Sophie's guide on: How to spot a faker
There is a growing epidemic of fakers plaguing singlet communities. That's right, systems who are pretending to be singlets have been infiltrating more and more singlet spaces.
As we all know, this is extremely harmful because it delegitimizes singlethood and causes singlets to be taken less seriously.
With this guide, I hope to be able to shine a light on this very real and very serious problem, and give you the tools needed to spot fakers.
But first, we should define what a singlet is.
A singlet is a word for someone who is not plural. Instead of experiencing life as multiple people, a singlet experiences life as one lonely person, forever isolated in their head.
Loneliness is a chronic issue in singlet communities, with many having to seek out more and more external relationships to fill the void within themselves from not being able to share their heads with others.
Nobody knows exactly why singlets exist. It's generally believed that most people start out with personalities that are naturally divided between various states. Then something goes wrong during development that causes the personalities of some people to fuse together.
Please remember that being a singlet is a serious psychological condition that is being romanticized by fakers. This condition is not all fun and games. While some may romanticize having silence in their head with only a single voice, people who struggle with this condition will be the first to tell you how difficult the loneliness is.
Singlets are also not without hope. There are many solutions from internal family systems therapy to tulpamancy, but becoming plural can be a long and difficult process for many. And some may never achieve it, making a lifelong condition.
I want to be clear while making this that I do not mean any harm to real singlets who are suffering from this condition.
The truth is that fingers aren't a monolith. There are many reasons some might fake being a singlet.
Some do it for attention. Some do it to be quirky. Some do it to fit in with singlet communities.
And not everyone who fakes being a singlet does so intentionally. Some people might misinterpret normal plural experiences for signs of singlethood. They might misinterpret switches as "mood swings" or gender fluidity
They might misinterpret the voice of a headmate as a conscience or imaginary friend.
And many of these faker communities will perpetuate misinformation about singlethood in order to groom young systems into thinking they are singlets.
Use of self-referential pronouns
As you know, a lot of plural systems will use we/our pronouns when referring to the collective system. Often, a fake singlet will slip up and use one of these pronouns for themselves. This is usually a big giveaway that you are dealing with a fake singlet.
But there's another giveaway that is more subtle. That is overdoing singular self-referential pronouns.
Sure, it's normal for many singlets to use singular self-referential pronouns in some contexts, but they can also come off as trying too hard when they are using these pronouns constantly.
Real singlets exclusively use singular self-referential pronouns, but not too many to the point where it feels like being one person is their entire personality.
Romanticizing singlethood
Remember that being a singlet is a miserable, isolating experience. People who only speak positively about it are romanticizing being a singlet.
But also, people who try too hard to look like victims are faking too. Singlets should neither be too happy about being singlets, nor should they be talking too much about how miserable it makes them.
The same rules from before applies here too. Real singlets don't make having one single personality their whole personality.
Posting on r/systemscringe
This is actually one of the biggest giveaways, and kind of goes on from the last point. Systemscringe singlets notoriously are the type to romanticize being a singlet, often making long droning posts about how they used to think they were systems before discovering they were singlets. 🙄
Nobody makes "being a singlet" their whole personality like the fake singlets from that subreddit.
By the way, if anyone from that subreddit comes across this post and wants to share there, remember that I was put on their public figures list due to my criticism of the fake singlets from the subreddit in the past. So no need to censor my name! 👍
Imaginary friends, long-term daydream characters and writing characters with a will of their own
Sometimes, fake singlets will be gaslit by faker communities into thinking they're singlets and that their headmates are any of the above. While singlets can have short-term unintelligent imaginary friends and daydream characters, these do not actually possess any agency of their own. The singlet form of these are just under the control of the singlet, like a puppet the singlet can make dance around at their will.
Most singlets also don't carry imaginary friends into adulthood, because just imagining people you have full control over gets boring.
If someone possesses multiple people in their head with their own will separate from the host's but doesn't recognize that as plurality, this can be a form of "Imitated Singlethood" or even a delusion of being a singlet if the false belief persists in spite of evidence to the contrary.
Some fake singlets may present conversations that they've had with a headmate as a conversation with "God." Alternatively, an unintentional faker may have been gaslit into thinking their headmate is God.
To be fair, singlets are capable of prayer just like anyone else. There are plenty of singlets who will pray and get no response. These singlets just like talking to themselves as a way to fill the void of not being plural.
But if God talks back, that's usually an indicator that they are faking being a singlet, whether intentional or otherwise, because as we all know, God isn't real.
In fact, a lot of the singlet community likes to perpetuate misinformation about a God existing to convince systems they are singlets. They even make entire buildings, called "churches," to perpetuate this misinformation.
Some real singlets will use plural language, like describing having multiple parts.
When real singlets do this though, it is always meant as a metaphor. They don't actually have multiple parts with their own self-consciousness and agency. Those parts definitely don't have names of their own or separate memories.
Try to make sure that singlets are not using "parts" as a metaphor before fakeclaiming them. But when it's clear that their parts are more than metaphorical, feel free to fakeclaim away!
Spacing off and dissociating
This is something you can only really see in person, but a lot of fake singlets will have a habit of spacing off and staring into the distance while internally communicating with other headmates. They may have trouble focusing on what you're saying because someone is talking to the fronter at the same time.
Sometimes, real singlets will do this too if they're staring at a cellphone or other electronic devices. But fake singlets do this even when looking directly at you. And some fake singlets will even look at a cellphone while NOT reading or watching anything to give the illusion that the reason they're not hearing what you're saying is because of the phone rather than the headmate!
So if a singlet isn't hearing you while you're talking to them and they're looking at their phone, it may just be that the phones is distracting them. But it COULD be that they're having an internal conversation and they just want you to think it's the phone!
If you still aren't sure if someone is really faking being a singlet, just trust your intuition. That really matters more than anything.
Fakeclaiming, in the end, isn't about facts. It's not about science. It's not about what's objectively true. What is objective truth anyways? Philosophers have been debating things like this for millennia and still have no answers, so truth can't matter that much at all.
Fakeclaiming is about vibes and intuition.
People never fakeclaim because their accusations of faking are well-founded. They do it because it feels right.
In science, you often start with evidence and build a hypothesis around the evidence. With fakeclaiming, you should start with the opposite. You should decide that someone is faking being a singlet first, then use points like those in this guide to support your conclusion, while discarding any points that might contradict your pre-existing beliefs.
I hope this has helped. Wishing you all some happy fakeclaiming! 😁
