Knowing The Difference Between Positive & Negative Interaction
Social media usage, for some, can be a great way to stay in touch with friends, while for others, it’s a source of stress and anxiety. Knowing if you have a healthy or negative relationship with Twitter, Facebook or Instagram is difficult to analyse.
Often one may feel as though they’re in a perpetual love-hate cycle with the platforms. This is often the case for some addictions. For instance, that high you get from seeing a notification can be the same as when you take a drug.
For fetishists, this problem might even be more substantial as we mix both sexual and social needs.
To find out if you’re possibly using social media in a negative way, and how to help, see our chart below.
Positive Association
Unsurprisingly, it’s harmless to have an everyday routine of checking social media. Routine is good as it gives us structure and can act as a “reward” when we’ve done something good.
Creating connections with others and being “social” is the entire point of social media. Just because it’s virtual doesn’t make it any less of a need.
Negative Association
“How much is excessively,” I hear you ask. Well usually you know as it’ll make you feel pretty bad when you think you “miss out” on something. This leads us onto the next point.
FOMO has become a common theme, and often leads to continual checking of social media sites. The idea that you might miss out on something if you’re not online can affect your mental health.
In more general terms, these findings suggest that as long as we are mindful users, routine use may not in itself be a problem. Indeed, it could be beneficial.
For those with unhealthy social media use, behavioral interventions may help. For example, programs that develop “effortful control” skills—the ability to self-regulate behavior—have been widely shown to be useful in dealing with problematic Internet and social media use.
General Safety Online
If you decide to meet up with other fetishists from social media – there’s two main things to know. Most people in the fetish community are wonderfully friendly and amazing people. However, with anything, there are things to watch out for to ensure you stay safe. Most of this is common sense, but, for those who don’t know see our list below.
Be aware some social media users will at some point steal content of yours. There isn’t many ways to stop it from happening but adding watermarks to your photos & videos can help.
Things can be deceiving on the internet. There’s no sure-fire of knowing if you’re meeting up with your soulmate or a crazed murderer. The best way is to talk as much as possible until you’re comfortable/trusting enough to meet in person.
It goes without saying, when sending people money online be extremely careful that your personal details aren’t being shared and if you’re sending money that both the receiver and the sender understand fully the purpose of the transaction.
Dealing With **sholes
The internet is swarming with assholes, but Twitter/Instagram are particularly bad. This is mainly due to the platforms being a source of personal opinion. There’s a real lack of concern for other people, and a definite attitude of MY OPINION MATTERS THE MOST which is not limited to the kink scene by any means.
As a fetishist putting yourself out there can be tough – especially with open accounts. Being in the public eye, and with the nature of what we do, you’re bound to receive some nasty comments or DMs at some point.
Below are a few options on how you can try and avoid the haters online.
It’s always a tough decision to lock your account. On one hand the added privacy is a nice benefit. However, it makes it harder to open discussions with new people.
I’ve decided instead to have a platform with public content that I rarely check comments, messages (and subsequently any hate.)
And a locked personal account which might show my face, musings from my day and a little bit more about the boy behind the mask.
It’s a hard choice to make but it’s important to do what’s right for you.
Time is precious, time is the one thing that you can’t ever get back. Take a moment before replying, I barely ever reply to hateful comments, I sometimes respond to constructive criticism because that’s different.
The main thing they want is some interaction with you, that’s why they’re doing this, why they’re acting out. So don’t give in to what they want, your time is far better spent doing positive things.
You can also filter out negative words in your comments so you don’t have to see comments with those specific words.
On Instagram for example, you can create a custom list of words, phrases or (even) emojis that you want to hide. Similar options also exist on other social media platforms too!