The Internet and Its Influences on BDSM

[BDSM_Tourguide]

The Internet and Its Influences on BDSM
by
BDSM_Tourguide

The internet.
The world’s largest “community.”
Millions of pages of data on every subject from alpine skiing to zoology.
Millions of gigabytes of information at the fingertips of anyone who wishes to find it.

The internet has had a profound effect on the BDSM community, introducing such customs as titles for assumed dominant users, awkward capitalization rules, awkward forms of typing, and the creation of several protocols unheard of in any real-life community until after the booming popularity of internet chat brought on by AOL in the 1990s.

Why is the online BDSM community so different from the communities seen in real life? One answer is because the media are different. Online BDSM only offers users an interface through text, microphones, web cameras, and similar data-driven devices. BDSM activities in real life are actual experiences that can be felt, tasted, seen, heard, and smelled. The internet experiences shared by members of the online BDSM community cannot compare to the experiences shared by people practicing BDSM in real life. It’s not a slight against the online community to say this; it’s just a simple fact.

The internet BDSM community has compensated for its losses in physical experiences by introducing many new ‘cyber’ experiences. Among these new experiences are the customs and protocols listed before: Titles for dominant users to distinguish them from submissive users or normal, vanilla users. Capitalization rules have been introduced into many communities stating, or sometimes insisting, that a dominant user must capitalize his title and/or his name and submissive users must lowercase their names. Typing rules have been introduced that literally have no standard in real life communities and would be unpronounceable if they were used in real life settings. Many other protocols exist in online BDSM communities that do not exist in many real life communities as well, but as they are numerous they will not be listed individually in this article.

Unfortunately, in its efforts to make online BDSM more real, the members of the online BDSM community have lost sight of reality. Practices common to the internet community would likely be frowned upon by members of real life communities, or those online practices would have no translation in the real world. How does a submissive pronounce her name in lowercase for her real life dominant? Would a dominant member of a BDSM community introduce himself as ‘Lord’ such-and-such? Who made him a Lord?

The truth is that many internet protocols do not translate well into the real world, because they are visually oriented and useful only in chat rooms or BDSM groups online. The reverse is also true. Not many real world BDSM protocols translate well into chat rooms. So, how is one supposed to keep his or her BDSM ‘realistic,’ but also to integrate real world experience into the online realm? Truly, that has been one of the big mysteries plaguing the online community since its foundation.

Bringing realism into online experience is not a difficult thing, and yet the fact that it is not difficult to do is precisely what makes it so difficult to do. That sounds confusing, doesn’t it? Then read this explanation: In order for a person to enjoy a realistic BDSM experience online, he or she must first stop using the protocols and practices associated with online-only play. However, in doing this, the user will very likely isolated himself or herself from the community to which they are a member, because they no longer behave as the rest of their community does. Therefore, to attain a realistic BDSM experience online, one must simply stop doing what is expected of a typical online user, but in doing so the user runs the risk of confusing their community because the other users within the community have accepted the internet protocols as fact, and for users within the community to suddenly begin to abandon those accepted protocols would likely create difficult and misunderstanding among the community and its members.

So, it is simple, but not so simple, to have a BDSM experience that more truly mimics the real world online. In doing so, an online user stands apart from the rest of his community because they are acting in a fashion more befitting a real world BDSM community, but in so standing apart in his online community, that user also risks isolation from the same community because that user’s practices and protocols no longer match theirs. This is one of the hardest differences to overcome when a person makes the transition from real world BDSM experience to online, or vice versa. This is also another reason why real world experiences do not translate well into online experiences, and vice versa as well.

This all sounds very negative, though. It seems, by the tone written here, that the online BDSM community is inferior to the real world community, and that online experiences are not as good as real world ones are. That’s not entirely true. Online experiences are just different from those experiences in real world situations. Nothing makes one better or worse than the other, as long as users online do not mistake what is reality on the internet for what is reality in the real world.

Another reason the online BDSM community differs from the real world one so much is because the number of online users in the BDSM community that have actual, real world BDSM experience is in the minority. Many people online believe that the practices they see daily in chat rooms and groups are what occur in real life. And why shouldn’t they? They don’t know nay differently. Many people in many places worldwide do not have access to a real BDSM community they can visit in person and compare to what they have seen online. By the same token, however, many real world users find the online community to be full of fakes and people only playing at BDSM. Many practitioners of real world BDSM avoid the internet BDSM community, except to talk to other people in their local scene. Some from the BDSM communities of the real world do wander into chats and groups occasionally. Typically, these people stand out among the online-only users, because they are so different form the online-only users. Ordinarily, knowledgeable real world users that have entered an online community are usually treated in one of two ways: They are either perceived as oddities because of their differences in opinions and mannerisms than the ones shown by the online community or they are, ironically enough, treated as being ‘ignorant’ and ‘uninformed’ for the same reasons.

For all its differences, though, the online community has provided some very good influences to the real world BDSM community. For example, the people that do not usually have access to a real world BDSM community can go online and gain knowledge of BDSM from the internet. It is true that the knowledge they can may not translate too well into a real world situation, but some knowledge is better than no knowledge.

The online BDSM community may help to disprove some of the nasty rumors about the real world practitioners of BDSM, too. People ignorant to the true nature of BDSM may be able to find informative articles about BDSM in their daily browsing online. If these people can read that people who are ‘into BDSM’ aren’t abnormal sexual deviants that only wish to cause harm and pain to helpless women who allow themselves to be abused, then that is a major plus for the BDSM community, both online and off. And, yes, that stereotype is the standard by which the BDSM communities are judged and must overcome. It is propagated by many aspects of media, piped into peoples’ home, and made widely available to people ignorant of the true nature of BDSM for their ‘information and education.’

However, and this however is a big one, when uninformed people from the real world that have heard good things about the BDSM community make their way into chats and groups dedicated to the ‘BDSM experience’ and find those chats and groups to be filled with practices and protocols that are unusual to them, those people may become even more confused and frightened. Those people will believe that what they see online is what happens offline as well. They may never know that the two communities are the same, but entirely different.

If the members of both BDSM communities don’t do what they can to ensure, encourage, and inform people about real world BDSM and it truths, then both communities will continue to suffer the spears and arrows of the negative press they each receive. If members of real world BDSM communities don’t do what they can to explain and inform to those in online BDSM communities about the differences between real world practices and online ones, then the members of the real world communities only help to broadcast the impression of ‘internet ignorance’ more widely and to more and more people. And if members of online BDSM communities don’t do what they can to inform the people they meet that there are very different real world communities and some very informative sites on the internet about BDSM, then the members of the online community will only continue to enforce the ideas in peoples’ minds that what they see at face value is the truth.

Every member of each and every BDSM community, whether it is online or real world, has a commitment to help make truthful information about BDSM as widely available as possible. By not doing so, the members of the BDSM communities themselves are only helping those ignorant of the truths of BDSM to pass more laws sanctioning against consensual BDSM practices, BDSM fiction in literature and online, and other forms of ‘perversions and indecency.’ Is that what we want for ourselves?