It goes in cycles like pretty much everything but a number of recent events have caused me to have to look at and intervene in instances of fake profiles which yet again brings this up as a discussion topic that I think is worthy of some consideration.
The largest and most serious of these involves a number of automated accounts or "bots", yes these things are getting good but don't worry your kinky heads about it, I'm on top of them.
The second is the eternal (it seems) problem of catfish fakes, for the most part guys pretending to be girls. Why do they do it? I hear you all scream, well lots of reasons but lets make one thing quite clear here. Kink Talk does not require verification of being female (or male), it is totally voluntary and for good reasons. Many (most) are quite understandably reluctant to reveal too much about themselves in a forum such as this and so any requests or demands to change this will not get you anywhere.
This does however make the whole catfish thing a tricky problem to deal with. Our method over the past year or so has been to utilize the user title to call out suspected fakes and hence make it publicly known their activities are suspicious while at the same time allowing them the option, if they so desire, to prove their accusers wrong.
Why not just ban them? Well a couple of reasons, the main one is that almost always they will return with a new fake persona soon enough and so the whole shitshow starts again. Secondly it serves as a kind of warning to others that we know what's going on and will act if we get the evidence.
Of course this is getting away from the very real question of why some people do this in the first place, why indeed. Several of the cases I've looked at involved quite elaborate lengths to perpetuate their ruse, however most don't and are quite clumsy in their attempted deceptions. There are lots of cases, in fact probably the most, of guys posing as female lesbian Dommes. In this case the objective is pretty obvious, male to female ratio is badly skewed so desperate guys try this less than novel approach to try and get themselves a female sub. In the cases of guys pretending to be sub girls looking for Dom guys its a bit more complicated, I mean there are loads of guys as both Dom and sub so the chances of finding someone is good, it has to be something else. Perhaps the deception is part of the thrill, maybe its something else entirely but either way it is not appreciated, no one likes being fooled.
So come on Kink Talkers I know we've discussed this before but what's your take? Have your views changed, is there anything more you think we can do and why do you think it remains such a prolific problem?
The largest and most serious of these involves a number of automated accounts or "bots", yes these things are getting good but don't worry your kinky heads about it, I'm on top of them.
The second is the eternal (it seems) problem of catfish fakes, for the most part guys pretending to be girls. Why do they do it? I hear you all scream, well lots of reasons but lets make one thing quite clear here. Kink Talk does not require verification of being female (or male), it is totally voluntary and for good reasons. Many (most) are quite understandably reluctant to reveal too much about themselves in a forum such as this and so any requests or demands to change this will not get you anywhere.
This does however make the whole catfish thing a tricky problem to deal with. Our method over the past year or so has been to utilize the user title to call out suspected fakes and hence make it publicly known their activities are suspicious while at the same time allowing them the option, if they so desire, to prove their accusers wrong.
Why not just ban them? Well a couple of reasons, the main one is that almost always they will return with a new fake persona soon enough and so the whole shitshow starts again. Secondly it serves as a kind of warning to others that we know what's going on and will act if we get the evidence.
Of course this is getting away from the very real question of why some people do this in the first place, why indeed. Several of the cases I've looked at involved quite elaborate lengths to perpetuate their ruse, however most don't and are quite clumsy in their attempted deceptions. There are lots of cases, in fact probably the most, of guys posing as female lesbian Dommes. In this case the objective is pretty obvious, male to female ratio is badly skewed so desperate guys try this less than novel approach to try and get themselves a female sub. In the cases of guys pretending to be sub girls looking for Dom guys its a bit more complicated, I mean there are loads of guys as both Dom and sub so the chances of finding someone is good, it has to be something else. Perhaps the deception is part of the thrill, maybe its something else entirely but either way it is not appreciated, no one likes being fooled.
So come on Kink Talkers I know we've discussed this before but what's your take? Have your views changed, is there anything more you think we can do and why do you think it remains such a prolific problem?
