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Noah -> RE: Why online isn't (2/5/2007 2:07:30 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: SimplyMichael
Noah,
I read your post a couple of times, nowhere did you explain how long distance is a place you can do things you can't do in real life. I think a talented dominant can do all sorts of things long distance and have said as much. I do not expect them to come forward but I have pushed a few charming women here to do things long distance they hadn't done before but they know and I know how much more it could have been if it was more than my voice they were subject to. I help my ex get refocused on school about twice a month. I talk to her, figure out some steps to take to get her back on track, etc. I use my slighly lower and more resonate domly voice while doing this and it really works for her. The other night at 4am, she called sobbing and I worked her through her issues, got her calm, gave her an outline of what I wanted done and she made her flight the next morning with a packed suitcase. I can do the online stuff but it is an empty shallow experience compared to waking up next to her. I am a great big warm teddybear at night to keep her warm, in the morning I tend to be a bit cold and she is usually the warm one. I wouldn't trade one night of that for a year of phone calls.
So, about the gist of your point that I lack the understanding of the depth possible online/long distance there is a fatal flaw on its face. If I can be so blind as to not see the depth you see in it, that then opens the door to the possiblity that you don't see the depth capable in real life that I do and instead of my lack of understanding, it is yours that is at the root of this issue.
So then have you, or have you not backed down considerably from your initial position in this thread?
quote:
Original: CrappyDom
Online is quite real in my opinion, but it isn't real S&M, it isn't real sex, it isn't real relationships, it isn't much of anything, it is just "real online" and NOTHING more. Combine that with the fact that online self selects for people who often don't have real life relationships and tend not to have any real life S&M experience, you have a recipe for disaster and broken hearts .
I mean it seems to me that what you are doing for your ex is "real relationship," as much as I hate to deal in terms of the ontological bullshit that inevitably rides into the conversation--more often than not, unrecognized--on the back of your R word.
I will give you props for stopping short of "twue."
And who gives a shit about tendencies toward self-selection. Do libraries tend to self-select for people who can't afford to buy books? I couldn't care less. I buy what I want to buy and borrow what I want to borrow. Similarly, my partners are selcted by me, quite actively and judiciously. They are not selected for me by some tendency of a given communication medium.
Do BDSM clubs self-select for people who can't discern potential partners unless the potential partners are already dressed in rubber with a tattoo on their face which says either "dom" or "sub"? I don't know. But who cares? If you can spot potential partners and BDSM-cool friends a mile away and only go to clubs for quite other reasons, who gives a shit about said tendency?
As for your claim that you would give upa whole year of communication with a partner for one night together, let me offer this.
If I had to go away from my girldfriend for a year, and I could either leave today and talk to her on the phone every day for that year, OR sleep with her one more night and miss that year of phone calls, I'm pretty sure I would sacrifice the one night. I think that the pleasures that would accrue to me in that year of phone calls would be enough to decide the issue for me. I also think that the benefits to her, irrespective of the pleasures to me, would alone be enough to lead me to decide to remain in phone contact for a year rather than have one more wonderful night together. I see at least doubly sufficient reasons to sacrifice one night of holding in my arms for an entire year of enhanced psychological and emotional communion with her.
Now honestly, you would really forego that whole year of contact just for one teddy-bear night?
As for what you can do remotely that you can't do in person, that you can't answer this question for yourself, to at least some significant degree, really has me wondering.
One person I care very much about lives in a place where my Summer is her Winter, my today is her yesterday, literally. What remote interaction allows us to do that we can't do in person is simply: "anything at all."
She has made the trip here before and will come again this year, and hopefully again and again. In the periods intervening between her visits, long-distance interaction allows a wide range of wonderful things to happen. I mean don't you have any friends who no longer live in the same town? Do you really want to hold that interacting with a person you love, over the phone, by mail or e-mail or what-have-you is not real relationship? Your definition of relationship just strikes me as astoundingly narrow.
This woman and my girlfriend have in recent months developed a warm and meaningful relationship, "online", which I fully expect to enrich the time that we will all three soon be spending together. But of course by your account, since these two women have never met in person they have no relationship at all. Wacky, if you ask me.
As for what else can transpire between people at a distance that can't transpire between people up close, I don't feel particularly motivated to give lessons to someone who seems adamantly opposed to appreciating what I have to offer. Someone with imagination who explores this thing with integrity and an open mind will presumably find these things without me leading him by the nose. That you don't care to do this exploration is perfectly fine with me.
As to whether I have enough depth of appreciation of up-close BDSM to be able to tell whether my "online" dominance is "real" enough for you, well maybe you're right. Maybe all of my current and former up-close partners have been settling for second best, the poor things, or far worse. Maybe, as you suggest, I'm just some lamer who doesn't get what "real" BDSM amounts to.
As a sadist, I kind of like that idea. Here I've been holding these women in thrall, depriving them the pleasures of interaction with a genuinely capable dom, and furthermore hoodwinking them about the whole shebang--if you'll pardon the expression. As someone who enjoys physical, psychological and emotional sadism I find that notion rewarding on a number of levels. So thanks for the happy thought.
Or maybe the case is more like this. You derive tremendous pleasure and meaning from listening to music and playing it. I derive similar rewards from composing music and playing it. We both appreciate music very deeply indeed, but in our own ways, according to our respective tastes and abilities.
How nice that neither of us is so silly as to say things like: "Your approach and orientation to music... isn't real music, it isn't real musical appreciation, it isn't much of anything. Or: Composing music, as you like to do, is just an empty shallow experience compared to playing it, as we both like to do, and since I don't enjoy composing, I suspect that you, as a composer, are incapable of appreciating the true pleasures of music (even though you are in fact an experienced performer too.)"
I'll grant that composing sucks, if the only evaluation you are willing to subject it too is how perfectly it matches playing. I happen to think that this would be an idiotic standard to hold it to.
I'll be interested to read your response. In fact I'd be interested to read your responses to so many of the points I've made and illustrations I've offerred throughout this thread which you have for the most part left un-responded to.
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