Yes, I’m still here.

I have not jumped ship on the mass exodus from Google Blogger.  Haven’t yet seen the point.

I started blogging in 2003 on Livejournal.  It was (and still is - the archive is still there) a locked blog where I used to share my thoughts w/ only about 15-20 people who could read it – all friends I actually know in the real world.  The blog dealt w/ kink stuff, but that was only about 25% of it.  Mostly it was about books, travel, movies, games, music, mythology, comic books, art, philosophy, motorcycles, and anything else I felt like essaying about.

In 2003, everybody was on LJ.  A few years later FetLife started.  I never liked Fet. (1) It’s all fetish community based, and surprisingly many of my friends aren’t kinky.  (2) It’s too busy and too “networky” for my taste.  I’m not much of one for social networking and tend to have a rather slight online presence in general.  I blog mostly as an essayist and memoirist – Fet seemed to be more about “chatting” and hooking-up.  The online equivalent of small talk at a kinky bar or party.  If I want to do that, I’ll go to an actual freaking bar or party.  (Like I am tonight – it’s kinky karaoke night at the Up Stage!)  (3)  I never liked the fact that you can’t “lock” your Fet and restrict who can view it, and at that time I was only interesting in sharing my blog w/ my friends.  (4) The ads are annoying.

However, as the years went on, more and more people left LJ and moved over to Fet.  Finally, it came to feel like nobody but yours truly was left on LJ anymore.

So I decided to try something new and, last year, started this bolg on Google.  This was new in two big ways: (1) It’s public.  Anybody can read this.  That, in turn, affected change (2):  It’s mostly about being a kinky human-puppy.  Since it is public, I’m not as comfortable making it really about me in a memoirist kind of way like the LJ blog was.  Instead, it’s mostly restricted to one interest of mine (w/ occasional tangents onto other topics).  Thus, someone reading this gets a pretty good look at Pup Emrys in the kink community but sees only peripheral glances of me in any other context – which is what I prefer since most of you reading this are strangers to me.

After building-up the blog for a few months, I did finally relent and create a nominal presence on Fet – mostly just to make it easier for people to get in touch w/ me, and to direct people to this blog.  Why Google Blogger?  Well, I do like the easy-to-use format.  It has more features than LJ.  It’s not chit-chatty like Fet and doesn’t have annoying ads.  And most of the other leather-pups I was getting to know last year were already on blogger.

“Were.”

Recently, as most of you probably already know, Google “changed” its terms of service for adult content blogs.  In fact, so far as I can tell, it wasn’t a change at all, but they reiterated something that was always there.  Which is:

“Adult Content: we do allow adult content on Blogger, including images or videos that contain nudity or sexual activity. But, please mark your blog as 'adult' in your Blogger settings. Otherwise, we may put it behind a 'mature content' interstitial.

There are some exceptions to our adult content policy:

Do not use Blogger as a way to make money on adult content. For example, don't create blogs where a significant percentage of the content is ads or links to commercial porn sites. No incest or bestiality content: we do not allow image, video or text content that depicts or encourages incest or bestiality.”

Despite the fact that it says, “we do allow adult content” (obviously; why else have the “adult content” warning label) it looks like many pups and kinksters interpreted that otherwise and decided to jump ship and take their blogs elsewhere (which is fine w/ me – I’m not partisan here).  But the policy looks to me to come down to: ‘We allow legal adult content as long as you aren’t making money off it.’  Okay, I’m cool w/ that b/c I don’t want to make a buck off my blog and I sure as hell don’t want anybody else making a buck off my blog (i.e. through ads).  So, for now, I’m still here.  Now, who knows – Google might suddenly delete me at any moment, but that seems, to me, unlikely.

P.S.  I hate Facebook.  To me, its format is even more annoying than Fet is.