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OTHERKINS ARE BACK! This time in
pog formSpanish!In case you don't know/remember what an otherkin is, it's a person who self-identifies as an animal (other than homo sapiens, that is) or a mythical creature (dragons, angels, etc). The centroid example of an otherkin would have been Shiro Ulv, the "on all levels except physical, I am a wolf" guy.
Once, around 12 years ago, they were central to the tumblr ecosystem to the culture war and to discussions around neo-pronouns. Then around 2018, possibly connected with the porn ban on tumblr, the identity sort of died off. Most of them reabsorbed into some kind of trans or agender identity (Shiro Ulv himself is now a trans woman) and the only surviving neopronoun is "they".
But now they are back, except this time it's in latam. The phenomenon seems to have started as a viral trend on spanish-speaking TikTok and then spread to the real world, all over latin america, enough that people are again talking about them. The name they are now known by in spanish is therians, not otherkins, which is a name that existed even back then but was less used. For example here they are being talked about in Argentina, Mexico and Peru. Argentinians therians seem to be particularly out of control, one supposedly bit a man and a girl was rape-sniffed by a pack of feral therians, both could be fake, I don't know, but they were funny anyway.
If it spreads back to the anglophone world, remember that you read it here first.
This doesn't pass the *ahem* sniff test. The word "therian" isn't pronounceable in Spanish because Spanish doesn't have the /θ/ phoneme. So a bunch of Argentinians calling themselves "therians" sounds about as likely as them calling themselves "latinxes" (which is equally unnatural in Spanish and a phenomenon that native Spanish speakers are either unaware of or mock us gringos for). My guess is that to the extent this phenomenon exists in the hispanic world, it is pure "cultural imperialism" from the ultra-online-left imposing "therian values" on the backwards latams.
Of course, I didn't watch the youtube videos, so I could be way off base.
Eh? I'm sure Fortnite and Roblox use sounds not common in many languages, yet their popularity is nigh-ubiquitous. I think this is a very weak argument to make, the internet is a series of tubular superhighways for memes.
Fortnite/Roblox are examples of Western imperialists pushing their culture on the global south, not an indigenous cultural phenomenon. I'm using this language ironically because it is a famous fail-mode of the American-left to insist on calling hispanic people latinx. You can tell that the latinx word is not native to spanish culture because it doesn't use spanish orthography, and so native-speaking spanish people don't know what to do with the term.
I'm not doubting that there are people in Argentina calling themselves "therians". What I am doubting is that these therians are people that could meaningfully be called hispanic. In the same way, I am sure there are people in Argentina who call themselves latinx, but these people are not meaningfully hispanic. They are people who grew up in the US and were forced to re-immigrate back to their latam home for whatever reason and are trying to reconcile with the fact that everyone in their "home country" considers them foreign gringos.
To the extent that there exist therians in latam, my prediction is that they are people who got removed from the US and have tied their identity to American leftist politics. I do not believe that any "grassroots" movement in a hispanic country would come up with this term. The correct Spanish of this from-greek-word would be "teriano", and that's what real hispanic (tm) personas would actually call themselves.
Are you really going to No True Scotsman this? Nobody disputes that these guys are unusual, and as far as I can see, nobody says this is particularly common. The OP says that it's (probably) happened at a number greater than zero (but probably less than a few hundred).
If they are of South American heritage (whatever mix of indigenous and Spanish ancestry is common), live in South America, and speak Spanish predominantly, this is a bad argument.
That's like saying furries can't be American because they're a very small proportion of the population, and have different tastes and values from the majority. It's less than helpful. There are no broad claims being made by OP, it's a slightly interesting cultural curiosity, like the Japanese subculture that tries to be American as fuck (red tailed hawk screech) or those dudes somewhere in Africa who dress up in leather jackets in 32° weather. Them being uncommon doesn't mean they don't exist.
Yes, I am going to "No True Hispanic" this.
I'm not calling these people "weird". I am calling them "not hispanic"[1] because they are not using Spanish. And I am making a prediction on their backgrounds based on this observation. For example, "True Hispanics" write "furros" instead of "furries" because furros conforms with Spanish orthography. My understanding is that the word "furry" first entered the Spanish lexicon through American heritage Spanish speakers and then native hispanics started using the word furro (although I admit to not being an expert on the linguistics of Spanish sex fetish vocabulary), and I expect a similar phenomenon to be happening here.
[1] In all my posts I'm using the word hispanic to mean Spanish speaking as that is literally what the word means in Spanish. I'm not trying to use the word to imply racial/ethnic ties or to mean latam-culture-adjacent the way it is sometimes used in the US.
TIL I'm not Finnish because I regularly use words that have the letter c, q, w or z (none of which exist in native words).
Frankly, your so-called argument is just complete bullshit.
I prefer mierda. But you're probably right.
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