General

lol ye I agree dude!

I think media makes things seem bleaker than they are.

The simple truth is, there are a lot of fat people. Not all of them are miserable or ashamed. Or tragic stories, or people looking for a way to get "cured" or made "better." Just waiting for that little "boost" of someone who makes them feel happy about being big.

Are you ok, hun? Do you need to talk?

Sadly no but i hope no day to find myself a gainer gf

Alright. That's fine. There's no need to yell.

Removing your pictures is probably the wisest option. Gives your more control over your body and your image. It's one of the many reasons my pictures aren't on this site either.

I see. Just so you know, on the internet, typing in all caps means yelling. If you want to use emphasis, you *use asteriks* or only CAPITALIZE the IMPORTANT words.

Unfortunately some people are so effete that they're traumatized by capital letters.

Congrats!

IMHO, the problem with this site is the problem with internet dating in general, and is exacerbated by a number of factors associated with this site and this genre and this group of people, many of which have already been mentioned in the comments above. Note the ethos before I go into this, I've been on this site for about 15 years (and dimensions and yahoo groups before that), since my early teens, I pay the premium sub just to support it, and I love and am committed to this site and this community. That said, there are many problems...

1. It's relatively anonymous, as is the internet in general, therefore people don't behave themselves as well as they might otherwise. Then again, this also creates a faster and more honest impression, at least of that type of person.

2. Due to the niche nature of this genre, the strong interests in it of many people here, and the consequent difficulties if not impossibilities of finding truly fulfilling sexual compatibility elsewhere, people here are often desperate on some level.

3. The genre itself is problematic. Being fat, much less gaining weight, isn't like wearing leather and ball gags in the bedroom, and it has societal implications only rivaled in magnitude by the desires of those truly turned on by it. This creates cognitive dissonance that cannot be understated. (Literally almost everything I've ever written in this genre reflects this in some way, lol.) The transgression is powerful, human beings in general are often aroused by the taboo, but one of the main reasons it's so powerful is because it is so very very difficult.

4. The genre itself is polluted in five (overlapping) ways.

4a. The first is by desperate and well-intentioned but over-aggressive guys, though this is pretty standard for internet dating and to some degree for life in general. Sorry ladies, I'd say it's the balls, but really we're just dicks. The genetic and social pressures blah blah blah, society vs the inner animal blah blah, etc. We have no excuse. Hopefully the world and humanity continues to improve on this level. I try to do my part by being an asshole to everyone equally.

4b. The second and third ways are by people that really don't live in reality, and by society in general portraying everyone in this community as such. (See the movie Feed, as well as many articles both in pop culture and in the literature.) You can see my feelings on this by my bio and a lot of the crap I write, but actual intentional weight gain in a partner is potentially really fucked up, like any other type of sexualized body modification. Now, humans in general are more fucked up, and weight gain is relatively inevitable for most people in industrialized societies, and the literature on obesity is debatable, etc. etc. excuse excuse but still. But still it's saying that, at least to society as a whole, if you're into heavy people, that you want a partner that's unhealthy, and if you're into people gaining weight, that you want a partner that's becoming unhealthy. Still, this could be excused by society, as much as anyone excuses anything, which isn't much, but then you have people that actually espouse gaining five hundred pounds, that hounds anyone that posts an image of themselves into gaining a massive amount of weight, or just doing custom work, etc. Bad apples in a community are what the community is judged for, unless there are no bad apples, in which case society makes stuff up to judge them for instead. (Insert "Thanks, Obama" joke, or maybe something even more ridiculously out of date like McGovern, lol.)

4c. This brings me to the fourth way, which follows from the previous ones rather naturally: The only outlet for most people here is porn. Really, FF and most other such sites are not dating sites, they're porn-sharing sites with a side of social. Since most people don't find partners that are into this genre, and those that do face all of the other problems mentioned, the result is that most people only find satisfaction for this part of themselves in ways and sites like this one. This in turn creates a rather massive market for people to model and/or gain for money. The result of this is that people become used to an easy but unfulfilling substitute for what they really want and, in all honestly, will probably never have. This can (and often does) make even normal people anxious, aggressive, depressed, needy, resentful, and further out of touch with reality. Furthering the irony dramatically and depressingly is that in the internet age, by the time you're 25 porn is boring, you've seen everything you care to see more times than you care to count, and now you want to try to find a real relationship and realize that while the internet is great for finding porn when you're 12, it sucks for finding relationships, and the very fact that porn is so easy on it indirectly sees to that.

4d. The last way is the other side, which is that a tremendous amount of profiles, especially those with the most "content" and exposure, are for pay, either porn profiles, or scammer/begger profiles. (Capitalism, am I right?) Even a normal person, one interested in this genre, who is young and in college, may find it hard to resist the appeal of a little bit of modeling, even just through DMs, in exchange for praise and enough money to pay for college, esp if you are probably going to gain weight there anyway, and if college costs 50k/year. And half the stories in this genre reflect that, lol. But once you do that, you go one of two ways, either it's now a job and you lose interest in the genre, esp. due to the more ridiculous, demanding, creepy, insulting, and even dangerous customers, or you love it and gain two hundred pounds in a year and have to quit for health reasons. Either way, those people are going to find it difficult to date in a community they've been exposed to on that level - personally, I think I'd quit it within a week and never come back. (In the end, this whole genre is a really a nest of catch-22s, and this one in particular, since if you don't post a picture of yourself you don't get attention, but if do post a picture you get way too much attention, as well as DMs demanding you gain weight, do other poses, or move across the world to marry them.) Again, this goes back to the above points as well, as the people still in this genre, the long-haulers, are very often affected by the nature of never finding fulfillment. And combine all this with how many profiles, both real and fake, are asking for "food" money... and yah, few people that want to date, bbws/bhms, FAs/FFAs, feeders or feedees or foodees, are going to try dating here, and those that do don't stay. And there's really nowhere else. Feabie is worse, as far as I remember. Fetlife is a joke. Etc.

Well. That was depressing. Welcome to internet dating lol. It'll be better in 30 years, but I doubt anyone reading this gives a shit if the wild west someday gets tamed. I can offer solutions, though they're unlikely to go anywhere, such as separating the dating profile portion of sites like this entirely from rest of the site, allowing unlimited DMs on it but no pictures or video of any kind, relegating that to other services like gmail if the participants want. But then it's just a meeting site, and suffers from the same fiscal issues of all internet dating sites, namely that the better it works, the shorter the time customers pay for it. Again, I love capitalism, but it's crap for this kind of stuff, lol. Anywhere a buck can be made, it will be, and anyone that isn't willing to buy or to sell can get out of the way of industry.