Talk:Vampire lifestyle

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 13 January 2020 and 20 April 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Agilpin4927.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 12:15, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

"Criticisms"

Taken from the page

Vampirism has also been criticised for fuelling the fantasies of people who are psychotic or otherwise severely mentally ill. Some self-proclaimed vampires have murdered in order to drink human blood, such as Brisbane's notorious Tracey Wigginton, who was called a lesbian vampire murderer by the press. There have been some reports of crimes committed by deranged people who believed themselves to be vampires: for example, the "Kentucky Vampire Clan" was a vampire role-playing group in Kentucky whose activities spiralled into murder.^[1] Activity of this manner is variously encouraged^[2] and discouraged.^[3]"

Everything as been "criticised for fuelling the fantasies of people who are psychotic or otherwise severely mentally ill." Including groups as holy as the Christian Church (no pun intended.) Its more of an attack IMO... See: Ad_hominem --Charles 06:48, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Which is why there are Wiki articles on Socrates, James Dean, video game violence and contagious strains of teh ghey, all of which mention the Corruption of the Youth. Or should, at any rate. I'll have to look the aforementioned articles over. Whether or not there's any veracity at all to the allegations in question, "attacked" is PoV language, whereas "criticized" is simply informative. It's not technically argumentum and hominem, by the way. Saying "Red Bull has made you crazy in the head" is just an unfounded assertion; saying "You are crazy in the head, therefore your opinion on Red Bull is incorrect" is an ad hominem argument. 89.1.35.44 03:23, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Sepis and biting

With regard to another of the criticisms made in the article, this passage:

"Finally, for one person to consume another's blood presents a serious hygiene risk to both parties, with a major risk of sepsis from human bites and the possibility of transmission of blood-borne diseases including HIV/AIDS and Hepatitis.[6][7]"

- doesn't make an awful lot of sense. One does not necessarily need to bite somebody to obtain their blood, and while I appreciate that biting is the method of obtaining blood that most of us are familiar with where vampire lore is concerned, it does not state anywhere that this is the method that adherents of the 'Vampire lifestyle' use. Furthermore, the connection between biting and vampires may not be clear to those unfamiliar with western vampire lore. I think that some clarification of this point is needed from somebody familiar with the customs of those who have adopted the vampire lifestyle, particularly with regard to the drinking and procurement of blood.

Exactly, for example, I simply take a box-cutter, with a razor sharp, clean blade and slice my arm to draw blood for my fiancee to feast upon.... Vampire Warrior 23:44, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

drinking blood will not give you a blood disease, it doesn't survive the acid in the stomach. Though it is very weird that's for sure. Blood has to come in contact with your own/ or sexual intercourse. The Unbeholden (talk) 08:30, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Surely drinking blood could give one a disease in the same way that oral sex can give one STDs - tiny unnoticeable cuts or abrasions in one's mouth. No need for it to reach the stomach or beyond. Dichohecho (talk) 14:39, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

This article needs serious work or to be deleted

Reads as though written by a "vampire", and as though it is promoting the lifestyle. Filled with vague references to different terms apparently associated with this vampire lifestyle, that when I try to do further research on leave me with little or nothing. An example of this is under "Trancendental Vampires", a term which only returns a small amount of results, mostly blogs or websites dedicated to and promoting vampirism.

This article really is very low quality and from reading the talk page it seems to have been this way for years. Needs a serious overhaul from someone who knows about the subject and can be neutral. I think this article should be removed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Edmund132 (talk • contribs) 13:10, 25 December 2014 (UTC)

Seconded. 85.24.253.45 (talk) 20:20, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

Issues within the article as brought up by the multiple issues tag

I came to this page on a curious post-Twilight binge, and here I am at 1am editing the entire article(!). At the risk of drive-by tag-and-editing, I can identify several issues with this page that need a shape up before I hop off to bed:

- Overview

It's not really clear. There's some bare-bones stuff I managed to scrape off the original article: they mostly drink blood, some of them drink energy, somewhat connected to otherkin, mostly connected to goth culture. But really, what I'm looking for here is a reliable and more fleshed-out description of what a typical example of modern vampirism may look like.

This means mostly every sentence is a good starting point here, but needs more meat; how alternative an alternative lifestyle is it? When did it originate from goth subculture, and were there any major events or influences on its birth - like musicians, albums, other forms of media? Seeing as some of the sources in this page are really old (see below), when did vampire subculture first pop up on the Internet and where? Which glossy magazines aforementioned in the introductory paragraph publish this stuff? (And how much do they cost, and do they ship to the UK? And can you message me if you have details? (I'm just kidding.))

Essentially, if you can flesh out this stuff, and work on the stuff below as well, we could have a really good article here. It was even a featured article candidate! In 2004! But still! It could be great!

- Sources

I haven't touched them; I figured I could at least re-structure what's there before doing anything else. But from a quick glance and vague recollections of a Vice documentary, they need work.

It seems like these sources were added a very long time ago. One of them, in the section for 'Christianity and vampire subculture', talks about the online community and is from 1999. It's really, really clearly not relevant to the present day. Considering this article seems to have been first created in roughly 2004? it doesn't surprise me, but unless someone can find a source that's younger than I am as to Christianity and vampires, the section's gonna get the boot.

Another issue: there are books used as sources, but no page numbers. It makes it difficult to know exactly where in this German book of vampire things I should be looking, if I want to verify X claim.

- Terminology and reliability

There's a table in the lower section of the article with no sources. It lists terminology and honestly, could've just been made up. I mean, it would make a great basis for worldbuilding in fiction, to have these funky names for people in the vampire world, but if this section can't be sourced either, it's also getting the boot. The section on different types of vampires I judged as being more reliable - it too needs sources, but I've at least heard some of the words used in it before.

Some of the sources - particularly Mark Benecke's book. Again, until someone can get a hold of these, I haven't got a clue how reliable these could be. A lot of the books on this subculture seem what I would classify as 'small-time print': they're published small, small print run, small reach, and not the most reliable at times. A quick look at Benecke's Wikipedia page shows that it too has issues relating to reliability, in particular things like original research and impartiality, so you can maybe see why I'm hesitant to include his work here.

That's not to say there aren't reliable sources on the vampire subculture out there; I've just got a hunch that they're not used here, really, which is a shame. This subculture is so interesting, it deserves to have a Wikipedia page that reliably telegraphs what it's actually about.--Ineffablebookkeeper (talk) 00:40, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

Article "revamped" 2.0

Hello. I have been assigned to edit this article for a class and have gone ahead and made several edits that I think makes the article more cohesive overall. My edits are mainly in response to Ineffablebookkeeper above.

-Lead

I fleshed out the lead in an attempt to create a more cohesive general overview of the topic which also helps connect to the rest of the article.

-Origins and development

I took inspiration from other wiki subculture articles, especially the Goth subculture article, and decided to add a section explaining the origins and development of the vampire lifestyle/subculture. I split it up into two subsections, one for before 2000 that gets into the first records of this subculture and one for present day that explains just for better organization content-wise and visually.

-The rest of the article

I expanded on almost every section besides "members" which I thought was already good and "christianity and vampires" because I really couldn't find any good sources mentioning or regarding "modern vampire slayers". "Modern vampirism and crime" had some prompts for explanation and examples so I put in some of that, especially noting Rod Ferrell in that particular section because he's a very significant figure regarding vampirism and modern crime.

Of course, with everything I added, I cited as much as possible with the most current sources that I could find and did my best to keep everything sounding encyclopedic. Looking over the article, I tweaked some things that had been previously written and provided some more explanation in the lead to try to reflect Wiki's encyclopedic tone as much as possible.

I hope my edits help. Here's a link to the article before I started working on it in case you'd like to see what I started with and want to change any of my edits. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Vampire_lifestyle&oldid=935998275 --Agilpin4927 (talk) 02:25, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

Hey, you might want to watch the copyright/plagiarism in the future. Go ahead and add your sections back, but please try to avoid patchwriting when using sources. Plagiarism is a form of academic dishonesty and a very real crime in the legal world. Mgasparin (talk) 06:27, 8 April 2020 (UTC)