Because your average user has the maturity and patience of a 14y/o and what they consider "slow to reply" is a lot faster than MY consideration of "slow to reply" and having a note that I'm disabled is usually a good way to avoid accusations of ghosting, stealing dragons, etc
(it's less "medical chart in display" than explaining to an impatient teenager what a hemiplegic migraine is.)
Also because I've met other folks on fr with disabilities by having the disabled button in my profile, and have made friends who Get It.
Np! I 100% get that there's a lot of kids who are assigning themselves diagnoses willy nilly- some are because they are genuinely sick and their folks can't afford to take them to specialists, so self diagnosis is a form of catharsis.... but there are some who just want to feel special.
Me, I just don't want to have to explain to a 14 y/o for the millionth time that yes, certain types of migraines are disabling, and that something "as simple as logging into FR" is not simple.
Disabled is just quicker, to the point. (And makes me approachable by other folks with disabilities, so it's a win/win.)
DA - I'm a little late to this conversation. I think sometimes people tend to overshare. I frequently roll my eyes at some of the buttons. But I do appreciate when someone lists that they are disabled and even sometimes what the specific disability is. Sometimes it's nice to see if someone else is dealing with the same thing(s) I am. And sometimes it lets me know that person has limitations and to be more patient if I'm waiting on a response or interaction of some sort. I don't particularly need to know if someone is lactose intolerant. (Though I guess it's a safe space for people who want to talk about the fact that they get diarrhea from ice cream?) I don't think a breakdown of specific disabilities is required, but knowing that someone is autistic, or dyslexic, or has ADHD, or a chronic pain disorder, or a myriad of other things, can be really helpful when it is something that impacts communication.
Oh yeah, that makes so much sense! This convo really opened my eyes because admittingly when I think of disabilities on FR I think of ones like mine (learning disability+speech impairment.. college is hell for me) or something else like rheumatoid arthritis. While my disabilities don't really get in the way of MOST things on FR, I need to remember that "disability" is such a huge umbrella and that the FR fanbase is pretty big and diverse.
You're valid in letting your disability be known and I am glad you managed to even reap in a benefit of befriending similar folks who Get You. You deserve it!
(...Are you, by chance, the one Anon who accidently missed putting someone elses breeding pair on a nest before roll over because you went into an episode? :O )
I'm glad to hear that :D There's lot about disabilities that isn't talked about.
And yeah! I am that anon, lol. That was such a mess. Was my first (and only?????) seizure. Docs chalked it up to a really really bad hemiplegic migraine making my brain short circuit.
(Hilariously, it made getting a medical marijuana card all the easier, and I am down from 2-3 hemiplegic migraines a week to 2-3 a month! THC is a lifesaver.)
"but there are some who just want to feel special."
That describes most of the situations online unfortunately, because it is too easy to lie. It's rare for people to assign self-diagnoses accurately in general, and many of the 'self-diagnosed' people I see on the internet pander to the worst of stereotypes and assumptions about the supposed illnesses they have. DID is apparently all the rave to fake, for instance, and so are wild and offensive inaccuracies about it.
OP of the thread... this was the kind of person i was complaining about, and the reason why the buttons even began to annoy me in the first place. plenty of people use the buttons for reasonable purposes. time zone, pronouns, et cetera. disclosing conditions in general isn't a full-on, blanket-statement Bad Thing, and as other people are discussing here, it 100% has its social place and can often be a GREAT thing, leading to conversations & friendships that may not have blossomed otherwise. Flight Rising has an awesome community in a lot of ways, and it's nice to know things about fellow players at a glance - but after a while, for me, it went Too Far. i place the blame squarely on the shoulders of the "Cosplaying Disorders is Cool" crowd. seeing the buttons now is like seeing a red hat in public - "is this going to say what i think it's going to say?" i feel awful for people whose conditions are popular targets for malingering. i wanted to start this thread with a tone that was exaggerated for humor, because i'm not trying to take a swing at people who actually have, for example, a dissociative disorder. but admittedly it is the DID fakers who have me reaching for my block button most often. i do a lot of giveaways on the forums, and i just plain Don't Want To gift stuff to people who choose to present themselves as FR user The(___)System (multiple real users like this) (one of them with that username style literally has a clan info section that says "we're a DID system but we wont really talk about that here" like??? if that was true then why name your entire account like that, shaking my damn head)
I block any and all self-proclaimed systems on sight. It does wonders for my mental health, because seeing them ignites a burning anger within me. Hell just earlier, I wrote a whole essay to myself just to vent my thoughts and feelings after seeing one such The(___)System user. I have very, very strong feelings on the matter, to the point where it's not really healthy. Hence, the loosey-goosey blocking.
If someone asks me to, I'll post what I wrote, but otherwise I'm not gonna dump it on anyone unprompted.
I have a DD, and I'm very. VERY careful about who knows, because of the knee jerk reactions TikTok and tumblr have created in folks wrt to folks with DD's. Only like... three people know- and my partner is NOT one of them, because of how people react to folks thanks to dumb ass teens on TT/tumblr.
I also don't spend any time on tiktok because it's a toxic cess pit. I use tumblr often, but I try to avoid most users that are plural or claim to be, because half the time, they have those asinine DNIs that are all "DNI if you have X person in your roster because I have the only REAL one."
That sounds awful, sorry. People constantly co-opting the condition in order to bully other people over shit like cartoon characters is wild to me and yet so goddamn common right now that I rarely see much pushback against it.
Because if you start calling these people out, they claim ableism and no one wins. Even if they're the ones screwing over the people who actually have said medical condition(s).
Also, I have seen people who have tried to push back, and others (who don't have the condition, whatever condition you are talking about) will come forth and go 'well, they are just children! they are exploring themselves! They are looking for attention! maybe one of them has it and can't get diagnosed, and seeing everyone else has it allows them to feel not as isolated!'
Trying to act like people pretending to have these conditions is a good thing, even though most of the time, those people have no clue about the actual condition, just the trendy parts.
I really hate how some people use the fact that they are children to sweep their bad behavior (applies to everything else other than pretending to have certain medical conditions too tbh) under the rug when it just means that they probably don't know any better, not that they shouldn't be disciplined in any way. They just end up being enabled and carry this shitty behavior into adulthood and wreck actual havoc.
There's literal teens getting arrested for pretending to have various medical conditions and essentially scamming people to donate to them ffs. It fucking sucks to be one of those people relying on crowdfunding to pay for their medical bills because of assholes like them.
very interested to know what you have to say as well!
bonus points if the person has a cohesive, themed system with a cast of fleshed out characters lol. like this is clearly a creative writing exercise for you. how fortunate for you that your trauma manifested an AeSthEtiC!
I wrote this all up in the bio of one of my dragons yesterday, then when I was finished I felt better and realized I definitely should NOT publish it in a dragon bio, so I cut and pasted it into a .txt file instead. Here goes:
"A sucker is born every minute and we'll never change that; some people are rhubes who will believe anything, that's just the way the world works. Don't taint your mental health because someone is lying on the internet for attention. Obviously they're a sad, desperate loser whose life isn't great, you don't need to join their ilk. Take care of yourself.
[rule]
Ugh I have a lot of feelings about faking mental disorders and it's probably not a good idea to vent them out in a dragon bio but whatever. It's too hard for me to interact with this community and never speak up about this, because it greatly affects my blocking habits! I'll try to keep it civil.
First, I like nuance. I'm learning more and more in the adult world that nothing is ever black or white, all good or all evil, and you can't ever align yourself to an extreme in a healthy manner. (Except maybe those monks who meditate alone on the tops of mountains for years straight to achieve enlightenment? Supposedly they do pretty well for themselves. Good for them!) Second, the corporate internet has rotted the brains of millions of people, young and old, such that it makes it difficult for them to use critical thinking skills, nuance, and scepticism. I'm recovering from that brain rot myself! I believe, perhaps naively, that people are not naturally stubborn, reactive, aggressive, defensive, and hypervigilant. Therefore, when people act in this way, I do not think it is a moral failing on them as a person, but rather that their behaviour is a product of their environment.
So. Faking mental disorders. It's a topic that's immediately threatening to many, many people. See my second point. It is difficult now to discuss these things without feeling like you have to defend yourself from attacks on all fronts, like you have to shout your stance the loudest because you can't ever let yourself falter or doubt yourself because your stance is your everything, it is your shield and your lifeline, and if it's ever endangered you feel like YOU'RE in danger. That's how debates turn into arguments. (I think that, in recent decades, this phenomenon has become very prevalent all over the world: opinions aren't just opinions, they're badges, they're passports, they're sacred things that you swear allegiance to- but I won't go any further on that topic)
In general, I dislike people who fake them. However, it does not mean I believe that all people who fake them are evil, or that anyone faking them is doing it deliberately for malicious reasons. I believe that they do a lot of harm, but I also believe that most people faking them do not have bad intentions. Most probably don't think they're faking it at all. Look how much stigma there is about mental health! Look how hard it is to get mental health care, in any country! Consider how complicated the human brain is! Of [i]course[/i] people are going to be misinformed. Of course they're going to try to figure things out on their own and build their life around information they don't know isn't true. Or maybe they get misdiagnosed by a well-meaning but under-prepared professional, and they build their life around that. [i]Good[/i] information is not easily accessible.
I'm running out of steam. I'll make some bullet points of why I think faking disorders is a thing people do. - They were experiencing mental health issues and were misdiagnosed by a professional with X when they actually had Y. - They were experiencing mental health issues and weren't able to see a professional so they did as much of their own research as they could. Unfortunately.... ---...they experienced an anchoring bias that caused them to focus on X, the first thing they learned about, so they neglected to consider Y, which they actually had. ---...they experienced a confirmation bias towards X, which they had previously considered prior to this, so they neglected to consider Y, which they actually had. ---...they trusted the wrong sources, who fed them misinformation about X and Y, so they believed they had X and it couldn't possibly be Y. (This one is really, REALLY bad!!) -They developed in a social environment where many of their peers had X (or faked/performed/mistakenly thought they had X), so they were more likely to think that they had X too. Often followed by confirmation bias. -They knew they had Y, but felt like their mental health issues were too severe to "just be Y" / felt like they weren't receiving the proper care for their mental health issues when they "only have Y," so they searched for some other condition they could possibly have that would validate their feelings / make professionals take them more seriously. Often followed by confirmation bias. Really, confirmation bias is a big player in all of these.
From personal experience, I once faked a mental disorder for the last two reasons. I didn't know any better! My research wasn't thorough enough. I stretched definitions out of desperation. I was in a bad place and I didn't know why.
Okay now I'm really all out of steam. This is why I block people willy-nilly if I suspect they're claiming to be X when they're actually not. Be nice to people. Take mental health seriously."
yeah this is all very reasonable. i don't think fakers are bad people either, i think it most often indicates some kind of unmet emotional or mental health need.
Yeah that makes a lot of sense. Fortunately ableism isn't so bad on the site and FR users will generally shut up when they see an explanation like this as to why they were not being catered to immediately. As long as the explanation of a disability isn't being abused to avoid responsibilities and obligations with paying customers or another service, it's perfectly reasonable.
It makes sense and I totally get why people have details like this in their profile. Personally I'm so, so tired of having to disclose my own private details around disability irl in order to have people treat me humanely when I cannot physically function. I'm not willing to do it on a pet sim site, and I'm not going to cater to people that take their frustration (over stupid shit like hearing back from a nest rental within 20 hrs, which I have seen) out on people by bullying them or trying to convince people that they're getting scammed, even if I could potentially prevent this by disclosing my personal details. Because fuck those people.
I'm genuinely glad other people have found community on FR through sharing disability status, and I definitely get a certain amount of social privilege from having a disability that isn't always visible, and that doesn't affect me 100% of the time. A lot of other people don't get that. But damn I still don't want to have to share any of that shit on my profile, I'm already sick of that.
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Re: Unpopular Opinion...
(Anonymous) 2023-08-04 11:51 pm (UTC)(link)Because your average user has the maturity and patience of a 14y/o and what they consider "slow to reply" is a lot faster than MY consideration of "slow to reply" and having a note that I'm disabled is usually a good way to avoid accusations of ghosting, stealing dragons, etc
(it's less "medical chart in display" than explaining to an impatient teenager what a hemiplegic migraine is.)
Also because I've met other folks on fr with disabilities by having the disabled button in my profile, and have made friends who Get It.
Re: Unpopular Opinion...
(Anonymous) 2023-08-04 11:56 pm (UTC)(link)Ooooh, gotcha gotcha! Thanks for the explanation :D
Re: Unpopular Opinion...
(Anonymous) 2023-08-05 02:00 pm (UTC)(link)Np! I 100% get that there's a lot of kids who are assigning themselves diagnoses willy nilly- some are because they are genuinely sick and their folks can't afford to take them to specialists, so self diagnosis is a form of catharsis.... but there are some who just want to feel special.
Me, I just don't want to have to explain to a 14 y/o for the millionth time that yes, certain types of migraines are disabling, and that something "as simple as logging into FR" is not simple.
Disabled is just quicker, to the point. (And makes me approachable by other folks with disabilities, so it's a win/win.)
Re: Unpopular Opinion...
(Anonymous) 2023-08-05 05:22 pm (UTC)(link)Re: Unpopular Opinion...
(Anonymous) 2023-08-05 11:48 pm (UTC)(link)Oh yeah, that makes so much sense! This convo really opened my eyes because admittingly when I think of disabilities on FR I think of ones like mine (learning disability+speech impairment.. college is hell for me) or something else like rheumatoid arthritis. While my disabilities don't really get in the way of MOST things on FR, I need to remember that "disability" is such a huge umbrella and that the FR fanbase is pretty big and diverse.
You're valid in letting your disability be known and I am glad you managed to even reap in a benefit of befriending similar folks who Get You. You deserve it!
(...Are you, by chance, the one Anon who accidently missed putting someone elses breeding pair on a nest before roll over because you went into an episode? :O )
Re: Unpopular Opinion...
(Anonymous) 2023-08-06 03:26 am (UTC)(link)I'm glad to hear that :D There's lot about disabilities that isn't talked about.
And yeah! I am that anon, lol. That was such a mess. Was my first (and only?????) seizure. Docs chalked it up to a really really bad hemiplegic migraine making my brain short circuit.
(Hilariously, it made getting a medical marijuana card all the easier, and I am down from 2-3 hemiplegic migraines a week to 2-3 a month! THC is a lifesaver.)
Re: Unpopular Opinion...
(Anonymous) 2023-08-08 12:14 am (UTC)(link)That describes most of the situations online unfortunately, because it is too easy to lie. It's rare for people to assign self-diagnoses accurately in general, and many of the 'self-diagnosed' people I see on the internet pander to the worst of stereotypes and assumptions about the supposed illnesses they have. DID is apparently all the rave to fake, for instance, and so are wild and offensive inaccuracies about it.
Re: Unpopular Opinion...
(Anonymous) 2023-08-08 02:56 am (UTC)(link)Re: Unpopular Opinion...
(Anonymous) 2023-08-08 09:31 pm (UTC)(link)plenty of people use the buttons for reasonable purposes. time zone, pronouns, et cetera. disclosing conditions in general isn't a full-on, blanket-statement Bad Thing, and as other people are discussing here, it 100% has its social place and can often be a GREAT thing, leading to conversations & friendships that may not have blossomed otherwise.
Flight Rising has an awesome community in a lot of ways, and it's nice to know things about fellow players at a glance - but after a while, for me, it went Too Far. i place the blame squarely on the shoulders of the "Cosplaying Disorders is Cool" crowd. seeing the buttons now is like seeing a red hat in public - "is this going to say what i think it's going to say?"
i feel awful for people whose conditions are popular targets for malingering. i wanted to start this thread with a tone that was exaggerated for humor, because i'm not trying to take a swing at people who actually have, for example, a dissociative disorder. but admittedly it is the DID fakers who have me reaching for my block button most often. i do a lot of giveaways on the forums, and i just plain Don't Want To gift stuff to people who choose to present themselves as FR user The(___)System (multiple real users like this) (one of them with that username style literally has a clan info section that says "we're a DID system but we wont really talk about that here" like??? if that was true then why name your entire account like that, shaking my damn head)
Re: Unpopular Opinion...
(Anonymous) 2023-08-09 01:12 am (UTC)(link)If someone asks me to, I'll post what I wrote, but otherwise I'm not gonna dump it on anyone unprompted.
Re: Unpopular Opinion...
(Anonymous) 2023-08-09 05:05 am (UTC)(link)Re: Unpopular Opinion...
(Anonymous) 2023-08-09 07:26 am (UTC)(link)I also don't spend any time on tiktok because it's a toxic cess pit. I use tumblr often, but I try to avoid most users that are plural or claim to be, because half the time, they have those asinine DNIs that are all "DNI if you have X person in your roster because I have the only REAL one."
Like... what?
Re: Unpopular Opinion...
(Anonymous) 2023-08-09 07:39 am (UTC)(link)Re: Unpopular Opinion...
(Anonymous) 2023-08-09 08:00 am (UTC)(link)Because if you start calling these people out, they claim ableism and no one wins. Even if they're the ones screwing over the people who actually have said medical condition(s).
Re: Unpopular Opinion...
(Anonymous) 2023-08-09 12:25 pm (UTC)(link)Also, I have seen people who have tried to push back, and others (who don't have the condition, whatever condition you are talking about) will come forth and go 'well, they are just children! they are exploring themselves! They are looking for attention! maybe one of them has it and can't get diagnosed, and seeing everyone else has it allows them to feel not as isolated!'
Trying to act like people pretending to have these conditions is a good thing, even though most of the time, those people have no clue about the actual condition, just the trendy parts.
Re: Unpopular Opinion...
(Anonymous) 2023-08-10 01:17 am (UTC)(link)There's literal teens getting arrested for pretending to have various medical conditions and essentially scamming people to donate to them ffs. It fucking sucks to be one of those people relying on crowdfunding to pay for their medical bills because of assholes like them.
Re: Unpopular Opinion...
(Anonymous) 2023-08-10 07:11 am (UTC)(link)It must fucking suck*
Re: Unpopular Opinion...
(Anonymous) 2023-08-09 02:18 pm (UTC)(link)bonus points if the person has a cohesive, themed system with a cast of fleshed out characters lol. like this is clearly a creative writing exercise for you. how fortunate for you that your trauma manifested an AeSthEtiC!
ok you wanted my rant about it
(Anonymous) 2023-08-09 04:02 pm (UTC)(link)"A sucker is born every minute and we'll never change that; some people are rhubes who will believe anything, that's just the way the world works. Don't taint your mental health because someone is lying on the internet for attention. Obviously they're a sad, desperate loser whose life isn't great, you don't need to join their ilk. Take care of yourself.
[rule]
Ugh I have a lot of feelings about faking mental disorders and it's probably not a good idea to vent them out in a dragon bio but whatever. It's too hard for me to interact with this community and never speak up about this, because it greatly affects my blocking habits! I'll try to keep it civil.
First, I like nuance. I'm learning more and more in the adult world that nothing is ever black or white, all good or all evil, and you can't ever align yourself to an extreme in a healthy manner. (Except maybe those monks who meditate alone on the tops of mountains for years straight to achieve enlightenment? Supposedly they do pretty well for themselves. Good for them!) Second, the corporate internet has rotted the brains of millions of people, young and old, such that it makes it difficult for them to use critical thinking skills, nuance, and scepticism. I'm recovering from that brain rot myself! I believe, perhaps naively, that people are not naturally stubborn, reactive, aggressive, defensive, and hypervigilant. Therefore, when people act in this way, I do not think it is a moral failing on them as a person, but rather that their behaviour is a product of their environment.
So. Faking mental disorders. It's a topic that's immediately threatening to many, many people. See my second point. It is difficult now to discuss these things without feeling like you have to defend yourself from attacks on all fronts, like you have to shout your stance the loudest because you can't ever let yourself falter or doubt yourself because your stance is your everything, it is your shield and your lifeline, and if it's ever endangered you feel like YOU'RE in danger. That's how debates turn into arguments. (I think that, in recent decades, this phenomenon has become very prevalent all over the world: opinions aren't just opinions, they're badges, they're passports, they're sacred things that you swear allegiance to- but I won't go any further on that topic)
In general, I dislike people who fake them. However, it does not mean I believe that all people who fake them are evil, or that anyone faking them is doing it deliberately for malicious reasons. I believe that they do a lot of harm, but I also believe that most people faking them do not have bad intentions. Most probably don't think they're faking it at all. Look how much stigma there is about mental health! Look how hard it is to get mental health care, in any country! Consider how complicated the human brain is! Of [i]course[/i] people are going to be misinformed. Of course they're going to try to figure things out on their own and build their life around information they don't know isn't true. Or maybe they get misdiagnosed by a well-meaning but under-prepared professional, and they build their life around that. [i]Good[/i] information is not easily accessible.
I'm running out of steam. I'll make some bullet points of why I think faking disorders is a thing people do.
- They were experiencing mental health issues and were misdiagnosed by a professional with X when they actually had Y.
- They were experiencing mental health issues and weren't able to see a professional so they did as much of their own research as they could. Unfortunately....
---...they experienced an anchoring bias that caused them to focus on X, the first thing they learned about, so they neglected to consider Y, which they actually had.
---...they experienced a confirmation bias towards X, which they had previously considered prior to this, so they neglected to consider Y, which they actually had.
---...they trusted the wrong sources, who fed them misinformation about X and Y, so they believed they had X and it couldn't possibly be Y. (This one is really, REALLY bad!!)
-They developed in a social environment where many of their peers had X (or faked/performed/mistakenly thought they had X), so they were more likely to think that they had X too. Often followed by confirmation bias.
-They knew they had Y, but felt like their mental health issues were too severe to "just be Y" / felt like they weren't receiving the proper care for their mental health issues when they "only have Y," so they searched for some other condition they could possibly have that would validate their feelings / make professionals take them more seriously. Often followed by confirmation bias. Really, confirmation bias is a big player in all of these.
From personal experience, I once faked a mental disorder for the last two reasons. I didn't know any better! My research wasn't thorough enough. I stretched definitions out of desperation. I was in a bad place and I didn't know why.
Okay now I'm really all out of steam. This is why I block people willy-nilly if I suspect they're claiming to be X when they're actually not. Be nice to people. Take mental health seriously."
Re: ok you wanted my rant about it
(Anonymous) 2023-08-09 06:06 pm (UTC)(link)Re: ok you wanted my rant about it
(Anonymous) 2023-08-09 06:20 pm (UTC)(link)Re: Unpopular Opinion...
(Anonymous) 2023-08-05 03:09 pm (UTC)(link)Re: Unpopular Opinion...
(Anonymous) 2023-08-10 01:57 am (UTC)(link)It makes sense and I totally get why people have details like this in their profile. Personally I'm so, so tired of having to disclose my own private details around disability irl in order to have people treat me humanely when I cannot physically function. I'm not willing to do it on a pet sim site, and I'm not going to cater to people that take their frustration (over stupid shit like hearing back from a nest rental within 20 hrs, which I have seen) out on people by bullying them or trying to convince people that they're getting scammed, even if I could potentially prevent this by disclosing my personal details. Because fuck those people.
I'm genuinely glad other people have found community on FR through sharing disability status, and I definitely get a certain amount of social privilege from having a disability that isn't always visible, and that doesn't affect me 100% of the time. A lot of other people don't get that. But damn I still don't want to have to share any of that shit on my profile, I'm already sick of that.