything? How are we to experiment?

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I've not given this thread a proper read yet, only skimmed it, but wanted to offer my opinion on the automated bot stuff. It's probably already been said, but such a thing would be pretty difficult to pull off without it being able to understand the meaning of words/sentences in the post as well as the context in which all of them are used and such, and at that it'd probably still not be as accurate as a real person making a judgement about said post.

 

Having said that, thinking about the idea reminded me of those support ticket systems which automatically suggest existing answers to the question you have, based on the title and, in some cases, the actual post contents. Might it be enough simply to have any close matches be shown to the user before they submit the post, as they're still typing?

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Most of what I have to say has already been mentioned, but I do have a few points.

 

The community seems to be shifting to weaker redefinitions of terms. Take imposition for instance. I've seen people assuming that it's what I would call pseudo-imposition, imagining your tulpa in the real world, seeing them in your mind's eye while having some sense of their presence. That's nice but it isn't seeing them about as realistically as anything else. I've seen people surprised this is even possible without drugs, while back when this community was younger it was one of the selling points.

 

The definition of what's a sentient, vocal tulpa has shifted as well. Early on, vocality meant hearing them out loud the way you hear other people, or as an out loud voice stuck inside your head. Then we started accepting quiet mindvoices, and now some proxy their tulpas by just thinking back and forth at them. Thought communication is convenient and efficient, but if it's the only way someone's communicating with their tulpa, the tulpa can hardly be considered vocal.

 

I suspect there's been some shift of definition on sentience too, which brings me to my second point, instant tulpas. I'd say that instant tulpas are definitely possible, even in seconds, but only in a few circumstances and with the caveat that they aren't instantly well-established. Instant and accidental "walk-in" headmates are a known phenomenon in multiplicity, but this assumes that there is already more than one consciousness and the brain is used to / knows how to "do" to this situation. However, it's highly unlikely for someone with no former tulpa/whatever experience to make a first tulpa this quickly.

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Chupi, your last point depends greatly on what a tulpa is. If the tulpa is indeed another consciousness then your post makes sense, but we as humanity have yet to agree on what consciousness is. Therefore, you should not define a tulpa as another consciousness without first defining what you think a consciousness is. This is a big problem with the community that may cause people to misunderstand the tulpa phenomenon.

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I've seen people assuming that it's what I would call pseudo-imposition, imagining your tulpa in the real world, seeing them in your mind's eye while having some sense of their presence.

 

In my defense, though I use the word imposition to mean an advanced version of that where I can almost see them, I do my best to not call it true imposition. That is a 1 on a scale of 10 where 10 is true imposition. And I have experienced maybe a 6 before, while on a two-week streak of practice. My visualization and imposition skills have since declined as I practice neither.. pretty much ever, so they've sort of reverted to their natural state of crap.

 

But that's just me being defensive. I'm well aware that this is a general problem throughout the community as well. I'm just a special snowflake.

 

The definition of what's a sentient, vocal tulpa has shifted as well. Early on, vocality meant hearing them out loud the way you hear other people, or as an out loud voice stuck inside your head.

 

... I had no idea, honestly. For as long as I can remember, vocality simply meant your tulpa was capable of forming and conveying words; a step past sending thoughts/emotions, and one before auditory hallucinating. Though I'm not sure if this is necessarily a bad change, as it serves a purpose. I've not once assumed someone who said their tulpa was vocal meant that they could hallucinate hearing them. This is like the difference in wonderlanding with your tulpa versus imposing them, being able to speak to them clearly mentally and actually hearing them are quite different.

 

And I'm glad you understand the whole instant-tulpa thing. However I don't think the definition of sentience has changed - I think nobody knows what it's supposed to mean in the first place. To me it means my tulpa is capable of thinking and acting separately from me in a wholesome manner, meaning they can have thoughts entirely independent from ones I can have without any intention on my part. But that's far from a solid definition, it's just mine. So I guess the problem is that people are making their own definitions based on their understanding.

Hi! I'm Lumi, host of Reisen, Tewi, Flandre and Lucilyn.

Everyone deserves to love and be loved. It's human nature.

My tulpas and I have a Q&A thread, which was the first (and largest) of its kind. Feel free to ask us about tulpamancy stuff there.

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Maybe the new Articles in the Guides Section can be put to use to where people can utilize theories of consciousness, and seeing how they may resonate with implications behind tulpas. If it's really about building a foundation where there's some kind of philosophy of science behind theories of minds and what have you to be a conduit for more discussion that are more thought-provoking than whatever people think is the usual, then it's just a matter of personal research, and idea playing.

 

In other words, treating the claims as theories and such, and to not take them as militantly, but rather as a way for more food for thought, and to get ideas rolling. I've been wanting to do something like that, though I felt if it was in General Discussion, it would be drowned out with the usual queries. IMO, if there's a section where we discuss about some philosophy behind our endeavors, and actually use standpoints, and be blunt in expressing them, it may help with the strive for more thought-provoking discussions.

 

But if people want things like that to happen, and how a certain camp of people should do that, then it wouldn't hurt to maybe make a separate board, albeit, it wouldn't cater to older members, but something to where things are intended to be a bit more serious. But some may feel those discussions would pertain to metaphysics and what have you, and the usual patterns of consternation would ensue.

 

An example of a forum that does the whole splitting with metaphysics, philosophy, science, language, and much more is this:

 

http://forums.philosophyforums.com/

 

Fairly basic, but at least it gets the job done there. But of course, some people may not like a copy-cat style approach, and some may feel any intentions to encroach some philosophy of science, or whatever will be a pseudo-(insert whatever word you want here). Though, we don't really have to follow something like that militantly, but it could help with finding some alternative with the strive for thought-provoking discussions like the thread of a Strict Science board, or something like that; Philosophy of Science, or even Metaphysics & Epistemology.

 

The latter may entail that individuals should provide justifications to their theorizing rather than freely stating things, and ignoring further queries that may criticize, or play devil's advocate in to learn more from them. That other forum just shifts other threads that aren't specific to the "not so philosophical" sections, or even the off-topics.

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I think I have a suggestion to remedy the lack of certain types of more productive and useful discussion on the forum. This suggestion will come in the form of my described experiences since I have returned to the community.

 

From my viewpoint, after a certain level of development, continued observations and thoughts about a person's mindfolk seems to stop cold in its tracks. Looking at the general discussion and questions & answers, they are usually pointed toward beginning and maybe some intermediate people. Nothing else beyond the specific act of creating a thought person is discussed, not even for purposes of finding their possible function for personal development and actualization. Truly, it's been a very long time since I've even seen a discussion on a thought persons potential as even a memory aid, one of the selling points of them back in the day.

 

I personally find it difficult to believe that after a certain point, there is literally nothing to say about one's brain buddy's behavior and activity. That there is nothing worth investigating or observing in your creations growth and development. Furthermore, that there is nothing in the mind that is worth looking in to, or that there is nothing that can happen to a person and their resident in certain extreme conditions. But, if you look at the forums AND the IRC, conversations about continued development and the consideration of what life with another person in one's head seems to be all but non existent, and the residents themselves don't really speak as if they're looking at life while piggy backing on someone else. They're conversation is often on completely empty subjects, things that would seem empty and useless even from another human, and it is the thing that really struck me the most. These did not feel like a being with a potentially unique perspective of life. Instead, they seemed to be no different than a human, in ALL ways, and spoke just like a person who has been born from a woman, rather than formed in the mind.

 

So, when I first saw the small gurmblings of "roleplayers" upon my return, I felt a small hope in my heart, that someone else aside from me saw this void: That the mindfolk were empty, and spoke only of empty things, that the people who had been formed and molded and looked after with such care had nothing much of worth to say, and that their conversation was usually better served in general geek culture communities. That these partners, these companions, seemed to have little notable effect on their creator's life and livelihood, and their role is to pretty much exist, so that they can be in a community about brain folk, or at worst, sit in a small, hidden away clique of others like them and feel superior to other with lesser imaginary friends.

 

In essence, that the mindfolk I saw seemed little more than toys, and not very good ones at that.

 

So when the definition of “roleplayer” was revealed, being used to describe experiences that were out of the ordinary and those who achieve communication quickly, I was rather disappointed, demoralized, and to my shame, angry. The void of curiosity really sat on my heart, and the idea that I had learned more concerning the phenomenon by reading snippets of Jung and lurking about the multiplicity community than I had browsing the site that set me off on my journey to begin with saddened me. I say that the focus on roleplayers does little to improve the community because of this void: nothing is being made to fill it, and when things cool down, only more people who lack understanding will come, they will have experiences they are unable to describe, the usual folks with call them roleplayers, and the cycle will continue.

 

So as such, my suggestion and hope is that the people who want to see the community grow will instead of grumbling, fill the void of serious conversation, and interesting questions for the members to consider. That they continue to examine and reflect on their continued experience with their partner, and learn what they can about the nature of the mind from them, and share it with others here.

 

Furthermore, some reflection on what "sentience" actually entails, and what makes for a sentient mind person should be defined more. For the longest time, communication has be synonymous with sentience and consciousness, which I now understand to be not the case at all. If people still believe that communication means sentience, then it is no wonder that there are so many instant creations running about, I believe sentience is about the ability to think and consider one's self, no just to talk.

 

A mid-period between full sentience and partial needs to be defined, if only as a way to refer to instances of mind folk who can communicate with their host easily. At the very least, there should be something to refer to these as until the host is completely sure that their partner is conscious. As it is, the only terms are "Tulpa", "Servitor", and "NPC". There is no term for a thought person who is above servitor/npc, but is no quite complete, and has potential to grow. In another thread, I suggested "fragment".

 

 

 

You may have noticed that I did not once mention the word “science” in this post. That is because I feel that the word science, as it is used in this community, has become a millstone around it's neck, and I have often seen it essentially used as an excuse to not try and explore the phenomenon further. The logic I've seen used often amounts to:

 

“Since we cannot examine the phenomenon in a physical manner, and instead must rely on what others say is true, we cannot do much to really examine and possibly improve our knowledge on the subject.”

 

The fact that these are often the same folks who will be quick to jump on someone for roleplaying, or having some kind of wrong thought, completely baffles me. If one cannot examine an experience, or try to increase knowledge on it, how can one accurately say who is roleplaying? Why is it even an issue? Why even try to make a community based around sharing and discovering things about a subjective experience, if we cannot actually do so at all? It seems absurd to me. As such, my focus was on self-examination, discovery, and questioning things, and not “science” as it is used here.

Sock Cottonwell's

Sketchbook, Journal, and Ask thread.

Peace

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I feel like I should post something here because I can easily be considered a culprit. Because of this, my opinion is most likely biased, but still surely contains some insight for this debate that has ridiculously been going on for much longer than I have been a registered user on this site.

First of all, this entire thread is pretty depressing. Not only do I feel personally attacked, but I'm sure a few others do as well.

I can easily be seen as a roleplayer, so to clear things up; I am not a roleplayer. Oh wait, that doesn't solve anything does it? Because you can't possibly tell whether or not I am lying. I forgot that we have yet to produce a magical interrogation method capable of 'weeding out' roleplayers.

Eliminating roleplayers is absolutely out of the question. It has already been established countless times that it would be impossible to tell the difference between a roleplayer and a person dealing with an absurd yet true problem. Unless of course you guys have some secret agenda to create long-distance lie detector technology.

If that's the case, please count me in.

The only possible solution to the classic roleplayer problem is making the site less attractive to roleplayers, but of course you guys have already realized this. However, making this forum more strict and serious is going to make the site less attractive to everyone, perhaps even for the science-minded. I'm not speaking from pure intuition, I'm speaking based on how I felt the moment I opened this thread to read the posts. I felt indirect hostility directed towards me, the person whose name shows up the most in the PR section, because I have committed many of the misdeeds discussed. Even if I'm not being indirectly addressed, others have been, and attacking them even indirectly when you have no solid evidence against them is going to scare them away whether they were roleplaying or not.

 

Now about the whole "science-minded" part of the bold statement I just made a few sentences ago.

 

I have tried to introduce new ideas to this site a few times, but they are always rejected. Rejected ideas are not bad. In fact, many of the most popular ideas in modern science were originally rejected for decades or even centuries. But rejected ideas that are never tried, are the ones that truly die.

From what I have seen, new scientific ideas aren't welcomed very well here.

 

The fact that this "science-minded" community is not very open-minded is a problem nobody has addressed. It doesn't matter how many scientific people are around if no new ideas can get off of the ground.

 

So fast-forward into the future. The site has become extremely strict, and 'sciene-minded'. Everyone who harmlessly enjoyed the site has long ago departed. The remaining few, the science-minded, builds upon already existent ideas and reaches what I call the technological brick-wall. That is, the point in which you need laboratories, participants, and controlled experiments to test theories. The science-minded grows bored with the constant overturning of archaic theories pertaining to the tulpa phenomenon and slowly fades away, for there is no longer anything they can do without multi-billionaire research groups funding their every whim. New ideas testing the phenomenon can barely get off the ground because people won't actually try them--they don't comply with carved-in-stone beliefs that aren't even immune to skepticism. They could go to the lounge, or any other part of the forum, but since more than half of the community is gone, there isn't much to talk about, and a new thread comes about like an oasis in a desert.

 

That is the only future I can see heading towards us if this site becomes locked-down from anything off-topic. This classic psychological effect can be observed in children on a playground as well. Let's say the kids are playing football. Suddenly a teacher approaches and says "HEY! DON'T DO THAT! I DON'T LIKE THAT!" and creates a long list of rules: No hitting, No sprinting, No tackling, No screaming, No throwing the ball.

 

Suddenly the children are so dismayed by the strictness of the game, that the entire game loses its very function--to be fun. They then walk away from each other and create new games. The same goes if the strictness of this forum was increased. The people who feel attacked for being off-topic will leave, and all of their new ideas and invaluable insight will leave with them. Not that any of their ideas would actually be tested by all of you prestigious neuropsychologists anyways.

 

 

and Chupi, what you said about mindvoices and tulpas hardly being vocal highlights yet another horrible aspect of this forum. The fact that people are trying to define the tulpa phenomenon for others--another thing that is virtually impossible. My tulpa speaks via mindvoice, not because I want it to be so, or because the community's definitions of vocality have shifted, but because that is the way she speaks to me, and you have no right or evidence to say that she is "hardly vocal". It's one thing for everybody to constantly run in circles trying to solve unsolvable problems on this forum, but another for people to run in circles and not only attack each other, but define aspects of each other's tulpas that cannot be defined.

 

 

Some people are off-topic on their PR's because they seriously have the inability to stay on topic. Some people are off-topic on their PR's to make their PR's more digestible for others, and to illustrate how personal life affects the development of tulpas. Oh and did I misread that the PR section has the words "Personal blog space" written on it? That's probably one thing that can be misleading in the long run doncha' think?

 

Well I can't say anything about the IRC because I never use it.

 

I use the PR section because I care about the creation of my tulpas, keeping in contact with people who have proven to be good friends, and abstaining from bullshit like this. I only got involved because it's dangerously relevant.

That's all I have to say, take it or leave it.

"Sanity is the playground of the unimaginative."

 

Yumi + Cinema

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Guest amber5885

What Cinne said was perfect.

 

I actually thought of him as a roleplayer when he first showed up and there was A LOT of hostility and because of it we almost actually lost one of our most active and popular members here on the forum.

 

Yes there are the obvious ones, I'm not afraid to name names so AlexMmorrow comes to mind as the user that not only claims to have an imposed tulpa in 5 hours but also claims to be telekenetic and can go into other's mindscapes. That's the difference between OBVIOUS and ASSUMED.

 

"Maybe the new Articles in the Guides Section can be put to use "

 

 

The problem with this suggestion is that no one reads the guides. The new members don't even bother to use the search function anymore.

I agree with a bot that can use key words from your post to suggest close matches to questions that have already been answered and instead of answering the same question we link them to another question and be done with it or just merge the topics to avoid cluttering the board.

 

Maybe a probationary period of three days to a week where you cannot post any new threads to the forum outside of maybe the beginners questions and answers thread and the intro thread. You can read but you can't post to avoid the issue of the same question being asked over and over again and if they leave from frustration they weren't here for the right reasons to begin with. But force them to take more time to reasearch their questions before spamming the board with "Can my tupa fly?" "How many butts can a tulpa have?" "Am I a tulpa?" Threads

 

"Furthermore, some reflection on what "sentience" actually entails, and what makes for a sentient mind person should be defined more. For the longest time, communication has be synonymous with sentience and consciousness, which I now understand to be not the case at all. If people still believe that communication means sentience, then it is no wonder that there are so many instant creations running about, I believe sentience is about the ability to think and consider one's self, no just to talk."

 

This is perfect. Absolutely perfect and maybe we do need to write up a document of terms. I know I said that new members don't read them BUT that doesn't mean that we can't link to it whenever we see an issue and tell them to read it before continuing the line of questioning. I for one would be happy to sit down and write it out. I got two days off and nothing to do.

 

We need to stop babying new members. Im not talking about being a dick but there was one thread in particular where I saw someone asking if making an instant tulpa was possible and all the old members said no. We were out shined by the new ones saying things like "Oh yes I make one every time I take a shower." That's an instance where we know something for a fact as a community so the mods or the old members should step in and shut it down. We need at least a handful of members who's word is gospel to dispel some of the stupidity that has been floating around or else it's going to breed and multiply like a disease.

 

Those are just my suggestions. Take them or leave them.

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The problem with this suggestion is that no one reads the guides. The new members don't even bother to use the search function anymore.

 

I thought going to the Articles section wouldn’t wholly be contingent on using the search function since it would just be a sub-category with the guides section. It’s understandable that you’re presuming no one will read them, but I thought with a thread like this, people seem to show interest in any potential of thought-provoking discussions. And even if we imagine futuristic frameworks of the community being more in the mentality of Science, there’s always Philosophy that we can talk about, especially if people would fall back to philosophy as a means of finding out how a person should live out their lives (while not being considered as the end-all be-all way of living, though).

 

It doesn’t have to be one-sided with implications and theorizing with Science, philosophy and science can be intertwined to some degree, so I’m not sure if it’s practical for us to be defeatist in at least experimenting with a few formats and how to go about discussing things specifically without those threads being drowned out. Just like other people who feel they wanted to talk about more thought-provoking things, they get rejected. I even remember trying to cover an existentialism thread that would easily pertain to a Philosophy related issue, but I didn’t really see many questioning more, and adding onto the discussion.

 

Maybe because they’re still trying to map things out for themselves, and don’t see referring to certain philosophies as learning tools in relation to tulpas is practical when they feel their foundations are infantile at best. However, this is just generalizations on my end based on PMs and things in the past, and I’m sure there’s going to be people reading it (any future content for thought-provoking discussion for example), and there may be nothing there in terms of actual discussion, but the information would still be there for the future.

 

And if it gets left to dust, then so be it; I just thought if people said things like “people need to do this, that, this and that,” it seems any suggestions are left in vain because of prior experiences that are dead. So if there’s an impasse on setting things up for discussion, and those not wanting to be part of it, that’s fine. But I still would be interested in initiating any of those discussions, and if they don’t bear fruit, at least the questions are out there for others as rhetorical. In other words, they can think for themselves, and come to terms with their companions in question rather than always wanting someone to baby and pamper them.

 

Though I guess the rhetorical approach, and people wanting to have critical thinking to learn how to sustain themselves despite of the future potentially leaving nothing but piss and shit for them isn’t pragmatic in the first place. I fixate more on just getting people to think more, and not really making them take a course of action of initiating paradigm shifts that go leaps and bounds beyond what people think is the norm around here. I know things like that are futile sometimes, but it’s just about getting information out there.

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