Now, this is not a ‘pitting’, and I’m not making a statement one way or another about the closing, but I just have a question about the “it’s way too much information to be sharing in your first post” part of the reasoning.
It to me sounds an awful lot like, “if you’ve been around long enough you’re allowed to share these odd personal details, but if not you better wait until you know we like you.” How many posts ought one to have before a thread like this is acceptable?
I think Lynn was just reacting to what was probably a creature living under a bridge. If you have been around for a while, and shown that you are a responsible poster, you get the benefit of the doubt. If you are a first-timer, you don’t. Pretty straightforward.
I thought it was a rather weird first post, but that does not necessarily mean that it was trolling. Maybe Lynn closed it because her spider sense was tingling.
I, for one, had the feeling it was leading to a solicitation for a pay site. Maybe not; pretty elaborate spamming. How many junk emails have YOU received that are pretty similar to the OP, but boiled down to a single subject line? “$1sters tie each other up! 0n webcam!”
Yeah, but she said she and her sister are ugly and fat. I suppose there’s a fetish for that sort of thing, but if she was soliciting for a pay site, I would think she would have described herself as young, buxom and svelte. Sadly, ugly and fat aren’t generally good selling points (for most people anyway).
You do kinda have to question the person’s motivation. No “I’ve been lurking here for awhile…” or anything, just [bam]“Hi, I’m into bondage.”[/bam] to a bunch of complete strangers.
I kept getting the feeling we were going to get strung along innocently and then the poster was going to let the boom go with a really risque comment. Maybe not, but then with a bunch more previous posts to go by the probability would have been easier to call.
Lynn’s not saying the poster can’t raise the issue later once her intentions are more clear.
It did seem a bit weird. I mean, you’re introduced to a small group at a party, and the first thing out of your mouth is, “I thought I should tell you that my sister and I are into some real kinky stuff…”
I am obviously weird because, well, it made sense to me.
It’s the sort of question I would think you’d want to ask of complete strangers rather than friends or even acquaintances. If a complete stranger says, “Wow, you’re sick!” it doesn’t hurt the way it would coming from a friend. If a message board full of strangers says, “Leave, now!” it doesn’t hurt the way it would if you had invested time and energy into the board.
Yes, it could have been a troll, but it seems possible that it could also have been an attempt at self-preservation for someone who is in an very atypical and possibly psychologically shaky position, and who could have been expecting a shocked or condemning reaction.
By coincidence, I just finished a conversation at work about someone who did something rather like that.
Someone else hired him, and he started work for me one Monday. Within twenty minutes, he was telling me about his sexual kinks. He wasn’t a bad person, and he was certainly smart enough and he worked for me for two or three years.
I got to know him after a while, and he was a nice enough guy. I think he was trying to get a rise out of me.
Don’t know about the motives of the person in the linked thread. But it wouldn’t be the sort of thing I would solicit opinions from strangers about. Maybe the person is a submissive, and likes to be yelled at. If it works that way over the Internet.
As a data point, I registered oh so long ago to talk about stuff I didn’t want to/couldn’t talk about with my friends in real life. I can definitely see one’s first post being… well, objectionable.
Not wanting to speak for Lynn, but I could tell you if I was a mod/admin, I’d do the same.
Lynn gave you three reasons why the thread is closed. The first two are instructive: They indicate that you haven’t done your homework. You haven’t read the FAQs or the stickies. It’s an indication that you may not be interested in following board protocols, especially as someone who hasn’t paid for a subscription. It indicates you haven’t been lurking for a while getting to know what this board is about. This raises lots of flags.
Then, on top of that, your first post to the board is a TMI (too much information) thread on kinky sex asking people to jump in on the discussion. You do know that this is the Straight Dope board for fans of Cecil Adams? If your first foray into the board is with a kinky TMI thread, then maybe this isn’t the place to be in the first place.
Show you know the board protocols and have lurked awhile. Participate in the GQ or CCC forums. Buy a subscription even. Then we can be assured that your TMI discussion is from a serious member. We’ve been burned too many times by troublemakers who weren’t serious.
And, good points all. I guess it just sounded a little arbitrary to me. And, it seemed that even though it was an ‘ewey TMI’ subject, it was addressed without being crude or particularly tasteless.
Anyway, back to your regularly scheduled programming.
That’s pretty much my reason for closing the thread. It raised too many flags for me. Had it been an established poster who opened the thread, I would have yelled at him/her for putting it in the wrong forum, and moved it to IMHO or MPSIMS, which is where it should have been. But the OP only wanted to talk about this one topic. I was pretty sure that we’d be directed to a website pretty soon, illustrating just what she was talking about.
Even for an established poster, though, that was TMI. I direct you to TubaDiva’s announcement.
