Read This! Significant Change In Rules Effective 3/1

[rawTOP]

10 hours ago, Sum1 said:

Maybe, you've been around a lot longer than I have, and as such, have experienced a whole lot more. I dunno, the risk of catching something is the whole reason I bareback in the first place, otherwise I'd just wear condoms. Actually, I'd probably abstain from sex altogether just because I don't find the act of sex on it's own all that fun. Though that's just me, and again, I don't think I'm this site's target audience, and that's cool. Same as being an outlier to anything, you have the best luck when your interests are the most common wherever you happen to be.

Try condoms for a while and you'll realize all the other reasons why barebacking is better. The sensations (for both the top and the bottom) are like 100 times better. And the exchange of fluids can be really intimate and powerful. It actually makes me sad that you see barebacking only as a form of self-harm. That's what I'm trying to correct with this policy.

 

23 minutes ago, Hintyt said:

Does this apply to those discussing choices one makes for them self?  If a member with full-blown AIDS announced their decision to stop taking medication, would that be banned?

This is really confusing.

No infraction is ever given to someone who sincerely seeks personal life advice (well, if they put it in the wrong section they might get an infraction, but not for the question). When someone comes on the site and says they're thinking of self-harm people who respond will absolutely get an infraction for anything less than a well-considered, sensitive answer. For many years now we haven't allowed "harm to another real person". The members who seek advice are human beings who deserve to be treated in a compassionate manner. "Go harm yourself" is never appropriate, and never has been allowed. So there's no change in policy on the types of cases you're talking about.

The new rules are about AIDS FETISH in the sense of holding out illness/morbidity as a desirable goal that people should strive to achieve. I don't want the members to use this site to form a death cult which is literally what's happening on Twitter right now, and to a lesser extent here. My gut tells me that many of the guys pushing the destructive form of AIDS Fetish are meth addicts with a distorted view of reality. You'll see them pushing the destructive form of AIDS fetish, and then all of a sudden you'll see a tweet from them like "Kind of hard to say this, but I'm now apparently meds resistant and cd4 count slightly over 100", but then a week later they're back to potentially destructive behavior. 

[wood]

1 hour ago, rawTOP said:

Try condoms for a while and you'll realize all the other reasons why barebacking is better. The sensations (for both the top and the bottom) are like 100 times better. And the exchange of fluids can be really intimate and powerful. It actually makes me sad that you see barebacking only as a form of self-harm. That's what I'm trying to correct with this policy.

 

No infraction is ever given to someone who sincerely seeks personal life advice (well, if they put it in the wrong section they might get an infraction, but not for the question). When someone comes on the site and says they're thinking of self-harm people who respond will absolutely get an infraction for anything less than a well-considered, sensitive answer. For many years now we haven't allowed "harm to another real person". The members who seek advice are human beings who deserve to be treated in a compassionate manner. "Go harm yourself" is never appropriate, and never has been allowed. So there's no change in policy on the types of cases you're talking about.

The new rules are about AIDS FETISH in the sense of holding out illness/morbidity as a desirable goal that people should strive to achieve. I don't want the members to use this site to form a death cult which is literally what's happening on Twitter right now, and to a lesser extent here. My gut tells me that many of the guys pushing the destructive form of AIDS Fetish are meth addicts with a distorted view of reality. You'll see them pushing the destructive form of AIDS fetish, and then all of a sudden you'll see a tweet from them like "Kind of hard to say this, but I'm now apparently meds resistant and cd4 count slightly over 100", but then a week later they're back to potentially destructive behavior. 

I fully support the changes and this message. 
 

I know I’m not exactly popular on here because my posts are almost always just fact based, but parts of this forum have strayed far from the original intent, and IMO it hurt this community. 

[Bottomlad]

Thanks for this rule 

[AOFraFuck]

On 2/21/2021 at 4:10 PM, hairyone said:

A very well-thought policy. Thank you, rawTOP.   👍

It is! 👍

[EricX]

Clarification: will you be purging posts currently on this site that violate this policy?  If not, you might want to post some sort of warning on each of these posts, or close them to further comments. 
 

Thanks for all the time you put into maintaining this site. 

[ErosWired]

On 2/21/2021 at 8:24 AM, rawTOP said:

So for example - a bottom is getting spit roasted and the top fucking him slips him a booty bump without him knowing. Since drugs wear off after a few hours, that's not permanent harm.

This is potentially confusing. The initial effect of, for instance, methamphetamine, may wear off after a few hours, but damage to dopamine receptors may be lasting, and the foundation for life-changing addiction may have been laid. Plus, dosing another person with a psychoactive medication - or indeed any pharmaceutical - without his knowledge and without knowledge of other health factors or other medications that might contraindicate it is not defensible. The reality is that stealth doping another human being is dangerous no matter how you color it.

In fictional stories, the tale can be told that everything turned out fine - as it might, if everybody stayed lucky. But everybody doesn’t always stay lucky in real life, and sometimes harm is done even if it isn’t immediately obvious.

Similarly, advocating for giving someone HIV is not to be an infraction in the way advocating for giving someone AIDS is, but the hard truth is that, at this point in the state of medical science, giving someone HIV causes him harm. Meds may hold off the development of the disease, but they do not stop it completely, and every single person with HIV, without exception, is fighting an internal battle against constant inflammation that is wearing down his systems and shortening his life. Period. What if the guy who just gets pozzed keeps getting false negative results on his HIV testing and doesn’t get on meds at all? (I’ll tell you what: He ends up with a CD4 count of 49, a viral load of 85,000, and fungal meningitis, and we’re back at AIDS even if it was never mentioned.) So it’s not as though one can say that giving someone HIV is harmless, even today. It may not be the death sentence that it was, but it’s still a chronic disease, and it sure as hell ain’t gonna wear off in a few hours.

 I think that this barebacker community, by its nature, tends to be one that takes a certain you-buys-your-ticket-you-takes-your-chances view on personal risk that lays the responsibility for risk on the person who experiences the effects. Such a view is sometimes at odds with a sense of responsibility for the well-being of others, and doesn’t necessarily promote an ethos of preventing harm.

 For that reason I think these extended restrictions are forward-thinking and necessary, and I am glad to see them implemented. I do think sometimes we as a community would do well to think a little deeper about our responsibility to prevent ourselves from becoming agents of harm to others.

[drscorpio]

1 hour ago, ericbttmffx said:

Clarification: will you be purging posts currently on this site that violate this policy?  If not, you might want to post some sort of warning on each of these posts, or close them to further comments. 
 

Thanks for all the time you put into maintaining this site. 

Moderator's Note: The plan is to edit the posts that can be saved and remove the ones that cannot. This will be a process. There are only so many of us on the staff, and there are so many posts to go through. 

[mikesholes]

Isn't this kinda cancel culturey, and is that considered woke? The dreary purist trends here in the US are censoruous and retrograde, though the pendulum inevitably swings both ways. 

Inoffensive sleaze seems like an oxymoron.

[seattlebbbtm]

I appreciate checking suicidal ideation but I find some hot fantasy stories on this site that involve STIs which can be cured with treatment.

I am a total slut and this site allows me a community where nobody judges me for ending up with STIs after a hedonistic evening of gluttony at my local bathhouse. That lack of judgment for risky sex illuminates the fantasy fiction found here and I fear your new STI ban perpetuates the stigma and leaves me feeling judged. 

If we want to discourage self-destruction, why allow irreversible castration talk of any sort while condemning STI fantasy fiction?

I love this site and intend to stick around to see how this plays out, but remain concerned we’ve reached the beginning of the end of what makes the Backroom unique.

[rawTOP]

1 hour ago, mikesholes said:

Isn't this kinda cancel culturey, and is that considered woke? The dreary purist trends here in the US are censoruous and retrograde, though the pendulum inevitably swings both ways. 

Inoffensive sleaze seems like an oxymoron.

There are times when cancel culture is a good thing. This is one of those times. 

[rawTOP]

For those who find the policy confusing… I had to draw the line somewhere. It took a while to think through the issues to identify what it was that had changed recently in the posts and tweets I’ve been seeing. There had always been an undercurrent of harmful fetishes, but it’s really gotten quite bad the last year or two. My guiding principle previously was that people can do what they want with their own bodies. But I came to the realization that STDs (other than HIV) effect more than the individual, and that while a person has the right to kill themselves, it’s perfectly reasonable to say this site won’t encourage it. 

If you can explain a better, more clear policy, I’m all ears. 

[seattlebbbtm]

I agree that drug-fueled sexual violence is getting out of hand and agree that measures must be undertaken to prevent this site from drawing unwanted oversight. But I just can’t quite square why STIs now seem verboten when they are a natural consequence of embracing anonymous bareback sex. If anything, articulating their existence can encourage their prevention as much as encourage their wanton proliferation.  

Edited February 23, 2021 by seattlebbbtm

[cumslutfuckpig]

50 minutes ago, seattlebbbtm said:

I agree that drug-fueled sexual violence is getting out of hand and agree that measures must be undertaken to prevent this site from drawing unwanted oversight. But I just can’t quite square why STIs now seem verboten when they are a natural consequence of embracing anonymous bareback sex. If anything, articulating their existence can encourage their prevention as much as encourage their wanton proliferation.  

But that's not at all what's happening in the (rapidly multiplying) stories and posts he's targeting here.  detailed and highly eroticized imagery around gono, syphilis, etc. down to the pus.  That's not a public service announcement.  The principle problem, however, are instances where people are encouraged by others to never go on meds and let HIV becomes AIDS and have that be what kills them.  There's arguable liability there (Commonwealth v Carter) for the person making the encouragement.  Right now the site most likely enjoys technical protection afforded providers who are not responsible for content, but this site also makes an extremely unsympathetic figure and an easy target - technical protection wouldn't be enough to survive the kind of scrutiny.  And the site admin also has to be able to sleep at night, so he gets to set boundaries.  

Playing devils advocate (RawTop please forgive me here), if the admin were so inclined, I'd recommend putting the fiction or posting with STI, AIDS chasing, and death fetish into it's own category.  The way it's mixed in now, a lot of us are mid-wank and discover the author takes a sharp left hand turn into pus oozing from cocks and have to start over lol.  
 

 

[rawTOP]

@seattlebbbtm - yes, as I stated STIs happen. Mentioning they happen, and talking about how to minimize them are all still allowed. What’s not allowed is eroticizing them. 

@neg4charged - the stories already are in their own section. If you see one outside the backroom please report it and a moderator will kick the person off the site for a few days. This is a long-standing policy. 

[Guest Bbtmdville]

Drugs are harmful too, as is encouraging others to do them.