There Are No Easy Tricks to Doing Fetlife as a Shy, Awkward Guy

Three years ago, I decided to find out whether I could cut it as a male Fetlifian. I gave my sock puppet the username, Twitch, uploaded some cute Calvin and Hobbes memes, and posted an avatar in a sexy white linen shirt.

Twitch wasn't particularly buff. He was a feminist like me, and he was also a dope like me. He had one habit that was different to the average unicorn hunter: He USED Fetlife. Not to pick up women. Not to find smut. Not to post cock shots, but to socialise and engage. He built an impressive list of friends.

When he tried to connect with other people on an authentic level, authentic connections happened just like magic. He displayed his personality, which is more or less like putting The Thing on the supermarket shelf to encourage a purchase. Most of the men who soar into my inbox asking to meet never put The Thing on the shelf. They keep it in the stock room with the spaghetti, and nobody's going to go down there with their shopping lists. When you hide from us, you can’t connect, and connection is the whole everloving point.

It's hard to put your personality on display on Fetlife. I know this because I do it every day. Women get shy, too. We also want to hide. We, too, fear rejection. Most of the time, when I shoot a message to a stranger, I feel pretty terrified. Not one of my followers makes it any less scary.

And then I click "send" anyway because nothing good ever came from hiding.

Putting your whole freak flag on display will get you one of two responses:

People will hate you.
People will like you.

Hiding your freak flag in the stock room will get you one of two responses:

Everyone will ignore you.
Everyone will ignore you.

That's a fool's choice right there, so be yourself. Show yourself. Give us a shot. You might just make a few good friends along the way.

I meet a lot of socially-phobic men on this site. Some of them take the risk of writing to me, but many never reach out to a soul. They sneak into comment sections to tell me they’re too terrified to attend events and too derpy to send a message.

In short, they’re exactly like me. Their ignorance of our similarities is their point of failure. They think their fear is different than other people’s fear. They think everyone else is waltzing around the site feeling suave. And we aren’t. They think the reason we reach out to people is that we lack their insecurity. And we don’t. We just don’t erect our fear like a wall.

When I arrived on this site, I was intimidated by everyone. I didn’t have their skills. I wasn’t smart enough to be popular like them. I wasn’t experienced enough to have a voice. Then one day a woman called @SlutKityPrincess asked me to post a piece of deeply exposing writing anyway. She said two things might happen:

People would hate me.
People would like me.

It took a lot to hit that “express yourself” button, but all I learned was that I was exactly like everyone else. I slowly began exposing small parts of myself, and I made some amazing friends along the way. I even flew all over the US to meet them. That was terrifying, too, but fear never has to be a wall. Sometimes, you’ve just got to take the risk of exposing yourself in all your weirdness. Some people will hate you, but the new friends will always make it worthwhile.