Mordax et al

:

Sure.

First of all, tumblr is notorious for how fast misinformation spreads through it on a daily basis. That’s not to say this doesn’t happen on other social media sites as well (see: Kony 2012 and the Reddit Witch Hunts), but it seems to happen more often on Tumblr. I don’t have any particular source for that, but I’m sure if you’ve been here longer than a few months, you’ll know what I’m talking about.

Second, the misinformation in the otherkin tags alone is reprehensible at best. All around, you see people saying things like “Otherkin is identifying with something” and “ID’ing outside your race is racist,” as though the whole idea of otherkin is just a choice someone makes for fun or for coping, like picking a muse for role play.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m glad for the large kin community here on tumblr. I love the aesthetic posts and the posts about kin memories. I love that I can post something and know it’ll be seen by at least 20 people by the end of the day, just because I tagged it as “otherkin”.

But the size of the community itself is detrimental to the spread of information. People with barely a concept of what it means to be otherkin try to give advice to people with even less of an idea of what it is. Non-kin ask what otherkin is and are greeted with answers like “it’s a coping mechanism,” when, well, it’s really not. Some people do use their kintypes to cope, but they didn’t create the identity(ies) themselves.

Now, with all this misinformation going around, it’s no wonder teens 13-17 come here and think they’re otherkin. “Wow,” they think, “I really connect to Sailor Moon. I must be kin with her.”

Which, of course, isn’t how it works. But it’s how you get probably 80-90% of the “kintype lists” linked on every other otherkin’s tumblr blog. You know the ones. They start out with “IDs (literally me)” and go through Primary, Secondary, Tertiary, with at least three characters or creatures under each category.

I’m not saying there aren’t polykin, and I’m not saying the people with these lists are being malicious in their intent. But I’m almost certain these kids are confused about what otherkin means, and might not actually be kin in the first place.

And that is okay. You don’t have to have 50 IDs to be yourself. You don’t need to be every popular character from the last five years to be understood, or even to understand yourself. You’re you, and that’s amazing.

This is getting long, and I’m not sure what else there is to say, so I’m gonna stop here. Hope this clarified things. If not, feel free to ask more.