Does it matter that "demisexual" came from a 2004 roleplaying forum?

from the archives of Factual Wriley, 2015.

Every now and then, I publish an old piece of internet-native writing from the archives.

I’m not sure what the ethics of doing this are. Is this curation? Am I taking other people’s work? Is my recommendation where the value to my audience is? Should I create a new tab for this so it’s clear I’m not the author?

Also… two housekeeping notes. This is a queued post. I’m not checking emails. I am off the grid. I will return the second week of March. The second important note is that today is my birthday.

Anyway…

What I think this piece misses is that online dating made labels like ‘demisexual’ more salient. The origin is interesting—it just goes to show how these things take on lives of their own. But remember when people were unironically identifying as sapiosexual on OkCupid? Because I do! It wasn’t always so “cringe.” There was a time when “Reddit culture” was just culture. But there was a need for it, too, even though we’ve always had a real “I don’t subscribe to labels, maaaan” attitude.

Labels are a filtering tool. Especially when we don’t have the benefit of body language or meeting people in a physical place that can communicate vital details about who and what we are: we need labels to expand and help us organize the frankly insane volume of people. Labels are bat signals. They’re tagging devices. There is no meaningful difference between “sort by number of kids,” and typing in “sapiosexual” in the search bar.

---

Factual Wriley is a factual person of utmost correctness and is never wrong. Do not argue with xim. Ze is able to change zher appearance, ethnicity, age, gender, sexuality and mindset at any given moment. Ze is the ultimate oppressed individual who faces...

First off, check these three images.

1. Oh God, this betch.

   ¹

2. Well, here’s the chick from the last screen-cap

3. So here’s the poll from the 2004 RP forum

Also, as a little bit more proof, here’s the Demisexual Google trend.

She was basically from a RP forum that I helped moderate in my younger, idiotic years. The girl literally believed herself to be her character, and was probably the earliest mention of “Demisexual,” which is quite the funny story that I need more proof for before posting.

She claimed to be a part of a Boarding school for the wealthy and "Super intelligent". She was such a vile, cancerous individual that it wasn’t even funny. This was still sitting in an old Photobucket account, surprisingly still existent. Found the link to this in an old Email address that I remembered.

In the early 2000s and farther back, you won’t find much about the proclaimed sexuality that is known as Demisexual.

That’s because, the truth is… Demisexual started on an RP forum hosted by Proboards. The forum in question no longer is active, but first started in early 2003 and was kept alive till 2008, which was the same time Asexuality and other such nonsense became big. The sexuality, Demisexual, was created for an RP about a highschool for different and unique individuals and due to such a RP setup, there were non-human beings that were created to participate in this RP.

Because of such a variety of races, species, and beings to choose from, there was also a plethora of sexualities. One such sexuality was, in fact, called “Demisexuality’ and is close to what Tumblr and the rest of the Internet claim it to be, but with one slight difference… it was created not by some professor or intellectual, but by a 15 year old girl, who, in all honesty, was just RP’ing a slutty character who constantly fell in love with everyone else’s character. It got to the point where this person continued to act like her character, even in non-RP boards.

That was until 2004, when the girl in question actually believed Demisexuality was real and left to start a Livejournal in order to promote said claim. She would, as sad as it sounds, make these outrageous claims of various historically famous individuals, like Tesla and Cleopatra. It got so bad that she one day vanished off of the Internet due to the ridicule and constantly trolling by people from the forum.

This continued on for awhile, becoming a bit of a meme within the forum. When the forum closed down (It’s actually still up and I’m in the process of removing personal information and shutting it down) the Demisexual thing died down until Tumblr started. When I first joined Tumblr, it wasn’t anything close to what I do now, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t poke fun at the fledgling SJ crowd. One person claimed that their sexuality didn’t exist and that a person’s sexuality was different for each person, which did remind me of the Demisexual fiasco. Jokingly, I said they were Demisexual… and it grew from there.

For awhile, I left Tumblr until Later 2010, early 2011. I saw that it became what we know it as now, but with the added sexualities. I apologize for being the person that first started the Demisexual fiasco, and for being the one to spread to such a volatile environment as Tumblr.

EDIT: Where has this been mentioned?

1. Oh God, this betch.

She was basically from a RP forum that I helped moderate in my younger, idiotic years. The girl literally believed herself to be her character, and was probably the earliest mention of “Demisexual,” which is quite the funny story that I need more proof for before posting.

She claimed to be a part of a Boarding school for the wealthy and "Super intelligent". She was such a vile, cancerous individual that it wasn’t even funny. This was still sitting in an old Photobucket account, surprisingly still existent. Found the link to this in an old Email address that I remembered.