30 Days of Kink Day 26: What’s your opinion on online BDSM play?

This is a tough question.  I find that online BDSM play is very good at stimulating the mind and emotions.  In turn, things can become quite physical.  Do I find it will ever replaced or be better than BDSM in real life?  The answer is no.  It will always be a second best.  Because when it comes down to it, the online play is not real.  It's play for a reason.  People can show their best foot forward.  They can break off or end relationships easier than in real life.  On line makes it convenient and easy.

It is convenient and easy to cheat when on line.  We don't know if the other partner is married or not.  Maybe they aren't even the sex they claim to be?  How could we be 100% sure?  We can not.  It allows for abuse more than in real life.  One could say the real life also contains people playing games and cheating.  Yes, this is true.  I personally find that it's faster to catch a person lying or misleading in real life than on line.

There are pluses to being on line.  Someone who is painfully shy make open up.  Their self confidence may grow because of how they act on line.  This is a very heady sensation and in may carry out to real life and give this previously shy person a boost.  I'm not saying online BDSM play is bad.  What I am saying is that it can be misleading which allows some of the more vulnerable people to open up a bit too much in anonymity only to be crushed by callous players.

This I find sad and I see over again on fetlife and other social media websites.  One could pose I'm jaded and paranoid.  That would be a yes.  I'm not that trusting.  I also believe on line anonymity sometimes brings the worse of humanity out.  I see bullying website and now we have laws trying to be put in place for cyber bullying.  It's depressing to see and I find those in the BDSM lifestyle are not exempt.  For a group who professes to non judgmental and family like acceptance, there happens to be just the same amount of pettiness and judgmental behaviour as in the vanilla world.

EDIT
Here's a website which is very helpful as well as containing articles of interest. This website seems to be geared for submissives - Submissive Guide. The bits I've seen so far have been good. A friend passed it on to me this morning which I find applicable to today's topic.

Realities of online submission is one that every online only BDSM relationship should review.

The follow up with Cyber submission exploring DS on line was another good article.

There was a question about training and how online works. To read more about it - see On Line Training.