eevee

not that i had a carrd but still, i want to reword my bio to express more what impact i want to have on others. thank you

despite my brain's irony-poisoned initial reaction being "well said! thanks, eevee from pokemon!" i genuinely appreciate what you're laying down here

I have a lot of feelings about the current state of the term "kin" to now be a List of Adjectives but it's hard to elucidate without feeling like I'm identity policing or Old Dragon Yells At Cloud. Part of it is because I too have been around since it meant "literal soul" stuff.

I think if anything "maybe we should see ourselves as ongoing stories, not a set of keywords" is pretty succinct a statement about this whole phenomenon. I've turned my nose up before at the (initially) Tumblr culture of listing sexuality right in one's profile, in part because you can't really reduce who you are to keywords, why not leave that information to actual conversation between people when it's relevant?

I assume the people doing this these days mean "characters they kin" to be a less offensive version of the colloquial practice of calling random characters/critters/etc one's spirit animal

I also just assume the people doing this are way more trouble than they're worth and try to avoid interacting with them because I don't need that shit in my life I got enough problems.

I have been acutely aware that how much I love Manaphy (and it's been nearly 15 years at this point) boils down to capitalism brain rot and I'm having trouble reconciling that with what you said

Like I'm pretty sure the emotional anchor it provides me is one of the last few things keeping me sane and non-suicidal but I'm also aware it's not actually good for me because it probably prevents me from maturing but I simply need the copium of having small blue friend in my brain

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y'know it's funny i definitely grew up with that kind of tumblr culture and like, very carefully curated a kin list for precisely that purpose of "this is a way to signal the Group that i am in and the role that i want to play in that group" but now i still have that kin list and it feels more, reflective? like i am well past the point where i feel like looking at a wall of like forty different cartoon girls is going to tell anyone else who i am in any meaningful way beyond 'i like cartoons and grew up on tumblr' but like. i dunno i see the patterns. having this reference of media that was a part of my life both in terms of the watching of it and of the emotional impact it had on me and the way i latched on to particular ways of seeing myself gives me like, a little snapshot of who i was the last time i updated it, the sort of person that would put uriel from orv and venus from wktd right next to each other and what that says about them and me and the relationships between all of those all at once, and in that case i kinda relish in the hyper-specificity of it

though also i have at multiple points written up paragraph-long explanations for why all of those characters are so meaningful to me personally and i do absolutely need to finish that for its current iteration because that seems like a much better reference for "people who are not me" of which i have been informed that there are many??? fucked up

if we described ourselves less as three adjectives meant to hint at the shape of our inner world and more in terms of the impact we have and aspire to have on the outer one

Gonna think about this for approximately one forever, thank you.

I usually look at carrds to see what boundaries a person has before interacting with them. The kin thing is odd, but a little understandable, they just "click" with the characters so much that they feel a kinship with them. I seen this with younger people (under 20 yrs), but rarely with older people.

I think the strangest thing about kinning characters is see some people who are vehemently do not want to interact with another "clone", another kinner of their character. I don't get it. It's a character you like so much that you feel a relation to, but other people might feel the same way, right? But it's like a competition for who is the character. I honestly don't get it.

Anyway, I really like a certain angry paintbrush character so much that I based multiple ocs on. I just like their non-binary gender angst.

i saw what i think is kind of a related thing in the talk around Jaiden Animations' video on asexuality

there were a lot of people who felt really relieved and excited when they found out that asexuality was A Thing and, like, i don't remember when i first heard the word but i know i didn't have that kind of reaction. i see the word "asexual" as a mostly-accurate description of me, not a group that's recognised as legitimate

like, the existence of a video didn't teach me that being ace doesn't make you any less of a person, it was the combination of being ace and not being any less of a person that taught me that

i guess there's a Kinds of People thing here, when we look to the people around us to gauge whether we're doing good, some folks like to have concrete landmarks, like labels or role models

This whole thing is very Jungian when you put it this way. I'm not much for Jung, which is probably why this sort of thing is not very meaningful to me.

the strange mid-10s tumblr cultural lens where everything was judged on its validity and so you couldn't just have a personality, you had to have a named Thing and argue for its legitimacy so that your peers would not only respect it but consider it a form of bigotry for others to not like you

Thank you so much for this wording I'm gonna be thinking about it for months

idk what the deal with “kinning” specifically is, other than if someone said i “kin” with Wario or whatever i would very loudly say that that’s incorrect. but this stirs up thoughts i have on like, online bios in general, especially since i redid mine recently‐ish after i abandoned Twitter.

giving an “elevator pitch” for an entire person is something i used to just see as just a product of capitalism and social media telling us that we need to make ourselves “marketable”. it might still be that a little bit, but more so i think socializing through the computer just forms alternate social conventions is all. being able to communicate “i support trans rights”, and avoid people who at least make it part of their identity that they explicitly do not, has saved me a lot of grief which is always harder to avoid irl. so i’ve assumed that people describing in detail what minorities they’re part of in their bios is part of them trying to communicate in a similar way like, “hey i’m safe to be around if you’re also like me”. and also boosting visibility for minorities is important i suppose, though i usually think of media as being more important for this than online bullet‐point bios. i dunno, i’m cis and straight and able‐bodied and don’t really feel a need to proclaim this, so it’s confused me as to why other people feel the need to tell you their gender and sexuality and disabilities upfront. but i’m also clearly not part of any minorities here, so there’s plenty i can’t relate with directly. (i do fill out English pronouns in my bios at least, since this is useful and harmless, and anyone who has an issue with people who put pronouns in their bios should feel free to not talk to me anyway.)

arguably none of this stuff is really “who you are” at all, but it’s not really how i think of myself either, similar to how the sanitized version of myself i present in public also isn’t how i think of myself. i’ve never once thought to myself “alright how can i be more like this Wario Land 4 Sound Room Guy personality which i’ve decided i am now”. besides, it’s impossible to summarize an entire person, with all their lived experiences and how those have shaped their worldviews and personality. trying to answer “what do i do most notably” and “what are my broad worldviews” is how i try to get my bio as close as i reasonably can, but maybe other people would say that their experiences struggling with illness or whatever communicate more aspects, or more important aspects, of their lives. though, approximately 800 years ago when i used Tumblr, i had a bio page that included lists of what IPs i had interest in and what mental and social struggles i had. and within, i dunno, probably a year or two, i completely wiped it as my growing issues with the culture on Tumblr led me to criticize all aspects of it and it occurred to me like, why the hell do i have this here. close friends are the only people who might want to know this stuff about me, or that i would want to know this stuff about me, and they’re not going to be reading the bio page on my Tumblr anyway. i’ve also come to reckon with the fact that i didn’t have much in my bio in terms of political ideologies/worldviews because i tried to ignore the fact that unfortunately i don’t live in a world where i can afford to not participate in these discussions (since “neutrality” implicitly supports those in power).

now, i still have this whole Wario thing going on, but it’s been more about identifying myself than anything else. like, so people can use my avatar, username, and unique line in my bio (a quote from WL4’s manual) to be like “ok yes i recognize this person, it’s the Wario Land 4 Sound Room Guy”. which is great! and desirable. makes me feel more like i have a rooted identity than just being another person who drifts along the information highway without a face or purpose. but i don’t need Wario to do this. indicating “i like video games, including these games” isn’t pointless, but increasingly i feel i’d rather not be associated so strongly with Nintendo, even though there’s a lot of effective reclaiming of their IPs online. (hm, i suppose this reclaiming is a lot stronger with Pokémon than, maybe all other Nintendo IPs?) now, for a long‐ass time i’d accepted that i could Never change this part of my identity since uh, Twitter removed animated GIF avatar uploads and i wanted to keep mine forever. but now i don’t use Twitter, so who cares! it’s not pressing, but i’d like to make my identity more distinct and more “me” in that way (even though people who know my face but not WL4 have assumed it’s literally me in this avatar before). tangentially‐related confession time: tbh i used to not like your new avatars as much as the ones that looked more like Game Freak’s Pokémon Eevee, mostly because i thought the big dark brown animal eyes were cuter than the white‐filled ones, but now i’m like, ah she’s claiming her own identity and proud of her developed drawing skills so i’m happy for her, and also this design is cute af too. big pink boopable nose.

I want to say this as gently as possible: is it appropriate for us to put forth theories, let alone critiques, of social practices that we admit to not understanding?

for things like this, I always wonder "how much of this is just how young people think"

i've always found labels like alterhuman, copinglink, otherkin, fictionkind etc. more useful as descriptors than a list of kintypes without any clarification on what op means by "kin". bonding over a shared community or experience (or even learning about one you're not familiar with!) feels more natural to me than trying to judge somebody's character by which fictional dudes they've collected - and i say that as a guy with his own fictional dudes collection very much reflects who he is

as deeply as i identify as my kintypes and have kin memories and shifts and all that oldschool funky junk, i'm more than "a claptrap kinnie" and how that kintype affects me and my relationships is broad and weird and interesting!!!

similarly, sticking adhd in your bio can be good for solidarity but doesn't really tell anybody anything about you if it's the only thing in there. adhd affects everybody differently, and if you know how it affects you... why not write about what kinda guy it makes you? it makes ME a chatterbox, forgetful, passionate, fun-loving and friend-oriented, a casual gamer, an animation enjoyer, and a pig enthusiast! it's not hard to find neat things to say about yourself when you really put your mind to it, and labels can be a great place to start!!

it's not wrong or bad for people to show off words they resonate with though, not even hyperspecific microlabels or phobias that have older folks quietly slapping "what does x mean" into google, but it sometimes feels like a performance instead of a real attempt to describe themselves. in the worst cases, people will reduce their character to an aesthetic for readability or fixate on labelling absolutely EVERYTHING so strangers can know every little detail about them without them actually describing anything or exchanging any dialogue

which is kinda troubling bcuz how do they make friends off the internet? sometimes you just gotta take a leap, have a chat with a random and see what clicks! keywords can only do so much heavy lifting

this is a topic i've been thinking about a lot lately and i consider it primarily to be a facet of late-stage capitalism and the categorisation of identity. it's not necessarily something that people want as much as it is something people are led to believe is the trend or the 'appropriate' way to do things. social media nowadays has filed the edges off individuality and has largely boiled Being A Person down to a profile picture and a text box, and i find it troubling that people are willing to accept that

I have a reluctance to categorize myself, to identify with groups, even those I am nominally a part of, to claim membership in anything. I don't feel the urge to declare myself part of a demarcated group... I think I understand the social value of it, but I find it perplexing.

ido like pepsi

i appreciate you saying this, eevee

The funniest part is that I've only known you for like, idk, two or three weeks? and that was only because I happened to catch your announcement for Fox Flux on the global feed. And my assumption was that you called yourself Lexyeevee because Lexy could transform into an eevee too. And that was like, her social media persona or something? I mean it didn't seem that weird at the time. Being referred to as eevee in real life is pretty based

Tbh I think we all had a respectful discussion in the first post and nobody got hurt so I would call that a success overall assuming you actually learned something; I think I did, at least?

I apologize for responding to one note with an overly personal anecdote. But maybe my perspective can be informative? at least as one alternative

Specifically, when you say this:

i thought we were speaking the same language but all of a sudden we aren't. this is one of a handful of ways that i've felt words stop working, and i don't like when words stop working. i think words are very important in fact.

I think: when I'm using phrases like "kinning", I'm explicitly embracing this. I don't believe language is universal. I don't know if I ever did, but if I did, it was a time before what I currently remember. I've been misunderstood a lot, but also had a lot of opportunities to watch people talk, and even if "English" can have a literal meaning, I find that in most interactions, there are subtle or not-so-subtle differences in what each person thought was being said.

So when I say a phrase that's uncommon in my profile, or even when I write phrases I expect have an understood meaning, I'm usually trying to reach out to others who speak or understand it as I do. I don't know if this works. I suspect, in my case, it really doesn't because my cultural context is a chaotic mixup with little connection to reality. but I think the intention is there: I write words that are utterly ambiguous and meaningless, and if someone understands them, then I feel understood.

this is in contrast to how i write posts. i mean, i will insert or alter certain word usages or grammatical structures (hello, lowercase sentences!) to communicate the Group I'm In, but since the point is to communicate, i usually always also have the literal meaning of my sentences be what i'm trying to say. if i think the person i'm talking to won't understand a phrase, i won't use it, or will explain it.

writing it out, now, then, i think it still makes sense to me: a bio is, or at least can be, a tool to filter people for similar culture, or for similar people. when it's limited space, it almost has to be (even if unintentional). so when i say in my bio "This cat is playing Civ VI" that says something about me, but more importantly, how one read it says something about the reader. if that sentence makes total sense to them, then we're now more closely linked by a bond of shared language, and that's important information.

if everything written in a bio was completely unambiguous, then anyone could interpret it correctly, and that would be great except for the fact that exclusion is, to some extent, in my understanding, the point.

RC Cola really is the best though

I am resonating with both posts rn. Particularly two separate statements that really jumped out and grabbed me, in context but also maybe not in your context. Might be tangential.

1. "really about someone's experience with the source material" and
2. well it was a lot but basically "I associate with a found name"

For 1), I mainly vibe with the discomfort of interpreting a set of inputs and finding subtle but important discord in how many folks interpret it.

But for 2), the idea of personal identity and acceptance is to me tightly bound to a chosen persona. It's more secret, but more open? And so the name you most closely bond to, for whatever reason, is clearly something those close to you would respect and use, if desired?

But also, that's actually a choice? You actually can put whatever in your bio/profile/etc. It used to be more common, I think. And I think I forgot that was a real period of the internet, full of random nameless folks on BBS', usenet, irc, phpbb, livejournal, etc, who were all, briefly or not, very important.

Often I wish I understood people more, though I think I understand what you've shared here a little, and it feels like a familiar place.

Speaking for myself at least, I think a list of short, vague-ish things can be at least somewhat helpful as context when you're trying to convey what your deal is to someone who's either looking to follow you or otherwise interact with you and has no idea who you are. Obviously some terms may be much less helpful than others, like you've noted, but I find in general, at least from my perspective, it's still preferable to having none of that info at all. On their own they can be useless or even more confusing than saying nothing at all, but I tend to also look at some of the posts on a person's profile to get a feel for who they are, and together they usually form a bigger picture that can be helpful for figuring out a person's overall vibe. Sort of a speed-dating kind of thing, almost? But instead of dating it's for the sake of figuring out if I want to follow someone, or if there's anything particular I need to keep in mind if I'm talking to a stranger in a comment thread, or whatever. And maybe there's something to be said there about people writing elevator sales-pitches for themselves as people, but the alternatives (that I can think of, anyway) are pretty much either:

1. Write nothing about yourself, in which case no information is conveyed at all and people can only go by what you post and share, which has some use ultimately only tells you so much and can sometimes be just as confusing.
2. Write something longer and more thought-out, which requires a lot more effort on your part and is, depending on the length, less likely to be read than a short list of things.

I don't know that there's necessarily a "best" way to approach it, since all of these options have pros and cons. I suppose the "ideal" way to handle it is to keep a profile description/bio clear and concise, and focus only on the important things, but that still runs into the "requires more effort than some people might be willing or able to put in" shortcoming of the aforementioned "Write something longer and more thought-out" option, and conveying useful information in a clear and concise manner can be a tough skill to develop (I know I'm personally pretty bad at the "concise" part, as seen here).

TL;DR: I think I get where you're coming from, but I also think get why people write profile descriptions and bios like that, and as I see it there's really no one-size-fits-all solution that'll make everyone happy. It's just kind of an unfortunate result of people being complex, I suppose.

the thought circling through my head now is "if i were on an internet like this in 1992 i would probably have put in my bio that i'm garfield kin"

I've been thinking about this more, and also the "this is just how young people think" thing that a couple of folks have nudged at in the comments.

An analogy occurs to me: for a long time it was believed that nobody dreamed in black and white, and even today a lot of older people believe that, because they dream in black and white, but then younger people dream in color.

And then if you really look into it, it turns out that it's probably because older people grew up with black and white movies and TV, and younger people grew up with color TV, and so there's this narrative framework in peoples' brains about "this is what stories look like."

I wonder if extremely online kids who use TikTok a lot dream in vertical video format.