System communities & accountability

This post assumes the reader has a basic knowledge on dissociative identity disorder. The post linked above provides some of that information. A glossary will be included for terms used in this post, as well as a starting place to read up on DID.

It was last updated on 05 Aug, 2024.

What changed: Unlisted entry. There's definitely some kind of nuance I didn't write about, but I'm not gonna reread and correct it. Keeping it up for posterity/archival, will probably delete this and the rest later.

I do not ever want to claim to be a 'DID educator' of any sort! While I aim to guide people in the right direction, it's better to look at places meant for this kind of information. This is more a commentary on the community than on the disorder itself!

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As many young people may be aware of, there's an entire community dedicated to OSDDID online on Twitter, Tumblr, and TikTok. Each version of the community has its own problems, however some may be considered worse than others. I'll break down each platform and the issues their respective communities bring.

Tumblr's community either isn't as active as it used to be or I simply haven't seen anything happen with them lately. Its biggest problems arose in the mid-2010s (around the time the DSM-V came out) and this would be the start of people pretending to have DID for varying reasons (systemfaking). While it's possible to genuinely believe you have DID and turn out not to, one of the biggest users on Tumblr had faked DID for the purpose of identity politics. Everyone was also involuntarily pitted in the war of 'endos vs traumagenics'.

A 'traumagenic' system is a person with OSDDID. An 'endogenic' system, often called an endo, is a system that has formed 'naturally' or from non-traumatic causes. Reasons for this level of animosity against each other mostly included endogenics going into spaces meant for traumagenic systems - information belonging to endogenics often got mixed up with DID information as well, so a lot of misinformation began to spread. There's a lot to the 'misinformation' that was and is still spread online, but I'll save that for another time.

There were absolutely cases of the opposite happening, though - some traumagenic systems would make their way over to endogenic communities and harass them for what you could argue was no reason. Other communities that interacted in these spaces included soulbonders and tulpamancers, who were also looked down upon by traumagenic systems for similar reasons to endogenic systems. It should be noted that the term 'fictive', a term used by almost every plural community, seems to originate with soulbonders.

So what happened to Tumblr's community? While I doubt it's fizzled out completely, it's very likely that many users left during the porn ban exodus of 2018. Most of these users moved to Twitter.

Twitter's community is slightly different, but there are certain things about the platform that make it, in my opinion, worse than Tumblr:

• Twitter's character limit makes providing context much harder.
• Twitter is about as reactionary as old Tumblr and has been steadily getting worse since the American election in 2016.
• Misinformation is easier to spread.
• The older people in this community may have fallen victim to misinfo during their time on Tumblr. Many of these people have learned since, many have not.

The Twitter community's relationship with endogenics is still strained, however there seem to be more people who don't really care as much about their existence (assuming they aren't spreading misinfo). Misinformation comes in stranger doses on Twitter, with trauma symptoms becoming 'system experiences' that totally mean you have DID instead of just trauma symptoms. There also seems to be a(n un)healthy amount of people claiming dissociation is exclusive to OSDDID - it absolutely is not. Everyone dissociates, even the least mentally ill of people.

Young people with OSDDID also seem to be making more wild claims about endos, such as 'endos look down on us because we weren't naturally born a system'. I've literally never heard this take before, but a friend of mine ran into these threads at least once a week. People who try to correct genuine misinformation on DID are often vilified for disagreeing with what has unfortunately become the status quo.

In Twitter and Tumblr's communities, poor or questionable behaviours were and still are often allowed to thrive. Here are some examples:

• Refusing to take accountability for another alter's actions.
• Treating littles like genuine, actual, real children.
• Harassing persecutor alters for no reason other than the role's reputation in the community.
• Treating headspace as real as the real world, and mistreating one's own alters (often encouraging others to do the same).

These will be elaborated on, but here is a short answer as to why all of these aren't good in some way or another:

• Accountability: Alters are a part of a whole, and reflect the system in some way or another. If one alter is attacking people for no reason, what does that say about you? It's better to apologize and handle it.
• Littles: Littles are just as capable of doing things other alters can do, and often alter age does not matter much.
• Persecutors: Persecutors are misguided protectors and are a traumatized child just like the rest of the system. They are trying to help.
• Headspace: Actions in-system may feel real, but they ultimately are not. If someone needs to vent to you about how an alter has treated them in-system, let them talk, but don't go and treat the harassing alter like a piece of shit for it. It's not really your business.

Refusing to take accountability often manifests in a few forms, such as:

• A nonblack system may have an alter who presents as black in-system that says the N-word. This is a weirdly common occurrence.
• An alter will be genuinely mistreating people outside of the system, and the host will essentially just go 'I can't control him'.
• Misuse of the word dormancy to make people feel bad about holding them accountable.

Alters, while they can appear in-system in different ways, are ultimately no different from the body they reside in - if the system is not black, they won't truly understand what it's like to be black (and therefore should not be reclaiming a word that has never been used against them in real life). This goes for any race the body is not. Also, no, people in real life will not excuse you because 'you have a black alter'. That's somehow worse than saying you 'have a black friend so it's fine'.

It should be noted that no, systems generally cannot control what their alters do. But this doesn't mean you shouldn't apologize on their behalf and do your best to correct the behaviour!

The issue with treating littles as actual children is that they are not. While littles do present as children, the system does not magically turn into a child when one fronts. Like every other alter, littles are capable of understanding and doing things that any singlet the system's age is, such as driving and holding a job. There are also people who have excused pedophilic tendencies by saying something along the lines of 'my littles are attracted to children because that's how old they are'. No!!! In general, body age always trumps alter age.

Until now I have neglected to speak on TikTok's community - that's because I have no clue where to start. Imagine if you took the bad parts of Twitter and Tumblr's communities and then turned it up to 11. If faking DID wasn't a trend already, TikTok definitely made it one. You'll find people who fake things as awful to be as a programmed system. The most blatantly (and honestly hilariously) obvious case of sysfaking in recent TikTok history is 'twosoulsonebod', a person who went from claiming she was a system with no trauma to making things up on the fly to say she had DID. She is mostly known for her 'rapid switching', in which her two alters in the system could speak together one after the other with little to no issue. More on her here.

TikTok is a breeding ground for quite possibly the worst opinions and misinformation I've ever seen. If you have DID/OSDD or are questioning if you do, I generally suggest you avoid the communities surrounding it and talk to a professional. Misinformation is everywhere, even if the people spreading it are doing their best to give you good information.

As a final note, a lot of these things could apply to other plural communities - while the terms used are exclusive to OSDDID, it's not uncommon to see non-trauma plural communities try to excuse their actions on 'alters' or whatever word they've come up to mean that. I implore you to check yourselves and make sure you aren't spreading misinfo either.

Yanderebitchclub: the kin drama that changed Tumblr (for more on the Tumblr user mentioned)

Twosoulsonefraud on Tiktok (for more on twosoulsonebod)

A lot of this is from personal observation, so feel free to take it with a grain of salt. I've also avoided these communities for a while, so my information may not be 100%, but I believe it serves as a fair introduction.

Good places to read up on DID are did-research.org and Multiplicity&Me, the latter offering a more personal perspective. If you're interested in information on programmed systems, I will let you know that information on it is hard to come by due to the likelihood of it being taken advantage of.

A thank you to Warp, Vince (& friends), Wally, and Niko! Talking to you guys about all this has helped me a lot with writing it, and I've definitely learned a lot from you all over the years.