Way way back in the day, I remember the launch of Ebay. It was designed to be a lovely, welcoming and wholesome community where items were bought and sold; the whole thing held together by the premise of people well… actually just being terribly nice to one another.

Time’s change and of course Ebay is now a rampaging commercial monster with great big teeth. Or something.

Fet rightly deserves it’s reputation for being a virtual snake pit to the new and uninitiated. In time though, if we choose to say, we begin to be able to successfully navigate the Leviathan that is Fet.

This can, if we are unwary, lead us into a false sense of security.

One of the things that has been bugging me for a while now is the Fetish list.

The other thing that bothers me are profiles.

The more profiles I see (and I’m really talking about female, submissive/slave ones) the more I begin to see behind the mask. What bothers me is not so much the profiles but their signalling away to ever Tom, Dick and Harry that they are brand, sparkling new. This tells in the profile text, the groups and of course the fetish list.

I bet you, like me, scroll immediately to the curious about part. This tells an awful lot about the person; maybe too much. And there’s the rub. Why DO those that are new (and believe me, I have been very guilty of this in the past) flag up that we are ripe for the culling? Thinking back to why I did it, I did not see any reason why I shouldn’t be honest about the fact I was new. That’s the right way to be, right?

Urm… possibly.

There are many on Fet who are not ‘terribly nice’ and are also down-right sociopathic. Anything and everything on the profile is literally more meat for their perverted grinder.

Every time I come across a profile of someone saying they are ‘curious’ and want to try, my heart sinks.

Let me give you a hypothetical example.

On your Fetlist is ‘curious’ about CMNF. So, for the first time, the Dominant is coming to yours for a scene. He turns up in a suit. Bit odd maybe as we don’t live in Edwardian times. Not so odd though if they have just been to a ‘funeral’. Perfectly acceptable right? You’re happy. He seems great. All good. But more importantly, trust has been sought and has been gained.

Because that’s all what it’s about really; the grooming. Yes folks. this isn’t something which just happens between an adult and a child. It can be adult to adult too.

And what’s more, YOU have provided them with all the information about yourself they will ever need to do a great job and get inside your head.

I think one of the most dangerous things we can do in life is make the assumption that because we are decent people with a good sense of ethics and morals, everyone must be the same. They aren’t. Sooner or later, paths will cross. What happens next very much depends on how good we are at accepting what people say about themselves on face value. For me, I am bad at this. It took a huge paradigm shift for me to take a step back and to see if words match up with actions. Even the best actor in the world can’t hold the mask forever; there are always tells.

So the moral of the story is that great caution needs to be employed when fishing for Dominants. Sometimes you will get a gleaming salmon. Other times; a shark.

And believe me on Fetife; the sharks are circling.