Glitch (it/he)

Lunaith⠀⠀❀⠀⠀When the Moon is simply a fact of one's existence or identity. It may feel that, without moonlight, there'd be no you.

What are typing quirks and what’s their validity?

I see systemscringe fakeclaiming them a lot and I don’t know a lot about typing quirks, but I definitely feel like it isn’t something that should be fakeclaimed.

I have actually seen the symbol one before, btw, I did not come up with it.

Typing quirks are really just things some people do. Fake claiming someone over typing quirks is like fake claiming someone because they use too many emojis. It doesn’t really make sense, because it has nothing to do with the actual disorder the person is being accused of faking. As such, arguing if it is “valid” doesn’t make sense.

There are reasons why people do it. Many just do it because they think it’s fun, or makes their messages look ‘cooler’ to them. However, others have deeper meanings to it. Some fictives and nonhuman alters may prefer to type like this out of comfort or for species euphoria reasons. For example, a Papyrus fictive may choose to type “*LIKE THIS” for comfort reasons, and a robot alter may switch their i’s with 1’s and o’s for 0’s, just because it feels better to them.

And, on rare occasions, I can see how an alter may struggle with typing without it. We don’t have an alter like that, ourselves, but we have an alter who struggles with something that could have easily turned into a reliance on typing quirks. One of our alters can’t send messages in first person, not because they’re physically incapable of it, but because they can’t get themself to actually send the message, regardless of how much they try and want to. There’s a mental barrier there. If the message doesn’t feel ‘correct’, he can’t get himself to send it… and ‘correct’, to him, can be very specific… and always excludes normal speech. At first, they tried using emojis to communicate, but while they could send those messages, they weren’t very understandable. Then he tried talking in third person, which worked. With that in mind, I can see how someone else may suffer from a similar issue, but find a solution in typing quirks, instead of third person speech. Making them ‘reliant’ on it.

All of that said, it is something that has to be done with certain considerations in mind. Typing quirks, especially drastic ones like my ‘impossible to read’ example, can and do break screen readers. So some really need to be translated, preferably before you use the actual typing quirk. Another alternative I’ve seen on discord, specifically, are specific channels for typing quirks, so people who rely on screen readers won’t just get blasted with a robotic voice reading out ‘h-three-one-one-zero three-v-three-r-y-zero-n-three’. All of the typing quirks being in one channel, which you can easily mute if you so choose.

So yeah. I wouldn’t say it’s valid to fake claim anybody over it. It’s like somebody using too many emojis— it’s sometimes kinda annoying, and you’ll occasionally wonder if it’s really necessary… but you can’t go around saying that somebody is lying about their severe mental disorder because of it. Even if they say they physically can’t send a message without an overabundance of emojis, it still wouldn’t be a valid criticism to say they’re faking an entirely unrelated disorder.

Few tips:

Think about names or nicknames you go by irl, or have in the past. Do you like any of them? Is there a name you’d all like to go by irl? A chosen name? We go by Niko because it’s our chosen name from before we realized we were a system

Now, think about names, nicknames, or usernames you go by online. It’s not quite uncommon for people to shorten usernames into a one word ‘user-nickname’: for example, someone with the username ‘EeveeLover’ will often just be called ‘Eevee’. Do you have anything like that which you have historically gone by? Childhood usernames, preferred online fake names? Online we tend to go by Glitch or Glitchy, because that’s our childhood ‘user-nickname’

Interests. Likes. If you all like a certain piece of media, a type of plant, etc.. If there’s a something you all like, you can steal its name (albeit you might get some backlash if you took a cultural name, from a culture that isn’t your own)

Look through name websites to finds ones everybody likes, you can even look for gender neutral names that can go both ways, if preferred. Like Alex or something. Google will give you diaper ads, though

Symbolism is also a friend. Like you can base it off of butterflies to represent the metamorphosis, the sun to represent hope, space to represent a vast array of possibilities, or even use it to represent and portray things you wouldn’t normally feel comfortable with, in a way which you can reclaim. These can also act as themes, too

Common trends between alters. Do you have anything that applies to most or all of you?

Nouns. Find things that just sound cool, cute, or otherwise interesting

Happy memories. Is there anything that reminds you all of those?

Also additional tip:

Don’t be afraid to have multiple names, just put in the bio and let others determine which they want to call you

Theming is very helpful for coming up with ideas. The brain very often gets overwhelmed when it knows it can choose anything and themes can help with that, by narrowing your search pool and brainstorming. If nothing feels right, you can always change it. We have a technology theme and most of our collective names, and sys name, follow that trend. You can also have multiple themes (not that you actually need a theme though)

Lists are very helpful, too. Just storing them and rating them can be helpful

Despite the amount of shit here, don’t overthink it. Just try out things you all are comfortable with, you can always change it later

Some apps like simplyplural and octocon have polls that can let individual alters vote on things. This isn’t a tip for finding a name, but it is helpful for communication if you struggle with it