Are those who existed prior to the internet, or those who do not participate in it online, really part of the "otherkin community" though? Not just the otherkin phenomenon, but the otherkin community as a discrete (sub)culture with shared history, terminology, customs, etc?
Yes, there are offline gatherings of otherkin--but typically those serve as gateways into or temporary annexes of the larger culture, and contact with them does not automatically bring one into the community itself IMO.
As for those who existed prior to the internet, such as the Silver Elves, I would argue that they formed their own communities and did not become part of the otherkin community until later when they joined the online mailing lists and adopted the term otherkin to describe themselves. As Sylvere described their entry into the community: "The DarkFae list was already well-established when the Silver Elves showed up there. I remember they did not receive a warm welcome because of how fluffy they were. Their penchant for using first-person plural pronouns caused some list members, including Aria, DarkFae’s founder, to look askance at them because no one had heard of them and didn’t realize there were actually multiple people posting by consensus from one account." That sounds very much like outsiders entering a new cultural context, to me, rather than different members of the same cultural group meeting.
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Yes, there are offline gatherings of otherkin--but typically those serve as gateways into or temporary annexes of the larger culture, and contact with them does not automatically bring one into the community itself IMO.
As for those who existed prior to the internet, such as the Silver Elves, I would argue that they formed their own communities and did not become part of the otherkin community until later when they joined the online mailing lists and adopted the term otherkin to describe themselves. As Sylvere described their entry into the community: "The DarkFae list was already well-established when the Silver Elves showed up there. I remember they did not receive a warm welcome because of how fluffy they were. Their penchant for using first-person plural pronouns caused some list members, including Aria, DarkFae’s founder, to look askance at them because no one had heard of them and didn’t realize there were actually multiple people posting by consensus from one account." That sounds very much like outsiders entering a new cultural context, to me, rather than different members of the same cultural group meeting.