Human* Being: On Otherkin Identity and Digital Community

Human* Being: On Otherkin Identity and Digital Community is an ethnographic exploration of the Otherkin--a technologically-mediated community of practice whose members identify as other-than-human--breaking down barriers of identity and calling into question assumptions about what it means to be a human. Based on a decade of ethnographic research, Human* Being examines Otherkin engagement with the techno-virtuality afforded by the internet--through chat forums, personal blogs, 3D virtual worlds, Facebook, YouTube, Tumblr, Discord, TikTok, and Reddit--troubling conventional notions about our relationships with the virtual and our understandings of the Self. The Otherkin represent a larger shift in body identity, shown by increasing numbers of people identifying as trans, nonbinary, fluid, and neurodiverse; bodies open to nuance, complication, and multiplicity. Devin Proctor closely examines internal community debates about the limits of non-human identity, avatar creation practices in virtual worlds to approximate inner realities, and the policing of identity constructs toward a stable definition of the phenomenon. However anomalistic, even fantastical they may seem, the Otherkin offer a window into our own complex notions of bodies, Selves, and technologies.