caristars:

Can someone plz explain ‘kin’ to me?

Back in my day (I say as a 20 yr old who’s been online since age 10), kin/otherkin specifically referred to people who felt a disconnect with their status as human and identified with an animal/element of nature which they felt best embodied their truest self and the most accurate version of who they are inside.

But now people don’t seem to use kin that way? I’m very confused what did I miss, why is it a meme to jokingly refer to yourself as (character)kin, and how did the shift happen from people genuinely identifying as other species to people listing characters they relate to? I’m so confused? Please help?

(This post is entirely genuine by the way, like I don’t mean any harm to anyone who is an example of either of the above examples, I’m just very confused because the definition changed and I want to understand the distinction and how to best be nice to anyone who identifies as/does the above.)

Your definition is pretty close to correct. 

The “meme” (which is really just being disrespectful) is a lot of wishkin and what we’ve come to call ‘tumblrkin’, which is just a worse variety. They seem to think it’s a coping mechanism (copinglinking) / a roleplay / something fun; and refuse to acknowledge that they’re destroying parts of our actual community while they’re at it. When told off, they either “why do adults hate kids having fun” or “why are you so ableist??” and create echo chambers and cult-like environments so they don’t have to stop being rude and disrespectful.

You aren’t going to run into this outside of tumblr. The definition didn’t change. There’s just more awful people around who don’t seem interested on not being wrong.