The Vetting Process

The Vetting Process

darthlaurie • May 13, 2016

When I started my BDSM journey it was common practice to vet people; i.e. ask around to see if someone is a "safe" player, are they active in the community, etc. That was 2000-01. With the explosion of social media and places where we can meet online and share ideas, one would think it would be easier to vet people. Is that really the case?
Over on Fet (I hope it's okay to mention it), you can't mention someone's handle/nickname even if they've been abusive. You can see all sorts of rants about unsafe players among us and yet they are protected. I understand there is the risk of slander, but it seems to me that policies like this protect the abusers rather than those they prey on.  The only option one has is to PM potential play partners with the information you have about someone. Wouldn't it be great if there were a Yelp for kinky folks where we could post information about ourselves and others? It could even go further  and you could say Master ____ is a heavy primal top  who may be too intense for newcomers or Naughty Little Bottom is an absolute brat but she's hilarious and a great negotiator. I just think that with modern technology we ought to be able to vet each other easily rather than putting up roadblocks.

Rod​(dom male) • May 15, 2016

This is a great topic, I agree 100% about that loss of personal referencing. I was the same in my formative time, mostly getting to know people through word of mouth, at munches etc whereas now with so many online options the trend is for that "instant" hook up. 
It's a basic problem with the online thing really, it has taken away the personal interaction in many spheres of life and allows for people to "Walter Mitty" themselves to an extent. The single biggest problem I see are new subs exaggerating their experience level in their online presence, worried that if they seem too inexperienced they will be overlooked. Of course the flip side is also true with a huge number of "doms" hyping themselves up when they have little or no experience at all.
Now generally this isn't a problem for the genuinely experienced folk as they spot these "exaggerators" but what worries me is what is happening when the hyped up sub meets the hyped up dom, that seems to be a recipe for disaster!
So the basic question then is how do you vet potential play partners now? I see a place still for asking around, even online its possible to ask others "hey do you know Nina123, what's she like?" The real problem with that of course is the sheer volume of people you're dealing with, in a regular local group you are talking to much smaller numbers and these are generally actual physical contacts who know each other directly (or at least indirectly) not someone they have chatted to a bit online.
It is a real problem for sure and I don't really have any answers, I know for myself I take a long time (too long for some) to get to know a sub I meet online before even suggesting a play session and this will have included at lease a couple of vanilla coffee meets.

Villanelle​(staff) • May 15, 2016

This is a brilliant topic - thank you for starting it Darthlaurie!  It's a tricky thing, isn't it?  As someone who has been fairly active online on various platforms over the years, I've seen attempts at character assassination, harassment, stalking, flaming, etc., as well as legitimate concerns raised about individuals.  I suppose the problem is that some (although certainly not all) opinions are subjective.  While you or I may think a particular dominant isn't safe or trustworthy because she or he had a bad experience with someone of our acquaintance, someone else may think that person is completely fine.  Surely we're allowed to express our opinions, right?  But at what point does it cross the line?  Hard to say.  

As far as administration on this website, I am not sure what Cage Monkey has for a policy as of yet.  As you may know, Cage Monkey has been running thecage.co.il (the Israeli language version of this website) since around 2006, pre--dating any other kinky social networking sites of this nature.  I am confident he'll have an opinion about how to handle this as I am sure he's dealt with similar situations in the past.

Hopefully individuals who do meet on this and other social media sites will use common sense when meeting and interacting with new people.  For those just engaging in online play, I'd like to say the dangers are nullified by distance, but sadly I've known more than one person who has been hurt emotionally, physically (following dangerous instructions for self bondage, etc.), been taken advantage of financially, or had their private lives exposed.  So the dangers exist across the board.

Rod​(dom male) • May 16, 2016

Yeah some of the overtly stupid ideas I have seen in forums posted as supposedly legitimate self bondage ideas horrify me! If naive newbie subs took them seriously and tried them out they could be in real danger.
I know a couple of sites that use a reputation scoring system whereby users can give other users rep, similar I suppose to the "like" function only it specifically applies to their credibility. Like any system of course it is open to abuse but generally users of long standing with a high reputation score are much more trustworthy and reliable. Not sure if this is something that could be implemented here, unfortunately its not a lot of help for vetting newer members...

Villanelle​(staff) • May 16, 2016

Bread crumbs for Web Monkey to chime in on this...

Cage Monkey​(staff) • May 16, 2016

Wow, yes, this is certainly the one of the most popular discussion topics on the Israeli cage.

Wouldn't it be nice indeed if there was a yelp for kinksters. The review system often works successfully harnesses the collective experience to save us from trouble.
And that also works successfully with reviewing humans, in UBER you can rate your ride driver, and nowadays drivers can also rate the customers, that certainly keeps everyone on their toes, drivers try to give a pleasant experience, customers try not to make them wait, it is a truly great system to keep the level of service up.

But that could work only while rating reflects the reality...

BDSM and relationships are not quite the same thing as being a good customer/driver and the experience can be entirely subjective. Someone perceived by one as an angel can be the absolute nightmare of another, and in BDSM in particular heavenly and hellish experiences live so close to each other - we can't tell them apart sometimes.

So if people write reviews on one another, what absolute truth would it really hold?

After a breakdown, people can be left with different kinds of emotions, and sometimes with some desire to take a revenge, hurt back a little, get the attention from the ex-partner, provoke etc. we most of the time don't know what really happen so we can't judge them, and we can't judge their partners either.

There's no telling if rating/review/shaming is based on true fact or not, and even if the feelings described are real for the writer, they are biased and subjective because we're dealing with emotional contact between people, not the quality of service.

Also, we are different people, we switch partners for BDSM acts on different rates rate, while there can be some great professional whipper who's getting excellent reviews for his handiwork and does it with occasional partners, there, such review seems to make sense, if someone gives him only 2 stars, it's okay, it doesn't affect the average score much.

On the other end of the spectrum if someone is not happy with the behavior of his partner for some years, this should not be the place to wash the dirty laundry, and these people are not in any way like products or services that should get a grade for how they handle things between them.

Potentially, someone can "shame" anyone else at any day, giving out secrets, weaknesses, maybe exposing a moment people really regret or maybe  not with a single word of truth about it. How can we be defended from such deeds? someone might shamed because they rejected someone else. if someone share your secrets, your fears, or other intimate information.

And then there's the law that puts the responsibility for the things that are published in a web site - on the site owner.

So, we can not play police or judges we can't prove things and we're not here to educate or punish people. We give a platform, hoping to make it great and helpful to most, usually we can't take the responsibility dive into relationships and give out our sentence.

The Israeli Cage has been online since 2003

And from the day the blogs we launched, a couple years or so later, we had exactly the same policy fetlife has, that I just heard about now. You can not even name a person by nick if they didn't give their consent, and not to hint for their identities, that's sounds maybe harsh a bit but there's no other way really.

That's on the surface.

Under the surface, when we get complaints, we file them, repeated complaints from different people can indicate that something may be wrong. There are other indications, and in the last 13 years there has a been lot of work to make sure a few people (not many relatively, I must say)  stay outside. I developed some intuition to discover and keep away the bad guys from coming back, it's an ongoing struggle and the effect is not really great.

But I feel I have to do it to put the sensitive information I get from time to time to good use so I can and sleep better at nights, but this by no mean implies that people in the site get any protection or are really safer, this certainly mean we can investigate any complaint seriously.

And in cases where police should be involved - doing just that would help a great deal for others not to get hurt as well, unfortunately that's the only effective solution I know of.

Awareness is super important, certainly we can put some information about how to keep safe in virtual/real BDSM world. That could help tremendously - , I also have been thinking to put some warnings when first messaging new people on site, any help on writing or referencing to online resources - will be appreciated.