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[–]whateverman 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

I really wonder what the next thing is going to be. Trans-racial people? Uncle Ruckus was a joke character, but there's already been at least a few stories of people obsessed with a race or culture they're not.

DID self-diagnoses? Teens and twenty-somethings on Tik Tok are faking an extremely rare mental disorder so that they can claim each personality as a different age, race, gender or even species, referring to themselves as we/us. Like they're all our reigning monarchs.

Otherkins were a thing for a while, but trans-species was too weird to really get popular. Fucking furries.

What's it going to be?

[–]Ricky_Ticky 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Maybe autoandrophilia and autogynephilia? Many of those who ID as trans now will realize later on that the dysphoria they felt was not a sign of them being the opposite gender. In fact what they felt relates more to being autoandrophilic or autogynephilic which atm is considered to be a rare and not well researched condition. There will be of course new genders created based on autoandrophilia and autogynephilia and the gender identity saga goes on and on.

[–]piylot 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I saw a few cases people describing themselves as transracial (most often white people who consider felt they were really japanese) that got majorly called out on tumblr ~5 years ago, they got no empathy, was seen as offensive, don't think it'll ever take off.

Otherkin was still going around that time too, and was mostly turned a blind eye too but received some backlash because they tried to use the same logic of being born in the wrong body, and it reflected poorly on transgender people to be associated with it.

There's definitely been a boom of people self diagnosing with DID. I think self diagnosed mental illness has been going on a while, at least 10 years but that's just the span of my time online. Bear in mind among these are a large portion of people (I'd even say maybe the majority) who genuinely have been struggling with mental illness and only came to understand it through the availability of information online, especially in online communities. Even with a correct self diagnosis there's always the concern that these online communities become like group therapy with no therapist– just sick people who often don't know how to help themselves trying to help each other.

I think one thing that's growing in popularity more recently is the self diagnosis of more nuanced mental health/emotional issues - eg attachment styles, trauma. People not so much taking on a label but dissecting their own past and labelling things as traumatic etc. Again a lot of people will be correct, but I do think part of the appeal in these cases is having something to blame for your problems, which can be a slippery slope