All right. FetLife… I don’t get it.
That’s basically all I can say, over and over and over: I don’t GET it.
I’ve seen posts, on blogs I adore, that start out “Well, over on FetLife…” and I’m just left staring (at what is usually a long rant by said blogger) about the stuff/discussion/people/etc.
Don’t get me wrong, from what I’ve read, there are (some) seriously demented people at FetLife and rants are in order.
But…
I just. I…
*flaps hands uselessly*
I DON’T GET IT! Someone has to help me understand. (I should mention right now, I have never so much as even looked at the website so feel free to ignore everything I say.)
While I’m sure these bloggers I love must find some of the conversations super-great and all (or else why would they go, right?) the ones brought over for ranting purposes appear to be something like this… (Complete with my general reaction. Woo.)
FetLife: Let’s regress to about age 12, and form a lot of cliques so we can isolate ourselves based on Very Important Issues such as who is “real” enough, submissive enough, slave-y enough, real-time enough, live-in enough, etc…
Me: Meh. I don’t care.
FetLife: Submissives! Slaves! Some of us, let’s spend a lot of time acting all high and mighty and dissing Doms for acting Dom-ish, and the rest of us, let’s be judgmental of that behavior, safe on our knowledge that we have (oh-so-selflessly) judged ourselves to be “better”!
Me: I really, really don’t care.
FetLife: You know what would be fun? And productive? A semantic brawl! Let’s adamantly defend personal definitions for things like Mastery vs. Ownership.
Me: Holy cow! I can’t even count the number of times I’ve cared so very deeply what other people think about that! Actually, wait… Yes I can. Turns out it’s zero.
For the record… When I watch the news, I see only stories about the planes that crashed, not the ones that landed without incident… So I recognize that the things I see ranted about in blogs probably don’t represent the full picture of FetLife.
Anyway… Thinking about why on Earth people go on FetLife makes me think about why I read blogs.
I don’t read to find out how or why or when other people do things, at least not with respect to how I should do those things. I’m not really looking for advice. I’ve got all the advice I need in one convenient location – my Master.
Now, admittedly, I’m not able to do the “instantly fall in line no matter what” routine. I’ll push against him and question his reasoning. I will often rant and think and ponder and ask questions and reevaluate, sometimes in direct response to things I’ve read on blogs.
(In short, I can be a crappy slave. I like to pretend it’s simply a byproduct of having a brain. The reality may be less flattering.)
But none of that questioning and ranting matters in the long run. In ANY situation, the conclusion I come to has to match his vision or I’m going to be confronted, challenged, pushed, and molded until I readjust anyway. All the outside advice-seeking in the world won’t help me in the slightest unless I come around to his way of thinking in the end.
I read blogs, yes, because I am interested in the lifestyle and others who live it. But mostly, I become invested and involved (in my own head, in a non-creepy way, I promise) with their lives. I mean, Kaya posts pictures of her cats, or her backyard, and I’m ridiculously stoked. (Non creepy. I am NON creepy. Difficult as it my prove, please try to remember convince yourself of that.)
I think I just like to feel connected to good people who lead good lives and who HAPPEN to have the quality that they wouldn’t blanch at the thought of me living the lifestyle I do. And I get that from blogs. I seek friendships with phantoms, I guess…
But FetLife? Maybe you’re all just different than I. When I engage in fruitless debates, I tend to get irritable and huffy and what I like to call “holier-than-thou disguised as a snarky cunt.” (It’s not my most admirable trait, but at least I recognize it, hey?)
Antonio aims for me to live more like he does – with (as he puts it) “an uncluttered mind and soul.” And FetLife debates like the ones I have seen spoken about in blogs? Well, they seem like soul and mind clutter, and I know I don’t need them.
However, I’m not saying I don’t have a desire to go to FetLife or anything. I do. Sure, most of the things I wouldn’t care about. But some things, like that bestiality debate kaya mentioned that spurred my post on it? Yeah, sometimes, I really WANT to go. Part of me absolutely revels in the thrill of chopping someone down, someone I think is ignorant or “wrong” or employing logical fallacies. I have a streak of cruelty in me… A form of sadism, perhaps? I LIKE the idea of verbally eviscerating someone who strikes me as being intentionally ignorant. It borders on euphoria for me – a mixture of an art and a cathexis, albeit a negative one. (Dammit, cathexis is a word. My spellcheck can lick me.)
And it just seems… So alien to me that people would get something truly positive out of engaging in debates with people who aren’t really on their game, or don’t actually matter, or about topics that really aren’t up for debate – they’re just opinions. I get my positive interactions from Antonio, and I get positive interactions from bloggers I know and respect (and who know how to disagree with the right mix of passion, intellect, and respect), not really from open-forum debates – they encourage me to be vicious and inappropriately self-assured.
So, I guess the question is – if you go – what does it DO for you? What do you get out of it, for the time you put in? How does it help you serve, or help you be better as a human being?
Does you feel it’s a really useful thing that, ultimately, serves your Master directly, or serves him indirectly by making you a smarter, calmer, more submissive person? Or, like it would be for me, is it just a personal indulgence that serves you?
(And don’t let me sound like I’m judging if you do it just for yourself. I have plenty of things I do that are purely selfish. Granted, if they don’t please Antonio, I have to work to change them, but still… I have ‘em.)