this post was submitted on 26 Apr 2026
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It's clearly a passion project but even his goal of it paying for itself is highly unlikely. More importantly, making sure those homebound, living in rural areas, using an android phone etc. are persona non-grata is just such a douchecanoe move. There's a lot of ways he could have incentivized IRL contact without telling everyone not able to do that that or running an android phone that they're not welcome on the platform.
It reminds me of Fetlife.
If you've never heard of Fetlife, it's a fetish social network. At least that's what it markets itself as. In reality, everyone on fetlife knows what it is.
It's a fetish dating site. And also a fetish hookup site.
But the thing is, lets say I'm a male between the ages of 18 and 65. And I want to find a woman, in my city, who is single, and into monogamy......and also a whole list of fucked up fetishes. Don't worry, these women would ALSO list these fetishes as interests so it's consentual.
As a fetlife user you can't do that. You can't search by gender. You can't filter by age. You CAN see who's available by city, but you literally get EVERYBODY in that city. It's more like getting a whole phone book, rather than a filtered search list.
So it just ends up being way harder to use than it should be. They claim it's to "protect women", but that's bullshit. Women are not these defenseless creatures who need you to break your whole search system to shield them from the world. Also, there's an easy fix for that. You add search opt out in your own personal settings. They already have the ability to limit who can message you, it would not be hard to add a checkbox that says "remove my profile from search".
I'd be good with that. I just want to search women in my area, who share my interests, are single and monogamous, and want to be messaged. The system they have makes that SUUUUUUPER hard.
Fetlife isn't a dating site. Sure, you can try using it like one. Just like you could try using Facebook like one. Or Lemmy. But just because it's sex positive doesn't mean it is for hookups. Like you noticed they are deliberately limiting people's ability to use it like a dating site.
Dating sites (especially the fetish ones) attract creeps and bots and Fetlife already has plenty of those. Managing it like a dating site would just make that so much worse.
If you are desperate to meet someone go to the events listed in your area. But again, if you go there with the intention of immediately hooking up you're going to be severely disappointed.
If you want to be derogatory towards Fetlife call it a porn site. Because that is the main reason people pay for it. To get access to videos.