References and how to use them

There is no register and no body that certifies anybody in this world. What exists instead is people who have been in a room with somebody and will tell you the truth about it. That is a weaker system than a register and a far stronger one than a profile.

Consenting adults only. Everything on this page is about adults over 18 who have freely agreed to it.

Written from first-hand experience or extensive research by the editor.

Why references are the mechanism

There is no qualification for this. Nobody is licensed, no organisation certifies anyone, and the reassuring-sounding titles people occasionally give themselves are self-awarded. Anybody can write a profile describing fifteen years of careful experience in about four minutes, and the people with the most reason to write one are precisely the people you would least want to meet.

What cannot be written by the subject is another person. Somebody who has been in a room with them, seen how they behaved when a scene went sideways, and is willing to be asked about it by a stranger. That is the entire verification system this world has, and once you understand that it is the only one, the amount of weight the scene puts on it stops seeming strange.

It also explains why the community layer of this matters so much. Somebody who goes to munches has people who can speak about them. Somebody who has only ever existed in private messages has nobody, by design or by inexperience, and you cannot tell which from the outside.

What a real reference process looks like

Ask for two. One can be a friend doing somebody a favour. Two is harder to arrange and considerably harder to fake.

Contact them yourself. Not through the person, not by having the person introduce you, and not by being forwarded a message they say came from somebody. Message the reference directly, on the platform where they have their own history, so you can look at that history while you talk to them. Somebody who insists on brokering the conversation is doing something unnecessary and you should ask yourself why.

Then talk to them properly, which means a conversation rather than a question. Take the time. Most people are surprisingly willing to do this because the whole system depends on people doing it, and being asked is not an imposition.

What to ask

Open questions, always. A closed question invites a one-word reassurance and tells you almost nothing.

• How do you know them, and when did you last see them?
• Tell me about how you two started talking. (You are listening for whether it matches what you have been told.)
• What are they like to negotiate with?
• Has anything ever gone wrong, and what did they do?
• Have you ever told them no, or stopped something? What happened?
• Is there anything you would want to know if you were me?
• Would you play with them again?

The last two are the ones that produce the useful pauses. People are reluctant to say something openly damaging about somebody in a small community, but they are much less willing to lie outright, so the honest answer often arrives as hesitation, as a carefully narrow reply, or as something like she would be fine with the right person. Listen to the shape of the answer as well as its content.

What to be suspicious of

• Written testimonials the person controls. Screenshots, quotes on a profile, a page of glowing comments, anything presented as reviews. All of that is editable by the subject and none of it can be questioned. It is marketing wearing the costume of a reference.
• A reference account with no independent existence. Created recently, no group activity, no posts, no other connections. Anybody can make one of those.
• References who only know each other through the person being referenced, particularly if the group is small and closed. Mutual vouching within a tight circle is a real problem and it looks reassuring from outside.
• An answer that is entirely superlative and entirely non-specific. Somebody who has actually played with a person can describe them. Somebody who has not offers adjectives.
• Any resistance to the process at all. Delay, irritation, an explanation of why references are not really appropriate in this case, an offer of something else instead. Experienced people hand over two names without making it a conversation.

Why this site names nobody

I write under a persistent scene name rather than my legal one, and there is no public list of people vouching for me here. I want to be straightforward about that rather than construct something that looks like one.

I do not publish names, and I would not publish them even if every person concerned were relaxed about it, because naming somebody as a participant in kink is a thing that can cost them a job or their family. Outing people is not acceptable, and a public reference list is a small act of outing dressed up as transparency.

The consequence is that nothing on this website is evidence about me. Not the careful writing and not the citations. A person who intended to be dangerous could write all of it. The same is true of every profile, blog and website you will come across, which is why the only thing that tells you anything about a person is talking to people who have been in a room with them. If anybody shows you a testimonial instead, apply the section above.

If somebody asks you to be a reference

Say yes if you can, because the system only works while people do. Then answer honestly, including the reservations. You are not writing a character witness statement and you do not owe anybody a good one.

Say what you know and mark clearly what you do not. Something like I have played with him twice, both times were fine, I have never seen him under pressure is far more useful to the person asking than a warm summary. And if somebody asks you about a person who treated you badly, you are allowed to say so plainly. That is the mechanism doing the one job it exists for.