Discourse (?), kin, kff (?), genuine questions
We've seen twice now (on DW) people speaking in a hostile manner towrads kin and "kin for fun" (we've never heard this term before). The idea is apparently people saying they're kin to a character because they very much relate to them, which... we think is relatively harmless. There seems to be discourse around how it's "diluting the term" and "making the rest of (us) look like we're not serious" and even "it makes them more palatable than us," but all those arguments sound very similar to "you can't use xenopronouns because it makes other queer people look bad."
We're not taking a stance on it at the moment, since we don't have enough information, but the kind of language being used is deeply concerning. Words understandably have meaning, but much of the language of the plural community-- to our present knowledge-- is very different than it was ten years ago (with terms like "natural system" no longer or rarely in use now). We're not sure how this is different? If the language evolves, does that make it diluted? Or is there some active push against people who are plural, soulbonders, etc. that we're not aware of (and we mean a direct, malicious harm, not just kids learning new terms to help describe themselves).
Ultimately, at the moment, we're thinking that many of the "kin for fun" crowd are probably like... the kinds of genderfluid or genderqueer kids that grow up to find out they're trans? That seems to consider best with what we've seen so far. So is discouraging it (or outright being hostile) really a good idea, or appropriate?
Again, we don't know our stance yet, this is just a collection of thoughts. We'll probably crosspost this to DW, too. Open discussion but please don't be hostile or combative, we're not interested in an argument; just other views! 📚
re: Discourse (?), kin, kff (?), genuine questions
Update: while we still don't have any strong feelings either way, and still definitely quirk a brow at exclusionist language of any sort, there does seem to be some level of reasonable discussion on the topic. There's a tumblr post by (we assume?) the person who coined the term actively revoking it, asking for people who would use "kff" to instead use "cir" (character I relate (to)). There's also notes about how damaging the tumblr "kin" community was to plural, otherhearted, soulbonders, etc. folks (which we agree wholeheartedly with, tumblr was a cess pit!). At the moment there seems to be only one person with active resources (or even just general links), and said person is someone we'd normally be quite suspicious of. They also actively denounce many of the plural resources available in favor of some small ones we've personally seen use exclusionary terms and the like. It's all very hard to wrap our head around, especially with so much history for kin/plural/soulbond/etc. having been lost to time (LJ)! 📚
@raptordyne I couldn't tell in your thread whether the problem was supposed to be that there's people saying "I kin X for fun", or if there were other people deciding that some people weren't "really" kin and were only doing it "for fun". But either way it does kinda sound like gatekeeping and like, who needs that shit?
@enbeanpotSys I found one discussion and group that was saying it was something to the effect of stealing or co-opting language that wasn't theirs/didn't describe their experience? But it quickly devolved from that into "kin bad" and "you're not valid" and similar arguments. Like mentioned in my other toot, it lead to a disturbing anti-endo place and if the rhetoric eventually leads to something like that, I'm inclined to go "no thanks!" There's one particular person that seems to be "spearheading" the "movement" and it's been super weird to read.
That said, it seems to ignore "I started as kin only to discover I was plural/multiple/soulbonded/gateway/etc" which was pretty common because of tumblr. So... I guess those people just aren't valid? It's all daft, I think. 
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@enbeanpotSys Ultimately the problem was "you can't be kin for fun / SAY terms like kin because it steals language and you're not kin"
Apologies for misreading your comment and the long/rambly reply hjsdf
People who make fun of people like me
@raptordyne no prob I just woke up myself so it probably didn't hurt to see it said in different ways haha! Yeah I recently dipped my toes into Reddit and because I liked r/plural I obviously got recommended r/SystemsCringe or something like that, which is a sub that seemingly only exists so that people can post redacted tiktoks of people saying they're plural so the sub can make fun of them, point out all the ways you "can tell" that they're not "really" plural, and I'm like Does any of this really need to exist at all? Don't y'all have ANYTHING better to do with your time? I've never understood the urge to make fun of someone in the first place but deciding they know better than literally everybody they encounter about the contents of our brains is a whole new level of WTF to me
re: People who make fun of people like me
@enbeanpotSys GOD yeah, it's a whole lot of nothing from them, really. As if they can only feel better about themselves by bringing others down... what a miserable time that must be. 🦈
re: Discourse (?), kin, kff (?), genuine questions
Update 2: in our research we ended up at a place that was just deeply hostile to endogenic systems so our new opinion is "my god, please let people exist without trying to tear every aspect of them apart :(" and we no longer have any real thoughts on the original KFF question x_x 📚