Please check the about and the questions page for more information about this site and about what this site, the terms on it, and the experiences it describes are and are not.
More personally, these terms exist because I discovered I was programmed - or experienced something very much like it - and that parts of my system existed due to programming, but the more I dug into it, the more I realized it is hard for me to find reliable information on programming, such that it took me a long time to figure out any of my experiences even counted as programming.
Not only that, I also have experiences that may or may not fit under programming, but that I know for sure are emotionally similar and can also be described in similar terms, in that someone was abusing me in a way that involved influencing my system on purpose.
Therefore, this site exists for me and others like me to have language to describe our experiences.
However, it is still a word with a specific meaning, and while some experiences may feel similar to programming, that doesn't mean they are programming. I don't think "programming" is a word people should use solely because they feel they have experiences in common with it.
However, there are definitely experiences similar to programming, and it is valuable for trauma survivors to have language to describe their experiences. This is especially true for experiences that involve complicated communities of relatively recent origin, like the plural community. The plural community is real, but is not as widely understood as other communities may be.
Meanwhile, the experiences that have caused me to create these terms occurred a long time ago - starting over 20 years ago - and some of them happened many times over. Therefore, I find it useful and helpful to create a website that makes it clear that these things happen, and that they've happened for a long time, and that there should be ways to talk about when they happen, even outside of very specific contexts.
For one, some people feel that "programmed" is a very loaded word, to the point where they will not say it in Discord servers without spoilering it. This can make people feel that their trauma or experiences are a very scary and triggering thing to even acknowledge.
While it would be ideal to destigmatize discussions of programming, that also isn't entirely feasible, because programming is a form of abuse that normally involves very extreme things and that may conjure up extreme images whenever it's mentioned. However, a term like forcigenic doesn't necessarily have those connotations, is just a description of the origin, and doesn't inherently refer to extreme trauma anymore than the word "traumagenic" itself does.
Additionally, there is a good deal of information surrounding programming that sensationalizes it, exaggerates certain things, plays into certain conspiracy theories, labels people as dangerous if they are programmed, or is simply false. This can make it a very discouraging word to want to associate oneself with. "Forcigenic" and "forcishaped", however, do not have those connotations.
Partly due to the misinformation and the conspiracy theories, there are people who believe that programming does not exist, or that it only happens in extreme cases, or under very specific circumstances. However, forcishaping is defined as using abuse or trauma in order to influence somebody's system. It is much harder to deny that that is a real experience, and while it intentionally includes things that aren't programming, it also intentionally includes everything that would fall under programming.
Sometimes, people don't hold the misconception that programming is entirely fake, but they do hold the misconception that it inherently and always includes things like organized abuse or ritual. While it's important to clear up misconceptions about existing terms like "programming", it's also true that victims have to deal with those misconceptions in the meantime. They therefore might want a word like forcigenic to describe their systems if they feel that their origin counts as programming, but it lacked a lot of the elements that people assume when they hear "programming".
With regards to some of the function terms, "forci-" as a prefix is also more specific than using "programmed" as an adjective. For example, a "programmed system" can be a system that was created through programming, has programming but not parts created by programming, has a mix of parts created by programming versus by other means, or anything else that can fit under the experience of a system being programmed.
Meanwhile, a forcigenic system was created through forcible and intentional means, whereas a forcidawn sidesystem or structure was created through such means (where the rest of the system may not have been), a forcibased system or structure is subject to being affected intentionally by abusive external forces (where it may not have been created that way), a forciplex structure is one where all members of it are affected by such forces but not necessarily in the same way, and a forcimpacted structure is one where all members of it are affected and it is all in the same way.
If the abusive forces in question were programming, then the term "programmed system" applies to every term in the above paragraph. However, they are or can be all different things, and it can be confusing if "programmed system" is the only language you have to refer to something like that.
That, combined with the reasoning that some experiences are similar to programming but don't exactly fit under it while still having experiences in common with it, would explain why someone would prefer to use language like "shaping" and "forcigenic" than "programming" and "progammed system".