CarnalNation

Are other people getting hotter sex and kinkier adventures than you?

It sure seems like it from all the posts and activities on the various sites.

Kink and sexuality social networking sites are such double-edged swords. On one hand, the great Web 2.0 revolution connects previously isolated sexual adventurers and provides great resources for knowledge. A person no longer has to feel lonely and shame-riddled for their erotic appetites, whatever they may be. Nowadays, any insistence on isolation and guilt would need to be pursued with dogged determination.

Want to have loving sexual relationships with many people at once? No problem! There are hordes of polyamorous folks out there to connect with. Want to tie up your lover or be tied up? Bazillions of people out there also interested that it's enough to make it seem ordinary.

Want to dress up like giant chickens with your lover while engaged in ritualized egg laying in a vat of Jell-O, accompanied by polka-playing sumo wrestler shamans? You're not alone—although you may click a few more times than the fuzzy handcuff set.

Once you've found your tribe of people who share your desires, wisdom and knowledge is easily within reach. Whether it's advice on how to navigate poly relationships successfully and ethically, or how to bind your lover safely for hot sex, the information is out there. Someone out there is sure to have advice on safe ritualized egg-laying and how to find polka-playing sumo wrestler shamans, and tell you why it's important to avoid the klezmer-playing ones.

There are whole online communities to suit our every pleasure. We make friends virtually that may lead to in-the-flesh friendships, events, romance and even policy changing social movements. I should know, as I belong to many such sites and online groups. Diversity of sexual expressions seem to be accepted more by ordinary people for what it is—as variation—rather than a pathology or dysfunctional deviance.

That's the good stuff.

Then there are negative effects as well.

Sure, there are the predators and stalkers. But we can discuss them another time.  Let's talk about the subtler and more nefarious effects of unrealistic impressions, improbable expectations, and bias that the sexual social networks unwittingly create. Frequently, readers and students confide in me with conversations that go something like this:

"I'm not poly like most kinky people are…"

"I'm just not getting the sort of play like other people are…"

"I know I'm supposed to do ____ in this type of relationship/scene but…"

In short time I discover in each of these conversations that their barometer and catalogue of "standard" kinky behavior and relationships come from their survey of people's posts and online discussions. They don't stop to think of the natural biases. Online community conversations aren't anywhere near a statistically true reflection of actual behavior.

There's the issue of self-selection and topic. If it's a sexuality community site or sex blog, people are there to talk about what gets them off. The population who are put off by talk of sex, for various reasons, are likely not going to participate in such places. Those who do actively participate aren't going to talk about all their mundane stuff of life, which is actually a majority of our living hours. Work, laundry, groceries, paying taxes, driving the kids to soccer practice. They're also likely to not talk about the more "mundane" aspects of their sex lives.

If Joe Citizen has five nights of kinky sex a year and posts about it with great and joyous detail, what we're not reading about is the other 360 days of regular sex, jacking off, blah sex and no-sex nights. He may not intend to, but the self-selection for posting only the adventurous nights gives the rest of the group members a very skewed impression of his kink life. Take ten Joes and we get 50 steamy escapades reported and 3,600 boring nights untold.