How to set up your Fetlife for success

We realize that joining Fetlife can be intimidating. After all, it’s a social media website filled with random kinky internet strangers, porn, and all kinds of crazy stuff! We hope this guide will help you decide if Fetlife is a good fit for you, how to sign up for Fetlife, how to use Fetlife, and have the best chances of success and safety.

What is Fetlife?

Fetlife is a social media platform for kinksters. It includes these features:

  • Private messaging

  • Blog posts / writings

  • Local event listings

  • Interest groups / discussion groups

What are the pros of getting on Fetlife?

  • Find local events. Fetlife is the best place to find local kink events, education, and socials. It is the de facto standard for advertising these events. Not all organizations are on Fetlife, but they probably should be.

  • Stay in touch with the community semi-anonymously. It’s common that you may meet someone at a party or event and want to keep in touch with them, but you may not be comfortable giving out your personal phone number or email. Fetlife is an excellent alternative to this. You can give out your Fetlife handle without worrying that someone will abuse your personal contact details. You can centralize your community communications in one place.

  • Network with other people in the community. As you participate more in Fetlife and RSVP to events, you’ll find people that are tending to come to the same events as you. Fetlife can be a great way to network with these people

  • Find resources and information on niche topics. Fetlife can be an excellent resource to find information about specific kinks. There are lots of wonderful fetlife writers who publish highly valuable information about consent / negotiation, specific kinks, learnings from doing kink, and various other topics. We recommend bookmarking Fetlife writings that you love and saving them for later reading.

  • Stay informed about predators in the local community. Fetlife is often the first place to find out about this information. Consent incident reports are often published to fetlife and reading them can be one way to keep yourself safe from predators in the community.

What are the cons of Fetlife?

  • Creepy people. More information on how to protect against this below (keep reading). Fetlife is FILLED with creepy people and profiles filled with dozens of dick pics. This may not be your cup of tea. Keep reading for recommendations on how to avoid these people.

  • Creepy messages. Similar to the above point! See our recommendations on how to avoid this.

  • TONS of porn. This may or may not be what you’re looking for! If you are actually looking for porn, Fetlife is great. They offer an annual subscription to get access to all the porn for free (videos in particular are behind this paywall) and some of it is good quality. If you’re not looking for porn, don’t click into anyone’s profiles :)

  • Trolls. Like anywhere else on the internet, Fetlife is filled with trolls. They may write things that rub you the wrong way. If you only use Fetlife for messaging and events, it’s fairly easy to avoid trolls.

How to set up your fetlife account for success

  • Choose a good handle. Getting this exactly right the first time isn’t so important, you can change it later! We recommend choosing a handle that is: easy to pronounce, easy to spell, and memorable. Preferably, your handle should match your scene name so people can find you more easily

  • Filter your home feed. If you want to avoid porn, trolls, and other nonsense, you can filter your home feed! Just look for the “Customize your feed” button in the upper right corner of the home feed. We recommend filtering with the following settings:

    • Deselect all options

    • For writings, select “Posted New Writing”

    • For events, select “RSVPed to Event” and “RSVP updated”

  • This will filter your home feed for writings and events (for people you follow). We recommend following your friends and other people you may care about to see what events they are attending. Then you can attend together!

How to avoid creepy messages

When setting up your Fetlife account, there are a few steps you can take to avoid getting creepy messages! Here’s our recommendations:

  • Set your gender to Male

  • Set your kink orientation to Dominant

  • Set your location to Antarctica

  • Set your age to 99

  • Don’t upload a profile picture

  • Don’t select any kink interests / fetish interests (these will be listed at the bottom of your profile)

  • Limit your bio or have no bio

  • Avoid posting in any “Personals” discussion boards (such as Seattle Area Personal Ads or Seattle Personals)

How to avoid creepy PROFILES

  • Follow the above profile steps

  • Stay away from “Personals” discussion boards in general

  • Follow our home feed advice

  • Avoid kink-specific discussion groups (such as CNC Personals or “Fans of X Kink”) and don’t join any newbie themed groups

  • Don’t click on things that look like porn :)

How to use fetlife effectively

  • Use the “Events” page to find local kink events. Set the filter to Seattle or if you’re visiting another city, browse there!

  • Follow your friends profiles to maximize relevance in your home feed, and don’t follow people you don’t know

  • Only accept friend requests from people you know. If you choose, you can block messages from people that aren’t friends with you (visit Fetlife’s Privacy Settings)

  • Create a google doc and save links to Fetlife writings that you find valuable

  • Instead of giving out your personal contact info at events, give out your fetlife handle instead!

  • Be consistent with your scene name and fetlife handle.

Thanks for reading!

We hope this guide helps to set you up for success on Fetlife!