There are a variety of online venues that are good for chatting, for hooking up, and for everything in between. Nowadays many of the kinky online personal dating services try hard to be communities, with chat rooms, discussion forums, and so forth; and probably all of the online spanking communities that are not intended to be matchmaking sites nonetheless serve that purpose from time to time. So I haven't tried to distinguish them; I present a few here for your education, and invite you to let me know about sites that you find so this can be of more service to others.
There are a variety of ways to find spanking partners online. You can use the ordinary matchmaking services but indicate your interest in spanking either directly or by using suggestive words like "discipline" or "strict."
My own experience has been with kinky websites, and I will discuss those I know. Each has its idiosyncrasies, but in each you post some sort of a personal profile and you can look for partners using some sort of search function. I have spent nowhere near as much time online as some people, and I don't intend these as general site reviews; for that you should go to the excellent Jane's Guide. But I'll tell you what I know. And please, if what I have posted here is out of date in some way, please let me know. I no longer spend much time on these sites.
Thank you to trish for this description of SpankFinder:
I was home alone. It was a dark and stormy night . . . . Well, actually it was, and so what better to do than surf the web in search of virtual pain to feed the spanking fires glowing within. I checked out familiar sites, such as Doc’s, that I knew would appease my flame, and then ventured forth to chart some new territory. I entered three keywords into Google – spank, partner, male – and the search engine returned a site I had never heard about: www.spankfinder.com. It’s an amazing little gem for anyone looking for a spanking partner.
Here are some of its best qualities, as I see it. First, it is entirely devoted to spankos. It doesn’t have the vaguely vampiresque quality that can make alt.com or bondage.com a little scary to those not into the BDSM scene. Spankfinder.com just looks like your ordinary internet matchmaking site, except for the provocative black-and-white OTK spanking pictured on the home page. Secondly, you don’t need to create a profile to get started. You simply fill in your own gender, the gender of the person you’d like to meet, and an age range. When I did this the first time, the site returned 600 male profiles. An interesting fact here – men outnumber women on the site at the ratio of about 4:1, and the site has about 2400 registered profiles. Women, particularly, should do very well here.
To narrow your search, you need to fill out a profile, and then you are able to search by any number of criteria (location, spanking preferences, education, employment, hobbies, and general interests, for example). The site allows you to “wink” at anyone’s profile if you don’t feel like emailing. But if you do want to start a conversation, you send your emails through the webmaster, unless you and your spanking suitor agree between yourselves to correspond on personal email accounts. Another nice feature is the convenient “no thank you” box, which allows you politely to decline invitations to converse while at the same time thanking the sender for the expression of interest.
No doubt, Spankfinder.com, with its tasteful design and built-in safety components, creates an inviting atmosphere to start that delicate search for spanking partnership. It’s worth checking out.
Alt.com is raunchy. It is diverse. It is a pain in the butt. But it is huge, in terms of the number of people, and that's why it's important. Yes, you have to hold your nose; but it may be worth it, despite its aggravations.
So, what aggravations? Well, to begin, Alt.com is annoying because it censors content. Management is paranoid and if your personal profile mentions something they don't like, they will quietly modify or snip out the offending text without notifying you. For instance, my profile used to say, "If you’d like to talk more, e-mail me here or at Doc.Tsai@gmail.com."
The Alt.com censors changed that to read, ""If you’d like to talk more, e-mail me here at Alt.com." Similarly, if you send someone a message through the alt.com messaging system and suggest moving to regular email, Alt.com threatens to kick you off the site. They say this is because of safety concerns; I'm not buying that. You should be aware of this.
And because Alt.com is huge and easy to find, a lot of people never look further. Either they say, "This is it! I am going to find a partner here!" or they say (this is from an e-mail I received)
I found alt.com to be a playground for people who I wouldn't want to be associated with in real life. The posting of genitals and crude insinuations in profiles and postings makes much of it pretty disgusting.
I couldn't agree more! Alt.com is raunchy in ways it doesn't need to be. Far too many people have photos of their genitals instead of their faces; this is one site where that is considered acceptable, at least by some people, but not by me! On Alt.com you are looking, as on other sites, for the exceptional person. But!! -- there are exceptional people. Don't pass them by.
That's the secret--it has people, lots of them. And it has recently added some enhancements. Before, a member might simply list as interests, just as an example, "Ass play, Bondage, Enemas, Handcuffs, Leather, Spanking, Watersports" leaving you no idea of spanking was first among equals or one among many. Now members can indicate their specific level of interest in a wide variety of activities; this helps weed out the people who aren't really all that into spanking.
Alt.com has attempted to set up discussion groups. I haven't explored them and have no idea how interesting they are.
It's commercial, it's gross, but there are a lot of people there. Look for the people; ignore the gross distractions.
Don't be put off by the name. You may have zero interest in bondage, but under bondage.com's large umbrella gather many spankers and spankees.
Bondage.com allows a lot of depth in a personal listing, so you can get a fairly good idea of what someone's like without touching your keyboard as long as they've entered the data.
Equally useful, or more so, bondage.com has active fora--discussion groups about any number of topics, kinky and not. If you want to learn more about a potential partner, check to see if he or she contributes to the fora. Their comments, over time, over a variety of topics, can be very revealing, for better or worse.
Like any open discussion area, bondage.com has flames, inappropriate comments, jerks mouthing off; all of this can get tiresome. But if you're looking for a partner, all of this becomes an asset--decide for yourself if your potential partner is forthright (as he thinks) or just abrasive, witty (as she thinks) or just silly, etc. It's a great feature.
Spanking.com should be the place, but it isn't. It allows users to post rudimentary profiles, brief interviews, and post single photos. There is a search function. But spanking.com has never lived up to its potential; after all, this should be the pre-eminent domain name in our small corner of the cyber universe! Still, despite its primitive functionality and small number of members, there are also some people who are here and only here, so it would be reasonable to include in your list.
I cut my online teeth on alt.spanking.com and other spanking communities. They were primitive by today's standards, but so were the cell phones and social networking sites of that era.
There is still a place for virtual communities, real ones, set up not to make money (like alt.com) but to provide a place for people who love spanking to dream, to chat, and perhaps to hook up.
You should be aware that different online communities have different personalities. Some are more hospitable than others, some more raunchy, some more firmly oriented to "male top, female bottom," etc. Some people love them, or at least find one or two where they feel right at home. But they are not for everyone. These comments by Sue are illuminating (Sue is the reader who has memorably chronicled her search for a spanking partner in Reclaiming the Fire).
Sue: While I was visiting the Bottom Lines site, there was a discussion about whether tops should be morally obligated to experience whatever level of punishment they dish out. And later a question on switching in general. There were some interesting answers and strong feelings from both tops and bottoms. The respondents fell into their usual camps over it - the ones who spanked just for punishment and the ones who found erotic pleasure in it. At least on BL, east is east and west is west and never the twain shall meet. Sometimes I think I should go back, but it was generally unsatisfying and any serious conversation wound up degenerating into either angry barbs or pure silliness. There were just a couple of people there I could relate to at all.
Doc: Interesting about Bottom Lines, and too bad
you didn't find it more satisfying. So many web-based discussion groups fall
prey to these problems: bickering, flames, and so forth. It's a shame.
I see little reason to make a moral issue out of most of these issues; "should"
the top experience whatever he dishes out? Why does there have to be a "should"
at all? For every bottom who wants to submit to a top who has experienced
everything, there's another who considers (all right, let's make this male top,
female bottom just for simplicity) there's another bottom who thinks any man who
wants to be spanked is not really a man. I think we should do what we want to
do, and avoid making judgments about other people unless the situation clearly
calls for it.
OK, I'm going to get off my soap box. Thanks for bearing with me!
Sue: First, I've spent most of my
life on one sort of soap box or another. lol Regretfully, my rants are famous on
four continents.
Bottom Lines could be a wonderful venue for spankos. I was excited to find it.
That it turned out to be disappointing is likely my fault as much as the others.
They clearly want a different sort of site than I did. I wanted a place to ask
questions and compare notes in a congenial yet serious manner. I have no
interest in the silliness, the dreadfully poor fiction, the cliques or the
self-righteous pedants who comprise the majority of the membership. They seem to
be having a great time, so more power to them.
Your remarks go to the core of why I left BL. There is a very vocal group who
think their way of approaching spanking is the only correct way. They do make
moral judgments constantly and try to force everyone into a mold of their
making. Well, I didn't fit the mold. And when I tried to patiently explain why I
saw things differently, I was inevitably misunderstood, deliberately I suspect
in some instances, and made to feel unwelcome. Others received the same
treatment, especially those who like me had no interest in their casino games,
whackings for supposed infringements of the rules, the silliness that went on in
the chat room, that sort of thing. I was bluntly told that I'm not a spanko at
all. That was a big surprise to me, considering how I'd spent most of my
post-pubescent life fantasizing about it. No one there would directly answer my
questions and when they did address something I'd posted, they completely missed
the point. It was just too frustrating to continue.
Doc, whether you believe it or not, I am extremely non-judgmental most of the
time. If any of my remarks have sounded critical, then I apologize. It's just
that I feel like a fish out of water with the bdsm community much of the time.
At no time on BL did I try to imply that anyone's experience was inappropriate.
I suppose I am a bit more defensive than necessary, perhaps due to the
experience on BL. I feel compelled somehow to defend my right to play at my own
level. You have never stated that spankos "should" do anything other than what
makes them comfortable and gives them satisfaction. But you are rather rare in
that regard.
I have enough trouble dealing with my own nature and finding a satisfying level
of intensity without being made to feel inadequate because I've never reached
that level of subspace that is considered the holy grail by so many. I resent
being told that reaching that level is the only valid experience for a
submissive and that if that isn't my goal, I need to get out of the scene and
leave it to the "real" subs. I also resent the notion that they know what I
"really" want and need more than I do myself. So, in total, BL was not a
positive experience for me.
Doc: Would you feel OK if I quoted your comments about people making judgments and assuming their way is the Only Right Way? Or that subspace is the Holy Grail and everything else is just plastic cups?
Sue: Hi Doc,
Please feel free to use my comments in any way you think will be useful. BL is the only community I have experienced, but I imagine others have the same atmosphere. It's a shame that joining a support group results in feeling worse about yourself instead of better. I suppose it is human nature to prop up our own opinions by trashing contradictory ones. It is unfortunate, nonetheless.
Doc: Thank you, Sue.
If one of my readers would like to defend Bottom Lines in this website, just send me a note. I am sure it serves some people well and would like that point of view to be represented as well.