Just like everyone and their kinky, whip toting grandma, I have profiles on Fetlife and OkCupid. Like many women with profiles on such sites, I find that there’s an unfortunately high dumbass to interesting ratio in the cold (from perfect strangers) messages that I receive.
Case in point. Someone messaged me on OkCupid a while back, writing:
you’re adorable actually for being 27…thought you were underage at first. Looking very innocent/shy though…I think im going to be too outgoing, sarcastic, and just plain naughty for such a fragile girl like you to handle, dont you think?
What the hell am I supposed to make of a message like that? I deleted it, and went on with my life.
Today, the same someone (I assume) sent me the exact same message on Fetlife, only this time with the subject line “daddies home .”
It took a while for my inner grammar nazi to get over his misspelling of “Daddy’s” and his seeming allergy to capital letters and punctuation.
In his profile, he listed “just in the bedroom” under activity, so I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. There are a lot of unwritten rules in BDSM cultures, and he may not know about scene etiquette. Maybe he’s new or just doesn’t know how to engage women in the scene or… at all.
I thought back to all of the emails that I, as well as many of my friends, have received over the years from internet dipshits who expected me to fall at their feet because I’m female or submissive or young or who knows what. If someone gently pointed out his errors, maybe it would be a public service. So I sat down and started writing an email about what NOT to do when making first contact with someone (well, someone like me at least) on Fetlife.
An hour later, the email had morphed into a diatribe. I realized this half way through writing it, but I sent it anyway. For one shining moment, I joined the ranks of didactic Fetlife assholes everywhere. For what it’s worth, I tried to keep the tone as helpful and non-confrontational as I could.
Here’s what I wrote:
* * *
From what little you wrote in your profile, you seem like a decent enough guy. Unfortunately, from the point of view of a mostly submissive woman, your message raises all sorts of warning flags.
I honestly don’t think that’s what you were going for, so I’d like to explain why you came across the way you did. This way, you will know how you can present yourself so that women will want to play/sleep with you, the community will have a slightly lower creep factor, and everybody wins.
I’m sorry this message is so long. Bear with me. You might want to thank me later, or you might think I’m a heinous bitch. Who knows?
1. When breaking the ice with a potential play partner, don’t go with the “I may be too big and bad for you, little girl” approach. The smileys tell me you’re joking, but I don’t what you’re playing at.
How am I supposed to respond? Do you want me to show you what a shy and fragile thing I am? Do you want me to step up and challenge you? Are you looking for me to brat?
If we’d met in person and I knew your intentions and voice patterns, that would be a different story. This is why it’s a bad idea to make assumptions about me and my play style based on my age and picture.
Better to engage me as a person first, and then find out if you can engage me as a toy. Otherwise, I’m going to write you off.
2. Introducing yourself as Daddy is a REALLY BAD idea. I get that you were trying to be funny, but even with the smiley, it’s just bad form.
Titles represent power exchange. Once you use them, you’ve already started to play. So if you take on the role of Daddy without asking for my consent, you might be trampling on my boundaries.
Why would I want to play with someone like that?*
3. This is a personal pet peeve. Using proper spelling, punctuation, and capitalization is in your better interest. This goes double when messaging people like me, who state IN THEIR PROFILE that they’re hot for articulate people. Otherwise, it’s likely that your email will be seen as an annoyance and deleted.
4. Read someone’s profile before deciding to message them. And reference her profile (not just age and picture) in your message. It’ll look like you care.
If you actually read through all this (can’t say I blame you if you didn’t), I hope you found it useful.
Best,
Sascha
* * *
UPDATE:
I just got a response.
ll pass on reading that essay…thanks though for the effort.
Oh well. You can lead a horse to water, I guess.
*This part was redacted. A lot.
Fool doesn’t know what he’s missing;)
But, oh,how I’d love to have seen the redacted bits.
Lots of preachy stuff about boundaries and consent. You know, the usual.
Can you hold its head under?
Good effort.. sad that it was wasted. Perhaps posting it will give a glimmer of a hint of what might be an idea that might make a grain of sense to someone, someday.
One can only hope.
*twitch*If he thinks that that essay is too long to bother with, he’s not even worth the effort of attempting to help. I mean, thats practically nothing.
Internet men are stupid.
What an ass. You wrote a completely reasonable and non-judgmental reply and he showed you that he was a complete asshole.
My girlfriend gets stuff like this all the time on Fetlife, and I always urge her to write back telling the dudes to knock it off – kudos for at least making the attempt.
It would have been interesting to see him actually try and debate the point, but then again in my experienece, poor grammer/spelling often go hand in hand with sending out mass emails to women — *even when it’s clearly mentioned in the profile they don’t want to be messaged*.
Maybe if everybody called them on their obnoxiousness, internet dudes might start getting the message.
I think most women, especially younger women, get flooded with shit like this all the time on both vanilla and kink dating sites. It’s the nature of the beast, sad to say.
Maybe I’m overly optimistic in thinking that some of those people genuinely don’t know any better.
The four points you outline are expertly crisp, Sascha.
Thanks so much!
The rub is always – Fetlife schmuck or Fetlife schlemiel?
He sounded like a schmuck.
Hawt.
God bless an articulate woman. So thrilled you sent it out. I may just have to do the same.
I propose Fetlife implement a new feature: an auto-reply to schmuck button. It can use this blog post as its default content. It’s astounding to me that so many people (not just men, by the way) are so oblivious to common sense. Playing with people is hard but it’s not impossible, if you follow some basic, easy steps.
Amen, sister. I’m on both OKCupid and FetLife too (though, I confess, my experience put me in the vanilla zone). Everytime I get messages like that, I don’t even bother to respond. So kudos to you for attempting to educate this poor, uneducated soul.
Also, I heart grammar nazis. I may need to edit my FL profile to include that, as my OKC does — but I think I neglected to include it because anyone who messages me on OKC seems to ignore my preferences for people that can read, follow directions, and use spell check (at the very least).
–diva.