Quote Originally Posted by AndrewBlack
I understand your concerns of misrepresentation, but I think you are focusing on the crap internet BDSM experience rather than the more positive one that can be had.

There are positive and negative r/l and o/l experiences to be had.
I wasn't actually intending to make the primary focus on the negative aspects. I was trying to point out differences is all.

I agree that there are bad experiences to be had in both communities. Worse one, in fact, to be had offline, because at least online you can close the window and turn off your comuter and the bad experience is over for you.

However, in offline communities, you can see demostrations of how certain activities are done by professionals that have spent their entire lives perfecting those skills. It's not a collections of text explaining how to do it, it's the real thing in living color right in front of your nose.

Just as an example: We used to know a couple in Houston that were members of both the online community and the offline one. The dominant partner's name was Master Whip and his submissive's names was vixen (not their real names, obviously). The reason he was called Master Whip is because he'd spent years and years of his life perfecting his skill with the bullwhip. FF had the opportunity to see him in person once. My understanding of the scene was the he used a blowgun and shot darts into vixen's ass and then used the whip, from fifteen feet away, to pluck them out one at a time.

I don't think that experience could be mimicked online.