Plural History: The Multiple Code
So, admittedly, not many people in the plural community know much about our history. This includes us- information isnāt exactly readily avaliable anywhere we know of, and itās not something a lot of people seem to have thought of researching.
So, when we came upon a piece of plural history from nearly 20 years ago, mentioned offhandedly, it was a little bit of an awakening on how long our community has been around and developing, and we figured thatās something itād be beneficial to share with others.
Codes were a bit of a thing back in the early internet days- Popularized in email and USENET signatures (from what we can tell, information is scarce), they were bits of letters, numbers, and symbols meant to convey a lot of information in relatively small space. Hereās an example, so you know what weāre dealing with.
Not exactly human readable, but thatās the point. Codes were used by a fair few online subcultures, such as goths, geeks, twinks, dragons, and, interestingly enough, systems, to communicate within in-groups. Itās hard to say where they were created, or when they went out of style, but Iād say their prime was late 90ās-early ā00s. If you were active online at this time, feel free to add info!
Iām not entirely sure how serious these were, as the Multiple Code site describes the effort of fitting so much info into so few characters as ācompletely impossible and probably amusingā, but regardless, Iām decently sure these were still used as an (admittedly clunky) form of communication.
Looking at the website, which is thankfully still up, you can see that it was originally created in March of 2001, no doubt older than many active participants in modern plural spaces. There are sections on member count, innerworld, degree of coconsciousness, and āoutness factorā, as well as non-multiplicity-related things like job, sexuality, diet, and paranormal experiences.
One of our favorite parts of looking through the code was the section on origins, which looks like this.
While this was definitely before modern -genic labels, a lot of these terms are still used in some capacity today, and the inclusivity of all types of systems is wild-in-a-good-way to see.
I have no idea how widely this code was used back in old web days. Weāve done entirely not enough research. But simply knowing that we have always been here, and likely always will be, is extremely comforting.
By the way- thereās an effort to revive the multiple code! It uses updated terminology and streamlines things a lot, while still staying true to the original in terms of appearance and function. It doesnāt have to be your thing, but I think itād be lovely to see it used in Tumblr bios or places.
[Image reads: check our pinned post for a dni before reblogging! End ID.]
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