Talk:Vampire lifestyle/Archive 4

message: I would severely question whether the picture added yesterday by the anonymous user is appropriate or improves the article in any way.  I personally want to kill it, but please make lucid arguments and votes below.  I will not delete the image until at least one other person says it should go, and delete votes outnumber keep, and there is no more discussion.  Falcon 18:51, 25 Jun 
2005 (UTC)
:It appears that the image has already been removed.  Nevertheless, this debate will continue until Aug. 2 in order to allow everyone else (gabrielsimon, anome et al.) to have their say, and if consensus is to keep we will reinsert the image.  Falcon 05:58, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Strike that.  The debate should continue indefinately.  There is a discussion about this at the end of the page.  Falcon 14:36, August 20, 2005 (UTC)
*Delete.  Falcon 18:51, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Addition of pictures by anon. IP 

message: I'm just about to refactor the page, grouping and moving sections around, deleting redundant and nearly duplicate content and some of the over-verbosity of the article... Everybody, feel free to revert, but I think careful editing is better at this point. Comments appreciated. --Pablo D. Flores 19:20, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Refactoring 

message: In current use by several communities and subcultures, the term "vampire" can have several meanings, which vary greatly. This article currently does not make a distinction between four major types of people who either adopt the label "vampire," or have had it applied to them: 
1. Lifestylers. 
Yes, they dress up as vampires. No, they do not believe they are vampires. 
2. Criminals who get called "vampires." 
These people are a subset of criminals, not a subset of vampires. The distinction is rarely made, even though criminals who get called "vampires" by the media have never participated in Lifestyler goth club nights or whatnot, and do not behave in comparable ways with Real Vampires. Discussion of criminality has no business in an article on the vampire subcultre. I realize that it's an easy mistake to make, since nearly every scholarly work so far has gleefully blurred the lines between the members of the subculture and these criminals, who are really members of cultures-of-one. It makes good copy if you're reading a true crime novel, but we're here to clear up confusion, not perpetuate it. 
3. People diagnosed with mental illnesses. 
So far, I have not come across any published papers in psychology or psychiatry that have acknowledged the belief that one is an Otherkin with any sort of mental illness. Clinical vampirism has been a diagnosis for a while, but the symptoms do not describe Real Vampires or Lifestylers. The references to personality disorders with no citations are the result of bias, not science. Many outside the community "feel" like being in the subcultre is the result of a mental illness? That's not a supportable statement. 
4. Real Vampires 
Yes, they say they believe they are vampires. No, they don't believe they are the vampires of legend. It's a metaphor. The fact is, they believe they are a minority subset of the wide variety of human variation that we don't have a name for yet. So they use a metaphor. These are the only people to whom the "sanguinarian" vs. "psionic" or "psychic" distinction applies. There are no "psionic lifestylers." 
There are people out there, we just have to categorize them properly.
:Ok.  Find a reputable source that agrees, and we're onto something.  Otherwise, it's just original research and not suitable for inclusion.  Friday (talk) 16:27, 2 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: PS. You may be interested in Clinical lycanthropy, which is about a subset of this phenomenon from a medical perspective.  I'd love to have some help organizing these articles and clearing out the original research and replacing it with supportable facts from reputable sources.  If you want to get involved, I highly encourage you to sign up for an account, it'll make things easier.  Friday (talk) 16:33, 2 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Disambiguation 

message: There's a section of this article which reads: "A number of vampirists believe themselves to be the vampires of legend, or some other supernatural entity (for example, a "lost race" of Homo sapiens); see otherkin for further discussion of this type of phenomenon. Self-styled vampires of this sort will often claim that their own personal physical or psychological characteristics, such as pale skin, sensitive night vision, quick reflexes, emotional irritability and instability, and any number of self-professed psychic abilities are direct results of vampirism rather than independent or imagined traits. Many outside this group see this as a result of a mental illness such as disassociative identity disorder, schizophrenia, or antisocial personality disorder."
First, all of this is unsourced opinion; especially that final sentence which uses weasel words to make an unsourced psychological claim about those who hold the beliefs.  Second, otherkin vampires do not usually believe themselves to be "the vampires of legend"... which legends, anyway, Brahm Stokers or the older ones where vampires were decaying revenents?  Where is that claim even coming from, anyway?  Unless it has a pretty solid source, it doesn't belong there.  Much less followed up by a statement that most practitioners of vampirism do not believe themselves to be undead, making it sound like the otherkin ones do...
:Also, is the statement "Many outside this group see this as a result of a mental illness such as disassociative identity disorder, schizophrenia, or antisocial personality disorder." sourced, or just assumed? (I ask because similar issues have come up on Talk:Otherkin, in which this article is mentioned.) ~~ N (t/c) 16:23, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Some problems with accuracy and sourcing: