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rattbagge

Do you belong to an AnswerMug group that's really buzzing?

Those groups I investigated seem to be virtually dead. I wonder whether muggers join a group and then lose interest for lack of interest - and whatever threads have been started just sit there gathering dust, as quiet as the grave. Seems a lost opportunity to me, but then it takes at least two to tango, and to keep it up.

Posted - February 23, 2018
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Responses


  • 6098
    No - seems to be little interest at all in group sex on here. 
      February 23, 2018 5:10 AM MST
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  • 53526
    "Group sex"?


    :|
      February 23, 2018 5:42 AM MST
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  • 7939
    She's referring to a group devoted to the topic... not referring to any funny business happening with answerMug groups. lol
      February 23, 2018 9:15 AM MST
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  • 6098
    Thank you.  Group I refer to is People Who Like Threesomes, Polyamory, Cuckolding, Group Sex, a.  Even though I don't like all of those but only two of them. 
      February 23, 2018 9:43 AM MST
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  • 53526


      I've tried to resuscitate activity in some of those groups many, many times. The patients, unfortunately, failed to respond to the best efforts of truly concerned people . . .



    ~
      February 23, 2018 5:48 AM MST
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  • 6098
    Thank you for trying to do your best. Maybe times have just changed from what they were a few or several years ago on answerbag.  Maybe the "new strictness" just eschews anything else. This post was edited by officegirl at February 23, 2018 7:15 AM MST
      February 23, 2018 6:08 AM MST
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  • 7939
    Story time! 

    A long, long time ago, there was a site called Answerbag. Answerbag was a site devoted to Q&A. Those who participated on the site were mostly Q&A purists, as that's all the site had to offer. These were knowledge-seeking folks who were most interested in sharing real information and opinions. Then, one day, a few of those folks deflected and started answerMug... another site for Q&A purists. However, the site was initially set up on a modular platform- the kinds were you can throw together all kinds of pre-built options, so the person who set it up added in all the available options because... well, why not? I guess. Among those options were groups. Being Q&A purists, though, the former ABers and new Muggers had little interest in any kind of group. There were maybe 10 or so which sat dormant. When Answerbag died, and the ABers came to aM, they still didn't care about the groups... with the exception of one special place... adultMug. The group for adult Q&A. (For those unaware, AB was later resurrected, but it came back as a zombie version of its former self. Fans are still awaiting a vaccine or medical treatment that will restore it to its "former glory.")

    Now, while all those wonderful Q&A purists were happy asking and answering questions, another group of people were on a different site called Experience Project. EPers were different because they liked to share stories. Sure, their site had Q&A, but the questions more ranged along the lines of "whats up?" and "how do i kno if a boy likes me!" Their stories, however, were often more involved, and invited others to share their own similar stories. The EPers loved their groups and joined a whole bunch of them as kind of a badge of honor or in solidarity. "I like dogs" would be met with thousands of people saying "Me too!" EP also died, and those folks came to aM too.

    Needless to say, storytellers and Q&A purists tend to have a very small layer of overlap. The EPers were more interested in belonging to little subsets and the former ABers were more interested in ripping apart subsets and examining why the subsets existed in the first place. The former ABers stuck to their Q&A, while the former EPers created hundreds of groups in an effort to make their new home feel like their old one. It was for naught. A new site eventually opened that looked and functioned a whole lot like their old home by intentional design, and so the vast majority set up shop there instead. 

    Meanwhile, the Q&A purists remained on the Mug... the groups which were set up by the former EPers slowly began to look like abandoned mining towns- ghost towns... the only exception being the one group that was actually designed for Q&A and one of the "original" aM groups- adultMug. Ok, well, that a sort-of fib. Somehow our "spanking" groups (set up by EPers) wound up on a bunch of online lists, and people kept flocking to those. That really creeped me out, so even though they were "successful," I secretly and silently hid them from non-members to stop scary people from finding us. I effectively and intentionally killed those, and I don't feel bad about that. They still exist, but they have as much dust on them as the others now, thank Zeus.

    Modern-day Muggers don't see benefit in the groups. They're not interested in settling into places where everyone agrees and chats about how much they agree. If they want to talk about dogs, they'd much rather do it in the Q&A where their discussions will attract a wider audience and variance of opinion. They'll still use adutMug because it lets them talk about things they can't talk about in the main section, but the rest have no purpose for Q&A purists. Even free-for-all, which was designed to have more leniency than adultMug doesn't get much use. I've actually run programs which highlighted different groups on the home page to see if people would become interested again. They didn't. 

    Now, you could theoretically resurrect any group you wish. If you start posting there and drag your friends to it, mention it in the Q&A and such, you might get some interest. However, I do think it will be minimal interest because most just are not here for that. They want Q&A.  
      February 23, 2018 9:48 AM MST
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  • 6098
    Interesting history and thank you for going into that kind of detail.  Not exactly sure just what a "Q & A purist" is.  For me the highlights of AB were always the personal friendships and messaging.  There were enough people interested in different things we could have informal "groups" and get different opinions about various subjects we were interested in.

    By the time you got on JA which I think was c. 2013 it had already started to go bad. A lot of adolescent males trying to be silly and show how little they cared (which actually I guess was always there) and a few strident individuals whose negativity was starting to dominate the site.  Aster AB began using Google AdSense the "adult" section (AB4Adults) and adult content started being systematically deleted, including answers and comments many of us had spent a lot of time on and had been proud of.  

    The moderators there were nice people but they took a lot of flack for being biased for or against certain users which I don't know if that was true or not.  Certainly no moderator on AB was as personally involved as you and the others are on AM. 

    I don't know - I would rather welcome a site where there is more agreement and I am not reading on a daily basis how much people hate me and people like me.  But I think the point is that the more users the more interests and it is as simple as that. 

    Very true that there is little personal messaging at all on AM. And I have been told be people that rather than discuss what would be generally very personal things privately they would rather talk about them  publicly in the Q and A format. 

    One good thing that AB had, besides the number of users, was a research index where you could put in a topic or key words and the pertinent questions would come up. When it was working properly. Which as I recall it did for a few years then it stopped working for a year or two then came back briefly. 

    I had stopped using AB for anything but receiving personal messages before they pulled the plug on the original site.  Then for a year I didn't think anything about any chat sites. I was on the renewed AB from I think October to March a year ago when I apparently was kicked off.  I could no longer access the site.  So as I had friends on here I started on AM. This post was edited by officegirl at August 26, 2018 7:05 AM MDT
      February 23, 2018 10:22 AM MST
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  • 7939
    The origins of AB were unique. I don't know Joel, but I have a keen interest in the motivations of other sites, what they stand/ stood for, what their goals are/ were, and what worked for them and what didn't, so I've read a lot. It's my understanding that he actually built AB to be an actual database of answers and intended it to eventually be something that other sites could somehow tap into... an awful lot like how Google works now, where you can type in a question and it will provide you with the actual answer, not just a list of sites. That's my understanding of it anyway, and so it would make sense that they would build around that and focus more on intelligent/ informed answers and the engine that could serve up those answers with ease. It also explains a lot of the logic behind the moderation, why certain things got removed, and so on. It wasn't designed to really be a "community." From what I've read, they were actually surprised when people started using the site for friendships and the like, which is why things such as on-site messaging were developed later. However, the early adapters to the site really were there for the knowledge. The more it stepped away from that initial core and community features were added, the more the crowd shifted. It would never be like EP. EP was designed to be a support community. AB was designed for the knowledge. They attracted two fundamentally different types of people with different intents. That's not to say they didn't ever attract people with varying intents. They did. Many people used both sites, but used them differently. And, I m speaking in generalities, as always. There will always be exceptions to this.

    I think I joined in 2011 or 2012, but it was well after the site had already become a community hub and well after the 2009 melee. 

    As far as having lots of people, I'm sure most would agree they'd prefer to be on a thriving site. And, I'm sure most want to find people who do agree with them, or at least those who have enough commonalities that they feel a sense of belonging. However, I also don't think our core user-base wants to be in an echo chamber. 

    I'm not surprised that a lot of people won't exchange messages here. I happen to be one of them. When things go into PMs, people seem to expect an extra layer of intimacy, which you may appreciate with certain topics, but I don't, especially as it relates to sex. One of the first things I always do when someone starts pulling a private discussion into the adult realm is to pull back out of the discussion and establish boundaries. I did the same on AB. I just don't want to go there with anyone. That's not why I'm here. Yes, there are people who are here for that, and that's fine. I'm not knocking anyone who wants to form those kinds of relationships, so long as they don't freak out the folks who aren't here for that. That's one of the things I HATED about AB. If I posted anything at all in the adult section, I'd receive a slew of dirty messages. I'd still get them just from being in the main Q&A, but they were much less frequent if I stayed in the clean areas. That whole thing really put me off the site. Here, I don't mind chatting with my friends in adultMug because it results in some really insightful discussions and we're all mostly centered on having those discussions, versus taking things to private channels. I feel like my personal boundaries are respected more. Plus, we are a pretty diverse group in there. You're like the yin to my yang lol. I can almost guarantee that whatever I post, you're probably going to disagree with me or have a different opinion on it, and that's ok. I learn a lot from talking with you and the other folks in there. I do think that you are probably one-of-a-kind in terms of your personal philosophies and lifestyle, and I'm sure that probably results in you feeling like you're the odd woman out from time to time because you're (at least from my perspective) always offering something different, but that's the kind of novelty I appreciate, and I know many others feel the same. If I posted something and everyone always answered "me too," I'd be bored to tears in a day or two.

    Having people with similar interests is great from a sense of belonging. I think all of us who stay here have that. We run into the same people time and time again because we have similar interests. As such, we do have the same kind of informal group structure AB had. However, the formal fragmenting into groups doesn't happen so much. Despite the fact that we're attracted (non-sexually) to similar people, I think most of us still gravitate to the big group discussions for the variety. 

      February 23, 2018 11:34 AM MST
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  • 6098
    Hi I am reading your last Feb 23 comment for the first time. Thank you it is very worthwhile and informative. Yes those were my understandings re the original intentions of the AB founders.  On that site I was not the "odd woman out" (which I had pretty much felt like all my life) but was so delighted and gratified to find so many other women who had the same interests and feelings and experiences I did.  And were not ashamed to post about their feelings and experiences.  Which was like OK just pretty normal and like billions of other people and I am not super weird or super selfish or somehow crabbed or stunted or misshapen or whatever.  And I could just talk to them and they understood perfectly.  Whether in the Q and As or in private messaging which I was engaging in within days after I got on in late Oct or early Nov 2009. 

    Right about the "dirty messages" along with all kinds of pictures of guy's body parts which I had no interest at all in seeing!.  And a lot of which came not from juveniles (though goodness there was plenty of that) but from adult men.  But I guess though no question was annoying was just that t was guys reaching out for love and acceptance.  And I had a good (male) friend who explained that to me that it was like guys pulling our hair when we were kids. Because I used to think OK why would they post and send those things if they are really interested in getting to know us?  And he explained men are just looking for some attention and affection but they have no idea of what to do.  Which I know I love when I receive attention though a lot of it is just not of the kind I want to receive. 

    Actually I feel closer to you than perhaps anyone on AM now that Neelie is no longer on.  Because you are honest and candid which is what I admire most.  And I sense your desire to be left alone as far as personal messaging is concerned.  Difficult for me because I guess I feel some amount of motherly affection and I want to see you happier and more enjoying your life which I strongly sense you want to do.  On AB I became much too involved emotionally with a the lives of few younger women especially to the point that when they put me aside or we fell out I was very hurt. One of whom I even invited to live with my husband and I because I wanted her to have a better environment in which she could grow and just be herself.  Which I guess many would see as the quirk of a middle-aged woman with ho children of her own. But we all find our own ways based upon our own circumstances or that is the way I have come to look at it. 

    Never heard of EP until I got on here but am not very adventurous when it comes to the net. 

    Weird to think to some people I am a "novelty" because I am just myself and live my life from day to day. 
      August 26, 2018 7:44 AM MDT
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  • 19937
    I don't belong to any of the groups.  I fact, I haven't even taken a look to see what groups exist.
      February 23, 2018 10:04 AM MST
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  • 17620
    No, but you may jump right into one and stir things up.  I'm sure someone will appreciate it. 
      February 23, 2018 2:40 PM MST
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  • 53526

      Wait, there's a Beekeeper Group?  I didn't know, no one ever tells me these things!
    ~
      August 26, 2018 2:48 PM MDT
    0