Relationships

In my twenties I had time to court women on the Internet, and the fetish market felt like a small town. There was no Tinder, no OnlyFans—just message boards, forums, and late-night chats. It wasn’t easy, but it was viable, and being single meant I could show my face without a second thought.

Two decades later everything feels commercial. Domination slid into the same category as Netflix or Photoshop: a subscription, a service, a product. Findom became a paradigm, and the places that used to feel communal—FetLife, Twitter—turned into billboards. Back then social networks were driven by friendship: add someone and they added you back. Now everything runs on one-way follows. I skim their personas; they never see mine.