OneEvilBastard
Posts: 15
Joined: 7/29/2005 Status: offline
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There's a world of difference between experience of face to face kink and experience of internet norms, etc. Face to face, you learn to read body language. You see the same people in an environment where they can't disappear and return as a wholly new identity. You see who's attending munches and hitting on every last person vs. who's more focused. You learn who has been around for a while and whose opinions you can ask when you're unsure. Online, you learn skills like spotting photos that are obviously ganked from a porn site. You learn the little clues that give away that the "lesbian" you're talking to is really a guy. You learn how to spot a form letter. You learn how to spot when someone's clearly not bothered to read a profile and is only responding to a picture. There's also a difference within sub-communities as to what is an isn't acceptable. A pansexual community will generally value everyone's opinion as equal. Other communities may, whether felt right or wrong by those outside, be in the habit of making gender or role based assumptions. It's entirely possible to have spent thirty years in a small enclave of people whose views WAY predate safe/sane/consensual, who way predate current views about everyone having value, etc., etc. Coming to the net for the first time, discovering a world that sounds like it's the same as the one you've been in for all that time but has a bunch of subtle differences is entirely possible. There's a famous saying, something along the lines of: Never attribute to malice that which can adequately be attributed to ignorance. For all someone claiming years of experience off line, yet treading on toes online may seem like a fake and a jerk, it's just as possible they're simply ignorant of a world that sounds similar but is infact very different to the one they know.
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