Its the multiple community, sockpuppets are like, the point
Do you know about multiples/plurals? They are a group of people, or perhaps a group of groups of people who believe that they have many minds or souls sharing one body. But don't say they have DID, or mention alters, this is "healthy"

multiplicity! The kind that basically comes from spending too much time role-playing.

Now days, the multiple community keeps most of its drama behind closed doors. Drama that usually has to with the people who don't have Sephiroth in their system looking down on those who do, or incessant bitching about who is just pretending, and who actually needs to get some psych help because they really aren't pretending, while the rest of the community is probably only pretending to not be pretending. Its a big old pretend-fest.

But yesterday, some wanker decided to air their wank in public for all to see! They created a journal where all multiples could post anonymously and bitch about the other multiples they hated.

And thus, Pluralanon was born! 100+ comments of bitching, backstabbing and circlejerk.

Its especially funny when the uninivated rest of the community shows up.

And its entirely possible that there were only 2 real live participants, with the rest of them being imaginary!

ETA: Original thread is now deleted, but they are back in a new one in Glorious Technicolor.

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visp
2011-01-30 08:53 pm UTC (link)

The 'disorder' itself isn't causing them any emotional problems, keeping them from succeeding in life, impairing relationships with others, and so on. They seem happy and functional.

Good point. There's also a bit of an "cogito ergo sum" question. I mean, it's a personality, it's from a human brain, so how do you really define what = awareness of 1 person vs. awareness of 2?

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seiberwing
2011-01-30 09:03 pm UTC (link)

I'm a fan of the idea that a large part of personality is rooted in physiology (primarily brain structure, neurochemistry, and hormones), so the idea that a single brain with a single set of life experiences can house two or more radically different personalities is quite bizarre to me. If it was more widespread and not so easy to fake it would make for wonderful psych studies.

And of course, even the concept of personality is pretty subjective. There's some theories that say all people have multiple similar but not the same personalities for different contexts. It would be very hard to tell.

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UNFUNNY AHOY

feenix
2011-01-31 01:43 am UTC (link)

Or, at least...well, more like serious ahoy.

I think, though...like, think of how you can partition a hard drive. One partition can run Windows, another can run Linux, so on and so forth. Two radically different computing experiences, but one computer. So, in that sense, I could definitely believe it.

The problem, as you noted, is that it's not impossible to skin a Unix OS to look like Windows (or vice versa).

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seiberwing
2011-01-31 01:56 am UTC (link)

Well, your analogy's not quite perfect. Excluding the whole business of souls and people popping in from other dimensions, you're not installing a personality onto its body's hardware. The body itself creates that personality, modified by the experiences of the outside world.

So same hardware, same life...where's the differences coming from? Especially when you get to things as radically different as gender and sexuality differences between personalities, things very heavily influenced by biology.

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cmdr_zoom
2011-02-01 09:00 am UTC (link)

AS I UNDERSTAND IT(*), a somewhat closer analogy is that a certain set of subprocesses that normally run almost invisibly under the OS get bundled together and "promoted" to a distinct, named feature/software suite/Control Panel item. Extreme stress is, of course, the most common trigger for this. And then we get into running in background vs. foreground...

(* capped to indicate that I may actually not at all.)

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	Re: UNFUNNY AHOY visp 2011-01-31 04:57 am UTC (link)
	It may not be technically "funny" but it's a very interesting idea. (Reply to this)(Parent)

cmdr_zoom
2011-02-01 09:17 am UTC (link)

Ah, but I'm not sure that "a single set of life experiences" applies in the reported cases in which one (or more) personality(s) apparently arise/are split off to "shield" the rest from the experience and memories of abuse. The classic (and possibly incorrect and/or fictional) scenario, as described in a comment further down the page, is a protector persona which remembers things that the protected part of the mind doesn't (isn't allowed to, represses, etc) for its own good and/or relative sanity.

tl;dr - "I can't deal with ____, so I shall imagine someone who can and let them remember it while I forget."

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	seiberwing 2011-02-01 02:56 pm UTC (link)
	But that's DID, and not quite what we're dealing with here. In this scenario multiple personalities develop without the fracturing strength of some severe trauma. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	cmdr_zoom 2011-02-01 03:45 pm UTC (link)
	well, that's because this scenario is just fannish bullshit (IMO). (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	seiberwing 2011-02-01 05:23 pm UTC (link)
	Eh, consider it a thought experiment. For me it's not a matter of 'lol it's silly because it's silly, everyone knows that' so much as 'this really does not fit with our understanding of psychology'. (Reply to this)(Parent)

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