In years past I remembered there being a (somewhat) active community where about 20 bloggers were regularly visible in their comments on other blogs. A handful of bloggers tend to keep up heavily on newer blogs and by searching their "blogs I follow" lists it was easy to track down the newer writers. So what exactly happened?
The primary answer is a really easy one. More Domme-authored Femdom blogs have shut down or gone dark than new Domme-authored Femdom blogs have been created. This conclusion is slightly less impressive than discovering the polio vaccine and ranks up there with "traffic jams occur because there are too many cars on the road at the same time."
Aside from this obvious observation, I feel this is part of a wave of happenings that when taken in conjunction with one another, have added up to a fracturing of the F/m blogging scene as a whole.
Another major obvious deduction is the change in the internet as a whole. Instant-gratification social media has taken over. The popular online networking sites have become behemoths. Blogging is just less popular now. People do a lot of questionable things under their real names. Yahoo got rid of their member profiles and want you to input your real phone number so that people can find you.
I will never post any of this stuff under my real name. I feel okay sharing things because no one will know who I am unless I specifically tell them. I have specific accounts set up to do all of my kink-related activities. Multiple accounts. Route everything under your real name with Google+. Input your phone number and picture into Yahoo. Let's force you to create duplicate profiles for the majority of social media which then must be logged in and out of every time you want to switch over. How about you just shove a needle in my dick so that I can have a major pain because that's what it feels like. I don't know too many people that enjoy having to shuffle around their accounts to keep up on their kink, especially when more people spend time on smart phones and tablets than on PC's. How fun does it sound to have a different facebook, twitter, tumblr, etc. account for every version of your online persona? It sucks. Some people have the balls to be their kink selves on their public profiles. Some people will be unable to get a job at the place they want to work because of it.
Going back to the others. Fetlife is a behemoth. I believe there's one major chastity site going. Each major fetish probably has some site that acts as the primary hub and turns it into an impersonal zoo where being an asshole is the standard method of interaction. So... when you combine the change in the net making it harder to easily interact in the way you choose to, the centralized hub form of interaction, and fewer blogs, there are just less people interacting on blogs.
There's really not much that can be done about this except to remind people as to how easy it is to create an imanamazingsub69@gmail.com email address and load it into your smart phone. You can filter it or download another app to monitor that so it stays separate from your standard email. Hell, you can even create a blogger account so that you aren't commenting as anonymous. Subscribe by mail to blogs, boom. You can see it all without having to keep checking back.
This next factor is an odd one as it hits on several fronts. People are voluntarily splitting up the F/m scene in ways that I have never seen before. In a lot of ways this reminds me of why liberalism often gets defeated by conservatism. The F/m community is fractured. We are split. You aren't like me. You're into ____? Fuck that, stay away from me. I'm more normal than you are. I'm only into _____, which yes, is definitely more normal than someone who likes _____.
No one really says this up front but among male sub bloggers it has always felt this way. Now it seems to be even worse than I ever remember it. MKINYK (my kink is not your kink) is fine, but at least admit that it's a kink, if not, I'll think you are full of shit. M/f blogging doesn't split like this. They don't want to separate themselves from others. I don't really get it.
F/m sub bloggers have generally fallen into something along these categories:
-Lifestylers/couples.
-Lifestyle theorists.
-Sissies.
-Cuckolds.
-Chastity enthusiasts.
-Spankos.
-I'm submissive and my wife is not.
-Caption Pictures.
-Newbies.
-Anyone I missed.
To be honest, there isn't a lot of sub to sub interaction. If it was, it was "hey, your blog title and username are very similar to my blog title and username, let's be friends." The difference was that a ton of us would assemble at many of the popular Domme-authored blogs. That is where we would see each other, learn about each other's blogs, and sometimes get some cross-following going.
Many people who associate with the term FLR have seemingly wanted to separate themselves from everyone else. Look Ma, Femdom without the amazing and kinky sex! My first impression is WTF? My second impression is "why are they following all of these F/m and M/f domestic discipline blogs that are always loaded with pictures?" My third impression is, "ah, they just want to feel like they aren't a sexual deviant." Years ago I followed a lot of blogs that associated with FLR but the new breed I have completely pulled away from. Once I detect one ounce of hostility from them I just leave and stop following because I'm too damn old to get pissed off by what someone else wrote on the internet. I've resorted to leaving comments under anonymous on blogs where I may face off with them, emailing the authors directly with my comments, or just not leaving comments at all.
While people can choose to disassociate with the community that is fine but once they start to fuck up my experience I pull away. I can't be the only one that feels this way and if there are others that share my sentiments it is indeed "part of the problem."
To be honest though, there has always been extremely limited sub to sub interaction on F/m blogs. I think it's that most male subs want to interact with Dommes and not with other subs. It's kind of a shame that so many do not want to learn from each other unless they already have identical tastes in kinks. You learn the most from people that are different and don't hold exactly the same views.
The last factor... laziness. It's easy to shut down when you feel like no one gives a shit if you are writing. It feels sort of fucked up when you get MORE RESPONSE from posting something highly disagreeable. e.g. If I made a post and said "ALL SUBS ARE WANKERS," I would probably get more comments than I have ever received before from people claiming I am wrong. I don't know why it's so easy for people to get fired up to disagree but so difficult to get them fired up to agree.
To anyone that thinks that leaving the comment: "hey, I like this," seems like a waste and isn't productive, you are very very very wrong. That can be done in 10 seconds on your phone while taking a piss at work but it does a LOT to fuel a blog author. Simply knowing that there are readers out there reading and liking what we write... is very motivating. Blogger blogs have a very good mobile version that is probably even easier to navigate than the actual web-version (the same can't be said for the back end interface). If you don't want to have Femdom shit in your browser history, download Mercury or Chrome or Opera in addition to your primary browser and fire up an anonymous window or set a password for it.
Keep in mind I'm not begging people to comment here, it's just in the community as a whole. Support the authors you like to read. They are doing this by choice. They are doing this for free. Let them know you care.
Now that I've started reading M/f sub blogs... you'll visit one of those and the post is a picture of a unicorn crapping a rainbow out of its ass and it has 35 comments. I can't say anything negative about it because I'm fucking jealous.
I almost didn't comment on this, but like so many of your posts it nagged at me (in a good way.) ;)
ReplyDeleteMy first reaction was thoughts about ever-changing technology and societal adaptations as well as the fact the somehow people expect the internet to educate and entertain them yet feel little need to acknowledge the efforts of those that produce content.
But as so often happens I moved from those reflections to your sensibilities and how the current evolution does seem to be reducing the number of blogs which can be found in the ways you require.
I think some of this began a few years ago when WordPress and blogger went through a righteous purge saving readers from perversion. I know many writers were understandably permanently discouraged when years of their work vanished.
I don't know what to suggest to help increase a sense of community. I remember in the old "rooms" subs seldom spoke to one another at any substantive level, as you mentioned.
I sense that the internet though ever-fragmenting means that there probably are ways to adapt and utilize other techniques to connect than through blogs which rely on search engines for content through WordPress.org or Blogger.
I can understand why you felt hosting your own site did not meet your needs for simple search engine responsiveness. And it does take several years to build adequate organic SEO, plus it requires moderate technical focus which may well not be of interest or perhaps feel wrong to "push" stuff.
Still I hope you will consider exploring other technical avenues...I do believe the internet offer ever increasing possibilities when/if/as we can figure them out.
Thank you again for another interesting and honest post.
Thank you, Watson. For some reason this comment ended up in spam when the 9 copy/paste Portugal comments I was spammed with earlier in the week did not.
DeleteI think many Dominant bloggers are positive bloggers in that they tend to post when they have something specific to say or share. Submissive bloggers are way more likely to post struggles and negative feelings as much as positive ones. I think this is why we see so many Dominant blogs go dark without any note as to why. Rather than airing concerns they just quit blogging.
Finding blogs is an interesting route. I mostly find blogs through reading people's comments and checking their profile. The links provided on their blogs and the "followed blogs" list in their profile is my main avenue for doing that. Google+ fragmented things even farther since about 75% of people did not switch over, and Google+ profiles are much harder to navigate. Google+ also encourages us to use our real names so that everything we do gets displayed to everyone in our contacts... yeah... right. Fuck that.
Wordpress and tumblr both have the "like" function. While it's not nearly as fulfilling as receiving a comment or response to a comment, it at least signifies that someone took the 0.3 seconds required to click "like" and let you know they acknowledge you. It's not entirely fulfilling but far superior to nothingness.
The perversion purge I think is partly why Yahoo went from allowing people to explore their "alternate" personas and tried to jam the "this is you, you are real" route down our throats. I remember being like WTF when I had set a text phone # for account recovery with my Yahoo account and all of a sudden it was like "we automatically made you findable by the phone number you supplied." Fuck that.
Another odd thing is that I actually like the 2003 internet version of the blogger layouts. It's easy to get a post count and see how far back a blog extends. On Wordpress and tumblr everything is "prettier," which essentially makes it hard as hell to navigate and you have no clue how deep the well is, or where to start. You have to click "show older posts" 174 times. It pushes "right now," when often what they are looking for is "5 months ago."
The main reason I don't get my own site is that I don't have enough extra money floating around to justify it when I am okay with what I get for free :)
I don't think there is really a way to restore a sense of community. I think popular authors can sway opinion a lot, e.g. calling out fragmentation as a bad thing, but at the same time I wouldn't want anyone to risk losing readers over it. I can call out the FLR rudeness here easily because none of those people read my blog. I didn't mind that at all when they were at least cordial to me in our interactions. It became an entirely different thing when they are jerks.
The easiest way for people to build the sense of community is to have an open mind and a desire to understand people that are different. Funny how this rings true for like... most bad things in the world, isn't it?
When people convey certain kinks that I do not appeal to me but I have never experienced... the way they convey it is so important. Can they put it into a context that will get my juices flowing? Can they make it seem like something special and intimate? If they can, then hell yeah. Giles English is the reason chastity became alluring. eMs sub is the reason why CBT is actually dancing around my head these days.
Is it strange that I am willing to consider something when someone displays it with enthusiasm and in an eloquent and alluring way? Or is the fact that I'm even debating it is strange show just how closed-minded I perceive most of the world to be?
You can still use one app on the phone for different accounts if you have android os. Use it in different container. Look for Parallel Space on Playstore or if you have Sam..ng you can use Knox.
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing, t22.
DeleteI have an iphone and I am one of those people who is willing to login/logout every time :)
This was sort of a brainstorm rant trying to figure out why things are the way they are. I do hope anyone who is using that as a reason not to interact and on android os does keep that in mind.
Thank you.
Interesting thoughts on the demise of Femdom blogging. It's obviously hard to pinpoint any specific thing that is causing this to happen, but you've presented a lot of ideas for consideration. I'm hoping it's not a sign of a gradual lessening of interest in the subject, and I'm hoping it's more illusional than actual because of a spreading out of options over the internet. As you pointed out, more opportunities to feed your particular kink leads to a sort of laziness. Hopefully, there will be a comeback sometime soon.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Lady Grey. I think the interest continues to grow year by year. It just seems the newcomers are interacting in more modern ways. Not to stereotype too much but I get flat out surprised at some of the comments from Dommes on the younger end of the spectrum nowadays. Back when I was searching and in my 20's many seemed to be imore interested in the whys and the hows but from what I read now... there's more of a tendency to take on a "I don't understand it but I'll pass judgement anyways" attitude.
DeleteWell, I don't follow a lot of F/m, but I've noticed there aren't a lot of males (Dom or sub) that comment. Daddy follows a few blogs and he has never commented. He prefers Tumblr, it probably makes up for all my whining words. Lol.
ReplyDeleteI agree that people segregate, it is just the way it is.
I have an iPhone as well. The Google app is nice because you don't have to keep logging in and out.
As for the unicorn, you crack me up!
Quality over quantity--you seem to have quality commenters.
Thank you, Misty. If you check out blogs like Femdom Think Tank, femdom 101, and up until recently for some reason, Lady Grey's blog, there are a slew of men that comment. The rest are fairly empty from male comments aside from a few FLR back-patters with the exception of spanking/domestic discipline blogs. Spankos tend to not care if it is F/m or M/f and plenty of men come out of the woodwork.
DeleteI do appreciate the quality of comments my readers do leave here. I just can't help but be jealous when some blogs I follow get 50+ comments on some posts.
Great post. And as you mentioned about WordPress and Google getting some sort of sanctimonious stick up their butts, after years of profiting from "porn"....I too was one that had numerous blogs deleted overnight with no reason I can think of. The thing is, it wasn't a human being that did it, it was just how they tweaked their bots...which is scary as the world now seems run by bots.
ReplyDeleteAnother thing is, most people don't want to read anymore. Rather than engaging in stimulating conversation, they want a porn Tweet and a few photos from Tumblr to get off on so they can get back to the business of....you know, sitting on the couch in front of the TV with Cheetos dust on their nasty old warmups. :)
This is obvious too when one looks at the near death of newspapers. Most people don't want to read an article, they want to see some pretty talking head with video and some "grabby" graphics. It does not bode well for the written word. :)
Thank you, Ms. Vanessa. I am sorry to hear that your blogs got deleted. You are the first person I have come in contact with that had that happen. I have started backing up my blog weekly over the past month or two.
DeleteI do agree that people want the instant "gratification" of a picture or video, but they do read caption pictures.
I guess I am just a fan of the written word, even if I don't spend a lot of time reading literature anymore. Processing words at the speed of someone's pen (or keyboard) and painting the image in one's mind is very rewarding, it's a bummer that it is going out of style.
It took me so many years to figure out how everything worked inside of my crazy screwed up brain... and it never would have happened if not for blogging and the interactions with other bloggers.
Take care.
I too benefit from writing. Its that...purging of manic energy. :)
ReplyDeleteIt can be rather great. Highly focused manic energy can also have some interesting outcomes when that energy is harnessed :)
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