Phaedrus

Fucking with them: great! Fucking them: not so great, probably :) Seriously, though, if you can get some entertainment out of the idiots and timewasters then I see no reason why they shouldn't be useful for *something*. Maybe they'll even learn to appreciate the people who are prepared to put up with them...

It was a great interview to read, too! Really interesting to hear about this sort of thing from a provider's point of view. Thanks, Malika!

It's quite possible she couldn't reasonably text at the time, if she was dealing with cops. But I agree that a couple of days is too long to wait for an explanation. This. Being late isn't cool either, and it's kinda hard to even text to tell someone while you're driving and also stressing about being late in the first place, and so you end up leaving them hanging until you do manage to park. It's a really shitty start to meeting someone, especially when you're also making a shitty first impression on them. I also aim to be 10-15 minutes early, and most of the time I do the same thing - park somewhere nearby to wait discreetly if need be, and then drive up the road to where you need to be at the appropriate moment. It's different if I'm going to be downtown - in that case it often takes a few minutes to find somewhere to park, there's far less risk of attracting attention because clients aren't all parking in the same place, and once I've found a space there's no way I'm giving it up, so I'll just wait in the car and then walk as many blocks as required.

Yeah, it happens occasionally. I had one last week, too. Just report the message as Greenteal said, and the mods will ban the account.

Thanks, Lydia (and the rest of the team behind the scenes). This is definitely a move in the right direction.

Well, yeah. I get that newbies can be irritating; I think it's just something we have to put up with. This is really a general netiquette problem. All communities have their own set of rules (some explicit, some not) and their own way of going about things. The right thing to do when joining a new forum is usually to lurk for a bit, get a feel for how it works, and then start to contribute. But a lot of people don't do that - they just sign up, post away, and annoy the more established members of the community. This really isn't unique to this forum; you can see the same playing out in other discussion boards, subreddits, and pretty much anywhere else people talk about things online. Hell, you can see it in real life, too. And we just have to put up with it, because it will never change. Finally, I'd like to reiterate what @Mikeyboy said, because it's important: if we scare off all the potential new members then we have no future. We can point them in the right direction without being overly harsh about it. And anyone who feels that's too much effort is entirely at liberty to simply ignore it and move on.

Yes, the no-show is still on the client. It would be on the client even if they had a good excuse, and I don't think this is one. I get that cops can make some folks nervous, but they can show up anywhere and that's something you have to factor in whenever you decide to leave the house. One of the things you have to realize in this world is that really, nobody else knows your business. You are not walking around with a flashing red light over your head and a big sign that says, "THIS GUYS IS GOING TO SEE AN ESCORT!!!". Unless you do something drastically stupid, nobody is going to know anything... including cops. I'm aware while writing this that I'm a white guy, so I'm not going to get the same attention that folks with more melanin than me might, but I still don't think it's a good reason to no-show. I suppose it might be OK to cancel if you had reason to believe the cops were explicitly looking for you, but if that's the case then you've probably got bigger problems than your pending appointment in the hotel... This does remind me of someone I saw who asked people to go to a particular hotel parking lot that was near her incall and call her from there for final directions. Thing is, that hotel was just over the road from the local police station... apparently she had some people who got there and decided to cancel.

Well, that was a resounding "Meh".

Many of the providers that require deposits are very reputable indeed.

You would probably do better to ask in the discussion forum for the relevant city, wherever that may be.

So if you don't mind me asking, how did you procure the second Moderna shot? I think one of the big issues with Canadian vaccines being recognized abroad is probably the way we've been mixing and matching shots... and so for many of us, having a third shot that's the same as our second could be useful from a bureaucratic point of view.

TBH, I think that's another thing we can blame porn for. AFAIK quite a lot of performers have had that sort of work done, and so everyone else starts feeling the pressure to conform to that norm. It's not helped by people who have done a lot more watching porn than getting naked with real people who are then shocked when real-life genitalia don't all look like the standard porn model.

Thanks, @Shalom! This is something that I wish was better understood: that sex is a lot more than just P-in-V (or other orifice).

It's not the same at all. Businesses declining to advertise on Fox is completely different to a pressure group trying to shut down Fox entirely. No, the biggest problem with OnlyFans was that it sold porn, period. Some people don't like that and wish to inflict their narrow-minded opinions on everyone else. They went after OF just as they had previously gone after Pornhub, which I don't recall ever being known for its 'family friendly' content. Moving to a new platform would not have fixed the problem when the problem for these people is that porn exists at all.

Does matter, because it will happen again, and it will keep happening until we solve the fundamental problem. I'm wondering, though... could we use this against the nutjob religious right? Could we generate enough pressure to force Visa/MC to stop providing services to people whose morality *we* disapprove of?

How you communicate, and with whom, and when, and whether you expect to be paid for it... are entirely your business, and nobody else's. Every escort decides for themselves what they do, and who with. Trying to police other folks' behaviour the way that it seems is going on here is a douchebag move. To illustrate how stupid this is: look at what happens if you make it a general rule. Once we start saying "You shouldn't do X because it undermines other escorts who don't do it"... where does that end? Should you stop offering services that other people don't? Clock-watch more, because they do? Raise your rates so you don't undercut anyone? Lower them so you don't look elitist? Stop doing incalls because some other people don't? Stop doing outcalls because some other people don't? Maybe the solution to these people is to invite them to come up with a set of universal practices to which all escorts must adhere, and then grab some popcorn and sit back while they fight over it. And just stir the pot a little more if it looks like they're calming down. That's probably not the most mature or sensible solution, but it might be fun and it would go some way towards making up for the unnecessary irritation they cause you.

Thanks, @loopie! And great to see you around these parts again!

I'm officially single, so this conversation doesn't really apply to me. But what I wonder is... now that I know what's out there, could I go back to just one person again? I'm not sure.

We can still have democracy with today's tech. It's just that it looks very different now. Winning political campaigns using misinformation is... not new. What has changed is the speed at which the lies can spread, and the speed at which other people make up new lies to reinforce the old ones, and they way in which our social media bubbles tend to feed us stuff we already agree with whether it's true or not. We all have whatever beliefs we have, and we simply don't get the pushback on them any more. We aren't forced to defend our beliefs because we only talk to people who already agree with them. I'm not sure how we change that, because... people like to be comfortable, and like to feel smart, and exposure to people who tell you that you're wrong about something runs contrary to that so we tend to avoid it. That's just human nature; the problem is that social media, by the nature of the way it works, tends to reward some of the bits of human nature that do a lot of long-term damage.

I see this whole thing has gone a full 180 in the time it took me to log in since it happened :) If you'll all forgive me blowing my own trumpet a bit, I talked about this in the (very long) interview I did back in January - the fact that the two big payment companies now wield enormous power and can effectively shut businesses down more-or-less at will. This will happen again. I'm not really sure where this leaves OF. If Visa and Mastercard cut them off then they're probably screwed; if all the sex workers leave then they're also probably screwed. And they've just demonstrated very clearly to SWs that they will absolutely not support them when the chips are down. Of course, SWs as a community are already well aware that they can rely on pretty much nobody except themselves. Now that OF has pulled a complete U-turn on this it'll be very interesting to see what happens. Will Visa/MC go through with cutting them off? Will they survive if that happens? Will SWs forgive them for the attempt to throw them under the bus? Some sort of alternative will inevitably come along, although whether that's an alternative platform to OF or an alternative payment system remains to be seen. The latter would be better in the long run, although I think it's less likely.

I'm not averse to providing a deposit, and have done in the past, but I'm only going to do it with someone who has an established presence so I can be reasonably confident that they're legit. TBH for me that isn't a matter of googling the phone number or doing an image search on the pics; it's more about their presence in various places (here, Twitter, etc), recommendations/reviews from clients, whether and how they interact with other providers.

Well, I'm glad someone kicks these things off. Sweeping everything under the carpet doesn't really help anyone in the long run. Things just fester.

TBH, I don't think Erin O'Toole would be as bad in the PM's office as some of the possible alternatives. What worries me is that he got the leadership job because the party realized that they needed someone more generally acceptable to most Canadians on the social issues, but the party as a whole hasn't actually changed all that much. So what would happen if they get in? Who would set the agenda? Difficult to say... Not that it's really a big issue for my vote - my riding is Liberal vs NDP and the Tory candidate, whoever that is (I can't be bothered to find out), will come a very distant third.

Seriously? Sheesh. All I can say is that there's a lot of people out there who are really not good at risk assessment. But that ain't news.

It can work that way. Or you can be seeing someone who's really had enough even before you turn up. I've experienced both :)