Message Boards?

Are they worthwhile to learn and overall impressions

I use to call myself a message board addict now I am more of a recovering addict as my path in life has drawn me from them. I though do think message boards of basically any topic and not just M/s, D/s, Top/bottom and kinky things can offer up really good information if one has the ability to not believe anything just on face value and has a mind that processes information well.

But to the specifics of power exchange message boards:

Good:

-Wide variety of opinions, experiences and types of things. Unlike plain web sites, books, seminars and blogs like mine you have the ability to read about things more then one person’s view and opinion.

-If you have a question about something the odds are someone(s) have had similar experiences or have the same interest in a particular kink as opposed to local communities that depending on the size, activity and how sheep like it is that often can be quite limited in breadth of specific experience and kinky interests.

-The privacy of cyber can let one be more open to sharing and asking about things that many will not do in private. No matter how cool one’s local community and friends are there will always be things that we do not share in a person to person interaction.

Bad:

-It is extremely difficult to sometimes know if you are getting an apples to apples comparison on things. A person calling themselves a TPE slave you never know if you saw them close up you would think was just a top/bottom relationship. Or when discussing some problem affecting a relationship the “I have been there” reply you will just never know what else was going on in that relationship at the time or if there is an other side to the story.

-Have to deal with the cyber only players. Please I do not mean to disrespect people in serious relationships that are cyber based but I am more of talking about bored people going to the web and in chat rooms and message boards proclaim themselves a role and start role playing the life. Knew a man once where in private emails was in a vanilla bad regular marriage that three months later when he became active on a message board was in a long term loving Gorean relationship.

-Regulars on messages boards are on there at least partially out of boredom, attention and validation. Most of this is minor but some of it permeates into everything they write. Many who spout one true way garbage and false gross generalizations.

-Cliques can develop and a board becomes about them and very unfriendly toward others. No information really being given and in some extreme cases there are far more posts with inside humor and flaming anyone who is not in their clique especially newbies.

Three views of popular boards:

Alt.com: For such a busy site I found the area where people share their views to be under used and not a lot of interactive communication. Now I have not been there in three years so things could of changed but when I was I found some awful good and interesting things to read which was somewhat shocking. But if one is looking for wide scope and active participation that is not on this one.

Collarme: Probably the oldest largest message board. It has a wide range of people contributing from long time people in the life to constant influx of newbies coming over from their personal section. Despite the many who complain newbies are often the life support of a message board. Most message boards go through waves where some regulars drop out and new people come in that can affect the atmosphere of a board greatly. Collarme has traditionally needed this because it tends to become a very toxic board because of cliques develop and know it alls think the board is about them. Surprisingly for a board that is so active and full of so many people it is an extremely politically correct safety obsessed female friendly board and during bad cycles not much information on a wide scope is put out. It is a shame that this board got overtaken by the chatroom cyber crowd and has yet to shake them. There are still some old timers there but they are there more to feel special because Collarme keeps track of the number of posts you have and they really get off on that.

Fetlife: The new darling and a lot to like. Unfortunately it became popular fast and therefore got inundated with the dominant and submissive for an hour and have learned or played only in cyber and chatrooms type already. What is great though about Fetlife is they have groups of pretty much anything that have Fetlife members that moderate them. Interested in dressing like a clown during sex there is probably a group. There are some great moderators that keep flames, “true” people and safety police morons from interfering with there groups. The downside is the smaller more specific groups do not have a lot of active participation like in new topics and answers per topic. The larger groups have become a lot like Collarme’s where it is newbies with the life span of days and maybe only days left asking lame questions and the usual self drama of over thinking everything in their life. Also some moderators in these groups are in way over their head and tend to be so inconsistent in what they delete and who they punish many good posters leave the group.