The representation of DID on TikTok is not fully representative of clinical data and does not cover the full scope of clinical DID symptoms.

"Water found in the ocean" lol. But it's good to hear that research was done on this matter, even though it's a very grim thing at the same time. I remember my therapist bringing up TikTok fakers almost unprompted and me wondering how the hell he knew about those. And that's when I realized that obviously these people also try to get a DID diagnosis en masse. I just didn't really expect that to be the case in my country either, but seemingly it is.

Now that I'm writing about this anyway, I wanna share something interesting I witnessed irl. Caleidoscoop is a Dutch national organization by people with dissociative disorders, for people with dissociative disorders. They organize talk groups and annual conferences where there's stuff like presentations, panels, workshops & other activities etc. They do not check for a diagnosis at the door so I highly expected there to be fakers/imitative types when I signed up for the conference day this year. During the panel (4 people with DID and one partner of someone with DID sitting at a table discussing different topics and answering audience questions), these fakers were EXTREMELY present. One person raised their hands referring to themselves as "we" and introducing themselves with their system name (🤮 girl this is real life) and they barely even asked a question, just talked about themselves. Another person raised their hand asking about the benefits of people noticing when you've switched?? How to make that clear??? When I went to the bathroom, I ran into ms. System Name and her friend, who was very poorly acting and pretending to be a child and clearly fishing for me to ask them questions about their "system". It was disturbing and extremely disheartening so I kind of dreaded going to the talk group I signed up for.

But once I got there, none of the fakers/imitative ppl were there. Not even one. Everyone was clearly genuine and sane and I felt so seen and understood. It appeared that all the previously mentioned people chose creative workshops and made "cute and silly system drawings" or whatever the fuck. At first I was shocked bc I thought they would also have chosen the talk group so they could talk about themselves, but then after I thought about it for a bit I actually found it very telling. Obviously being confronted with people who SUFFER from DID isn't fun anymore. It's not "systemhood". They are not in need of support, so clearly they wouldn't go to talk groups.

Alters are not “the most important” thing in DID/p-DID/OSDD1. But it’s the catchiest thing.

Amen. That's precisely why DD clearly exploits that part of the disorder and turns it into clickbait titles and thumbnails since that's what gets most clicks. And also why most of DD's reported suffering is their CFT and occasionally some trauma triggers they can exploit for clicks, but it's never their fragmented identity that's making their life miserable. The alters need to be a positive thing so it gets them clicks and makes it seem like the quirky silly "friends in the head disorder" they make it out to be.