(i ripped this off wikipedia real fast so sorry if it's lib)
In October 1776, the Public Universal Friend contracted an epidemic disease and was bedridden and near death with a high fever. Their family summoned a doctor from Attleboro, six miles away, and neighbors kept up a death-watch at night. The fever broke after several days. The Friend later reported that [deadname redacted] had died, receiving revelations from God through two archangels who proclaimed there was "Room, Room, Room, in the many Mansions of eternal glory for Thee and for everyone". The Friend further said that [deadname redacted]'s soul had ascended to heaven and the body had been reanimated with a new spirit charged by God with preaching his word, that of the "Publick Universal Friend", describing that name in the words of Isaiah 62:2 as "a new name which the mouth of the Lord hath named".
From that time on, the Friend refused to answer to their deadname, ignoring or chastising those who insisted on using it. When visitors asked if it was the name of the person they were addressing, the Friend simply quoted Luke 23:3 ("thou sayest it"). Identifying as neither male nor female, the Friend asked not to be referred to with gendered pronouns. Followers respected these wishes; they referred only to "the Public Universal Friend" or short forms such as "the Friend" or "P.U.F.", and many avoided gender-specific pronouns even in private diaries. When someone asked if the Friend was male or female, the preacher replied "I am that I am", saying the same thing to a man who criticized the Friend's manner of dress (adding, in the latter case, "there is nothing indecent or improper in my dress or appearance; I am not accountable to mortals").
editorial note: I think this is a very cool story and I really love hearing it. We've been around forever and we've been doing variations of this forever. It's really beautiful
Join our public Matrix server! https://matrix.to/#/#tracha:chapo.chat
As a reminder, be sure to properly give content warnings and put sensitive subjects behind proper spoiler tags. It's for the mental health of not just your comrades, but yourself as well.
Here is a screenshot of where to find the spoiler button.
I’ve modded here in the past on other accounts and a few other leftist places as well. The way I think about it is that people have relationships to these spaces that are similar to parasocial relationships but not quite. It is possible to get to know individuals in digital spaces in the same way as real life, usually through DMs. But for the most part, we create a gestalt of the community in our heads the represents the community like a single entity and we interact with that instead. And the community as a single agent doesn’t exist and therefore can’t interact back. It’s just a bunch of individuals treating you as a part of their own mental version of the community. So they act like they know everyone significantly better than they do. Because they know the community. But what is happening more often than not is that strangers or acquaintances are squabbling like close family.
And of course I don’t mean to diminish the specifics of what you’re saying. We can talk about the specifics of the morality of any particular issue. That’s normally as far as it goes. But the broader dynamic is always left alone because at the end of the day, the sense of community feels nice and deconstructing how it’s not a replacement for actual belonging just kinda sucks.