404: SystemNotFound

Thanks for checking this out. We’re just a system on the internet, but we choose to be relatively anonymous. The internet isn’t a safe place, so we choose to navigate it with caution.

Why are we here? We made this blog to ramble. We don't particularly care if anyone sees, or if they agree, or if they interact. We don't care whether or not you believe in our validity. Sometimes we just wanna speak on system topics, or ramble about our experiences, and this is our place to do that. Unfortunately, we're not here to make friends. It's not that we're unfriendly or isolated. To make a friend is to invite them into your life, and not all friendships are everlasting. We just don't want to risk our anonymity in the event of a falling out.

Are we comfortable sharing anything? Although not much, there are a couple things we can share. We're a bodily adult (21+), and we're formally diagnosed. DID is not our only mental illness, but we haven't decided if we'll disclose any info about that yet. You can expect that our alters will also anonymize themselves in a similar way to our collective. They may choose to use nicknames, or sign posts and comments with emotes or phrases that identify them. No one will be using their real name obviously.

I'm really baffled at the amount of people saying "X NEW PLURAL APP IS PRO ENDO!!!! DON'T USE IT!!!!" because hello? Just about every single thing we're all using are pro or neutral. Yes that includes PluralKit and SimplyPlural. There's a REASON it's such a trend, because gatekeeping your userbase is SHIT for the growth of an app or bot.

Honestly hot take- you can't expect an app dev to be outwardly anti with their platform. It's entitled. Even if a dev is personally anti- they're not gonna go on a ban spree against Endos or Roleplayers. Why? Because it's a waste of time, and a PR nightmare honestly.

At the end of the day, it boils down to this: Do you want your disability aid or don't you? Because a lot of you are getting really angry about things shutting down, while actively contributing to it with this kinda nonsense.

I don't think it's really controversial to say that there are a ton of toxic DID/System communities out there. Discord servers are especially known for their egregious execution. These communities almost always crash and burn, and if they don't, they're riddled with drama. Why is that though? Why are system communities always like this? Why can't anyone, even with the best of intentions, make a true safe space for systems?

I'm of the belief that it's impossible for a number of reasons, but the one I'm most convinced of is that mental health communities are subject to the good and bad of the mental illness they support, as well as to the various stages of recovery their members find themselves in. You'll find people who are working on recovery, and you'll find some who haven't even considered starting. You'll find some sweet genuine people, and you'll find people who are toxic to you. That is the beauty and the curse of the DID/OSDD community and several others. It's impossible to craft a space that's safe for everyone on every part of this spectrum. Someone who hasn't begun their recovery may feel they need vastly more protection to feel safe, but someone who is decently far into their recovery might find those same protections restrictive and harmful. You could make spaces specifically for systems who have and haven't started recovery, but even within those subsets there is complexity. Everyone experiences trauma differently, everyone handles it differently, and so everyone's needs vary. It's too large a spectrum to fit under the same umbrella of needs.

On top of those varying needs, Gatekeeping also runs rampant in these alleged safe spaces. I've encountered it with names, faceclaims, alter roles, diagnoses, system origin, inner worlds, system complexity, alter count, and so many other things that none of us have any right to decide on the validity of. It usually comes from a place of kindness, community leaders looking to prevent insensitivity, misinformation, and discomfort, but it has been shown to be irrefutably harmful. We can't control how people experience their system, and to try to for our own individual comfort is wrong.

The perfect System community will never exist. It will always be impossible to make a space that's safe for every system, because all of us have a different perception of safety. What may make one system feel comfortable could trigger another. For that reason, there's simply no way to make rules or guidelines that are right for the majority. At the end of the day, these communities are doing more harm than good by claiming to be wholly safe while being anything but. I think it's high time that people be realistic about their communities, because systems cannot and will not ever agree on a true right way. There's no shame in making a community centered more toward a specific system demographic, and no harm in someone deciding those spaces aren't right for them.