Daes - my comment wasn't directly at you more of a general statement. I find your feedback interesting. Most of it I don't find particularly debatable (or at least not moreso than as a minor quibble). I do have a couple points I'd like to address if I could.

"First, there are two kinds of this lifestyle. The first is an absolute full-time power exchange relationships, living with one another, not as much focused on as the more popular bdsm subculture. This would be the one most are familiar with. The play parties, chat rooms, role play, IRC, where majority (not all) of the participants are involved in a kind of bdsm fantasy life which accommodates for their sadomasochistic needs."

I find this, to be frank, too black and white a definition.

This caught my eye, as a representation of a general theme throughout the post: "You cannot have a 24/7 relationship online. It’s just not possible to have an absolute power exchange via internet."

Okay, perhaps so. But I would say realistically, it's a very small percentage of the community that are prepared to take on a serious 24/7 relationship in a D/s role. All of your post is quite clearly geared from the thinking that if it asin't 24/7, it's not quite good enough for you. Now, I've got no problem if that's how you work your life. For some people that works just great. But I think we're still talking about overall a subsection as opposed to all-covering info.

Even defining 24/7 can be difficult. Ar we talking Gorean slave that can't (literally) order a meal in a restaraunt without permission? Or something more... I'm not sur ehow to define it. "Mainstream", perhaps.

This is one of the challenges the Lifestyle always seems to present. Layers upon layers.

Now, onto one of your Poly quotes:
"“it's incredibly easy to dominate someone from a distance. It's so easy, in fact, that many men who are not genuinely dominant have discovered that if they put on this "act," they can have as many no-strings-attached cyber-slaves as they like. "

I've highlihgted that because for me, I think we're defining things in a couple differnet ways here. I don't consider anything that comes "no strings attached" to be a genuine relationship, because frankly I don't see that as possible if you're truly involved with someone. My online relationship, and many others, are by no means "no strings attached' deals. To me, no strings attached goes back into the kind of chatroom "I will Dom sub X that I just met for the evening" thing. I agree, that's easy. But again, just my opinion, I don't really consider that a genuine relationship. Though I'm sure many newcomers go through phases where perhaps that is appealing - and there's nothing wrong with that. Everyone has to start somewhere.

"I say this because, some only want to experiment with it, and some only want it in certain aspects of their life. To me, that’s not real control. Its play. I say this because That is where I drew my conclusion that online is easy. "

Again, I menioned earlier this was a kind of ongoing theme in your post. I can't agree with parts of this statement. By this standard, you just called 95% of us wannabees, essentially. And I'm sorry, that's just not going to fly. I don't accept the position that if you're not going into a D/s role 24/7 that it's "play". In fact I'd go as far to say that's an unrealistic statement to make.

I respect your opinions, but we're going to have to agree to disagree on this one I feel.