Using digital tools to be successful in the Lifestyle

Transcript

Speaker1: good morning good afternoon and good evening wherever you may be i hope you have blue skies and a smile in your heart welcome to that other lifestyle podcast i am your host jason and we talk about the good the bad the ugly and the weird sides of this wild lifestyle you are beautiful impressive wonderful and handsome i am thankful you're listening today just need to tell you that friends and associates, we are talking about the digital. Last episode, I mentioned that 72% of swingers use websites to find prospective new friends. So I want to do a deep dive into the wild world of websites and apps and social media. I will share a list of all the top swinger sites, maybe a few you've never heard of, and share potentially the most important public service announcement you will hear this week. Time for my personal advertisement and disclaimer. If you want to sign up for a swinger site, I have an affiliate link on my website, thatofthelifestyle.com, that you can use to sign up for SDC when we do talk about it. Please note that this podcast is intended only for adults. This is not safe for work, y'all. We will talk about adult or sexual topics, and I will use some salty language often. This content is for entertainment purposes only, and again, only for those over 18 years of age. I also try to be as inclusive with my language and terms as I can. It can be challenging to formulate and write and say all the inclusive terms in every instance. For simplicity's sake and time management, I may use terms like husband or wife or partner or spouse for the purpose of the narrative I am sharing. This podcast is for everyone, though. No matter your background, gender identity, gender expression, or whatever truth you may be living, everyone is welcome. The lifestyle can be incredibly daunting to start out. No connections, no one to ask for advice, certainly not your friends or family or neighbors. There is a desire to participate, but where to start? So, let's walk newbie couple, Nancy and Nolan. Again, I pick terrible names for my imaginary people through navigating the two most popular options for meeting other lifestyle I'll see quotes around it. If you go to Google or Bing and type in swinger website, there is a concafony of links and sites and articles pointing to other sites and articles. It is a knotted mess of confusion. There's an article out there that recommends these 10 swinger sites or these five apps. This post says to use this one. It can be a lot. And then there's a worry about digital safety and security and hell, are these sites even legitimate? I want to cut through all that clutter and walk the newbies and you, dear listener, through how to use social media and digital tools to establish an online swinger presence and meet some sexy people. Newbies, Nancy, Nolan, wannabe swingers. The hard part is where to start. You can't just walk around the neighborhood declaring, I am now a swinger looking to engage in fuckery with others while blowing a trumpet and waving a flag that says send newts. There is also the super awkward technique of dropping subtle hints around or the ever popular, why don't you come back to our hot tub trick at a local bar while clutching a pineapple. None of these work. After considering all these bad options, Nancy and Nolan realize they will need to use social media of some sort to meet other people. And being in their late 40s, they think, hey, let's go to Facebook first. I hear a lot of people cringing at this idea, and I'm going to tell you why. In my humble opinion, Facebook and Reddit, which we'll talk about later, are the worst places to dip your toes into the lifestyle for very different reasons. And brief note, there are other social media sites like LinkedIn. Please don't use LinkedIn for swinging or dating or meeting other people. There are enough lunatics on that site without throwing lifestyle conversations into the mix. So why is Facebook bad for swinging? I say that knowing full well someone will disagree with it and that's cool. You can have your own opinions and start a podcast and share those opinions too. Nancy and Nolan each have a personal Facebook page that they use to communicate with friends and family and work acquaintances. Whatever groups they join or friends they make or post will be visible unless they go through a very convoluted process of hiding certain people from other people on Facebook or changing settings to private. To me, this sounds like a raging headache. Admittedly, I am not super well-versed in Facebook. I know, crazy, right? I ditched it back in the 2010s and didn't get back onto Facebook at all until I started this podcast. And my existence on Facebook is solely dedicated to the frisky and fun arts. I have no vanilla connections and I did that on purpose. I am positive someone out there in the wild lifestyle can offer better guidance on this than me on effectively how to use Facebook for the lifestyle. All I got is my own limited guidance and knowledge here for y'all. If the newbies want to use Facebook for any kind of LS activity, they need to create a new profile. Probably need a new phone number to register it. Create a third profile that is just for lifestyle with just lifestyle friends and interesting groups. Segment this part of your life away from the vanilla world. Much less likely that the newbie's family and friends and neighbors and co-workers are going to find their lifestyle page. As an added layer of security, and this applies to all sites and apps. You do not have to post face pics. You can blur out your faces. It's totally cool. But the newbies think, how will people recognize us? They won't. And that's kind of the point. Lifestyle people, we understand blurring your face is not a social faux pas like it would be in the vanilla world. We get it and understand. The point is to keep vanilla people from recognizing you while you're out doing shenanigans. With Facebook, there are lifestyle groups out there. They are kind of hard to find though because out of all the data and demographics that Facebook collects on every single one of us, I'm pretty sure it does not have a lifestyle variable in that cauldron of personal information. On Facebook, the newbies, you got to be sneaky because lifestyle people are sneaky. For groups, you can search for the term swinger and find LS groups or maybe pineapple or lifestyle, some combination of those words. That's a good place to start. If you have a specific fetish or kink and you're looking for that, give it a whirl like feet and see what comes up. You might get lucky. Another option where you can meet other lifestyle people is Reddit. I say this with all honesty and sincerity in my heart. Reddit is a raging dumpster fire of the internet. That's coming from someone who uses Reddit daily. There's a similar protocol as Facebook. You can make a profile. You can go searching on there. You can find other subreddits dedicated to meeting other swingers. There's swinger groups from all over the world on Reddit. There is a lot more anonymity on Reddit, which can be a double-edged sword though. I will recommend Reddit to increase your personal knowledge of the lifestyle. r slash swinger, that subreddit, r swinger, is a great resource for newbies and experienced people to learn. The community on Reddit does an excellent job of organizing all these learning guides, FAQs, and starting guides for new couples. Every day, somebody is asking a random question, and I like this. I recommend with those random questions, you share them with your spouse. Ask them and discuss how you and your spouse would handle these incredibly bizarre but random situations that apparently do come up. If the newbies decide to use Reddit for dating, there is less chance they'll be found out by their vanilla associates, unlike Facebook. Anonymity can be your friend on this. On the flip side, with a super low barrier to entry, there is no guarantee that the person you connect with on Reddit is, number one, real. Number two, the person you think they are. Number three, you're going to need to do some verification personally before you start seriously interacting with anyone that you meet from Reddit. Pro tip, pro fucking life tip right here. This is super important. Someone out there needs to learn this right now. As I said, the most important public service announcement you are going to hear all week right now. There are porn sites, dedicated porn sites with porn right in the name of the website from all over the world that will skim the nudes and videos from Reddit every day for content. Yes, your pictures and videos that you post on Reddit can end up on some janky porn site out there. There are certain subreddits like r slash swingergonewild where these porn sites will actively copy and take nudes and videos from those subreddits and put them out there on other websites. This happens. I know this happens. Your nudes are not safe on Reddit. If you post anything on Reddit, please hide your faces, hide tattoos, any other identifiable information. Just assume any not-safe-or-worth subreddit with boobies and peckers could and is being skimmed. There is no protection in place for the pictures that people put up on Reddit. Anyone, anywhere, anytime can download a GIF or a video or a picture from Reddit and they got it forever. Be it a fedora wearing troll in his mother's basement or a million-dollar operation that just needs more content, this is the most important public service announcement you're going to get. And assume that all of Reddit is being skimmed by porn poachers. Just assume it. Nancy and Nolan want to put spicy selfies up on Reddit to drum up some attention. Cool. I would strongly recommend putting a watermark on those pictures. Huh? I know what you're thinking. What's a watermark? Watermark is a little graphic or text or something that marks the picture as your property. This is an insurance policy that should help if those spicy selfies escape into the wild. Granted, that watermark will not stop people from taking the picture though. The porn sites and the people that still pics from Reddit are probably based in countries where you have no legal power to petition them to take them down. You can request the pics to be removed from the offending website by emailing them, but I can't guarantee success on that. And I can almost guarantee that that ain't going to work. Once those images are up on porn sites, then they're indexed by search engines and they're going to show up on Google or Bing. What you thought was a cheeky bit of fun now exists in the wider internet world and can show up to anyone, anywhere. So what can you do about your pictures now showing up on search engines? I can help with that. There's a tool called an image removal request for search engines like Google or Bing. If there is an image that needs to be removed from search results, there is a tool offered by the search engines. At a minimum, it's going to get the picture delisted from results. We'll be right back. Bing. If there is an image that needs to be removed from search results, there is a tool offered by the search engines. At a minimum, it's going to get the picture delisted from results. I know on Google it's called the image removal request tool. I can't remember what the Bing one is called. You fill out a form and then submit and wait, usually 24 hours, and it can be super successful if you can claim ownership, which you do have by having a watermark on those pictures. Boom. Full circle advice. Facebook, there are privacy concerns for newbies, Nancy and Nolan. And with Reddit, it can work and it cannot work. What Nancy and Nolan need are dedicated websites for meeting other swingers. And I got a few to share with you. Maybe you've heard of these or maybe just want to try a new platform. For the websites, no particular order. And again an affiliate link with STC. Where the newbies join a swinger site there's a layer of comfort there in that it can be assumed albeit tentatively that everyone on the website is in this hobby too. Especially if they commit money to paying a membership every month this totally deters the snoops and the lick it loose. It is possible for people to slip in that may have nefarious motives like cheating spouses or catfishes. The newbies and you still need to exercise basic internet safety caution when meeting anyone online or conversing with them. At least with the swinger sites, there's factors that help. No one has to use any of these websites or apps or platforms, by the way. You can go find a local sex club. You can find a meetup or a takeover and just show up and see what happens i'll do a whole episode one day on how to navigate a meetup for couples in the future but i don't want anyone to think you have to do it this way or you have to participate in this aspect of the lifestyle you do you and whatever works for you i know for my wife and i we started using the apps which i'm going to touch on. Then we progressed to the swinger sites and we met a bunch of people. And now we mainly, almost exclusively just meet other couples at parties or takeovers. Everyone evolves in their swinger journey. Whatever journey you take is totally fine. For the swinger websites, I will mention a few specifically by name, still totally up to the newbies and you, which ones you go with. First, let me share the criteria I'm going to use to gauge these sites. First criteria. Is there a paywall? Do you have to pay to access this site? Spoiler, the reputable sites you need to pay for membership. What? I have to pay money to meet swingers? No, you can meet swingers anywhere. You have to pay money to use these websites, which is not a bad thing. I like paywalls. I like having profiles and pictures and the ability to communicate with members behind a paywall. This is beneficial because it cuts down on looky-loos and flakes and nefarious people. If an unbearably insufferable vanilla person with way too much time on their hands and they need to be nosy wants to know if their neighbors are swingers, they need to pay $10.99 a month to find out. It's much easier to hide behind a paywall because it discourages people who are just randomly surfing the internet, stumble on this site, and decide to go snooping. A lot of the sites do offer a free trial membership, which is fine because they also offer the ability to hide your profile from trial members. No offense to trial members, but either commit or get the hell out. If you want to see my profile, commit. Another consideration, are your pictures and information safe on these websites? I will point out this egregious option I found on adultfriendfinder.com, which was the reason I wanted to make this episode. It's what inspired me. Adultfriendfinder.com, I don't like it. I don't like this website because under privacy preferences, there is an option to have your pictures and profile indexed by search engines. Hell to the no. Why does this exist? Why is this even an option? The fuck? Let me back up. Education moment. Search engines like Google, they crawl through websites, they scan all the websites, and they're going to index the pictures and information to be listed on the search engines and in the giant databases. For most swingers, this is bad. This is very bad. If you have spicy content with your vajayjay hanging out, people don't want Google to index that picture. You need and want it hidden behind a paywall so only other swingers can find it, not your best friend or your boss or the Sunday school teacher at church. I'm flabbergasted. This fucking option even exists on this website. Passing it along, do with this what you will. When newbie Nancy and Nolan sign up for a swinger site, they want to know that their personal information is safe. Pictures and connections are secure as in they are not being indexed by search engines, which coincidentally is one of the definitions of the dark web, that secret part of the internet that is not crawled or accessed by search engines. Paywall is good. The price to access the site is usually negligible, like $10 or $20 a month, but you do get your money's worth. And there's monthly, yearly, or lifetime membership options available too. Another consideration for all of these sites is the geographic area. Some sites are way more popular in different parts of the world. Try the sites I'm going to mention later. See which one has the most members or community in your particular part of the world. The newbies can sign up for multiple sites as well. They and you can have profiles everywhere on all of them to increase the odds. There's no rule against that. Better throw out five nets to go fishing than just one net. So what are these mythical magical websites? First, sdc.com. Granted, I am biased because I have an affiliate link with them, but I like this one. Worldwide membership, interface is good, lots of activity and options to interact with other couples. Next up is fabswingers.com. Fabswingers. This site is more for English-speaking countries outside the USA. Think the UK and Australia. I like the verification process for this site. New members have to provide a picture of themselves holding a picture ID. I like that a lot because that deters the fakes. I mentioned fakes and it happens. There could be one half of a married couple who wants to try swinging. Their partner is not on board. So the other person secretly makes a profile anyway and then tries to con other couples into meeting them. And then they're like, oh, I'm sorry. My wife is sick tonight, but I'm here. Let's hang out. It happens. And a paywall and verification process discourages that. And there might be dedicated websites for your country or geographic area. Like New Zealand has kiwiswingers.co.nz. Again, whatever site you decide to go with, just do your due diligence, check the criteria for security and access. Cassidy.com is popular in the USA. It's got a decent interface and membership base, but that one's very dependent on geographic area though. Fuck adultfriendfinder.com are running. Fuck them. No. Another one, SLS or swinglifestyle.com, same thing. The interface is meh, but they have a very large membership because they've been around for a long time. Try out all these sites. Figure out which one is a good fit for you as a couple in your area. FetLife is another reputable active site. That one's more dedicated to like BDSM and fetish play. Please don't think this is an all-inclusive list either. I know there are other sites out there like Quiver.com. The ones I've given you, these are the sites with the largest following that I personally prefer and I'm familiar with. Nancy Nolan, they pull the trigger. They sign up for a swinger site. Good for them. It can be overwhelming when they log in for the first time. Profiles everywhere and nudes and words and acronyms. It is daunting. How do you start meeting people? Do you randomly send out messages? What's the best tactic? One pointer I can offer is to look at the groups on these sites. Maybe they're called communities depending on what site you're on. There are lots and lots of groups dedicated to everything from cars to fitness to cooking. Swingers coming together for a shared common passion besides the fuckery. Go look through the groups. Some are wide open everyone. Some have requirements. Maybe they're invite only. It's a good place to start. Some groups like my SDC group called That Other Lifestyle, real original name here, which you should totally join, is dedicated to media and entertainment. Look for local swinger club groups or local meetups groups too. These are great ways to network and meet people. Nancy and Nolan decide that none of the groups in their local area Thank you. media, and entertainment. Look for local swinger club groups or local meetups groups too. These are great ways to network and meet people. Nancy and Nolan decide that none of the groups in their local area quite match what they're looking for. Well, they can make a new group. You are fully empowered on these sites to make a group. Make it dedicated to people who enjoy chewing aluminum foil or pottery or 18th century history. It doesn't matter. Starting a group and networking with a group is probably the most efficient way to meet lots and lots of people quickly. Another feature I want to call out on these sites is the ability to validate or verify or certify a couple, whatever term the site uses. When a couple meets another couple, they can then go on to the website that they met them on and verify that the couple is real. It can be a simple, I validate this couple is real, or a much longer detailed write-up of the couple, I have seen validations that rival the greatest movie or Yelp reviews. This ability to validate or verify or certify is super helpful for others to know that Nancy and Nolan, for instance, are real people. In addition to websites, there are apps, so many apps out there. My wife and I, when we started our lifestyle journey, we started with an app, like I said. The barrier to entry is super low. Most have an interface that copies straight off of Tinder. Like, Tinder figured out the perfect way to do a dating on an app, and everyone just copied their homework. A person or a couple makes a profile, puts up some pictures, and that's it. Very low effort, which is easy. And for that that reason they attract a lot of low effort couples low effort couples will post one out of focus picture and write looking for fun in the most grammatically wrong way possible they will offer no personal details measurements preferences zip zero nothing skip those fucking people if they can't be bothered to fill out a profile then they aren't worth your time downside of the app at least in my experience insanely flaky people again it's that low barrier to entry there's no commitment those apps are as bad as a haunted house with all the ghosting the benefit of the apps is they can be highly specific to certain audiences or whatever you're trying to attract or whatever you're attracted to the swinger sites all lifestyle people, like those who are looking for full swap or soft swap or threesomes or whatever. With apps, they can be very specific to certain groups of people and the people who want to bang those people. For instance, 3Fun, primary purpose is to connect couples with a third person for a threesome. Felt is for those in alternative lifestyles, not just swingers on there. There are apps dedicated to finding bisexual people like Bicupid or Foot Fetishists. The whole range of human sexual expression is out there. For the apps, there may be a paywall, which is fine. Again, low barrier to entry. Really depends on your geographic area, though. If your town only has a thousand people in it, I promise there will not be much activity on these apps versus a major metropolitan area. Nancy and Nolan Nuvi will need a tool to communicate with all these couples they're meeting. Spinning back to the start of the conversation, Facebook does have Messenger. I personally do not like Facebook Messenger. I feel that my LS activity and the stuff I discuss with other LS people, I don't want Facebook skimming it for personal information. Call me weird. I don't like it. If it works for you though, rock on. Facebook Messenger is a good choice to communicate with the swinger groups you join on that site. But in my experience, the Facebook groups may use an alternative chatting platform in addition to Messenger. The swinger sites, they do offer messaging services, a way to chat with other couples. This feature may be locked behind a paywall though. So you might join the site, not pay, get messages, and then you have to pay to see those messages. I don't like this tactic from websites. It feels kind of sketch. Match.com and Harmony got in trouble a couple of years ago because when members would join those dating sites, they would magically have all these messages that they then had to pay to read the messages, and when they did pay, all the messages magically disappeared. I won't say this logic applies to the swinger sites, but yeah, don't sign up and pay just because you have messages. There are alternative texting apps out there. The worst alternative, which I hope the entire LS community collectively drops, is KIK. K-I-K. We used this app when we started in the LS because that's what everyone else was using. Please stop. It is terrible. Horrible interface, ads every two minutes, scams, bots. It is just horrible. If you're currently using KIK, just stop. There are better options. I will lump Telegram, Signal, and WhatsApp into the same bucket. Telegram, Signal, WhatsApp. The benefit is that you can have group chats, big group chats, as in more than four people chatting at one time. I have been in groups of upwards of 400 people, which is super nice for interacting and meeting people. And you can be in lots of groups and meet lots of people that way. Special call out to Snapchat. I cannot stand Snapchat. There is too much stuff on the screen at one time and my brain cannot process all of that. The benefit of Snapchat though is that users can send messages to auto delete or disappear after a set time frame. So this is a good option for sharing nudes and making sure they disappear. I totally see the appeal of Snapchat. It just ain't for me. Poorly planned transition? Activate. Acronyms. Nancy and Nolan, as they're scrolling through profiles, will come across various phrases and acronyms. Yes, I had to research the meaning behind these terms myself when we started, so let me save you the trouble. In no particular order, or rather the order that they came into my head when I wrote the script. one hwp hwp this means height weight proportional the couple that uses this term is either describing themselves as height weight proportional or looking for a couple that is height weight proportional refers to people that are not overweight in shape normal bmi range contrast this with bbw or bbm be a beautiful woman or man. Unicorn, a single female, the rarest and most enchanting of all creatures. A unicorn is a single bisexual female that will engage in fuckery with a husband and a wife. I say they are rare because they are and everyone is after them. Alternatively, a bull refers to a single male, much more common than unicorns. A variation on these terms is stag vixen, that's usually where the lady, the vixen, will do all the sex while the husband, the stag, watches. He may or may not join in depending on the dynamic. It's more about watching his partner in action versus participating. Which also means I need to talk about cuckholding. Cuckholding has more of a fetish vibe to the activity that may include a humiliation aspect that's not the same as stack vixen though cuck holding should not be used as an insult by the way it is a valid fetish with a horrible name you might also see the term hot wife conflated in all these dynamics as well wife has sex with the person husband likes watching the opposite term from cuck holding I guess would be cuck wife or hot husband. That's the logical opposite term, but I rarely see those. Soft swap and full swap. Soft swap couples do not engage in penetrative sexual acts with other couples. Full swap couples do engage in penetrative sexual acts. Parallel play or same room is when each couple stays with their respective partner. Girl on girl, as the name implies, only girl on girl action is permissible. The men just sit back and watch. BDSM means bondage, domination, submission, sadomasochism, discipline maybe. There's some combination of these letters. I'm going to do a whole episode on BDSM one day. Suffice it to say here for the newbies, this is the intense shit y'all. The newbies better do some research before they approach this side of the lifestyle. By comfortable, by curious, by sexual, I've seen variants of this phrase. It refers to a person's comfort in engaging in sexual activities with a person of the same sex. I have no idea what the accepted definition of all these multiple degrees is. I just say, if you're interested in this, ask. DDF or D&D means drug and disease free, not Dungeons and Dragons. Ha, I had to learn that myself because I'm a nerd. Safe and double safe. This one means the person is fixed, as in they have either had a vasectomy or a hysterectomy, so they're unable to get or cause pregnancy. Just because someone is safe, though, or or double safe still use condoms. It could also refer to someone's on birth control. FFM, FMF, MMF, MFM. Some combination of the letters of F or M maybe throw a T in there or an A as a good measure. This denotes what the couple is looking for or what they're into. Follow the sequence of letters. MFMF would be male, female, male, female as in a traditional foursome. MMF, two men and a lady and the men having relations. Hall pass, this denotes that the one person in the couple has permission of the other person to make the sexy time with other people. Totally fine if a couple has this worked out. Ver verify it though verify it verify it to be on the safe side verify by talking to both people in the marriage same room or separate room same room means all four people or all the fuckery must be contained to the same room separate room means couples can pair off separately in different rooms or areas most couples are more comfortable with same room than separate separate cool, though, if you trust all the participants. The word situational may pop up. This means that the couple that that label is attached to might do something, maybe if they're in the right situation. Look, logically, we need to stop using this shit. All swinging is situational. We kind of have an idea of what we're going to do, but if the situation changes, then we change our minds. And most of the people who say they're situational cannot name or describe the situation where they're comfortable swinging. So let's be honest about it. Alcohol is involved. That's the magic thing. Situational, alcohol is involved. Dominant and submissive. Some people are very dominant, take charge, assertive when they play hide the sausage. Some people are more submissive and like to be told what to do and just as the word says, submissive. NSA, no strings attached. These people are looking for one night stands or ONS and they don't want friends. They just want the sex and to move on. This is not an inclusive list of all the jargon and terms out in the lifestyle or ethical non-monogamy. It's just a very small list of acronyms and terms that people use on their profiles that I could remember to define. I always appreciate hearing your feedback and comments on episodes or suggestions for topics, so feel free to reach out to me. My personal disclaimer, I am not a medical professional nor a trained and certified educator of any kind in any way. I am a guy with a microphone sharing my personal experiences with you. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only, and please join us for the next episode. Whatever you may do today, I hope you have a fantastic time doing it. Know that you are appreciated and loved. Have a great day.