Chat Rooms Suck! – But you might love them…

[00:00] [Ed] Did you know that many swingers use chat groups and forums in order to communicate with each other
and learn about the latest going on in their community? If you didn’t, you might be feeling
a little vomo. Well, we’re going to let you in on the pros and cons of some of these chat groups

[00:16] [Unknown] as well as our love and hate of them. Welcome to Swinger University. I’m Phoebe and I’m Ed.

[00:27] [Phoebe] Join us as we explore the exciting world of ethical mon monogamy, sexual health, and sex education
with an intellectual and sexy twist. I’m excited to talk about this topic because it
drives me ape shit. And I have struggled, struggled, struggled to try and figure out value of
chat groups, chat forums and that way of connecting whether it be through Facebook,

[01:01] [Guest] telegram, discord, me, we name, name it. And I will say I have decided I am a round peg

[01:15] [Phoebe] and chat groups are a square hole and we just do not fit. Yeah, chat groups aren’t for everybody.

[01:24] [Ed] We’ve been in and out of them since we started in lifestyle and we did the math recently,

[01:30] [Unknown] 12 years ago, yeah, at least. And it’s kind of a love hate thing. Like I said in the intro,

[01:39] [Ed] sometimes we like them to be able to find out what’s going on, but usually we just
just don’t like them and we’ll get into some of the reasons why we don’t like them. Yeah,

[01:48] [Phoebe] and there are some some chat groups forums. They’re a little different. They’re more professionals.
They’re built around conferences or events, right? Mostly sold to companies that are trying to
get that particular route together. So let’s just say it’s a sex toy convention, right? So
people that are going to go to the convention, they’ll sell that to an entity. People can chime in
and they can they can talk about what they like with their favorite toy is and how they like it,
how they use it, whatever. The favorite color this thing, what are you going to say?

[02:27] [Ed] Well, I was going to say it’s kind of like LinkedIn or Facebook, which is like this big macro
cosm of a whole bunch of groups of mixed whatever, but paired down to one specific group for one
specific event so that the participants in that event can almost kickstart the conference early.
Yes. You get a sense of who’s going to be there. You can have some conversations. You can reach out

[02:50] [Unknown] and network with those specific people and get the whole thing rolling. We’ve had good experience

[02:58] [Ed] with those sort of and we still have some of our downsides that we’ll get into even in those groups.

[03:10] [Phoebe] What is the real purpose of these groups? It’s a way to quickly exchange information in real time.
It’s a space for education and it’s a place to ask questions. It’s also a place to feel this

[03:26] [Unknown] sense of community and find your tribe, connect with others. Maybe it’s a brand new

[03:35] [Phoebe] interest that you’re into. You just got interested in finger painting and you’re like,
oh my god, I just found a bunch of people who like it. Now you’re discovering there are other
people out there like you and so you get to connect and geek out over this brand new thing that

[03:53] [Ed] you discovered. The key difference between a forum and a chat group for those people who haven’t
waited into this and there are a few of us out there who don’t hang out there all the time.
You can kind of think of groups like Reddit or even Discord to a certain degree. That’s more
of a forum. There’s chatting going on. You can start a thread, a specific conversation with a
specific question and then people can kind of participate within that conversation and it’s
a permanent record of that conversation. People can refer to it and they can use it as a reference

[04:34] [Phoebe] later. Does Discord do that? Also like Reddit does that. Yeah. Discord groups tend to work

[04:40] [Ed] like that too. You can scroll back through the history and get that information. Whereas chats
depending on the app, that history can actually disappear. You might not be able to get the
historical context. The other thing that’s unfortunate with chats because they are, let’s say a
way to get to know people. If someone’s posted their picture and a little bio about themselves
and it disappears, you have to keep repeating yourself. There isn’t a common place within a big
long chat to have all of those bios who’s participating in the group and find out a little bit
more about them. Now, some chat platforms are better than others. Telegram, it’s okay and I think
a good tip would be to fill your bio out so that people have a better sense of who you are.
So when you’re contributing to that chat, you can just jump into the person’s bio and maybe see
a picture of the couple, maybe understand what their play preferences are, etc. But let’s get

[05:49] [Phoebe] into some of that. Yes. So what are some of these benefits? It does improve social skills.

[05:56] [Unknown] You get an appreciation of different perspectives. You become more effective at communication,

[06:04] [Phoebe] theoretically. You learn from one another and you can inspire one another. And why are they created
in this way your community? A lot of people build them to build the community, right? They bring
the community together. Within that community, everyone has little sub-interests. There’s
communities that only are shopping interested in bringing a single into their relationship.
Some are poly, some are more BDSM. So different little sub-sections of the community,
it creates a sense of being longing and it also helps relay information about parties
that you can’t always post everywhere else. Maybe you don’t have a large following on Twitter
or Instagram. Or you don’t have a Facebook following or a page. So you use the groups to do that.
I will say a lot of the Facebook groups, the messenger people feel uncomfortable chatting
and sharing sexy picks on messenger. And I don’t even think you can send a sexy pick in messenger.

[07:23] [Ed] No. Facebook will probably shut it down. A lot of people will go there to meet their group

[07:29] [Phoebe] and then they’ll message to get to a mewe or telegram chat where they can have more

[07:37] [Ed] free conversations without being monitored. You can set these groups up as a specific community
for an area, which is great. Maybe there’s a group of people who regularly get together and
have house parties. Get that group together onto a chat group and send your information back and
forth. Unlike a larger party where you’re maybe doing it for profit, like a house party, and you
want anybody who’s visiting or in the area or maybe doesn’t even participate that much. Maybe
even newbies who’ve never participated, they wouldn’t know about your house party in a chat group
because it’s a private group. Only people who’ve been invited there know about it. So if you want
to keep your party smaller, maybe more intimate, maybe just your close friends or your recent acquaintances
and not any random person in the internet, chat groups are great for that. Exactly. Exactly.

[08:39] [Unknown] Let’s get to why they suck. We have some strong, potentially controversial

[08:47] [Ed] positions, opinions about chat groups. And as a communication major, I find them

[08:54] [Phoebe] extremely frustrating. So they typically are unfiltered and loosely monitored by the host or
monitor. They’re also very time consuming for the host or monitor, Radman, and for the end user.
Right. So why are they very time consuming? Well, all right. We need your help so that your

[09:36] [Guest] community, the very one you love and have so much fun with, can also find our show.

[09:43] [Ed] Here’s a really easy way to do that. If you’re listening on Apple Podcasts or Spotify,
hit that follow button and leave us a rating. If you’re watching on YouTube, subscribe and turn
on notifications. We can’t emphasize enough how much this helps the swing our community,
and it truly is up to you to make that happen. It makes a massive difference in whether new listeners

[10:08] [Unknown] can even find us. And here’s the thing. When someone searches Swinger Podcast, the algorithm

[10:15] [Ed] doesn’t care how good our content is or how long we’ve been around. It only cares about ratings

[10:22] [Unknown] and reviews. We’d appreciate it and your community will really appreciate it. Thanks for listening.

[10:34] [Ed] The long and short of it is it’s stream of consciousness just blurting out whatever’s on your

[10:40] [Phoebe] mind or what’s going on in your life. And I’m regularly popping into these groups and having to

[10:51] [Ed] catch up because let’s say there’s a hundred people in there. If everybody posts once an hour,
that’s a hundred messages per hour. If you haven’t been in there all day, that’s 800 messages.
So you can imagine by the end of a day, there’s 1500 messages. And some of them are just
likes, thumbs up, little gifts, random stuff that really isn’t necessarily something that you
need to keep up on because it was a message back to the original post. So there’s a lot of noise
that you’ve got to scroll through in order to find the meat and potatoes of it.

[11:31] [Phoebe] Right. There’s also this sense of not belonging. So if you are a late comer to the group,
you kind of feel like you’re at the wrong reunion. Right. They’ve had a party before they said,

[11:45] [Unknown] hey, we all gel together. Let’s create a group chat. And let’s let’s be selective. Who else we

[11:50] [Phoebe] want to bring in? Well, though, okay, great. But those other people like, they’re late to the party.
Why you guys have already, you’ve played together, you spent hours together, you have history together,
there’s inside jokes that you don’t get. There’s just this kind of weird sense where you’re

[12:10] [Unknown] like kind of on the other side of the fence going, hey, what? I don’t know what you guys don’t

[12:17] [Phoebe] know what’s going on. Exactly. So despite the host being able to introduce you and kind of bring
you into the fold, you always get this feeling that you’re just an outsider. And I don’t think
for me, it doesn’t improve the longer you’re there. So even though you give it the good try,
and you say, I’m going to be in there every day and participate and read through. And you can do

[12:45] [Ed] that for 30 days. I think this goes back to some of our fundamental problems with online
personalities versus real life personalities. Until you’ve met someone and actually had a face-to-face
conversation with them or flirted with them in real life, you don’t really know who they are,
but you’re right. It’s kind of an inside joke, if you will, because you’ve never met these people.
And people in real life are different than they are online. Absolutely. It’s not the same.

[13:19] [Unknown] Right. It’s not the same. The other thing that drives me nuts. And this is a pro and con.

[13:27] [Phoebe] This is all in one. This is a pro and con. Let me preface this with. I understand the reason
for the naked pics and videos. I get it, but it drives me nuts. It’s typically women
being posting themselves or their husbands posting the women. So there’s usually not enough men
to me, honestly. Pros and cons. Let’s be real. It is a self-serving ego boost. And I get it. Let’s
just be honest. You get to post a picture of yourself. You’re like, I’m feeling sexy today. I’m
going to post this pic. Right. And you post that pic and someone’s like, oh my god, you’re so sexy.

[14:16] [Unknown] Oh my god. Love, love, love, love, love, thumbs up, thumbs up. Hey, I’m all for that. Like, I get it.

[14:26] [Phoebe] But really, after a while, can we get over that? Like, how long does it take for you to go?

[14:38] [Ed] How long? How long does that? Now, I personally enjoy posting pics. Now, I don’t post very often.
I post occasionally. Usually when there’s a topic for the day, and I have something to contribute to
it, but there are individuals who post a lot more than others. And there are some people who post

[14:55] [Unknown] things and I’ll kind of get into the pictures. And this is where we get to it. Some of these

[15:03] [Ed] really turn into almost their own personal blog because they’re usually one or two individuals

[15:10] [Unknown] who post everything that they’re doing into that group chat. And oh my god. And that’s

[15:20] [Ed] okay. Like, if you have an Instagram account and you want to post what you had for dinner,
what you had for breakfast, your latest shopping trip, all that kind of stuff, that’s cool.
But people who want to see your stuff and what you’re posting would subscribe or follow you

[15:38] [Phoebe] on Instagram. That’s perfect for that. Right. But in a chat group or a forum,

[15:45] [Ed] designed to connect people together, how much of you does everybody want to see? My thought in
kind of the rule that I have in my head is it’s a sexy group for sexy people doing sexy things.

[16:00] [Unknown] So keep it sexy. Right. And this gets to the what is the purpose of the group? Right. What is

[16:10] [Phoebe] the topic? If it’s about, let’s just say it’s about cats. Sure. Why are you posting photos from
you at work? Why are you posting photos of you at the gym? I don’t care. Right. I really don’t
care. Does that make me get to know you better? No. Yeah. I mean, in a sense, you’ve tuned into

[16:34] [Ed] group in order to find out about a topic and come to find out you get there and nobody ever
talks about that topic. Well, you’re going to you’re going to tune out after a while. It drives me

[16:46] [Unknown] bananas. One of the other things that’s kind of an unfortunate side effect of chat groups is if

[16:54] [Ed] you’re not in the chat group and let’s say you’re at a party and a bunch of people are talking about,
hey, did you hear about this thing or the latest event or the next party? Oh, it’s in our
chat group. Yeah. And you’re like, what? What secret club that I’m not invited to? I’m already in
the secret club. Right. But there’s now a secret secret club. Yes. It’s just in this chat group.
Yes. There’s a telegram group that we’d heard about at a house party. Real example,

[17:23] [Unknown] everyone there at the party was in this group except us. Yes. And we were like, I guess we’re

[17:32] [Ed] A, not the cool kids. Right. Because we didn’t hear about it. Right. B, how did we not hear about it?
Right. And and then C, okay, now we now we really want to be in the group. And then once we got

[17:46] [Guest] in the group, we didn’t participate enough. And so we got kicked out. Yes. Because literally,

[17:54] [Ed] people posted 24, 7, 365, like constantly, I’m convinced that some of these people actually don’t

[18:06] [Phoebe] work. There’s no way. I do not know how people actually hold down a job and do this at the same

[18:14] [Ed] time. It cannot be risky, high, explosive kind of work because they’re obviously not paying attention
to whatever they’re doing because they’re on their phones all the time. Which makes me really

[18:27] [Phoebe] nervous. Right. Depending on what kind of job you have. Probably they’re not pilots or something.

[18:33] [Ed] Yeah. After all of this, like who really benefits from this thing even existing?
Well, what do you get out of it? Yeah. You do get a little bit of an ego boost from posting your
picture and people admiring you from afar. I like the little hot things, but I was also the
nerd in high school that nobody really paid attention to. And so now I’m kind of living a little

[19:01] [Unknown] vicariously through this going. Yeah. Some chicks actually think I’m hot. That’s kind of cool.

[19:07] [Phoebe] Wait, you like the little thumbs up in the hearts? I do. I do like that. And I will actually go in

[19:13] [Ed] and see who liked it because it gives me a sense of who finds me attractive. But you don’t get

[19:20] [Unknown] tired of that. No, I don’t. But I don’t get very much of it, too, because I’m a guy.

[19:27] [Phoebe] Oh, because women aren’t typically harding or thumbs up in your or do you just have to

[19:33] [Ed] post pictures. Well, typically guys don’t post pictures. And there there’s a lot of participation
of guys in forums, right? It’s all about the it’s titty Tuesday. It’s
right. The thye Thursday. It’s most of those little themes that get kind of cooked up in forums.

[19:53] [Phoebe] They’re for women to post their pics. Do you feel weird if it was titty Tuesday and you post

[19:59] [Ed] your titties just to fit in? Well, some groups do a good job of creating a secondary theme
for the guys to be able to participate. I can’t remember some of them off the top of my head,

[20:13] [Unknown] but like man, meet Monday. Oh my goodness. You can guess what’s in there. Wait, wait. Okay, so

[20:21] [Phoebe] so I just bashed everyone earlier about the ego boost, right? And it being enough already.
Right? So did that offend you? Did you like? No, I mean, how do you feel about that?

[20:35] [Ed] Well, because I think that there’s in everything in life, there’s moderation. And if I were to post
every five minutes, a picture of my junk, people would get tired of it. If I was constantly posting,

[20:49] [Unknown] even if it was sexy, let’s say it’s not a picture of the wood shop or me cooking a meal or any of
the other things that I do around the house, scrubbing toilets, those things are not sexy. So people

[21:03] [Ed] would, I would hope would get upset about me posting dumb stuff that doesn’t have anything to do
with the topic at hand. But even if I keep it topical, even if I keep it sexy, there’s a limit.
How many times do I need to see the same person post the same picture or a variation on that picture?
Yes. It’s nice to be reminded every once in a while. Let’s say you get a new sexy piece of
lingerie and you think it’s great. It’s okay to share that with the group. But if you’ve got an
entire only fans batch of photos with the same piece of lingerie with 40 different poses, I don’t

[21:43] [Phoebe] think you need to post all of those. So you’re saying moderation, not every day,

[21:50] [Ed] not the same photo. Right. Right. Everything in life is great in moderation.

[21:58] [Unknown] Right. Drink a little, smoke a little, have a couple pieces of candy. You don’t have to

[22:05] [Ed] gorge yourself on any one thing. So don’t fire hose the chat with all of your pictures, even if

[22:13] [Unknown] they’re sexy. I think a lot of moderators think that keeping it sexy means sexy picks.

[22:22] [Phoebe] Right. And I don’t understand like the point of all of that. Yeah. Because I think that there’s

[22:31] [Ed] other ways to engage people in for play, if you will, through conversation or through talking about

[22:41] [Phoebe] sexy things. Right. What’s going to make that quality connection? Is it mental, typically?
Yeah, especially for women. Typically, topical. So once again, not about all those other examples

[22:57] [Ed] that we gave before. Well, and to kind of get into a little bit of it, the enthusiasm about a
particular topic, it’s much easier to express that than it is through a picture. Why? Because if
you’re enthusiastic in a movie clip or a picture, you’re just doing something sexual, it’s basically
just porn. But that doesn’t get into your inner feelings about how hot you think that thing is.
Right. Pretty much everybody looks the same when they’re jerking off or playing with their tits.
That doesn’t look all that much different. I mean, we all moan a little bit different. We
may have a different technique, but the mechanics of it are the same. But talking about it and
getting into the juicy details of why you find that hot way hotter. I agree. Way hotter. And
you get a sense of that person and kind of what makes them sexual, what makes them hot
through that much better than you do that just seeing a picture of them. As we’ve said,
talking to people and kind of digging into their personality and their sexuality
is usually way more fun and interesting than getting a naked picture of them.

[24:20] [Unknown] Right. I agree. Much, much better than a 2D pic to have this type of conversation or insight

[24:29] [Phoebe] into their mind, their interests, their… Right. Maybe even their kinks, right? And that…

[24:36] [Ed] I think helps to build that quality connection even though I’m still sticking by this.
Real life is so much better than a chat group. It’s a false equivalency to think that they’re
the same thing. They’re not. I don’t care how much time you’ve spent chatting with someone online,
meeting them in real life is an entirely different experience. It is. It is entirely different.

[25:04] [Phoebe] Do you feel more connected to a community by being in these groups and how? These are some of the
questions I have. Do you feel more knowledgeable? Do you have this sense of belonging and how so?
What kind of information was shared about swinging that you didn’t know? Are you someone that
really needs to be that connected and distracted all day long? I would say in the beginning for us
that need to feel connected, which was distracting because we were trying to figure out swinging
the components of it. There wasn’t a lot of information out there and everyone seemed to
had it all figured out and we were listening to a lot of podcasts to try and figure out what
the heck is this thing. So it was very distracting, I will say. My brain was thinking about that
quite often at work and it was new and novel and interesting and blah blah blah. So I do get that.
But I will say the in comparison that the groups and forums that are out today maybe more so the
forums probably address a lot of the questions people have like a new a newbie. Yeah, depending on

[26:44] [Ed] depending on the forum. There are some that I think are very newbie friendly for people who are
just getting into it. Maybe don’t have a lot of experience with it. There are online forums and
and some chat groups that can help people and kind of foster that welcoming and encouraging
experience. There are others and I will not name them, but they are on Reddit that are one
12. Oh, and if you say just the wrong thing, you will be lambasted out of existence. It’s
unfortunate that there are there are some people who are in the well, we already know club and this
is our club and we like to hang out here and talk and by you bringing in questions that have been
and this is a very common phrase there. Asked and answered. Go read the forums. RTFM as they like to
say. Go read the fucking manual and that’s not really conducive because people are just browsing
and here’s another thing and this is where it gets very convoluted and very frustrating in
some of these groups. There’s actual internet etiquette that says don’t go back, bring back to life,
these old posts, if you have an additional question, they call them necropost because they just
won’t ever die. A lot of forums don’t want something from 1987 being brought back to life and
brought in because things have changed. The answers are different. It’s not a good post and a lot

[28:26] [Unknown] of times they want you to start a new conversation because the societal dialogue has changed. Can

[28:35] [Ed] you imagine posts from the 90s talking about the LGBTQ community versus posts today?
Entirely different conversation. Back then you’d be talking about the HIV epidemic and how it was
devastating your community and now it’s all about prep and pep and all these other things
and what was going on then is not the same thing that’s going on now and the same thing is true
and the swearing community. It’s kind of a catch 22 with these posts and some of these groups
be cautious, go in gently and don’t necessarily ask controversial things or if it starts to go
controversial just back out because it’s just not worth it. It’s not worth engaging in it.

[29:29] [Phoebe] I will say there are probably eight very good, it could be as many as eight, eight very good
Facebook forums for swingers that have large communities. We’re talking thousands, 50,000,
100,000 people and there are very good contributors in that forum that answer questions. You get
stupid answers. You shouldn’t even be a swinger then. How is that helpful?

[29:58] [Ed] Those are the knee jerk troll responses for people just trying to get a reaction out of people.

[30:03] [Phoebe] Eat that. But there are a lot of people that go in and they have genuine questions, new people
and so that is a good way to get some questions answered.

[30:14] [Ed] Sure. They’re not all evil but be cautious.

[30:18] [Phoebe] Yes. When you step in it you’ll know it.

[30:21] [Ed] Right. It’s kind of smell. That’s stink.

[30:25] [Unknown] How to run a good chat. Here are some of the tips that we think and have seen how good chats are

[30:37] [Phoebe] run. A clear title on what the chat is about. So you know exactly what you’re getting into.

[30:44] [Ed] Right. If you’ve got some abstract title or it’s vague or it’s just cute and

[30:52] [Unknown] maybe quirky, people don’t know what they’re getting into.
Right. Clear and detailed rules. And this is so that people know how to behave and you know how to

[31:08] [Phoebe] and then you can hold people accountable. Right.
So that you can follow up with people and go, hey.
Appreciate you participating. But rule number three says you can’t really say that.
There’s a warning. Just you know be cautious blah blah blah. Right.

[31:32] [Guest] Here’s why we sail on Virgin. It’s adults only.
No kids screaming at breakfast. No family buffet lines. Just champagne at noon.
Late night pool parties and people who actually want to be there.
The vibe. Think, boutique hotel that happens to float. Tattoo parlors, drag brunch,

[31:56] [Unknown] restaurants you’d actually pay for on land. Plus when you’re looking to connect with other

[32:02] [Guest] couples who know how to have fun, let’s just say Virgin attracts a very specific type of adventurous.
No wonder bread cruisers here. Just your people.

[32:17] [Ed] And these clear detailed rules really set the expectation and the tone for what that community
supports and condoms. So if you’re not clear with your rules, people will do whatever they want.
And as a society, we’ve got some people who are on varying ends of spectrums.
And there are certain things that maybe the group has decided we don’t want discussed.
A lot of them that I would say in a swing or group that you probably don’t want to bring up.
You don’t want to bring up politics. You don’t want to bring up kids.
Neither one of those things are particularly sexy. They are highly polarizing.

[32:59] [Phoebe] Right. You want to have daily monitoring and with an admin presence. Maybe multiple admins
depending on the size of the group or you probably would like or should have a backup.
You can’t always be in the group. Maybe you’re in multiple groups and you just don’t have the
bandwidth. Something happens. There’s a death in your family or your job got really busy.
You want to go on vacation. Having a backup or two or three backups is key.

[33:32] [Ed] Or you have a job and during the day, you need somebody who can moderate, who maybe doesn’t.
Have a full time job or works different hours than you.

[33:41] [Phoebe] Right. The monitors also keep the chat on track. Keep it from going to sideways.
If it’s a chat, once again, about cats, cooking isn’t allowed.
So keeping the chat on track, keeping the group in the same space.

[34:00] [Unknown] It helps everyone to talk about the same thing.

[34:06] [Ed] Right. Because you have rules posted and you keep enforcing those rules consistently.
So consistent enforcement of the rules is very important.

[34:17] [Phoebe] Right.

[34:19] [Ed] Sending warnings out to those people who are not compliant. They’re not following the rules.
And or even just pulling their posts down and then sending them a small message going,
we had to pull that down because you started talking about politics or you started talking about

[34:34] [Unknown] fishing. Right.

[34:35] [Ed] It’s a swing or group. Let’s talk about swinging. Right.

[34:40] [Phoebe] You also want to reach out to those individuals who are extreme oversharers.
And typically they’re off topic. Yeah.
Or they’re people just dominate the post.
And also a good chat post forum is daily posts of information or questions to keep the group
interested or to get the group talking. Maybe the maybe people aren’t really active.

[35:06] [Ed] Right. It’s also a way to kind of swing the conversations back towards a particular
you know topic or to away from anything else that’s going on.

[35:19] [Phoebe] Yeah. Maybe maybe one topic spurred off a side topic and a side topics kind of like way off

[35:26] [Unknown] on left field. We’re going to kind of bring them back. That’s also, yes, a very good way to do

[35:31] [Phoebe] that. Consider limiting the number of people in the group.

[35:35] [Unknown] 100, 100 is pretty big. Yeah. And you’d be surprised at even a small group how many messages

[35:43] [Ed] can fly through. And I think it comes down to what’s the purpose of the group.
If it’s to foster a community and you’re not going to kick people out for lack of participation
and having 100 people in there may not be that big a deal.
Knowing full well that no one can keep up with the fire host that’s going to happen in terms
of information being sent through. But if it’s a small group for a specific party,
yeah, limited to the number of people who you think are going to attend your party.
Plus the people canceling at the last minute over planning.

[36:22] [Phoebe] Yeah. So that’s a good point. When you were talking about maybe it’s a temporary chat for a party.
But so why was it created and how long and it all kind of plays into that and the number of

[36:36] [Ed] people you want in that? And if it’s one of those temporary chats, I would recommend

[36:40] [Phoebe] shutting the chat down after the event. Yes. Yes. Maybe give them a week because they can

[36:46] [Ed] reconnect. One of the most frustrating things that we had when we first signed on to SLS
as an example, they’d post a party. Everybody would say, I’ll be there. I’ll be there. I’ll be

[36:56] [Unknown] there. You go to the party. You meet people and you didn’t get their number or you didn’t get

[37:01] [Ed] their name or you want to connect with them on the social platform. And what SLS would do is at

[37:07] [Unknown] midnight of that day, that event, it would disappear. They fixed that and now it hangs around for,

[37:16] [Ed] I don’t know how many days 24, 48 hours or something so that you can find their profiles
and connect with them after those events. Yes. That’s key. It was key. I loved when they

[37:28] [Phoebe] changed that feature because no one’s walking around with their phones. Typically, because it’s
an event where you can’t have your phones out and you’re socializing with people. You’re not

[37:38] [Ed] really on your phone. Yeah. So think about what the purpose of the chat group is or the forum
and how long you want to keep it up. The main reason to shut it down after the fact is you don’t
want to have to maintain two separate groups. So let’s say it’s a splinter group from the main
chat just for this party. People who decided to go to this party, well, you don’t want this to become
its own group and start to grow and have its own personality. You want to bring those people back

[38:10] [Phoebe] into the main conversation. So shut it down. Move everybody back. Exactly. Admin’s are typically very
good at introducing new people. That is a function they all in all the forums tend to know to do.
If they in Discord, you are required to do that typically as part of your
schedule of things that you have to check off when you sign up. Right. There’s usually an order

[38:40] [Ed] of operations before you can even participate in that. Correct. Yeah. So if you’re not in a discord

[38:44] [Phoebe] group or like that, then in the chat groups, you, the admin will introduce you and once they do
that, then you go ahead and provide your own introduction, something else with a photo and whatever

[39:00] [Ed] else that you’re into. Yeah. Yeah. Actually, we’ll do basically like a mini bio, who we are,
where we live, what we like to do, what we’re looking for, and another key one, whether you’re
open to direct messages or not. So if it’s okay to DM, DM you say it in there because then as people

[39:22] [Unknown] are reading your bio and they’re like, oh, they’re kind of fun. We’d like to meet them. Then they

[39:27] [Ed] can send you a direct message and they can start that conversation, which is the whole point, at least
for us, of meeting people online is so that we can meet them in real life. Exactly. Exactly.

[39:40] [Phoebe] And for a new person, the admins should be the primary responder to the new people’s posts,
at least for the first week, maybe two weeks. Kind of pull them in. To pull them in, make them feel
welcome. And when an admin responds, other people tend to chime in. They’re like, oh, the admin

[40:01] [Ed] responded. And so then they’ll chime in. And you can kind of think of admins as the customer service
or the public relations face, Julie Cruz directors, you will, of the chat group. Right. So they’re
the designated greeter. They’re the designated participant. They’re the designated
foam mentor of new topics. So you also become the person who tries to pull people into the chat and
get them to participate. And some people just won’t participate, but you have to try.

[40:37] [Phoebe] Right. And then the admin, lastly, will kick those out that don’t share. Some do, some don’t. I see
this often where they do. Now a lot of admins will call them lurkers. We’re going to kick the

[40:52] [Ed] lurkers out because they don’t share. There’s pros and cons with that. Because what you’re forcing
people to do is maybe be outside of their comfort zone. Maybe they don’t post pictures of themselves
because of the job that they have or their position within a community. But they’re there to find
out about parties so that they can actually hang out with the real people. So if your forum
really is online only and you don’t have any intention of getting these people together,
then yeah, you can kick people out if they don’t participate because that is the end goal,

[41:30] [Unknown] participation within the group. But if your end goal is to break the ice before a physical event,

[41:40] [Ed] then kicking people out may not be such a good thing to do. Right. Right. Right. Right. Exactly.

[41:47] [Unknown] All right. So well, that was exciting. A lot of pros and cons. And you definitely got to see

[41:56] [Phoebe] my feelings and reaction to chat groups. Let’s wrap this up. How do you feel about the forums

[42:05] [Ed] and the chat groups? I have mixed feelings about forums and chat groups. And there are definitely
some groups that I will not participate in because of the volatile nature of that community.
For me, it’s not worth the risk of engaging in a hostile group or a potentially hostile group.
And so I just avoid them. Even though I feel like I have information and we do as podcasters and,
you know, 12-year experience veterans within the lifestyle, we contribute.
But I’m going to choose to contribute through the podcast or YouTube channel and not in those forums
because I don’t want to deal with the stress and the challenges of working with people who are
there just to be mean. Yeah. For me, it’s not worth the stress. I’ve had enough crazy in my life
and I choose to not engage with people like that, just like I don’t engage in a lot of political

[43:09] [Unknown] forums because of that. It’s just to polarizing. What about the chat groups? Do you, you don’t really
participate much in them? I don’t. And I have a job. I work and it’s very focused job. It requires

[43:26] [Ed] my attention. It’s very detailed driven. Same. I could spend periods of time throughout the
day doing that. But I also am managing our social media and I’m managing the podcast and I’m
checking on our financials and all kinds of stuff. More planning trips and other social things.
Other social outside activities besides that. Right. I get that a lot of people that

[43:56] [Unknown] this is their main focus and this is their main outlet for social engagement. I have a lot

[44:04] [Ed] of other outlets and I have a lot of things that kind of distract me from that. So yeah, my
participation varies. It depends. I go through cycles where I participate more and less. I will
typically try and get that notification counter down. So I’ll periodically go in but I try not to
go more than a day or two from jumping into those so that I’m not overwhelmed by the volume
because it bothers me to try and catch up. And there have been key moments where I’ve missed out
because a new couple may be introduced themselves and I didn’t get to introduce us to them.

[44:45] [Phoebe] Or you missed somebody’s introduction because it’s two days ago. It just went by. It’s gone. So you
you don’t really know the changes. That’s one of the features of some of the groups. They can
pin to the top of the thread. New information like a party or an or anything that’s new. And

[45:07] [Unknown] that’s nice to have in there when the admins do do that. But I you are I am out of all of those

[45:16] [Phoebe] groups now. And you are in charge. Yeah. Yeah. Because it gives me so much stress like
viscerally. I can’t handle it. I just can’t it is not my thing makes me very anxious. I have
tried and tried and tried. Honestly, social media has never been my thing. And and we are deep
in it. And we’re pulling someone out of it. It just doesn’t do anything for me. And it just creates

[45:44] [Unknown] a lot of stress. Honestly. So but we realize they do have a lot of value for a lot of people

[45:53] [Phoebe] and brings communities together. I think they can be great for information, especially for

[46:00] [Ed] parties and things that are going on. Yeah. And I think that’s what I’m trying to rely on it for
is an alternative to the typical swing or dating sites like SDC and Cassidy and SLS.
Because it is our local group and these are people theoretically who we’re going to run into.
I kind of want to get to know them a little bit. And it might lead us to attend an event or a party
because those people are there. And we’re like, we really want to meet these people. They seem

[46:32] [Phoebe] like a lot of fun. I will say in closing that the chat forms that I find the most beneficial are
the ones that are a lot more a lot more structured to them. So there it’s a different type of app.

[46:44] [Guest] It’s more of a professional or business type of app where you get more of a more options within

[46:52] [Phoebe] the chat to break out different forums. It’s like a tree. It’s kind of like a discord in an app.
Yeah. Yeah. And you and it’s for a limited time. Let’s say you’re going to an event and the chat opens
three months before it really does get you give you the opportunity to get to trying.
You do kind of get to know people because there’s a tree of information. You get
people that are interested in alcohols or BDSM or there’s different topics that start to crop up.
Right. And then you can kind of gravitate to those people and start having conversations.
And then you connect with those people when you get there. Right. Because what they’ve done is

[47:35] [Ed] they’ve taken the one long massive super thread of all the conversations and they’ve broken
it up into sub topics. So you can participate in the areas that you find interesting. Yes.
It’s nice to be able to choose what you want to participate in. And with one big thread,
it’s almost you don’t get to choose. Yeah. Whatever the group is doing at that particular time.

[48:03] [Phoebe] Right. Right. All right. Well, it was very comprehensive this topic. I feel it was a little
a little bit over the place, but we were very passionate about this topic. And we hope it was very

[48:18] [Unknown] one last thing before you go. If this episode helped you in any way, the single best thing you can
do to support the show is leaving a rating and review. It takes 60 seconds and helps new people

[48:41] [Ed] find us when they’re searching for relationship education. And we’ve made it easy.
Visit SwingerUniversity.com forward slash review. All the instructions are there.
Thank you for being part of this community. We’ll see you again soon.