I’ve been using Twitter for about five years, in a mostly passive way. I tend to make about ten tweets a day, follow just about anyone who follows me, and have the occasional chats and comment exchanges. I’m one of those people that uses my own photo and when I do chat I tend to express my real thoughts. This is not the case with many Twitter users, who often view their Twitter account as a Role they are playing. Like any large community, Twitter has many smaller neighborhoods where wandering round may get you into trouble.
I met a very interesting Submissive on Twitter the other day. There were a few warning bells that should have gone off, but I was charmed by her tweets and how she reacted to my comments. I like Submissives. These are often NSFW kind of Twitter accounts and many of them also have very explicit blogs detailing their varied and sundry experiences away from their Vanilla life. The BDSM world is a surprisingly ritualized place, where Scenes are Played out and Games are played. They’re kind of like Masons with floggers. But the real world isn’t as clean and neat as the plot of 50 Shades of Grey or The Story of O. It’s a bit more like Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat, and Obsession by Julie Powell, less a fantasy and more an obsession. Or maybe it’s just writers who fall prey to this kind of thing, since we spend so much time in our own heads, the idea of getting into someone else’s is so alluring.
Back to the warning bells. This particular Twitter user had a blank Bio section and no information other than using a famous erotic author’s name as her Twitter handle and the name of the city where she lives. She took an instant interest in me and wanted to chat in Direct Messages. Flatter has always been a weakness of mine, and well, she was a Submissive, another weakness of mine. It took a couple of days to find a spare moment.
-You are a Dominant, correct?
-Yes, a Dominant
-Let’s play a fun game.
Sadly, my DM skills are not what they could be and my Dominant skills aren’t either. There also seemed to be some technical issues. I ended up sending her a number of random comments, my usual default position in all things, and she ran like a girl in a horror movie when she sees the monster for the first time.
She then refused to answer any messages or reply to any comments and deleted one or two posts in her Twitter feed I commented on. Oddly, she has not stopped following me or blocked me. This whole little episode left me confused and suicidal, one of my other default positions.
I read a blog post the other day about how you should have a Safe Word when doing BDSM in Second Life. Really? Yes, really. The Brain is the largest sex organ in the body.
I bid her farewell and her twitter feed rolls on like a river that briefly encountered a rock and quickly flowed past. Her conduct, of course, insures that many more rocks are sure to be lying in wait downstream.
I have a number of friends on Twitter who I talk to from time to time. We chat about books and music and this, that, and the other thing. I read a tweet I liked the other day that said-I’ve met a lot of really great people on Twitter. That is, if any of you are actually people.
Twitter, as this Submissive said after she got in a heated debate with someone else, is supposed to be fun.
And it is fun. For the most part.
