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monsterqueersSo we have now used Simply Plural solidly for about a year. Every switch logged as precisely as possible, notes logged on fronting, the whole nine yards.
This post is a bit of a review and a bit of a personal feelings thing and a bit of a persuasive thing all at once.
Because, you see, we decided while it can be a very useful tool for many, its not for us and we wanted to go a bit into why.
Essay under the cut;
So Simply Plural is a logging app for systems where one can log their headmates and switches and share who is at front and who is in their system to their friends on the app. There are poll options, ability to leave notes, and somewhat limited but decent profile options for each headmate. There is also a feature that synthesizes the fronting data to give you different information like average fronting length of each member and how often they front during different times of the day.
Its for mobile and can be run in offline mode for it, but there is a desktop version as well which requires the internet.
They are explicitly run as being inclusive of endogenic systems, if that is a concern, and the app is useful for loggings switches, showing people who is fronting on your friends list, and synthesizing fronting data.
It also is kind of buggy. Sometimes you try to record a front, close the app, and discover several hours or days later that it didn’t register. This is most common in offline mode or in the transition from offline to online mode and vice versa, but it can happen in online mode only as well. You can belatedly add a switch and edit fronting start and end points, but this doesn’t entirely erase the frustration of having this happen. It happened to us about ~30% of the time we recorded a switch, but we often turn our wi-fi off and dont have data on by default so ymmv.
There is also the problem with the desktop app. It frequently will load for hours and not open for us. Its quite laggy in this manner. We don't know if there is also an issue of desktop-mobile switch registering as we rarely have used it because of this, but its possible it also occurs here.
The useful links section also leaves much to be desired. Some of the resources are great! Morethanone.info (one of the best plural FAQs) is there. There is also a site in french and some global crisis hotlines which are perfectly good, and there is a excellent link for headspace building. The majority of the rest of the links are hard weighted toward DID/OSDD though. This would be fine, except what information that does talk about non DID/OSDD and non-trauma-based systems is kind of terrible for a app that claims its inclusive.
The most grievous examples of this are the two carrds linked that are made by the same author. NOTE- This isnt an attack on the author, its a critique on the resource and its inclusion on the app.
A carrd is a mini website that anyone can make and is mostly used to make an external about page for social media or as an alternative to linktree, as a note.
The first of this is the ‘New Alter’ carrd, which is intended to be shown to new headmates to help explain the situation. It is a mildly condescending and rather barebones carrd where the only properly given resources are some general online crisis ones, links to some discord bots and to simply plural itself, and to the next carrd, ‘Plurality Hub’.
Like any help resource, its going to be very YMMV of course and everyone has a different tolerance for coddling, but its real issue is barely explaining system things in favor of linking some discord bots and another (worse) carrd about it.
‘Plurality Hub’ -not to be confused with a Far Worse discord server hub known for its toxicity- is a plural entry-level FAQ carrd, intended as an all in one resource.
The bulk of the carrd is talking about the criteria for each dissociative disorder with not much on the community itself, the lived experiences of plural folks, or those in the community who don't have a disorder.
It barely mentions non-trauma origins or nondisordered plurality and what it does mention is 'neutral' on their existence in away that leads the reader to disbelieve in them when compared to the other information in the carrd for disorderly systems.
What little endogenic and nondisordered information exists gives the impression the author knows very little about those kinds of systems and their beliefs despite making a 'comprehensive' carrd.
The carrd is also filled with misinformation, including but not limited to misdefining co-consciousness as the same as co-fronting(it is not), giving hard limits to what things are or are not possible for systems when none of it is proven or disproven across the board, and assumes all systems define ‘headmate death’ the way the writer does and claims headmates cannot die in any way because of it.
Its worst misinformation sin, though, is that it claims mixed-origin systems don’t exist and that only one thing can contribute to what causes a system to form. This is very much incorrect and shows a total lack of understanding of the experience and belief.
That this carrd is linked as a resource is a incredibly poor choice and actively contributes to frustrating misinformation in the community. Its an incredibly poor choice of a source to add, especially when MANY better and more permanent sources exist out there that have proper resources and information.
All of this wasn't a dealbreaker for us- just deeply unfortunate as we really were just using it to log switching and basically nothing else, but its important to keep in mind if you want to use it- the sources aren't the best overall and its a bit buggy.
We would generally recommend it despite this because of its utility for systems. It can be an invaluable tool for many and its really the only app of its kind out there that works the way it does. Just keep in mind that it can be buggy and its sources are lacking.
The real problem for us was a personal one with how it made us behave about switching and fronting.
The app logs exact hour counts, and for us, it became an obligation to open the app and log a switch within a minute or two every single time. We wanted to be exact because the app was exact.
Because we hate carrying our phone with us(we would go back to not having a phone at all if it wasn't an emergency concern), we often leave it in the truck or when home on the bedside table and sometimes even leave it at home wholesale. It becomes a chore to get to the phone every time to update simply plural so we often ended up resisting switches or choosing not to switch when we could have. Even when the phone is on hand the first thought about switching has been for months now ‘ugh we will have to log this’ instead of 'nice, its my turn with the body!'.
This is not ideal as it means we resist switching even when it would be good for us to do so. Our host has a habit of hogging the front and it overtaxes itself doing this and the logging in this fashion only encourages this bad habit it wants to quit doing.
It was preventing us from switching as normal and this caused us to experience more fatigue-based dissociation than we would have otherwise.
While it was great for figuring out certain patterns in fronting and switching, we have reached the end of its usefulness for us and have decided to return to how we were functioning before- a discord channel to log notable things about switches without being too fussed about accurate times or always recording every switch. We have added a bullet journal to log things done and notable events each day with who was present for it, and intend to see if that will strike the balance between too little documentation (and risking forgetting something useful) and too much.
Finally uninstalling it off our phone was sad, but it was like a weight was lifted, we were free of logging things so precisely. That's for sure a sign we needed to do this.
It was nice while it lasted, but we really needed to try something else- so that's what we are doing. We encourage you to do the same if any popularly used tool isn't working for you. Its ok to use something different or not be helped by a specific thing people seem to use a lot. There are far more options than just the popular ones for whatever it is you need the tool for.
You don't have to use any accessibility tool you don't want to. If it doesn't spark joy or doesn't help you, then stop using it! Sometimes you outgrow certain tools and practices, and thats not a bad thing.
This post is a bit of a review and a bit of a personal feelings thing and a bit of a persuasive thing all at once.
Because, you see, we decided while it can be a very useful tool for many, its not for us and we wanted to go a bit into why.
Essay under the cut;
So Simply Plural is a logging app for systems where one can log their headmates and switches and share who is at front and who is in their system to their friends on the app. There are poll options, ability to leave notes, and somewhat limited but decent profile options for each headmate. There is also a feature that synthesizes the fronting data to give you different information like average fronting length of each member and how often they front during different times of the day.
Its for mobile and can be run in offline mode for it, but there is a desktop version as well which requires the internet.
They are explicitly run as being inclusive of endogenic systems, if that is a concern, and the app is useful for loggings switches, showing people who is fronting on your friends list, and synthesizing fronting data.
It also is kind of buggy. Sometimes you try to record a front, close the app, and discover several hours or days later that it didn’t register. This is most common in offline mode or in the transition from offline to online mode and vice versa, but it can happen in online mode only as well. You can belatedly add a switch and edit fronting start and end points, but this doesn’t entirely erase the frustration of having this happen. It happened to us about ~30% of the time we recorded a switch, but we often turn our wi-fi off and dont have data on by default so ymmv.
There is also the problem with the desktop app. It frequently will load for hours and not open for us. Its quite laggy in this manner. We don't know if there is also an issue of desktop-mobile switch registering as we rarely have used it because of this, but its possible it also occurs here.
The useful links section also leaves much to be desired. Some of the resources are great! Morethanone.info (one of the best plural FAQs) is there. There is also a site in french and some global crisis hotlines which are perfectly good, and there is a excellent link for headspace building. The majority of the rest of the links are hard weighted toward DID/OSDD though. This would be fine, except what information that does talk about non DID/OSDD and non-trauma-based systems is kind of terrible for a app that claims its inclusive.
The most grievous examples of this are the two carrds linked that are made by the same author. NOTE- This isnt an attack on the author, its a critique on the resource and its inclusion on the app.
A carrd is a mini website that anyone can make and is mostly used to make an external about page for social media or as an alternative to linktree, as a note.
The first of this is the ‘New Alter’ carrd, which is intended to be shown to new headmates to help explain the situation. It is a mildly condescending and rather barebones carrd where the only properly given resources are some general online crisis ones, links to some discord bots and to simply plural itself, and to the next carrd, ‘Plurality Hub’.
Like any help resource, its going to be very YMMV of course and everyone has a different tolerance for coddling, but its real issue is barely explaining system things in favor of linking some discord bots and another (worse) carrd about it.
‘Plurality Hub’ -not to be confused with a Far Worse discord server hub known for its toxicity- is a plural entry-level FAQ carrd, intended as an all in one resource.
The bulk of the carrd is talking about the criteria for each dissociative disorder with not much on the community itself, the lived experiences of plural folks, or those in the community who don't have a disorder.
It barely mentions non-trauma origins or nondisordered plurality and what it does mention is 'neutral' on their existence in away that leads the reader to disbelieve in them when compared to the other information in the carrd for disorderly systems.
What little endogenic and nondisordered information exists gives the impression the author knows very little about those kinds of systems and their beliefs despite making a 'comprehensive' carrd.
The carrd is also filled with misinformation, including but not limited to misdefining co-consciousness as the same as co-fronting(it is not), giving hard limits to what things are or are not possible for systems when none of it is proven or disproven across the board, and assumes all systems define ‘headmate death’ the way the writer does and claims headmates cannot die in any way because of it.
Its worst misinformation sin, though, is that it claims mixed-origin systems don’t exist and that only one thing can contribute to what causes a system to form. This is very much incorrect and shows a total lack of understanding of the experience and belief.
That this carrd is linked as a resource is a incredibly poor choice and actively contributes to frustrating misinformation in the community. Its an incredibly poor choice of a source to add, especially when MANY better and more permanent sources exist out there that have proper resources and information.
All of this wasn't a dealbreaker for us- just deeply unfortunate as we really were just using it to log switching and basically nothing else, but its important to keep in mind if you want to use it- the sources aren't the best overall and its a bit buggy.
We would generally recommend it despite this because of its utility for systems. It can be an invaluable tool for many and its really the only app of its kind out there that works the way it does. Just keep in mind that it can be buggy and its sources are lacking.
The real problem for us was a personal one with how it made us behave about switching and fronting.
The app logs exact hour counts, and for us, it became an obligation to open the app and log a switch within a minute or two every single time. We wanted to be exact because the app was exact.
Because we hate carrying our phone with us(we would go back to not having a phone at all if it wasn't an emergency concern), we often leave it in the truck or when home on the bedside table and sometimes even leave it at home wholesale. It becomes a chore to get to the phone every time to update simply plural so we often ended up resisting switches or choosing not to switch when we could have. Even when the phone is on hand the first thought about switching has been for months now ‘ugh we will have to log this’ instead of 'nice, its my turn with the body!'.
This is not ideal as it means we resist switching even when it would be good for us to do so. Our host has a habit of hogging the front and it overtaxes itself doing this and the logging in this fashion only encourages this bad habit it wants to quit doing.
It was preventing us from switching as normal and this caused us to experience more fatigue-based dissociation than we would have otherwise.
While it was great for figuring out certain patterns in fronting and switching, we have reached the end of its usefulness for us and have decided to return to how we were functioning before- a discord channel to log notable things about switches without being too fussed about accurate times or always recording every switch. We have added a bullet journal to log things done and notable events each day with who was present for it, and intend to see if that will strike the balance between too little documentation (and risking forgetting something useful) and too much.
Finally uninstalling it off our phone was sad, but it was like a weight was lifted, we were free of logging things so precisely. That's for sure a sign we needed to do this.
It was nice while it lasted, but we really needed to try something else- so that's what we are doing. We encourage you to do the same if any popularly used tool isn't working for you. Its ok to use something different or not be helped by a specific thing people seem to use a lot. There are far more options than just the popular ones for whatever it is you need the tool for.
You don't have to use any accessibility tool you don't want to. If it doesn't spark joy or doesn't help you, then stop using it! Sometimes you outgrow certain tools and practices, and thats not a bad thing.
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Like it can be useful for some folks, we see a lot of folks who absolutely LOVE it and talk about how it really helped them notice switching patterns and track trends, but we also see plenty of folks who find it the opposite of useful.
We were about in the middle- we tend to stay in front for a decent stretch at a time and dont have big numbers so mechanically it worked for us, but the problem was that the whole logging process in general was just so much of a bother.
Not even a full day since we deleted it and we are already noticing a difference. 'Ugh I dont wanna get the phone and log that so I wont go to front' has been preventing/suppressing a lot of more fully voluntary switching then we necessarily realized we were capable of now apparently!
Yeah we hope for the sake of the people who are still using it that they fix the glitching soon because oh wow was it annoying.
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I feel like there must be a word for the thing when the tech meant to help with a thing actually makes the thing worse. You know, like how car alarms are SUPPOSED to notify you that your car is being broken into, but mostly it just makes you go, "UGH, god, it's going off again, SHUT UP."
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Yeah there really SHOULD be a word for that!
Theres 'backfired' and 'counterproductive' but neither quite fit well enough.
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We sometimes call it "antihelpful."
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