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Content Notice – Incitement to suicide, proceed with caution
In this week’s description for the #SB4MH prompt, Cat wrote:
This week’s prompt is open but with a twist. Share the very first post that you wrote about mental health. Share the one you published before you knew about SB4MH. It can be about your issues or someone else’s issues. Try to find one that is an old one.
I have had a post that’s been bubbling for a while looking for a suitable time and place to publish. It’s a new post, though it describes events of 25 years ago, so I think it fits the spirit of this prompt.
This post covers a very dark topic and is as close as I’ve ever been to encountering something genuinely “evil”. Please take the content notice seriously, I’d much rather you turned away now than find the content too much to consume.
[A very big thank you for the editorial advice when I was deliberating whether to publish this post – you know who you are 💗]
I’ve written about fond memories of Mrs Silks chatroom, and since the site closed in 2018 it’s become by far the most popular post on this blog, it even has high Google rankings.
However, this chatroom also provided my first encounter with the dark and dangerous individuals that the Internet unleashed with its anonymity.
The Internet of the mid-1990’s hadn’t heard of security. I remember the industry horror when the first commercial email spam campaign was unleashed by Canter and Siegel in 1994. It pricked a lot of bubbles, caused meltdown and was considered the first ‘evil’ of the Internet. That hint of ‘evil’ was but a small precursor of the real vileness that touched me not long after in Mrs Silks chatroom.
Today if you want to go into a chatroom you’ll need a validated account and accept you may be monitored. Back then, it was a complete free for all. You could enter that chatroom with any name made up on the spot. Lots of potential for small jokes and wind ups in pretending to be someone else. In light of events, those pranks were the thin end of the wedge.
I logged in one day under my usual name to be immediately greeted by an unknown person in my DMs and in very obvious distress. It took me a while to coax the details and it just got worse and worse.
A sub screwing up their courage to enter such a place for the first time is petrified. For the first time they are alongside others who know why the sub is there. All those shameful kinks, desires and fantasies they could never express in the real world, exposed for all in the room to see and know.
These places are the home of the keyboard warriors. The ones in their Mum’s back bedroom who spout authoritatively on what the rules are, based on their fevered imagination that they will never see played out for real.
A new sub is easily taken in by perceived authority figures. And this is the beginning of what had happened to my distressed interlocutor.
Someone had been in the room using my handle and had left shortly before I arrived. This person double teamed with another to present this newbie sub with the darkest mindfuck in one afternoon that I’ve seen. So imagine this sequence.
- Ascertain that newbie is a sub. Doesn’t know what it means, but is eager to please.
- The sub professes a desire to explore cross dressing and aspects of ‘sissy’ D/s
- Sub blithely hands over some personal information about living circumstances i.e. still lives with parents.
The setup is complete and the mindfuck can progress.
Starting under the guise of being protectors wanting to help our newbie they start off with asking newbie to find bra, panties and tights from the mother’s wardrobe. Nervous hesitation dismissed with “so you don’t really want to feel silky and sexy, then”. And the big clincher, “you can’t be a true sub if you don’t do as we say”.
Pattern established.
Newbie becomes more and more confused and frightened of not doing as ordered by these super dominants who tell him this is the only true way.
Further progressions:
- Find out newbie’s mother’s wardrobe has miniskirts, so convince newbie of his desire to wear one and look like a sissy slut
- Order newbie to apply make up to look like a cheap hooker
- Convince newbie that a sissy slut always wants to suck cock and must suck any cock
And the pièce de résistance for the finale is ordering newbie to go outside to the corner of the street with the main road and display as a hooker looking for a trick and to suck that cock.
It was at this point I came in to the chatroom !!!
Not realising that I was now not the person to whom they had been speaking, the messages were pleas not to be made to do this and rapidly degenerated in to a calm solution that the only way out of this was to kill themselves. So mindfucked that the possibility of saying “NO”, that this was not real, eluded them.
It took me three hours to talk them out of the mindfuck and back to reality.
I don’t think I ever saw that newbie come back to the chatroom and I wouldn’t be surprised if they completely forswore all the desires and fantasies that had led them there in the first place.
It was my first encounter with the vicious, evil predators that have been given licence to operate by the Internet. When confronted later, there was no remorse. Indeed, one expressed disappointment that the sub hadn’t killed himself. I raised this episode in the public room with the perpetrators and Admin present. It caused no public concern in the chat room beyond “that’s not very nice” and a shrug from Admin. In private, a few expressions of horror and helplessness – and then it was all forgotten. To someone looking at the world as it is today the lack of concern about the victim and censure of the perpetrators will seem callous. That’s what the online world was like on the end of a 28,800 modem. No one expected to encounter evil, it was still a universe of unicorns.
But the episode isn’t forgotten, twenty-five years later this formative experience is as vivid today as it was then. It’s why I’m prepared to take the time and listen to people’s questions and traumas, I’ve seen the darkness. The editorial help on this post helped me see a specific reason that it’s not been forgotten – guilt. Guilt that I couldn’t and didn’t do more back then.
When people wonder why I seem to be familiar with the darkest fantasies and motivations of male subs, it’s because I have seen them close up. Close enough to be spattered by the gore and somehow reject descending in to the gore myself.
What (luckily) happened to me is that I found the right people at the right time to keep me away from the darkest and most disturbing paths. I could so easily have been turned towards a descent in to the darkness.
I know how my own thoughts operated back then. They were not entirely BDSM healthy and much of the eco-system was, and is, about channelling fantasies and desires into very unhealthy directions.
I can see an alternate version of my old self in a similar position to that emotionally crippled sub (for different reasons) and in need of a rescue that may never have arrived.
There but for the grace of God, go I.
And that by itself is another sub-conscious statement of ‘survivor’ guilt. Never mind if I might have needed rescuing, what about those subject to similar experiences that never got the help ? Where are they now ? Are they even here to tell their stories ? If they are, what traumas have they been left with ?
Indeed, it’s apparent I still have my own mini-trauma from these events and revisiting them as melody is far more emotionally draining than it was as ‘him’.
This is why I sometimes write in what can feel like female spaces about male sub issues. I know of their mental traumas and pain and at the same time know how reluctant they are to address, admit and talk about it. It’s why I deem #SB4MH to be so important as a space for anyone to discuss mental health and wish to support it.
Written for the #sb4mh meme of “Open”. Why not go check out other posts by clicking on the button.
Suicide Hotline Numbers
UK Samaritans: 116 123
US: 1-800-SUICIDE (784-2433) or 1-800-273-TALK (8255)
August 5, 2019 @ 10:26 pm
I can’t understand what kind of hateful, twisted minds would derive pleasure from driving someone to the brink of suicide. And, as you say, one wonders how such experiences may have driven the sub into a place of guilt, denial, self-hatred.
Guilt is an automatic response from someone who has empathy and care for others, and I think the fact that you still feel such concern for this person 25 years later shows that you are indeed a caring individual who has no reason at all to feel guilty. 💖
July 30, 2019 @ 7:08 pm
The internet now a days is by no means perfect. People like me complain about censorship, feeling the powers that be pretend it is for the children sake when there is actually another agenda. But This early internet hub was like a cesspit – waiting to pull in, abuse, corrupt and house all kinds of characters.
Thank goodness this person found YOU at the other end of the ether. That was their karma.
As far as the guilt goes. I think that is a given considering how long this has stayed on your mind. Blame is a different thing. And I think you did all you could to right a wrong. And are still doing so.
I find your early web experiences fascinating and would love to read more – good – bad and work related 😉 x
July 30, 2019 @ 7:25 pm
I totally agree with you regarding censorship, one of my bug bears that can set me off on a rant. You might recall a piece I did a while ago comparing the Internet with the machine of the Krells of Forbidden Planet. This experience was probably the genesis of my ‘theory’.
Guilt, especially survivor guilt is pernicious and we probably all have some of it tucked away from various experiences.
I know you’re a tech fiend, so I’ll see if I can slip some in. Funny, I just recalled that the first time I was a top 3 choice for #WickedWednesday was when you were judging – I deliberately put in the bit in the section about Grace Hopper as “May bait” 😂💋 – it worked 💗💗
July 30, 2019 @ 7:56 pm
it did! x
July 29, 2019 @ 8:43 pm
How horribly that poor sub was treated, and shocking that use of your name involved you. But thank goodness you ‘logged in’ when you did and were able to assist and soothe, preventing what might have been. It’s shocking too that Admin did not want to take it further, but we are looking at this with 2019 eyes, and (as you say) so much has changed and evolved. Some of those dangers have dispersed, but new dangers and pitfalls have evolved.
I am glad you participate in and support #sb4MH – you’re so right that it is valid and needed and I’m very please the admin for this site was able to help you gain perspective on your take regarding this traumatic event.
July 30, 2019 @ 9:43 am
I find that loosely there’s a common assumption that males, dom or sub, can never be the victim. This is another reason why many will bury their experiences, they don’t expect to be believed or find sympathy. It is 2019 and there is more awareness, though I’m not sure protection is any easier for what goes on in private channels. The only improvement is in action and sanctions after the event when brought to the attention of the site administration.
As the post says, I’ve been spattered by the gore and don’t wish anyone to have to experience such things.
melody x