favorite post of the day

My favorite personals post title of the day: "BiPolyPagan Faerie Princess Seeks Handmadien" [sic] - now I'm just trying to figure out where I fit in that particular fantasy.

A Curious Question

I registered myself on AdultFriendFinder, with a picture or two and some basic info. As I wrote before, I've gotten some lively offers - not exactly the sorts of relational transactions I envisioned when I enrolled. So, I could say, horizon expanding!

This evening, a 30ish man from Sacramento (without a picture posted himself) emailed with a question for me: "Hey bro, Hope I'm not offending you, But would you ever consider letting a duds suck you off? Discreet masculine jock firefighter here. ALso love to share pussy."

Well, there's something to think about. Again. Why not let somebody suck you off? That presumes the "off" or "suck" part of it gives pleasure - "off" is more of a concern for me. I think a bit about sperm retention, like any normal person. But more than that, I think about "suck on" versus "suck off." There's few non-reciprochal sexual relations. Aren't there? I've had friends offer me sexual pleasure before, without my hands or face able to do nothing. And that was fun I guess! But it took a long time for me to relax. And then I felt almost guilty at the end. Wasn't I supposed to do something? Isn't sex an exchange?

Either way, I'm not sure I'm ready to explore these questions with a 8.5" thick and cut firefighter. At least that's what his profile says. I feel like I'm being coy. It's strange for me to think that I would turn down these offers. Perhaps this is some insight into women's default posture ("talk to the hand"), at least as women's sexuality has been traditionally framed. I've been thinking about how I feel sometimes between masculine and feminine. Wearing makeup, dressing tough, mixing things up. On AdultFriendFinder, I'm actually finding the post-op transsexuals more attractive as potential dates than the thick cut firefighters.

Online Dating Panel at SXSW

"Getting It On(Line): Report From the Internet Dating Trenches"
16 March 2004, South by Southwest, Austin, Texas

Meeting people over the Internet has gone from being the domain of scaly computer geeks seated in front of their computers to a genuine cultural phenomenon -- at this point, everybody seems to have found somebody online, whether for a night or a lifetime, or knows someone was has. What implications does this new form of hooking up have for the future of life, love, and the relationships that bind us all together? Panel members who live and work in the online dating world will share their thoughts and observations about its present and future -- and hopefully a couple of hilarious stories, too.

(left to right)
John Grohol - PsychCentral.com (met his wife in online personals, and he's proud)
Ben Brown - Publisher - So New Media
Lance Arthur - Creative Dir - Quris
Jonathan Abrams - Founder & CEO - Friendster
Courtney Johnson - Dir of Research - Tickle
Lane Becker - Partner - Adaptive Path

Ben started personals.uber.nu, a punk personals site (limited to 18-29, purposefully). Ben is typically blunt, controversial. "If you're over 38 you shouldn't be dating online." On his site, you mark what you don't want, not what you want. So instead of "I like this music" you mark "I don't like that music" because it's more important what annoys you, most other stuff you don't mind.

I ask a question about the expanded sense of potential - people can shop for soul mates online, always wondering, is there someone better for me? Upgrading personal relationships seems possible and available in a way it hasn't before the internet. Some of that possibility is for specific interactions - I want a anonymous NSA hookup within five miles of here in two hours. Some of that is lingering wondering - being in a relationship and going online, thinking: "can I find someone who doesn't have these problems my partner has?"

Ben notes that people can mark how desparate they are on his Uber dating site. Is desparation attractive? Jonathan asks. Ben points out that desparation is attractive to other desparate people. He forsees a site where you can post your desparation level, and if other factors match up, one person is emailed directions.

Lance: there are many gay sites, people getting very specific and moment by moment. I'm at a hotel, downtown, with a half an hour. Getting your needs met in very specific ways: are gay men on the cutting edge, or are we just horny? Brad: it's a fine line. Lance: the problem with extensive online wish fulfillment: it does get really lonely and empty, it's akin to masturbating with somebody else.

Courtney: are relationships about finding someone who is the best for you, or someone who is good enough? Maybe options cause suffering. And as online dating grows, those options will expand.

Jonathan: sites like Friendster, people join just because their friends invite them. And maybe they didn't intend to be a part of the dating pool on the internet, but now they are. He recommends a book on the topic: Paradox of Choice.

How to have personal testimonials and recommendations? People broker their own testimonials on most sites. Lance: GreatBoyfriends.com - women recommend men to each other. But in general, panelists agree, situations and relationships between people are often too specific to be easily described for other people.

What about building in therapy, counseling? Courtney suggests a dating site could watch the people you chat with and date, asks about your reactions and experiences, and then suggests patterns and problems in your behavior. "You keep dating people who are too busy" for example

Brad: a user of dating, matchmaking, instant sex sites - working 10, 14 hour days, so he doesn't have the ability to maximally socialize. Can do first round of speed-dating at 3am, without having to shower, moisturize and prepare to go out.

Molly: living in a town of 25,000 in a foreign country, you learn who you might want to meet up with as a result of watching people's iTunes playlists.

Lane: to sum up this panel and the conference: people are screwed up, the internet makes everything worse, and someday technology will make everything better. (laughter)

Passive Seduction

I still haven't paid for Adult Friend Finder. But having a ready profile with pictures up there is generating plenty of potential.

Today I received two AFF messages. A couple near Sacramento in their late 30s asked if I was interested in couples play. They sent an erotic picture of the woman of the pair leaning over, smiling friendly. But no picture of the man!

That's an apt metaphor for my conception of the experience. I've been with more than one lady at once, but I haven't been with another man in a sexual experience since college. Then I was positively overwhelmed by the raging unstoppable pushing force I felt from this cock next to me, thrusting into my hand. The cheap cocaine and schnapps we'd consumed probably didn't relax me either.

Perhaps there's a place for fulfilling lovemaking between me and men. I don't imagine myself with men in any long-term way. But I would be silly to think a man couldn't give me pleasure. It's all in the mind, right? So all I have to do is tamp down my heterosexual filter and open myself to a wider range of sexual experiences.

It looks like this couple might be offering me this kind of opportunity. I told them I was inexperienced joining male-female couple play. I asked if they would take on a pupil. They wrote back to set up an initial meeting. Whew!

If that doesn't work out, there's always the 46-year old man who wrote me later on in the day - "Need a Blow? I'll suck everything between your legs...everything. No strings, nobody's business. Just a great, uncomplicated blow." That included a photo of him standing naked, privates discreetly shielded, on a beach somewhere.

Double whew - last time I was offered straightforward oral sex from a man was after getting high with Thomas in downtown San Francisco. I felt strange about it then. Not sure why. I still feel a bit strange about accepting (on it's face "a free no strings blowjob" would seem to be a no brainer). It's nice to know that I still have more to learn about my limits.

New Years' Dog Booty

New Year's Day - I'm too tired and distracted to play in online personals. Maybe I had some measure of satisfaction? Because that's a low state to be in.

But I wasn't too tired to be curious about the seething world of sex still out there. I found one young woman posting on Craig's List on the first day of 2004, looking for some unusual fun. I'm glad I archived it; the post was soon removed. The tone wasn't violent, but I guess there are prohibitions on advertising a request for beastiality?

Statistically Speaking

I told him that I've joined a bunch of sites but I haven't really sent out what could be called a shitload of emails. He scoffed - "that's the same as if you went to a bar and sat in the middle of the room waiting for someone to talk with you." That may be the case, or maybe I'll run into someone on the way to the bathroom. Maybe I like a little serendipity in my online dating.

We both agreed that often, it's hard to meet women in the real world. When we go out to eat or see a film, we're usually with friends which impedes our mack, as they say.

He pointed out that you can do a search for someone within 0 miles of your zipcode, and end up finding someone who lives in your apartment complex. And isn't that the perfect booty call?

Finally, he left me with a link to Solve Dating, quantitative analysis of online dating. As he says, it's interesting, but depressing. Statistically speaking the odds are against you ever finding a "soul mate" if that's what you seek. Either way, things like the "selectiveness cost" are fascinating geek browsing:

Continue reading "Statistically Speaking"

today I posted as w4m

Imagine the scene - a young woman posts this on Craig's List Casual Encounters:

"Hi, I'm a single white woman, 25 years old, brown hair and just a few extra pounds. I just broke up with my boyfriend, and I could use some sensual TLC. Looking for some snuggling and maybe some hugging and kissing."

Two hours later, this young woman has 1500 emails in her inbox - including 3.8 gigabytes of up-close erect cock shots.

I haven't yet had the nerve (or the proper designated email account) to post a w4m experiment (woman seeking a casual encounter with a man). But one guy on Craig's List has; here's his account. A bit depressing, the way it's written - reminding us that there are many desparate people out there. You could say that these people are not desperate, they are just playful!

Budgeting

I need to budget my adult play. I've joined a dozen personals sites but I haven't paid more than a total of $50 for my experimentation. Costs rise, it seems, as you deal with online dating services more oriented towards "play" rather than long-term relationships.

Still haven't decided if I'm going to pay the greater-than $20/month required to join Adult Friend Finder. If I did, I would be able to find out more about one particular adult male/female couple in San Francisco who have added me to their hotlist. Without paying I can't see their picture or read more than six words about them. But I can carry this notion around in my head that there might be a couple out there interested in doing something with me. What would that be?

Similarly, I still haven't decided if I'm going to pay the greater-than $20/month for alt.com, AdultFriendFinder's kinky sister site. If I did, I'd be able to find out more about the two 39 year old ladies in the Bay Area who have added me to their hotlists. Whew! Hot listing!

Until I figure out what my budget (and personal priorities are!) I will continue to add myself to the ranks of the free listed profiles on these sites, picking up phantom, unreachable winks, whispers and hotlistings. More pornography of potential!

Tips from a woman on how to answer these ads for optimal results

As usual, the meta-conversation on Craig's List personals is quite amusing -

It would seem that anyone posting a "w4m" ad in the Casual Encounters section is immediately innundated by thousands of pictures of stiff penises and the textual equivalent of grunts and pokes. "Me hard, we go."

One woman took the time to share some advice for men replying to casual encounters posts. I copied it below, before it was deleted:

Open Source Online Dating?

After mocking the personal ad network of OSDN, I'm ready to embrace an open solution for online dating. How about removing the middle man, and letting every blogger advertise themselves for mating and playing potential? Remove FriendFinder, Match.com and Spring Street from the equasion and let people search the internet for themselves.

This is the model Filchyboy proposes the The Dating Syndicate. Just a rough draft idea at this time, but an inspiring one.

Adult Friend Finder Nations

Adult Friend Finder is a personals site that seems to deal primarily with lust - people post nearly naked photos and ask for guys who will give it to them hard. As usual, the number of men advertising their services far exceeds women advertising themselves.

I find the list of AFF nations astonishing. If you take this list at face value, there are 130,810 Ontarians who have listed themselves on Adult Friend Finder. According to the OntarioGenWeb, the year 2001 population of Ontario was 11,410,046. That means that over 1% of the population in Ontario, Canada has registered on AdultFriendFinder.

Are people from all the 15+ FriendFinder sites funelled into these national listings?

There are 28,463 listings for Egypt alone. Is that possible? Not to doubt the hunger of people in Egypt, but that's a lot of English-language AFF personals for Northern Africa. Egypt only has 378 listed as w4m though. One tip - there are 1044 listed w4m in Nigeria, though Nigeria only has 16904 total profiles online. Better chances! Especially if you can forward a bank account number I suppose.

Dating Open Source Developers

Co-branded personals are getting a bit out of hand:

Today on a link from Slashdot, I saw that OSDN has personals. That's right - the Open Source Developer's Network. Nothing says hot date potential like "open source development."

Match.com and Springstreet have databases of eager singles looking for action. Other sites license connections to those databases, adding their own visitors to the pool of potential bodies. OSDN appears to use the whole Match.com database, so this OSDN Personals service is just for helping loads of geeks into the Match.com mix.

Kinky Pious Seniors

Like most sites, they send out a regular weekly email about possible online matches for your profile. I browsed the recent list of naked ladies who somehow have something in common with me. One woman had an introduction that read: "I have a cute face, a nice butt, and a deep throat. I love oral, anal, and hard, rough fucking." Just after that in the newsletter, there was this promotional note:

FriendFinder Inc. just released a new Dating/Networking site for the Jewish community... Check out JewishFriendFinder today!

Don't the FriendFinder folks see something incongruous there? Rough anal sex and aged singles identifying strongly with religion? Maybe they are more enlightened than I, mixing sex with everything. Maybe they recognize that everyone needs love. That's their business, after all. I did some poking around on the FriendFinder site: they have over 15 personals sites, from sadists to churchgoers. I posted the list below; the question remains: do the databases overlap? I can't imagine they do - but it's so amusing to think that they might!

Continue reading "Kinky Pious Seniors"

From Russia with ?

I signed up for the personals site LavaLife after I read some where that it was being used primarily as a place to find hook-ups. I eagerly dived into their "Intimate Encounters" section, creating a profile and pinging a few ladies. Not much reply from anyone. Most of the active ladies seem to be in British Columbia - note to self: examine specific geographical biases of individual online personals sites.

I did get a collect call recently. A collect call is where someone can reach out and touch you, without spending their money. It's a way for them to express interest and ask you to spend your money to make contact with them. Here's mine, a collect call in the "Relationships" section of the site:

RYSHIKA - Sent: Dec 05 at 7:05 PM PST
25 year old Female, located in MOSCOW, Russia. I'm Caucasian (White), a Gemini and Christian (non-catholic). I'm 5'7" tall with a slim body. I don't smoke. I drink socially. I have children who live with me. and earn less than $25,000 per year. Last online Dec 25, 2003.

Either way, a collect call from a random young woman in Moscow - pardon my sense of adventure, but I haven't replied yet.