I Think Gatekeeping Is Unfathomably Cringe And I Think The Way People In This Community Treat Linkers

i think gatekeeping is unfathomably cringe and i think the way people in this community treat linkers (funlinkers especially) and voluntary identities in general is gross, but i recently came across an exchange that was really irritating to be fair and made me kind of understand the defensiveness.

it was in a comment thread under a video where a streamer was talking about a twitter user who was being 'cancelled' and they must have listed their fictionkins on their strawpage because that's what the comment was about.

person 1: i thought kinning meant that you related to a character?

person 2: it does mean that, not that you actually think you're that character.

person 3: i'm kin and it means that you relate heavily to a character, ppl who identify as "fictionkins" and genuinely think they're fictional characters are just deluded and make us look bad.

like no, that's not what "kinning" means at all. as far as i'm aware, kinning has always meant that you identify as a character in some capacity until people who weren't a part of the kin community made out like it meant something completely unrelated while looking down on people who are actually fictionkin or "kinnies", which is probably where the defensive aspect to the community comes from.

you have co-opted a term that has always meant one thing, said it means something completely different, and then turned around and call the people who use the term in its traditional meaning 'delusional'. that is very disrespectful. for the record i think term discourse is dumb and you can use whatever labels you want, but i understand the frustration.

to more or less usurp the term 'kinning' or 'kinnie' or whatever and twist it to mean your own definition, then claim that the people who the term has always belonged to are 'delusional' is just awful and absurd. "kinning" has always meant that you identify as a character.

personally i am funlink and all of my identities are voluntary and for fun and i use the term kinning to describe that aspect of myself, but i would never look down on involuntary fictionkins or claim that their terms mean something else entirely when it doesn't.