History of our Census

Getting an idea of our population has always involved a significant amount of interpreting messages from our subconscious. Today, we use a combination of direct communication with subconscious members and neurological structures with external world observations and calculations to maintain a fairly accurate estimate.

With a population number as high as ours, and the mechanisms by which we know it grows, one does feel compelled to ask, "What exactly is a headmate?" and "Where should we draw the line for who is counted as one and who is not?"

Aside from the ethical pitfalls of drawing such a line in a population of individuals who are constantly growing and developing, we just don't have the practical means to draw such a line and get a restricted propulation count.

For this reason, we count each distinct self-schema as a full fledged system member, regardless of current complexity or apparent autonomy.

To date, the only entity in our system that we have solidly confirmed as a "part" is the Auditor, which may not have a self-schema.

Pre-Out Numbers

Before we consciously accepted our plurality, a number of us knew that we were in a system and urged our Bridge Crew to write stories and mythologies that included aspects of our collective identities. One such story was the myth of the Dragon People (the Ktletaccete). And when we got to the part of trying to describe just how many Dragon People there were, by saying "the Great One had mamy children," we chose a large number that was meant to be a mythological feeling arbitrary place holder for "countless". We chose 900,000.

This was when we were 19 years old. If we were to assume our average rate of growth could be applied consistently and evenly throughout our life, we should have been between 1.2 million and 1.5 million headmates in size at that time. However, we're pretty sure our growth rates have been bigger later in life due to college life and working in customer service, meaning earlier rates must have been lower, so 900,000 probably falls within a reasonable margine of error.

Still, it was a round number that we just thought of. Clearly an estimate at best, and more of an artistic choice at least.

Raw Observation

When we came out as plural to ourselves in 2016, we immediately started keeping count of who came forward and identified themselves.

We started with the awareness of Eh and Anne the Girl, and the surmised presence of an angry, desperate headmate who turned out to be Phage. Then, the same day we met Phage, we realized that Fenmere had to be a system member because she'd had name confusion and amnesia in our 20s, along with notable changes in emotions and reactions to things when her name felt right (i.e. when she was fronting). In fact, we had made conscious note of that in our 20s, suspecting plurality but not knowing that plurality was real and therefore we didn't come out as plural at that time.

After bringing Fenmere forward and talking to her, the floodgates were open and other headmates started surfacing at a high rate.

In a matter of a few months, we breached 40 known headmates. And we stopped keeping a tally somewhere around 60. Our Facebook archives have a record of these efforts.

Recently, while making this wiki, we have had the opportunity to count system members who have fronted or shown themselves on the Bridge, and we are at over 87 such encounters in the years between 2016 and 2020. But we are aware of only about 40 members who regularly take turns on the Bridge Crew.