Eternal Apprentice

Right when I was starting to think that Fetlife was a pretty awesome place the owner has come out of the closet, as a big asshole.

He asked a group on Fetlife if anyone wanted to be a “greeter” for the site. To be responsible for sending out an email or two to new users rather than a system generated message. We all know how much attention we pay to those.

Ellie, the outgoing and wonderful person she is, volunteered. The next day she received a message from the owner stating that he felt that there would be a conflict of interest between th duties of ambassador and the fact that she does phone sex. His exact phrase was “ethical dilemma”. He said that as the owner of the site he isn’t able to approach anyone on the site (??), and that if she messaged someone and they asked her to do a call with them she should turn them down.

I was reading through the (very funny) “Terms & Conditions” which has a 1% rule. According to John (the owner):

1% Of Your Action Belongs To Us

We have no clue how we are going to claim this but we want 1% of the action you are getting from this site. Yeah, you heard right. While we are working our asses off to grow FetLife you are getting action and we want 1% of it, damn it! We think it is only fair.

That could be taken any number of ways, but to me it sounds like he does want to dip into the honey pot.

Aside from all of that, he’s dealing with an active clientèle that is made up of regular users (with affiliate links right in their profiles), bloggers (with affiliate links on their linked pages), sex workers (pro doms, phone sex workers), and podcasters. The vast percentage of these users make *some* money by doing what they do. Isn’t it the dream of everyone to make money off of what they love? Is this akin to shitting where to live? No.

Does he think that Ellie is a predator, and that her only aim in an online community is to drag customers from it? Does he think that about everyone on the site, or just PSOs (phone sex operators) because he assumes that a PSO doesn’t enjoy her job or only does it for the money?

The fact is that Fetlife is a really good site right now. Most of the people on there are very friendly and open. We’re having good conversations and learning a lot about alternative lifestyles. Hopefully this was a case of him hitting send before thoroughly reading what he had written, and we can move forward from this having all gained a little knowledge from one another.

edit - Ellie received another email stating that the owner of the site had sent out similar requests/questions to other potential ambassadors. He also apologized that his original email could easily be interpreted negatively.

The future status of the seemingly hypocritical 1% Rule is still in question, though (if only by me and the lovely ladies that commented here).