BootmanLA

Right. But that's not the kind of posting I'm talking about. I'm seeing people posting what are clearly *not* porn video advertisement photos - not watermarked, no studio, and from all appearances just random shots swiped from somewhere on the web - being used to illustrate the characters in a story. That said, the pictures I was specifically concerned about seem to have mysteriously vanished from the story in question, with no indication in the header of the post(s) that the post was edited. And a comment that praised the picture for showing such a hot guy to illustrate the story also seems to have vanished.

As the owner & moderators have noted before - you get the ability to react (ie rate) more posts by posting more and increasing your level of participation on the site. With 23 posts to your credit (as of your posting above) that's not going to grant you a lot of access just yet.

This is undoubtedly a big part of it, perhaps the main reason by far. But it's important to note as well that this is a 2-pill treatment; either a manufacturer would have to propose and fund a study using a combined pill (which doesn't yet exist) or the study would really have to account for situations where someone takes only one of the two pills (either periodically, or regularly), because otherwise you're assuming one more thing that could vary in actuality. One thing I vaguely remember as a concern with the original 3-drug cocktails that required three separate pills is that things would get wonky for patients at times; one of the pills would be unavailable at refill time, for instance, and though it was fairly quickly in stock, the patients still had varying levels of the three drugs at times. Or someone would lose a few pills from one of the three, and until there was a refill, he was using 2 instead of 3 drugs. And some of those original medications required two or more doses per 24 hour period, so it was complex for people to take, and there was even more opportunity to get "out of sync" with the 3 drugs in the "cocktail". The single-pill regimens solved all of that, but it also means that you have to actually be prepared to produce a single pill combining the two drugs you want to test together as PrEP, if the study works out.

I suspect when the site was created, and thus had relatively few members, the feeling was that covering larger geographic areas in one folder meant more posts grouped together, and less likely that there would be, say, 10 subfolders in Europe/UK/England for all major metro areas and 6 or 7 were perpetually empty because (a) there were a few or no members there and (b) none of them posted because nobody else posted first, so nobody realized there were others in their area. As the site's grown, perhaps it's time to add more city-specific (or at least smaller regional) folders - perhaps some pretty active members in some areas could be tasked with coming up with a proposal for their area? ie "Here's a list of major metro areas in England which may merit their own folder" - with the understanding of course that the final decision belongs with the site.

That depends on how tightly the door seals when it closes. For a looser fitting door, you can run a narrow strip of high-strength duck tape on the edge of the door (make sure it doesn't wrap around to the front of the door) to keep the latching mechanism from popping out). That should work much of the time. But doors that fit tightly may require being propped open by swinging the safety latch into the open doorway and letting the door close against it, so that the door can't close all the way. Unfortunately, that means people can tell the door is open; it's a judgment call as to whether the neighborhood is worth risking it.

Never heard of this? What rock do you live under? That's been a noted effect since, well, forever. It's part of why the feds were so adamant about banning it back in the early 20th century, because it was popular in the African-American community and they were afraid all the black guys were going to be uncontrollable rapists attacking white women.

Because it's not just "one pill a day" and nothing else. That "one pill a day" can, depending on your system, wreak havoc with your liver or your kidneys. So you have to be constantly monitored not only for your viral levels, but for what the medications are doing to your system. The meds may have to be changed, multiple times over the years, to prevent problems or to at least stave off further degradation of critical bodily functions. It's true that new meds are coming online every few years, but depending on how crafty HIV becomes, it's possible that over a long lifetime you might develop resistance to most of the medications we have out there. We simply don't know if HIV will continue to respond for 60 years the way it does in the first, say, 10. And some of the meds have, in certain people, nasty side effects. Those are much more limited now, as the medications have improved, but it's not 100%, and you could be one of the lucky ones. Some of the medications, for instance, make it much easier to gain fat, so it's a struggle to stay fit (and packing on fat can increase the risk of things like Type II diabetes and heart disease). If you don't already have good life insurance before you're diagnosed, forget getting it. There are a limited number of companies that will insure HIV+ people who are undetectable and have been for a certain period of time. But it's not cheap, and coverage is limited - whereas an HIV-negative 25-year old might be able to get $250,000 of life insurance fairly affordably, an HIV-positive guy who's 50 will pay more than that guy will to get $20,000 of coverage to help with his funeral costs. In most places, you can't donate blood nor can you serve as an organ donor (they're just beginning to experiment with organ transplants between HIV+ patients). You wouldn't know it from most posts here, of course, but there is still a significant stigma about sero-discordant sex (between a positive and a negative person). Sure, there's a growing number of negative guys who are clear that "U=U" and that being on PrEP, they're OK with poz partners. But there's still an awful lot whose motto is "Clean, UB2" or "DDF only" or "Neg4Neg only", and for every one who posts that publicly, there's probably 10 or 20 who won't say it out loud, but that's their policy anyway. I'm not a global traveler, but there are still numbers of countries where you can't travel if you're HIV+, particularly in the Middle East and Africa. There are fewer official restrictions in most other places for short-term visits but you often can't get a longer-term visa if you're poz. And on and on. There are days when you don't even have to think about it really, even when you take your medications, and then suddenly something happens that you have to disclose for. For instance, I was on a vacation and hired a birding guide to help me find a few rare species in the region, and she mentioned while making the arrangements that she carried a full first aid kit in her vehicle. And it hit me - I need to tell her I'm poz just in case there's some sort of accident and I'm bleeding and she needs to know to be careful the way health care workers are instinctively. And there's no going back - maybe there will be a way to eradicate it from the body eventually, maybe not (beyond the bone marrow transplants they've experimented with). And we don't know what the future will bring in terms of new complications. For now, it's a life sentence, and while it may seem like "just one pill a day", the reality is a lot more complex.

Could be, but based on what he described, he recognized the guy (presumably from photos on the site). Given that the OP had to "find parking", that indicates an urban environment, ie multifamily dwellings (apartments, condos) and not single family houses, as he could have just parked at the guy's house.

I can't speak directly to the quality or use of either of the three main recommendations here (Jim Support vs. Fort Troff vs. Mr. S Leather). That said, I will note, for those who travel, the specs for the Jim Support model show a weight of 43 lbs (which means it can be checked baggage without getting into overweight territory). Mr. S's site clocks theirs in at 55 lbs (over the 50 lb single bag limit, so that's an overweight charge) and Fort Troff's is a hefty 64 lbs, so that's definitely over the standard limit. If you travel by vehicle, of course, it's not as weighty an issue.

I think the points made so far demonstrate how impossible it is to answer this question with a single answer. Dominant men want to be approached by a respectful submissive, except for those dominants who don't want a submissive to approach them at all because it's their job to approach the sub. Some sub men want an alpha to come after them, while others prefer to go on the hunt themselves and tempt a man with their assets. In between the two, you've got shy people who want to someone else to do the approaching, confident people who enjoy bringing out a shy man's interest, confident men who want other confident men, and so on and so on. Nothing works for everyone. Best advice I can come up with: be authentic, be YOU, and anyone who's not interested isn't right for you anyway. If you have to change into someone else to get their interest, is it worth it?

I'm good with following whatever rule you think is appropriate. But it seems to me that the likelihood of person A, who's writing bareback and/or pozzing fiction, also owning (or having the license for) a clearly very-high quality image of a model-looking young man are, shall we say, slim. Slimmer than the pickings on a bread aisle in the grocery store just before a hurricane is due to hit. Now, is there a huge amount of harm that occurs when Joe Straight Boy's pic swiped from some online forum somewhere gets used to illustrate the apple-cheeked youth that some guy is conning into taking poz loads? Maybe not. I just know if I were that guy, I'd be really, really pissed at a website that let people use my pic to illustrate erotica that had zero to do with me. It's probably unlikely he'd find out, and there's probably not much illegal about it if it's not revenge porn or whatever, but it just doesn't sit right with me as a practice to be tolerated. It just seems really, really creepy.

It's not actually that way for the US. Under US law, the photographer has a right (himself) to distribute the photograph he took of Dietrich. But absent a contract with RawTop that guarantees his ability to display his images online, the photographer has no "rights" tied to the ability to post it on RawTop's site. Everything posted here is, broadly speaking, at his benevolence and he can deny or withdraw permission to post such materials at any point. So honoring a takedown request from Dietrich under EU law would give the photographer no cause of action whatsoever.

You're probably right, but there's still one possibility here (based on what you posted, though there may be more which would rule this out): Perhaps he posted the ad four hours ago; he's gotten zero hits, or at least not in quite a while, and as a smoker, he starts feeling the need for a nicotine hit, so he pulls on some clothes and runs outside to smoke for a few. And you show up. (I said possible, not "likely"). Could even be that he posted a quick update to his message ("out for a few, back in ten") that you completely missed while you were driving. Again, as I say, possible, not judging likelihood. To me, that's a sign to call him on it, though. I'd have sent a message that says "I followed your instructions and when I arrived, you were actually dressed, outside, and smoking. What gives?" If it was a misunderstanding as I suggest is possible, he can say so, and if nothing else, it might prompt him to realize taking those breaks means missing out. Or he might try to bluff his way out and lie and say "that wasn't me". But you might at least have some idea of what he claims happened.

To be clear: should we report images when used to illustrate fiction posts, given that they aren't part of a porn video promotion and it's highly likely they don't belong to the poster?

If you want it, it is not rape, by definition. Q.E.D.

That certainly helps. And honestly, I get the appeal of illustrations - I'm a visual guy. But - still, it seems to me a bad policy to allow people to attach photos of others - people not even known to be gay, much less into bareback sex (even as a fantasy) - to fiction that describes someone (presumably of similar type) doing exactly that.

Not that I can see. "Follow" simply alerts you if ANYONE responds anywhere in the topic. For instance: in this discussion, we're in a section of the site called "General", in the particular forum called "Tips, Tricks, Rules & Help", in a thread titled "there should be a way to sort posts in a thread by popularity". "Follow" would attach to that thread name, so *any* post in this thread, whether responding to you, or me, or some completely separate posting, would trigger notification if someone "follows" this thread. What I'm envisioning is something more like this: Person A creates a thread (the highest level "item" a member can create). Person B responds to the original posting by Person A. Person C responds to Person B. Person D responds to Person C. Person E also responds to Person B (notice that his response is linked under B's). Person F also responds to Person B. Person G also responds to the original posting by Person A. The indents visually suggest who's responding to whom, and if done right you can collapse/hide any set of replies that go down a different "path" than what you're interested in - for instance, let's say I don't find B's response particularly helpful or enlightening, so collapsing it would hide (for me) C, D, E and F's responses to B. But not G's response, because he was replying directly to the original post. Does that explain what I'm thinking a little better? I'm not saying this is easy to do - there are forums/comment sections that do this, but not all - and it seems to confuse people who aren't used to threaded responses, with people "replying" in the main thread even though they're addressing a point deep in the sub-threads. Or vice versa. But when people understand it, it's a lot easier to figure out the parts that are getting lots of attention and responses.

In another thread, RawTop (in my view, correctly) levied infractions on a member for posting third-party pictures in a pozzing fiction story - given that the person in the photos almost certainly hadn't consented to their use in illustrating a backroom-level fiction story about infecting someone with HIV. Should there be a general rule about posting pictures in the fiction section? Even outside of the Bugchasing/pozzing forum, I can see there might be stories in the General barebacking forum or in the other fetish forums, where someone whose picture got online and then used in these forums could really piss off the guy in the picture. I'm seeing this more and more lately - still a small minority of the posts, but a trend I could see exploding. And if such a rule were put in place, I'd suggest a pinned post in each relevant fiction section reminding people of that.

Depends. If you were so fucked up from your drug shit that you couldn't consent, it doesn't matter whether or not you had a "GOOD time" - you were raped. Then again if your life revolves around using chemical substances to fuck yourself up, I guess adding a little rape on top of it doesn't really matter.

Speaking as a developer - allowing different sort orders is a relatively trivial thing, code-wise. But this site is built using a forum-management package that wasn't developed in-house by RawTop (he's mentioned before that he's working on his own site, but he's boxed in (to some degree) by the limits of this particular package. I think your continuity point, however, is critical. If popular responses come before the less-popular comments that they're responding to, it won't make any sense. What WOULD make sense is a more threaded system; that is, instead of there being a relatively flat design of a post followed by one or more comments, you could comment responding directly to a prior comment; kind of like the quote-responses here, but automatically threaded so that you can follow all the responses to any particular posting. In theory, it would also make it easier to split off a thread of comments into its own topic, by moving the "comment that provoked a new thread" to the top level as a new topic itself. THAT would be a code challenge (do-able, certainly, but would be complex), but it would be much more functional.

Then I didn't make myself clear. I was distinguishing between the times a guy considers himself available for sex, and when he isn't, not that he sometimes is a no-loads-refused cumdump and sometimes not. Obviously, there will be loads refused if, say, you're lying in a hospital bed connected to a ventilator; "no loads refused" doesn't mean "I'll take any load at any time" but rather "when I'm taking loads, I don't refuse them". I also believe, however, in rounding up and in exigent circumstances, so that, for instance, if a guy shows up with open, gangrenous sores on his cock that are dripping pus, even a no-loads-refused cumdump could be excused for passing. (One could argue it's not the load he's refusing but the means of delivering it.)

I think if it happened while fucking, the top should just say "oops, sorry" and keep going. Unless the smell is so bad one or both guys CAN'T keep going. Mostly the same for "during oral" - except for the laugh. Laughing if it happens while you're getting oral, and even more so doing it while you're being rimmed, is squarely into humiliation territory. That means it's something that needs to be negotiated in advance - at least in broad terms, if there are going to be D/S elements during play, consent's required. A top might not tip his hand and say "I'm gonna fart in your face while you rim me", but if all they've discussed is rimming, farting while deliberately holding his face in place crosses a line for me. I think the point about "to make the bottom repulsed on purpose" is what drives this home for me: that's an element of play that should never be foisted on an unsuspecting bottom. If he KNOWS you're going to do something that might repulse him, and he consents, that's fine. Doing it without warning not only might ruin the event for him, but traumatize him regarding that activity with others for a long time to come. That's a shitty thing to do.

FWIW: if you derive pleasure or satisfaction from being humiliated, it's not my place to say you're doing it wrong. But I will note: OF COURSE it's pleasurable for the "Alpha Tops" (some of which, in my view, could be anything but, but I digress). Bullies also derive pleasure from humiliating others, but that doesn't mean bullying is acceptable behavior automatically. Here's what I'd consider a good test: do the "Alpha Tops" value you, and treat you with respect, outside of such scenes? Or do they treat you as inferior and worthy of being humiliated whenever the mood strikes them? To me: if the humiliation ends with the scene, and you're treated with respect afterwards for doing a great job pleasing them, then that's a reasonably healthy situation and I have no qualms with it. It wouldn't be my choice - I don't like humiliation and won't submit to it - but that's my rule for me, not some sort of revealed truth from on high. If the humiliation can start at any time, in any setting, just because that's how they treat subs and enjoy it - when you haven't *willingly* entered into a setting where that's on the table - is just bullying and being an asshole. What worries me is how I've seen bullies over the years treat others who weren't equipped to stand up for themselves, either through lack of self esteem or worse, being developmentally disabled in some fashion and thus easily convinced to do degrading things through positive reinforcement (ie we'll be your friends, just do this thing for us [that treats him like a performing monkey]). Those bullying victims can become convinced that they're happy to be doing things that please these "betters", when in fact the "betters" are just taking advantage of the victims' naivete to mock them, and they have zero respect for their victims or their efforts. Again, not saying that's the case in all erotic situations that involve humiliation. But it's also not an unknown problem.

I will toss this out there: I think there can be a difference in meaning for "no loads refused" depending on whether it's used in an ad for a party/hosting situation - the kind of thing BBRT classifies as "Local Parties" or "Quick Connect ads" - or used in a profile. In the former case, sure: the bottom should be prepped, ready to take whatever size cock(s) show up, and no matter what skin color, HIV status, or anything else may describe them. Those sorts of ads include time parameters, so there's no excuse for not being ready when you said you'd be. But in a profile, where it describes more the general approach the poster takes to sex? It's more reasonable to ask at least some questions, because there's no guarantee the poster is ready right that moment to do what he says. He may feel he's ready to handle a 6-incher without a lot more prep but not a niner. He might be an "on demand" PrEPster and only is "no loads refused" when he knows his day-of double dose has had time to kick in for a few hours. And so on. A bottom asking questions when he doesn't have a "right now" kind of ad posted is not out of the question. That doesn't excuse race-related bigotry, of course; "no load refused, unless you're not white" would be a blunt but honest statement; they don't use that, of course, because they know even lots of white guys would be turned off by that kind of attitude.

I think this is where so many studios fail, and where some of those that produced limited but great output in the past succeeded: they paired up performers not just based on who was hot at the moment, but on chemistry, and if Top A and Bottom B didn't seem to have that chemistry, you could always swap over to Top C or Bottom D. When porn became an assembly line of cranking out a given number of films per year for a particular performer, it was kind of like the old studio system in Hollywood: you'd work steadily, but you'd produce some pretty awful crap along the way. The difference is that under the studio system, an actor would get the chance to watch other, better actors, and work with multiple directors and makeup people and so forth, and learn his craft to become better at it. With the porn studio system, there wasn't much acting to learn (as was pretty obvious from most of the "acting" you'd find in the films, but I digress), so the film's success had a short-term and a long-term component. Short term, what mattered was whether you were currently "hot" - Jeff Stryker at his peak, or any of the other scores of "stars" that came and went back in the day. Long term, what mattered is how good the sex worked with your partners, and that's not something any amount of "training as you go" can produce from thin air. Mind you, some guys (very few) seem to just always have a connection with whoever they're paired with. Either they're really good at faking it, or they're just really into the whole thing and the result is hot sex.