FetLife Nerdherds?

I get a shit ton of email. So much so that, to be honest, I often have a hard time keeping up. 

Sometimes email messages fall through the cracks, and I just forget to reply - or, worse, don't see them at all. 

Other times I get messages from numerous people at once, about the same topic. and missing them is not a problem. Today was one of these days. 

Today's group of messages came in about a FetLife group I resigned from a few weeks ago. (I left the group after a moderator advised me that blocking any of the moderators of the group was cause for termination; I'd gotten some creepy messages from one last summer and had blocked her, a step I rarely take; I decided that unblocking her was not something I was willing to do... bye bye group). 

Now, I should preface this by saying that I'd already had a number of negative interactions with this particular group, starting with a post to my "Message" blog entry from last summer being hidden from the forum - along with a nasty message posted beneath my entry stating that linking to other sites violated group rules. That had pretty much been my welcome into the group, since I hadn't really posted much there before.

It continued from there; over a period of months at least half a dozen readers of this blog would contact me regarding subjects like "internet bullying", all related to posts from this group. While I don't have a lot of time for diaper sites and didn't spend much time on FetLife, they would helpfully link me to specific forum posts, and I could see it was out of control: insults, namecalling, making fun of others... all the usual stuff you see within a nerdherd. 

I saw posts where unsuspecting ABDLs - thinking they had found a group of likeminded people with which to communicate - would put up forum posts introducing themselves, only to be made fun of and reminded that their posts belong in a 'sticky' post reserved for introductions - one it seems nobody reads or responds to, wtf? Nice introduction. Haha.

After a while I began to look at the group for what it is: a nerdherd of sorts, an assortment of internet forum trolls who are shockingly horrified if you suggest they are trolls, but who fit the definition in every sense. (They use words like "butthurt" and "inb4", for starters - words that rarely find their way to other ABDL forums, but words you often see in a collection of tech geeks or gamers.)

The group abhors discussion about diapers. Really. It's stated somewhere in the rules.

It's a group for ageplayers, it purports, but people who post about ageplay are often ridiculed and insulted by the group's moderators and a small collection of regulars. This particular group prefers forum posts where they make fun of people's ABDL-related email messages; they have one whole thread where they make fun of messages they have received from ABDLs doing their best to reach out to other ABDLs - by copying/pasting the private messages into the forum. Some are even made fun of because they're trying to make a connection but are hampered by the fact that they don't speak English as their first language - what the actual fuck? You have to be American now, or you get picked on?) 

In other words, a link to an inspirational blog post - not allowed. Posting the contents of someone's private message for all to see because their translation is not spot on? Perfectly acceptable. 

Make sense?

I wrote a blog entry on it in May, after receiving a number of messages all at once (again, like today). This was not the first time I'd been asked to address it. I had put it off several times. Then, after reading a particular nasty exchange in the group forum, I decided it was time to write something on ABDLs who internet bully others.

Today's emails concerned two recent posts in the group, posts I was surprised to learn I can still link to even after my leaving the group. 

In one post a young ageplayer asked if anyone from his part of the country wanted to talk; this was promptly shut down by a moderator who advised him that he was breaking the rules of the group, and then linked him to a list of rules that failed to show which rule he was breaking. (LOL) 

The second one was a post from someone looking for a mommy; in this instance he was made fun of by no fewer than nine members of the group before he was also advised that his "personal ad" was against group rules, and the post was locked. 

Never mind that these posts could have been handled in a much nicer way, with a group leader (and I use the term loosely, lol) private messaging him to alert him to the group's many rules. Nine people ganging up with insults on one person - and we're all ABDLs. Seriously?

We are all ABDLs. Nothing in either of the posts above was so offensive that it deserved to be insulted, shut down, etc. - much less by nine people. But when you get a group of internet forum trolls together, they feed off of each other. You've probably heard the expression "don't feed the trolls" - the trolls in some groups will eat anything, it seems. 

Today's emails came mostly from people who read the forum post in which I "resigned" my membership. It was a post where a group member had written that she felt that members of the group were becoming incredibly mean; I was one of many members who wrote to agree with her - and then was immediately attacked by the group regulars. 

The one thing that they took particular exception to is something I paraphrased straight from my previous blog entry - one I could not link them to, for fear of violating a group rule hehe. It was this: 

Some of those who make up our community have intense feelings of inferiority. One of the few things that makes them feel better is going on Internet forums and trying to show that they are not inferior to someone. 

I  stated that people who make fun of others live for the opportunity to do so because it makes them feel better about themselves; one or more of the people who read that nerd raged on me - probably because my description hit close to home. They tried to defend their treatment of others in a number of different ways, among them declaring that they were weary of the same old responses on a regular basis, and make fun of them as a coping mechanism. God, the idiocy...

I've been blogging for four years. I've posted many entries urging members of our community to treat each other better. So seeing people treat each other this poorly does something to me. But I can't write a special blog entry on it every time internet forum trolls turn this group into one that makes fun of ABDLs instead of helps them; if I did that, this blog would have to be dedicated to it. 

I will say this: read my blog entry on forum trolls. It has a pretty good message about people who treat each other poorly, and the reasons they do so. 

And while I invite you to continue to message me on any topic (abysitter@gmail.com), I will say this: I already know that there are shitty groups of people within our community, and I'm not going to give them any free publicity by linking to them here. (It has been suggested that I post a link to the entry in which I resigned rather than unblock a moderator, but even that would be free advertising. Fuck that). 

If you are a member of FetLife looking for a decent group of real ABDLs and ageplayers, look no further: both of the groups below are full of people like me and you, and trollage is minimal.

AB/DL

ADULT BABY/DIAPER LOVERS/AGEPLAYERS

And if you are an ABDL but haven't joined FetLife because you've heard about how mean and nasty people can be there, trust me when I say 99% of the site are really dope-ass individuals, welcoming people who don't make fun of, ridicule, belittle, or otherwise insult other ABDLs. 

Just avoid groups where people are mean to each other for no reason. Speak up if you choose - I have on many occasions, as many of you know. But don't expect to convert a troll into a human. It rarely happens. 

Join the site, join the groups above, and meet new people. 

Thanks again to all of y'all who wrote to me today. And, no, I won't be updating this entry with links to the group in question, screenshots, or private messages copied/pasted here; some of us are above that, so thanks in advance for not asking. <3 br="br">

Cwis