January 9th, 2022

The Wonderland System and Internet Hyper Surveillance

What is the Wonderland System?

It’s difficult to figure out where to begin this. Ok. If you’re not familiar with the situation, a tiktok user with the @ wonderland__wonderland__ or as they are more commonly known, The Wonderland System, began posting tiktok videos about their experience having DID. Quickly, tiktok users began to latch onto these videos, and many of the things told about the wonderland system’s alters. There was a lot to choose from. Today, it is something of a burgeoning tiktok community dedicated to documenting and picking apart everything this user shares. They call it the wonderland system lore, and anybody who calls them out is public enemy #1.

The biggest advocates for DID awareness.

Let's backtrack. DID or dissociative identity disorder is an illness that relatively little is known about. The Cleveland clinic writes that "Someone with DID has multiple, distinct personalities. The various identities control a person's behavior at different times. The condition can cause memory loss, delusions or depression." It is generally theorized that the cause is repeated childhood trauma that results in this rift of identity, and separate personalities are developed as a coping mechanism to deal with the unprocessed memories. It is considered to be a very rare mental illness. This is the illness the wonderland system claims to have, along with over 200 alters or separate personalities, not all necessarily human and some being from various movies/tv shows. They claim to have an entire inner world: a full mapped out planet inside their mind: a place to escape to. And I say claim because I do not know if they were diagnosed by a doctor or if they just think they have this disorder. The thing is, though, that's none of my, or anyone else's, business. But suddenly, everyone on the internet is an expert on DID and is calling out the discrepancies between this user's experiences with their mental health and the short list of symptoms they found during their quick google search. Research is fine. Research is great. I'm not going to sit here and pretend I'm a full on psychologist who can fact check this user because like 99% of the internet, I know just as little as everyone else, including the professional doctors and scientists who are just beginning to understand this complex disorder. The big difference again though is that I'm not using my shitty 10 second research to justify any harassment against a user who is clearly struggling.

Listen up closely. Here's something that maybe your silly little brains couldn't muster up. Even if this user does not have DID, what they are sharing that you are picking apart to all hell is still their coping mechanism, and they are still a mentally ill person who is in fact not a circus animal. They still use this coping mechanism to deal with unresolved trauma. And maybe, just maybe, dissecting their already fragile coping mechanism is not going to make their trauma or personal struggles go away. In fact, it is without a doubt making it a 1000 times worse. I don't care if a single person on this planet thinks their coping mechanism is funny or ridiculous because it's not hurting anyone, and if that's what keeps their mental health afloat, then more power to them. And I hate to be the one to break it to you, but there are much, much worse places a person's mental health can go, and the obsessed internet users seem fully intent on making sure the wonderland system goes there.

Delusion.

A big argument on the app to justify all this is that this user is faking having DID and therefore, we must tirelessly harass and mock them in the name of setting the record straight about the illness of course. And when we harass and mock them, friends, please be sure to use they/them pronouns for this user and don't make any ableist remarks in the comments!!! We're stalkers, but we're not monsters c'mon now. Because this user has been brought under the spotlight of scrutiny for the internet, there really is nothing on the planet that can falter the flawed logic of their most faithful anti fans, and the ones who claim to have a moral compass call to narrow the lens on the subject of their morbid curiosity to abstain from very valid criticisms about their treatment of this user. For a group of supposedly normal people, their delusion runs pretty deep. Because from an outsider's perspective: this is a scarily large group of chronically online users obsessed with a random 18 year old's mental illness.

Internet Entitlement.

I think the internet can be a great thing, truly, but maybe after so many years of the worst of its population getting everything they could have ever wanted at the click of a button, the overgrown ankle biters are getting a bit too jumpy for their own good. Everything on the internet is free rein to do whatever you please with it, that's true. That's an indisputable fact. But that doesn't mean that what you do with whatever you get your grubby little hands on abstains you from being a terrible person. You're still delusionally obsessed even if the "jokes" are fully at your disposal to make with just the click of a button. "It's just a joke!" Let me introduce you to Chris Chan (or reintroduce to my readers who are contra points fans or just senior citizens of the internet. Sorry.) Chris Chan was a youtuber back in the day who avidly posted a variety of content that can be put under the blanket term of cringe. To put it simply, she was an easy target for trolls. Their obsession with her escalated to such a point that the so-called 'christorians' were compiling entire timelines of this user's life's history, not only online but in real life too. This information was acquired by coaxing information out of the user herself under the guise of normal curiosity and questions. These christorians made an entire community amongst themselves dedicated to picking apart every detail of this random individual's life as if it were the marvel cinematic universe, to the point where it could be called...lore. Sound familiar?

The first time I drew this comparison it was as a joke, but the further this is spiraling the more it seems like history's truly repeating itself with a new generation of social rejects hyper fixating on a new easy target. Simply look up the tiktok user @wonderlandnews and its affiliated discord server. 47,000 followers dedicated to keeping up with and chronicling everything that comes out of their targeted user's mouth. And if you bring up how absolutely mind numbingly bonkers that is to a wonderlandstorian, you're just a little snowflake who needs to touch grass. Ok. Sorry I'm not playing keeping up with the wonderland system to a stalker level extent; I will go touch grass now. Let me just mention that I am not comparing the wonderland system to Chris Chan as people. I know of the recent arrest of Chandler. I am only comparing the similarities of the insane behavior of the people who follow them religiously. The thing though is that I know how the Chris Chan situation ended up. As far as I know, this decade spanning obsession included internet users finding her address, calling the police on her several times, tricking her into sending out explicit videos/photos of her that were then overanalyzed on their message board, and much, much more that was so documented that some people consider this user to be the most documented person in history. And this message board? According to Insider, it was called Kiwi Farms. The "online message board dedicated to sharing personal information about and plotting trolling campaigns against internet figures, was originally formed in 2013 by groups who had harassed Chandler in 2007. Kiwi Farms' founder, Joshua Moon, came under fire in 2019 after he refused to give authorities Kiwi Farms posts, pictures, and other data related to the Christchurch, New Zealand, shooting that left 51 people dead....Kiwi Farms' trolling campaigns have been connected to several s***ides, including the transgender game developer Chloe Sagal and the emulator creator "Near," who also went by "Byuu." Sorry if I don't trust you guys when you say it's 'just jokes'.

Listen, I know how the internet works. I know it loves a good cow to milk, and there is little I or anyone else can do about that, but there's just such a glaring difference to me between using an audio from a funny celebrity interview over and over and tearing apart an audio of a teenager voicing their mental illness online. And might I call out the people who say that if the negative attention is bothering the wonderland system user, they should just log off of tiktok. Because they did. They privated their account in response to all of this, except now it's just become a game of who can infiltrate their account first to 'spy' and find new information to milk to death. Tiktok is free rein. It's a place everyone has a right to be, if they so wish it, even the scumbags, but if you're going to force someone off this app, let it be someone who's causing actual harm. There's plenty of racists and misogynists to choose from, I promise. To the wonderland system, I say, I hope you get the help and support you deserve. And to their beloved stalkers, leave mentally ill kids alone, and please, for the love of all that is good, touch some grass my darlings.