Want to send us a message? Phoebe and I have a love-hate relationship with chat rooms. Sometimes chat groups suck! Listen in as we break down all the things we hate about swinger community chats and forums, and some of the reasons why we think you might like them. If you re in swinger chat groups, or want to be, you may want to check this episode out.Be sure to join our growing Patreon community, and gain access to behind-the-scenes, and extra-sexy content. https://patreon.com/SwingerUniversity Support the showWant More?👀 Watch on YouTube: YouTube ShowFull video versions and interactive live episodes!Bonus episodes, exclusive content, and 🌶️Extras: https://www.patreon.com/SwingerUniversity 🛳️🎉Looking for lifestyle events in your area? T4P is the go-to directory for clubs, parties, and resort events. Browse now at Ticket4Play.com Custom SU T-shirts and gear: Our Amazon StoreSwingerLinks.com - live schedule, special offers*, and our 🌶️links!Our Website - Leave us a message, articles, and sexy products3 Ways to get your question on our show:RECORD it on our website at: https://swingeruniversity.com/contact/EMAIL a recorded voice note to: [email protected]: (916) 538-0482 and leave a voicemail.* We get a commission if you decide to purchase through our links, at no cost to you.
Transcript
We have to talk about something we've been genuinely excited about for months, and our patrons actually got a preview of this already. Jamaica! Yes, we are going back, and actually, we have a great offer for you guys. Yeah, it's Swingcation. It's October 11th through the 18th at Hedonism 2. And if you don't know what Swingcation is, it's pretty easy. Swinger plus kink plus vacation. It's a hosted group with real structure, workshops, lectures, real conversations with experts who are passionate about bringing and bridging that gap between the swinger world and the kink world.
And we're not just going as attendees. We're going as featured presenters, which is exciting. We'll be leading sessions. So if you come, we actually get to hang out with you. Which brings up something we should mention. When you use our code, yes, we got a code, you're not just getting a discount. You're getting the signature swing experience, which means $100 off per person, up to $200 per room, but it also means that we make time for you. An exclusive breakfast, lunch, cocktail hour, or one-hour and one time with us directly, plus more surprise benefits.
Here's something that's really unique. You could actually contribute by hosting a discussion or running a Skillshare. I know it's scary, but if you have something that you want to contribute, that's a big part of why this event is so special. Everyone there has something to bring to the table. All right, details. If you book before April 25th, you save $400. Plus, they gave us that special code that gets you an additional $200, and the special code is SWINGERU-VIP. So book through TicketForPlay.com forward slash Swinky. That's T-I-C-K-E-T, the number four, play.com forward slash S-W-I-N-K-Y.
And use our code at checkout. And you guys, if you have any questions about the event, the resort, or what to expect, just reach out. I mean, we're here for you. We're happy to help. So once again, TicketForPlay.com forward slash Swinky, the code SWINGERU-VIP. We really want to see you there. Did you know that many swingers use chat groups and forums in order to communicate with each other and learn about the latest going on in their community? If you didn't, you might be feeling a little FOMO.
Well, we're going to let you in on the pros and cons of some of these chat groups as well as our love and hate of them. Welcome to Swinger University. I'm Phoebe and I i'm ed join us as we explore the exciting world of ethical non-monogamy sexual health and sex education with an intellectual and sexy twist all right i'm excited to talk about this topic because it drives me apeshit. And I have struggled to try and figure out the value of chat groups, chat forums, and that way of connecting. Whether it be through Facebook, Telegram, Discord, MeWe, name it. Any of them. Name it. Yeah.
And I will say I have decided I am a round peg and chat groups are a square hole and we just do not fit. Yeah, chat groups aren't for everybody. We've been in and out of them since we started in the lifestyle and we did the math recently, 12 years ago, at least. And it's kind of a love hate thing. Like I said in the intro, sometimes we like them to be able to find out what's going on, but usually we just, just don't like them. And we'll get into some of the reasons why we don't like them. Yeah. And there are some, some chat groups, forums, they're a little different.
They're, they're more professionals. They're built around conferences or events, mostly sold to companies that are trying to get that particular group together. So let's just say it's a sex toy convention. Right. So people that are going to go to the convention, they'll sell that to an entity. Right. People can chime in and they can they can talk about what they like, what their favorite toy is and how they like it, how they use it, who they, whatever, the favorite color, this, that, and the other thing. What were you going to say?
Well, I was going to say, it's kind of like LinkedIn or Facebook, which is like this big macrocosm of a whole bunch of groups of mixed whatever, but paired down to one specific group for one specific event so that the participants in that event can almost kickstart the conference early. Yes. You get a sense of who's going to be there you can have some conversations you can reach out and network with those specific people and get the whole thing rolling we've had good experience with those yeah sort of yes and we still have some of our our downsides that we'll get into even in those groups.
What is the real purpose of these groups? It's a way to quickly exchange information in real time. It's a space for education and it's a place to ask questions. It's also a place to feel this sense of community and find your tribe connect with others maybe it's a it's a brand new interest that you're into you just got interested in finger painting and you're like oh my god i just found a bunch of people who like right and so now you're you you're discovering there are other people out there like you. And so you get to kind of connect and geek out over this brand new thing that you discovered.
Yeah. The key difference between a forum and a chat group for those people who haven't waded into this, and there are a few of us out there who don't hang out there all the time, you can kind of think of groups like Reddit or even Discord to a certain degree. That's more of a forum. There's chatting going on.
You can start a thread, a specific conversation with a specific question, and then people can kind participate within that conversation and it's it's a permanent record of that conversation so people can refer to it and they can use it as a reference later does discord do that also like reddit does that yeah yeah discord groups tend to work like that too you can scroll back through the history and get that information. Whereas chats, depending on the app, that history can actually disappear. So you might not be able to get the historical context.
The other thing that's unfortunate with chats, because they are, let's say, a way to get to know people. If someone's posted their picture and a little bio about themselves and it disappears, you have to keep repeating yourself. So there isn't a common place within a big, long chat to have all of those bios, who's participating in the group and find out a little bit more about them. Now, some chat platforms are better than others. Telegram, it's okay. And I think that a good tip would be to fill your bio out so that people have a better sense of who you are.
So when you're contributing to that chat, you can just jump into the person's bio and maybe see a picture of the couple, maybe understand what their play preferences are, et cetera, et cetera. But let's get into some of that. Yes. So what are some of these benefits? It does improve social skills. You get an appreciation of different perspectives. You become more effective at communication, theoretically. you learn from one another, and you can inspire one another. And why are they created in the Swinger community? A lot of people build them to build the community, right?
They bring the community together. Within that that community everyone has little sub interests there's communities that only are shop shopping interested in bringing a single into their relationship some are poly some are more bdsm so different little subsections of the community it creates a of belonging, and it also helps relay information about parties that you can't always post everywhere else. Right. Maybe you don't have a large following on Twitter or Instagram, and you can't, or you don't have a Facebook following or a page. So, you use the groups to do that.
I will say a lot of the Facebook groups, the Messenger people feel uncomfortable chatting and sharing sexy pics on Messenger. And I don't even think you can send a sexy pic in Messenger anymore. No, Facebook will probably shut shut it down so a lot of people will go there to meet their group and then they'll message to get to a miwi or telegram chat where they can have more free conversations without being monitored you can set these groups up as a specific community for an area, which is great. Like maybe there's a group of people who regularly get together and have house parties.
Get that group together onto a chat group and send your information back and forth. Unlike a larger party where you're maybe doing it for profit, like a house party, and you want anybody who's visiting or in the area or maybe doesn't even participate that much, maybe even newbies who've never participated, they wouldn't know about your house party in a chat group because it's a private group. Only people who've been invited there know about it.
So if you want to keep party smaller maybe more intimate maybe just your close friends or your your recent acquaintances and not any random person in the internet chat groups are great for that exactly exactly let's get to why they suck we have some strong potentially controversial positions opinions about Thank you. to why they suck we have some strong potentially controversial positions opinions about chat groups right and as a communication major i find them extremely frustrating so they typically are unfiltered and loosely monitored by the host or monitor.
They're also very time-consuming for the host or monitor, admin, and for the end user. Right. So why are they very time-? Well. Okay. Can we talk about October for a second? Oh my God. Yeah. I've been waiting for this.
We were invited to be guest speakers for two engagements on a six-star crystal cruise ship with 310 lifestyle couples and it sails from montreal to boston during the peak foliage season i'm super excited and honestly i'm really nervous yeah it's kind of a version of like a swinger ted talk that we're gonna have to do oh my god i know and more importantly if you know the brand it's llv luxury lifestyle vacations you may have seen them and they're sexy playmakers with their fun red hats this ship the crystal symphony is classy butler service for every single room michelin rated restaurants full spa clothing optional All right.
Crystal Symphony is classy. Butler service for every single room, Michelin rated restaurants, full spa, clothing optional, sensual playrooms, like everything, theme nights and international DJ. So it's luxury and nudity. Oh man, this is going to be great. The bottom line is we want you there with us. It's 310 couples. And like all their vacations, they book up fast. They really do. Their vacations are extremely popular. So please come with us.
And in order to find it, all you have to do is go to our swingerlinks.com and look for the llv sensual voyage we hope you'll join us the long and short of it is it's stream of consciousness just blurting out whatever's on your mind or what's going on in your life and i'm regularly popping into these groups and having to catch up because let's say there's 100 people in there if everybody posts once an hour that's 100 messages per hour if you haven't been in there all day that's 800 messages yeah so you can imagine by the end a day, there's 1500 messages and some of them are just likes, thumbs up, you know, little gifts, random stuff that really isn't necessarily something that you need to keep up on because it was a message back to the original post.
So there's a lot of noise that you've got to scroll through in order to find the meat and potatoes of it. Right. There's also this sense of not belonging. So, if you are a late comer to the group, you kind of feel like you're at the wrong reunion. Right. They've had a party before.
They said, hey, hey we all gel together let's create a group chat and let's let's be selective who else we want to bring in well though okay great but those other people that come they're late to the party why you guys have already you you've played together you spent hours together you have history together there's inside jokes that you don't get there's there's just this right right kind of weird sense where you're like kind of on the other side of the fence going hey what i don't know i don't get the joke i don't know what's going on exactly so despite the host being able to introduce you and kind of bring you into the fold, you always get this feeling that you're just an outsider.
And I don't think, for me, it doesn't improve the longer you're there. So even though you give it the good try and you say, I'm going to be in there every day and participate and read through, and you could do that for 30 days. I think this goes back to some of our fundamental problems with online personalities versus real life personalities. Until you've met someone and actually had a face-to-face conversation with them or flirted with them in real life, you don't really know who they are. But you're right.
It's kind of an inside joke, if you will, because you've never met these people and people in real life are different than they are online. It's not the same. Right. It's not the same. The other thing that drives me nuts. And this is a pro and con. This is all in one it's a pro and con let me preface this with i understand the reason for the naked pics and videos i get it but it drives me nuts it's typically women being posting themselves or their husbands posting to women. So there's usually not enough men. To me, honestly, pros and cons. Let's be real. It is a self-serving ego boost.
And I get it. Let's just be honest. You get to post a picture of yourself. You're like, I'm feeling sexy today. I'm going to post this pic, right? And you post that pic and someone's like, oh my God, you're so sexy. Oh my God. Hurt. Love. Thumbs up. Hey, I'm all for that. Like, I get it. But really, after a while, can we get over that like how long does it take for you to go oh yeah bring it how long how long does that now i personally enjoy posting pics now i don't post very often i post occasionally usually when there's a topic topic for the day and I have something to contribute to it.
But there are individuals who post a lot more than others. And there are some people who post things and I'll kind of get into the pictures. And this is where we get to it.
Some of these really turn into almost their own personal blog because there are usually one or two individuals who post everything that they're doing into that group chat and oh my god and that's that's okay like if you have an instagram account and you want to post what you had for dinner what you had for breakfast your your latest shopping trip all that kind of stuff that's that's cool but people who want to see your stuff and what you're posting would subscribe or follow you on instagram that's perfect for that right but in a chat group or a forum designed to connect people together how how much of you does everybody want to see?
My thought and kind of the rule that I have in my head is it's a sexy group for sexy people doing sexy things. So keep it sexy. Right. And this gets to the, what is the purpose of the group? Right. What is the topic? If it's about, let's just say it's about cats. Sure. Why are you posting photos from you at work? Why are you posting photos of you at the gym? I don't care. Right. Like, I really don't care. Does that make me get to know you better? No.
I mean, in a sense, you've tuned into a group in order to find out about a topic and to come to find out you get there and nobody ever talks about that topic. Well, you're going to you're going to tune out after a while.
It drives me me bananas one of the other things it's kind of an unfortunate side effect of chat groups is if you're not in the chat group and let's say you're at a party and a bunch of people are talking about hey did you hear about this thing or the latest event or the next party oh it's it's in our chat group and you're like, what what secret club that i'm not invited to i'm already in the secret club right but there's now a secret secret club yes that's just in this chat group yes there's a telegram group that we'd heard about at a house party real example everyone there at the party was in this group except us yes and we were like i guess we're a not the cool kids right because we didn't hear about it right b how did we not hear about it right and and then c we okay now we now we really want to be in the group and then once we got in the group we didn't participate enough and so we got kicked out yes Thank you so much.
okay now we now we really want to be in the group and then once we got in the group we didn't participate enough and so we got kicked out yes because literally people posted 24 7 365 like constantly i'm i'm convinced that some of these people actually don't work I there's no way I I do not know how people actually hold down a job and do this at the same time it cannot be risky high explosive kind of work because they're obviously not paying attention to whatever they're doing because they're on their phones all the time which makes makes me really nervous. Right.
Depending on what kind of job you have. Probably they're not, you know, pilots or something. Yeah. After all of this, like who really benefits from this thing even existing? Yeah. What do you get out of it? Yeah.
You do get a little bit a an ego boost from posting your picture and people admiring you from afar i like the little hot things but i was also the nerd in high school that nobody really paid attention to and so now i'm kind of living a little vicariously through this going some chicks actually think i'm hot that's kind of cool wait You like the little thumbs up and the hearts and i do i do like that and i i will actually go in and see who liked it because it gives me a sense of who finds me attractive but you don't get tired of that no i don't but i don't get very much of it too because i'm a guy oh because women aren't typically hearting or thumbs upping your or do you just typically guys don't post pictures and there there isn't a lot of participation of guys in forums right it's all about the the it's titty tuesday it's right thick thigh thursday it's most of those little themes that get kind of cooked up in forums.
They're for women to post their pics. Do you feel weird if it was Titty Tuesday and you post your titties just to fit in? Well, some groups do a good job of creating a secondary theme for the guys to be able to participate. I can't remember some of them off the top of my head, but like Man Meet Monday. Oh, my goodness. You can guess what's in there. Wait, wait. Okay, so I just bashed everyone earlier about the ego boost. Yes. Right?
And it right so what did that offend you did did you like no how do you feel about that well because i think that there's in in everything in life there's moderation and if i were to post every five minutes a picture of my junk people would get tired of it. If I was constantly posting, even if it was sexy, let's say it's not a picture of the wood shop or me cooking a meal or any of the other things that I do around the house, scrubbing toilets, those things are not sexy.
So people would, I would hope, would get upset about me posting dumb stuff that doesn't have anything to do with the topic at hand. But even if I keep it topical, even if I keep it sexy, there's a limit. How many times do I need to see the same person post the same picture or a variation on that picture? Yes. It's nice to be reminded every once in a while. Let's say you get a new sexy piece of lingerie and you think it's great. It's okay to share that with the group.
But if you've got an entire OnlyFans batch of photos with the same piece of lingerie with 40 different poses, I don't think you need to post all of those. So you're saying moderation, not every day, not the same photo. Right, right. Everything in life is great in moderation. Right. Drink a little, smoke a little, have a couple pieces of candy.
You don't have to gorge yourself on any one thing so don't fire hose the chat with all of your pictures even if they're sexy i i think a lot of moderators think that keeping it sexy means sexy pics right and i i don't i don't understand like the point of all of that. Yeah, because I think that there's other ways to engage people in foreplay, if you will, through conversation or through talking about sexy things. Right. What's going to make that quality connection?
it mental typically yeah especially for women typically topical so once again not about all those other examples that we gave before well and to to kind of get into a little bit of it the enthusiasm about a particular topic it's much easier to express that than it is through a picture why because if you're enthusiastic in a movie clip or a picture you're just doing something sexual it's basically just porn but that doesn't get into your your inner feelings about how hot you think that thing is right pretty much everybody looks the same when they're jerking off or playing with their tits that doesn't look all that much different i mean we all moan a little bit different we may have a different technique but the mechanics of it are the same but talking about it and getting into the juicy details of why you find that hot is way hotter.
I agree. Way hotter. I agree. And you get a sense of that person and kind of what makes them sexual, what makes them hot through that much better than you do than just seeing a picture of them, as we've said, talking to people and kind of digging into their personality and their sexuality is usually way more fun and interesting than getting a naked picture of them. Right. I agree. Much, much better than a 2D pic to have this type of conversation or insight into their mind, their interests, their... Right. Maybe even their kinks, right?
And that, I think, helps to build that quality connection, even though I'm still sticking by this. Yeah. Real life is so much better than a chat group. It's a false equivalency to think that they're the same thing. They're not. I don't care how much time you spent chatting with someone online. Meeting them in real life is an entirely different experience. It is. It is entirely different do you do you feel more connected to a community by being in these groups? And how? These are some of the questions I have. Do you feel more knowledgeable? Do you have this sense of belonging? And how so?
What kind of information was shared about swinging that you didn't know? And are you someone that really needs to be that connected and distracted all day long? And I would say in the beginning for us, that need to feel connected, which was distracting because we were trying to figure out swinging and the components of it. There wasn't a lot of information out there, and everyone seemed to have it all figured out.
And we were listening to a lot of podcasts to try and figure out what the heck is this thing so it was very distracting i will say um my brain was thinking about that quite often at work and it was new and novel and interesting and blah so i do get that Um, but I will say the, in comparison, the groups and forums that are out today, maybe more so the forums, probably address a lot of the questions people have, like newbies have for their lifestyle.
depending on depending on the forum um there are some that i think are very newbie friendly um for for people who are just getting into it maybe don't have a lot of experience with it there are online forums and and some chat groups that can help people and kind of foster that welcoming and encouraging experience there are others and I will not name them, but they are on Reddit, that are troll fests. And if you say just the wrong thing, you will be lumbasted out of existence.
It's unfortunate that there are some people who are in the, well, we already know already know club and this is our club and we like to hang out here and talk and by you bringing in questions that have been this is a very common phrase there asked and answered yes go read the forums yeah rtfm as they like to say go read the fucking manual and that's not really conducive because people are just browsing and here's another thing and this is this is where it gets very convoluted and very frustrating in some of these groups there's actual internet etiquette that says don't go back bring back to life these old posts if you have an additional question they call them necro posts because they just won't ever die and a lot of forums don't want something from 1987 being brought back to life and brought in because things have changed the answers are different it's it's not a good post and a lot of times they want you to start a new conversation because the societal dialogue has changed.
Can you imagine posts from the 90s talking about the LGBTQ community versus posts today? Entirely different conversation. Yes. I mean, back back then you'd be talking about the HIV epidemic and how it was devastating your community. And now it's all about PrEP and PEP and all these other things. And what was going on then is not the same thing that's going on now.
And the same thing is true in the swearing community so it's kind of a catch-22 with these posts and some of these groups be cautious go in gently and don't necessarily ask controversial things or if it starts to go controversial just back out because it's just not worth it. It's not worth engaging in it. I will say there are probably eight very good, could be as many as eight, eight very good Facebook forums for swingers that have large communities. We're talking thousands, 50,000, 100,000 people. And there are very good contributors in that forum that answer questions.
You get stupid answers like, you shouldn't even be a swinger then. Like, how is that helpful? Like, really? Right. Those are the knee-jerk troll responses where people are just trying to get a reaction out of people. I hate that. But there are a lot of people that go in and they have genuine questions, new people. And so that is a good way to get some questions answered. Sure, sure. Yeah, they're not all evil, but be cautious. Yes. When you step in it, you'll know it. Right. It's kind of smell. That stink. How to run a good chat.
Here are some of the tips that we think and have seen how good chats are run. A clear title on what the chat is about. So you know exactly what you're getting into. Right. If you've got some abstract title or it's vague or it's just cute and maybe quirky, people don't know what they're getting into. Right. Clear and detailed rules. And this is so that people know how to behave and you know how to, and then you can hold people accountable so that you can follow up with people and go, Hey, appreciate you participating, but rule number three says you can't really say that there's a warning.
Just, you know, be cautious, blah, right? Here's why we sail on Virgin. It's adults only. No kids screaming at breakfast, no family buffet lines, just champagne at noon, late night pool parties, and people who actually want to be there. The vibe? Think boutique hotel that happens to float. Tattoo parlors, drag brunch, restaurants you'd actually pay for on land. Plus, when you're looking to connect with other couples who know how to have fun, let's just say Virgin attracts a very specific type of adventurous. No wonder Breadcruisers here, just your people.
And these clear detailed rules really set the expectation and the tone for what that community supports and condones. So if you're not clear with your rules, people will do whatever they want. And as a society, we've got some people who are on varying ends of spectrums. And there are certain things that maybe the group has decided we don't want discussed. A lot of them that I would say in a swinger group that you probably don't want to bring up. You don't want to bring up politics. You don't want to bring up kids. Right.
Neither one of those things are particularly sexy and they are highly polarizing. Right. You want to have daily monitoring and with an admin presence, maybe multiple admins, depending on the size of the group or you you know you probably would like or should have a backup you can't always be in the group maybe you're in multiple groups and you you just don't have the bandwidth something happens there's a death in your family or your job got really busy or you want to go on vacation, having a backup or two or three backups is key.
Or you have a job and during the day you need somebody who can moderate who maybe doesn't have a full-time job or works different hours than you. Right. The monitors also keep the chat on track. Keep it from going to sideways. If it's a chat, once again, about cats, cooking isn't allowed, right? So keeping the chat on track, keeping the group in the same space, it helps everyone to, you know, talk about the same thing. Right.
and because you have rules posted and you keep enforcing those rules consistently so consistent enforcement of the rules is very important right sending warnings out to those people who are not complying they're not following the rules and or even just pulling their posts down and then sending them a small message going we had to pull that down because you started talking about politics or you started talking about phishing right it's a swinger group let's talk about swinging right you also want to reach out to those individuals who are extreme over sharers and typically typically, they're off topic.
Or people just dominate the post. Also, a good chat post forum is daily posts of information or questions to keep the group interested or to get the group talking. Maybe people aren't really active. Right. It's also a way to kind of swing the conversations back towards a particular, you know, topic or to away from anything else that's going on.
Yeah, maybe one topic spurred off a side topic and a side topic's kind of like going way off on left field and you want to kind them back that's also yes a very good way to do that consider limiting the number of people in the group oh what a hundred hundred's pretty big yeah and you'd be surprised at even a small group how many messages can can fly through and i think it comes down to what's the purpose of the. If it's to foster a community and you're not going to kick people out for lack of participation, then having 100 people in there may not be that big a deal.
Knowing full well that no one can keep up with the fire hose that's going to happen in terms of information being sent through. But if it's a small group for a specific party yeah limited to the number of people who you think are going to attend your party plus the the you know people canceling at the last minute over planning yeah so that's a good point when you're talking about maybe it's a temporary chat for a party, but so why was it created and how long? And it all kind of plays into that and the number of people you want in there.
And if it's one of those temporary chats, I would recommend shutting the chat down after the event. Yes. Yes. Maybe give them a week. Yes. Because they can reconnect. One of the most frustrating things that we had when we first signed on to sls as an example they'd post a party everybody would say i'll be there you go to the party you meet people and you didn't get their number or you didn't get their name or you want to connect with them on the social platform And what SLS would do is at midnight of that day, that event, it would disappear. They fixed that.
And now it hangs around for, I don't know how many days, 24, 48 hours or something, so that you can find their profiles and connect with them after those events. Yes. That's key. It was key. I loved when they changed that feature because no one's walking around with their phones. Typically, because it's an event where you can't have your phones out and you're socializing with people. You're not really on your phone. Yeah.
So think about what the purpose of the chat group is or the forum and how long you want to keep it up the main reason to shut it down after the fact is you don't want to have to maintain two separate groups so let's say it's a splinter group from the main chat just for this party people who decided to go to this party well you don't want this to become its own group and start to grow and have its own personality. You want, you want to bring those people back into the main conversation. So shut it down, move everybody back. Exactly. Admins are typically very good at introducing new people.
That is a function. They all in all the forums tend to, to know to do if they in discord, you are required to do that typically as part of your schedule of things that you have to check off when you sign up. Right. There's usually an order of operations before you can even participate. Correct. So if you're not in a Discord group like that, then in the chat groups, the admin will introduce you. And I'll see you're into. yeah yeah usually we'll do uh basically like a mini bio who we are where we live what we like to do, what we're looking for.
And another key one, whether you're open to direct messages or not. So if it's OK to DM, DM you, say it in there, because then as people are reading your bio and they're like, oh, they're kind of fun. We'd like to meet them. Then they can send you a direct message and they can start that conversation which is the whole point at least for us right of meeting people online is so that we can meet them in real life exactly exactly and for a a new person the admins should be the primary responder to the new people's posts, at least for the first week, maybe two weeks. Kind of pull them in.
To pull them in, make them feel welcome. And when an admin responds, other people tend to chime in. They're like, oh, the admin responded. And so then they'll chime in. And you can kind of think of admins as the customer service or the public relations face, Julie Cruz director, if you will, of the chat group. Right. So they're the designated greeter. They're the designated participant. They're the designated fomenter of new topics. So you also become the person who tries to pull people into the chat and get them to participate. And some people just won't participate, but you have to try.
Right. And then the admin, lastly, will kick those out that don't share. Some do, some don't. I see this often where they do. Now, a lot of admins will call them lurkers. We're going to kick the lurkers out because they don't share. There's pros and cons with that. Pros and cons. Because what you're forcing people to do is maybe be outside of their comfort zone.
Maybe they don't post pictures of themselves because of the job that they have or their position within a community and but they're there to find out about parties so that they can actually hang out with the real people so if your forum really is online only and you you don't have any intention of getting these people together then yeah you you can kick people out if they don't participate because that is the end goal, participation within the group. But if your end goal is to break the ice before a physical event, then kicking people out may not be such a good thing to do. Right. Exactly.
All right. So, so well that was exciting a lot of pros and cons and you definitely got to see my feelings and reaction to chat groups what let's wrap this up what how do you feel about the forums and the chat groups i have mixed feelings about forums and chat groups. And there are definitely some groups that I will not participate in because of the volatile nature of that community. For me, it's not worth the risk of engaging in a hostile group or a potentially hostile group. And so I just avoid them.
Um, even though I feel like I have information and we do as a, as podcasters and, you know, 12 year experience veterans within the lifestyle, we contribute, but I'm going to choose to contribute through the podcast or our YouTube channel and not in those forums because I don't want to deal with the stress and the challenges of working with people who are there just just to be mean yeah for me it's not worth the stress I've had enough crazy in my life and I choose to not engage with people like that just like i don't engage in a lot of political forums because of that it's just too polarizing what about the chat groups do you don't really participate much in them i don't and i have a job i i work and it's very focused job it requires my attention.
It's very detail-driven. Same. I could spend periods of time throughout the day doing that, but I also am managing our social media. And I'm managing the podcast. And I'm checking on our financials and all kinds of stuff we're planning trips and other social things other social outside activities besides that so right i i get that a lot of people that this is their main focus and this is their main outlet for social engagement i have a lot of other outlets and i have a lot of things that kind of distract me from that um so yeah my participation varies It's a great place.
I have a lot of other outlets and I have a lot of things that kind of distract me from that so yeah my participation varies it depends I go through cycles where I participate more and less I will typically try and you know get that notification counter down so I'll periodically go in but I try not to go more than a day or two from jumping into those so that i'm not overwhelmed by right the volume because it bothers me yeah to try and catch up and there have been key moments where i've missed out because a new couple maybe introduced themselves and i didn't get to introduce us to them or you you missed somebody's introduction because it's two days ago.
It just went by. It's gone. So you don't really know the changes. That's one of the features of some of the groups. They can pin to the top of the thread new information like a party or anything that's new.
And that's nice to have in there when the admins do do that but I you are I am out of all those groups now and you are in charge yeah because it gives me so much stress like viscerally I can't handle it I just can't it is not my thing yeah makes me very anxious i have tried and tried and tried honestly social media has never been my thing and and we are deep in it and we are pulling someone out of it it just doesn't do anything for me and it just creates a lot of stress, honestly. So, but we realize they do have a lot of value for a lot of people and brings communities together.
I think they can be great for information, especially for parties and things that are going on. Yeah. And I think that's what I'm trying to rely on it for is an alternative to the the typical swinger dating sites like sdc and cassidy and sls because it is our local group and these are people theoretically who we're going to run into i kind of want to get to know them a little bit um and and it it might lead us to attend an event or a party because those people are there. And we're like, we really want to meet these people. They seem like a lot of fun.
I will say in closing that the chat forums that I find the most beneficial are the ones that are a lot more, have a lot more structure to them. So there it's a different type of app. It's more of a professional business type of app right where you get more of a more options within the chat to break out different forums it's like a tree it's kind of like a discord in an app yeah yeah and you and it's for a limited time let's say you're going to an event and it the chat opens three before, it really does give you the opportunity to get to trying.
You do kind of get to know people because there's a tree of information.
You get people that are interested in alcohols or BDSM or there's different topics that start to crop up right and then you can kind of gravitate to those people and start having conversations and then you connect with those people when you get there right because what they've done is they've taken the one long massive super thread of all the conversations and they've broken it up into subtopics so you can participate in the areas that you find interesting yes it it's it's nice to be able to choose what you want to participate in and with one big thread it's almost you don't get to choose yeah whatever the group is doing at that particular time right right.
Well, it was very comprehensive, this topic, I feel. It was a little all over the place, but we were very passionate about this topic, and we hope it was very informative. oh one last thing before you go. If this episode helped you in any way, the single best thing you can do to support the show is leaving a rating and review. It takes 60 seconds and helps new people find us when they're searching for relationship education. And we've made it easy. Visit swingeruniversity.com forward slash review. All the instructions are there. Thank you for being part of this community.
