A Beginner’s Course in Virtual Seduction.

Despite the fact that we’re members of large virtual communities, and that this particular virtual community is dedicated to pleasure through sex, navigating it can still be difficult.
To be clearer, it can be difficult to navigate if you haven’t mastered the delicate art of seduction.

Some people reading this may say “Seduction? Isn’t that where you walk up to a girl in a bar and say ‘Hey, wanna fuck?’”
If this was your response, you’ve got some unlearning to do. What I just described isn’t seduction. It goes by several other names, though. If you feel like being kind, you’d call it ‘social ineptitude’. If you’re feeling less kind, you might call it ‘Being a fucktard.’

From the perspective of an outsider coming into the virtual sex community, it can seem that suddenly, you’ve entered a giant cut-price department store of perversion – with every item on every shelf, at every floor, available for you to pick and choose as you please; and mostly for free.
But contrary to appearances, it’s not like that at all.
It’s not a department store. It’s actually more like an exclusive gentlemen’s club. There are long lists of rules to be obeyed, conventions to be followed, and dues to be paid.
On the downside, most of the rules and conventions are unwritten.
On the upside, most of them relate to common sense. And you can pick them up intuitively if you’re reasonably sensitive.

I’ve been interacting with people in a virtual context almost since the Internet as we know it came into being. And I’m still amazed by the utter insensitivity of certain types of people. Some I’ve encountered seem to lack any empathy. It’s as if they regard themselves as the only people who actually exist in the physical world, and they regard other people only as avatars or – worse – material resources.
If that’s their starting point, it’s no wonder that people who’ve never even met you can approach you out of nowhere, with messages that impose their world view on you, while offering sweet fuck-all in return:
‘I love you.’ (Actually, no: what you’ve fallen in love with is a narcissistic projection that bears little actual relation to me.)
‘Send me a cum tribute.’ (Yes, I have actually gotten this.)
‘U exist to swallow my cum.’ (Oh, yeah?)
‘Do you travel? We should meet sometime.’ (Let’s think about this… I don’t know you from Adam, these are the first words I’m hearing from you, and your profile is empty except for a dick pic. Even assuming you’re not a Nigerian scammer, what do you reckon the chances are I’m going to put my life on hold to run off and have sex with you?)
‘I want u to piss in my mouth. i am ur slave, Master.’ (Yes, I’ve gotten this, too.)
No one compos mentis would say any of this garbage to a stranger they’d just met on the street. So what makes anyone think they can say it on a networking site – even a sex networking site?
If that’s how socially insensitive some people are, I have to wonder: how did they make it through high school?
How are they able to hold down any job that actually pays a salary? Come to think of it, do they?
How are they able to move through society without being arrested for public indecency?

If you want something sexual from somebody – and let’s face it, all of us want something sexual from somebody, or we wouldn’t be here – the way to approach them isn’t to try picking them like an apple from a tree.
The way to approach them is to seduce them.

True seduction has a number of essential ingredients:

A genuine interest in the person you’re seducing.
You may think “Oh, I can fake that.”
But the truth is, you can’t. Not for long. Your true motivations always reveal themselves.
You have to start from the realization that, like you, this is a flesh-and-blood human being.
If you want something from someone, but you don’t have enough genuine interest in them to be able to return the favour, they won’t feel appreciated. They’ll feel like the victim of a sexual assault.

Empathy.
See above. You haven’t ordered a steak you’re going to slice into strips and chow down on. You're attempting to connect with a human being you may never have met before, and who may be highly sophisticated.
Reading their profile and seeing something you like, you may suddenly feel like you’ve known this person forever.
But trust me, you haven’t. That heady feeling of instant connectedness is your mind playing tricks on you. All you know about them so far comes from their public persona: a persona they may have worked very hard to craft. This person has their own agenda, their own motivations, their own annoyances, their own feelings. Their own life.

Common ground.
A mutually beneficial seduction is one where the person you’re trying to seduce reads your overture, and immediately thinks: “Hey, he/she and I have something in common!”
Common ground leads to connection.
Connection leads to sharing.
Sharing leads to intimacy.
Intimacy leads to trust.
Trust leads to comfort.
And comfort leads to passion.
The most common mistake people make is to try shortcutting straight to passion. It can’t be done. Human minds almost never work that way.
This is also why Shotgunning (sending out messages to dozens of people and hoping at least one will stick) doesn’t work, either.
Most people don’t share your exact preferences. And if you don’t share their preferences, they won’t go “Wow, someone wants to connect with me!” They’ll go “Who’s this fuckwit coming at me totally out of context?”

Sexual desire.
Anyone over twenty knows (or at least, should know) that every other person alive has unique sexual tastes, and that those tastes may not mesh 100% with theirs.
One thing that inflames sexual desire in us is the realization that someone really wants us. Is really turned on by us.
Let’s face it: this is the reason why there are sites that allow us to upload our own porn to the cloud. We’re turned on by the thought that someone we don’t know is stroking while they fantasize about us.
If you can make clear to someone that they turn you on – without being a total asshole about it – you’ve already got a foot in the door.

Also, bear something in mind: seduction is a deadly potent, but at the same time, delicate, instrument.
If they have any concept of it at all, the first mistake neophyte seducers make is to think about seduction the way Kim Jong Il thinks of nuclear weapons.
Seduction isn’t a nuclear bomb. It’s a stiletto knife.
It isn’t meant to affect entire groups in one shot. It’s focused on just one person.
It isn’t generic. It’s up close and personal.
It’s not coercion. It’s persuasion.
When you press yourself against the seducee, choose the spot at which to place the point of your blade, and lovingly press it in, you hold a human being who, in that moment, is yours – and who you have symbolically committed yourself to for at least a certain amount of time.
And as you feel that person surrender to you, you have created a two-way relationship in which an obligation exists for you to honour and respect the person you’ve seduced.

You can’t press the trigger on a bomb that will flatten all resistance and make everyone in the world sexually subservient to you.
No such bomb exists. The ancient Persians, the Romans, the Conquistadores, the Puritans, the Plymouth Brethren, the Vatican, the Royal Navy and the Nazis all found that out the hard way.
Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping – and a succession of American presidents – are busy finding it out right now.

Seduction is heady. It’s delightful. It’s flattering.
If you’re the target of a thoughtful seduction, it’s the best evidence you have that you have the attention of someone who’s willing to devote time, thought and resources to the sexual tension they intend to build between you – and the pleasure they want to give you.