M/M Hypno Singles Mayhem

So, here's another post I've wanted to write for a while.

Over the summer, I decided to try out some male-for-male hypnosis singles sites. Specifically, I set up an account on hypnotising.org and the IRC chatroom #gayhypnosis to see if I could find a good hypnotist to put me under online. I figured, I wasn't finding any good hypnotists on Fetlife, maybe they would be easier to find on a hypnosis-only site.

...um...

Hypnotists were easy to find, yes. Good hypnotists? Not so easy.

The following vignettes are not in chronological order, but rather in the order that it feels natural in which to tell them. I'd also like to preface this by saying that I realize that I still didn't get anywhere near the level of crap that so many people get just for presenting as female on Fetlife or other sites.


Older Dude in #gayhypnosis

This guy invited me to a private chat. Wanting the same treatment that I would give any of my subjects, I grilled him on what he would like to do with me in a first session. The answer was something along the lines of, "Oh, just put you under and feel things out."

Then I asked what he would like to do after that. Answer: "Fly out to [hometown deleted] and buy a collar for you," followed by a lengthy, way-too-detailed description of how special this collar would be.

...I responded that I was definitely not looking for what he was looking for.

I changed my hometown from [actual hometown] to "Variable" immediately afterward. He private messaged me again the next time I was in the room, wondering (not unkindly) why I was there, when I had already found "what [I] was looking for" and found it not to my liking.

Do I really need to explain where this guy went wrong?


Couldn't Be Sexy If He Tried

Another guy private-messaged me in hypnotising.org's own chatroom, asking to hypnotize me. He asked me what I liked, and I pointed him toward my hypnotising.org profile, which explicitly outlines everything that I like, as well as my hard limits.

His response? "Oh, I've done all of those things."

My inner response: "...suuuuuuuurrrrrrre you have."
My chatroom response: "Ooh, can you tell me about some scenes you've done, then?"

His response to that: "Oh, I don't kiss and tell."

So, OK, this guy's already making my Bullshit Detector go off. But I decide to give him the benefit of the doubt - I mean, I've done everything on my list as a hypnotist, right? And not everyone is comfortable disclosing their scene details.

Well, then he starts bragging about all the cool things he likes to do...one of which was "dumb jock" suggestions, which are right at the top of my hard limits. In fact, by this point my profile explicitly opened with "IF YOU WANT A JOCK, LOOK ELSEWHERE." So I pointed out that he seemed to be confusing my want-list with my limit-list.

As he continued to talk in circles and not give me any specifics whatsoever, I told him, "give me something to fantasize about!" He responded, "I don't work with fantasy, I only work with reality." (Yay for missing the point?)

At this point I've given up on salvaging anything from this guy, so I give up trying to be coy and tell him that he is not making himself remotely appealing, on any level.

Spiral: come on, give me SOMETHING to get me interested!
Not-Sexy-Guy: lol, i'm interested in you.

...yeah, you and a bunch of other horny hypnotists on this site, I'll need a little more than that.

Denouement: The next day, he invited me to watch him put another guy under on cam in a private chatroom. Or, rather, he was inviting me to put another guy under on cam - there was a massive miscommunication (which says something about his communication skills) that led to him thinking I was going to be the hypnotist, when in fact I figured I might as well check out his hypnotism skills and see if he was at least any good.

After the miscommunication was cleared up, he proceeded to put under the other room-goer with a hands-stuck induction. The hypnotee did not have a microphone; he was only able to communicate by typing - and this guy did a hands-stuck induction. Hands-stuck is my default, but I'm perceptive enough to know when it is a terrible idea - and by then, I'd learned to be disturbed by any hypnotist who would deprive his hypnotee of a means to communicate.

Not-Sexy Hypnotist proceeded to be utterly baffled and lost when this induction didn't work. So, not only did he use a poor method, he didn't have any backup plan when it failed.

Sigh.


Mr. Douche 'Tist

Here's the main event. There were some other mishaps, but these three were the most notable, and this one was by far the experience that left the biggest impression.

The first day I was on the site, I threw out messages to a bunch of hypnotists who seemed vaguely interesting. Not that I had a lot to go on; most of the profiles on this site only had a sentence or two. So I messaged people who at least had decent grammar and professed some kind of nerdiness.

I soon got a reply from a guy that I will refer to exclusively as Mr. Douche 'Tist. We chatted a bit on YIM, did some half-decent negotiation, and got on Skype for the trancing.

The first hypnosis session was, frankly, awesome. He had me freezing and posing in all sorts of positions, stripping in fun ways, feeling REALLY subby with a "good boy" trigger, and generally having a blast. His induction technique was also fantastic - I was legitimately impressed.

That said, there was one red flag that came up in this: up front, during negotiation, I stated that I didn't want any amnesia. He agreed to that. However, he proceeded to be surprised that I was fully aware and conscious every time I froze. Silly me, I just figured he defined "amnesia" differently, and I shouldn't be concerned.

(I think I'm right that he just defined it differently, but I still consider that a red flag.)

I proceeded to float in subspace for an hour after the session, which was reeeeeeaalllly nice.

My second session with him...hoo boy.

He messaged me, asking if I wanted to do another trance. I was up for it at the time, and asked what he wanted to do that night. He replied, vaguely, that he just wanted to do some freezing scenes. I was like, cool, sounds perfect to me right now.

Well, he used and reinforced the triggers from the last session. I should mention that I was starting to be impressed with my own ability to freeze in place - every time he used the freeze trigger, I was stock-still and it was awesome.

And then...

...well, first, while I was frozen, he suggested that I would unfreeze as a puppy. Won't lie, this is something I've wanted to do for ages, so I didn't mind - except that I had told him that I had to be quiet (someone else in the house was sleeping), so barking loudly was right out. So, I became a puppy for a minute or two, but I couldn't really get into it and I was very quiet. After he brought me back out, I explained that my headspace was messed up by the noise issue. He proceeded to look bored, freeze me in the middle, and leave me to awkwardly continue after being unfrozen.

Again: I don't think there's necessarily anything wrong with that. Freezing someone mid-conversation is par for the course. But it sent up another red flag that he would do this while I was explaining a problem, and I was irritated that he didn't seem interested at all in my issue.

So, he froze me again, and this time he suggested that when I unfroze, I'd be a cave man.

...that took me completely off guard. It was a hard limit I didn't even know I had, because I hadn't even given this fetish any thought. So, when I unfroze, the suggestion flat-out didn't work, and I told him that that kind of play just wasn't my thing.

OK. Here's where it takes a turn for the fucked-up.

Mr. Douche 'Tist (this is where he earns the title) then put me back under, and gave me a series of new triggers and suggestions. One of those suggestions was that he would be able to change my opinions on things. I outright rejected that one when he asked if I understood and accepted it. He woke me up, said it was fine that some things weren't working, then put me back under and, after a very lengthy deepening, he suggested that I would wake up with no free will.

Ordinarily, that would be really hot to me. But this guy had already surprised me with an unnegotiated kind of fetish play, then tried to give me a suggestion to change my opinions, and now he wanted me to be mindless - one right after the other, without so much as a pause to talk to me. This was not a good sequence of events for ensuring my trust.

Keep in mind - I was still in a really floaty, subby headspace this whole time. I was having trouble stringing together any kind of coherent protest - and he didn't give me the time or prompting to allow me to.

So I woke up, supposed to be lacking in free will (by the way, he didn't give me a chance to "accept" this suggestion), and I told him (still floaty, still rambly) that there were still some things I wouldn't do, even though I felt really submissive and obedient.

His response: "Sorry, [pseudonym I was using], you're not working out as a volunteer." *signs off*

WHAT.

THE.

FUCK.

No aftercare. Didn't even wake me up out of the subby headspace he had just built. Didn't ask me to elaborate on anything that had gone wrong, or why it had gone wrong.

Since I like to believe the best in people, I tried to see it from his perspective: he probably thought I was a faker, and that there was no point in doing anything if I were lying about being hypnotized.

Still: throwing in suggestions without negotiating them is pretty awful to me. I know there are hypno-subs out there who love it (including, from my chatting, most of the subs on hypnotising.org), but I stated up front that I wanted to negotiate things thoroughly before doing them. Furthermore, I find it outrageous that he didn't give me time or prompting to communicate any problems with him after I had resisted three suggestions in a short period of time. I know that in that situation, I would have asked my subject if there was a persistent problem, and if they would even want to continue. But no, this guy steamrolled ahead past my resistance, and decided that I wasn't worth aftercare if I wasn't going to fulfill his whims.

Yeah, this wasn't exactly a worst-case scenario. Maybe I'm disproportionately pissed off. But the more I think about it, the more this guy is a model for how not to scene with people, and the more justified I feel in saying that he was a selfish douchebag.

What I Learned from Mr. Douche 'Tist: I learned a lot about communication. I like to think I already knew how important it was to check in regularly and ask how everything was going, but this really hammered it into me by putting me on the receiving end of half-assed care. This guy showed only token concern for my desires or needs, only caring about his own desires when push came to shove.


Conclusion:

Not all of my experiences on hypnotising.org and in #gayhypnosis have been bad ones. I've chatted to some really cool hypnofetishists - mostly hypnotees - and had good conversations. I even met some ethical hypnotists and assorted good people. I even chatted to some hypnotists who seemed really awesome, and who took the time to get to know me; even if it turned out that we weren't compatible, I was much more warmed by those experiences than the hot session with Mr. Douche 'Tist. But the sheer, overwhelming selfishness and douchebaggery that I witnessed pissed me off because it was more common.

Maybe these two sites are so filled with this behavior because moderation is non-existent. Or maybe I'm finding out the hard way what it's like to be hit on by people made confident and self-assured by male privilege. Maybe all the predators on the site made these awkward and way-too-forward flirting methods look viable, because at least they bothered to come after token attempts to get to know a person. It baffled me, because I just couldn't imagine some of these approaches (like the first two vignettes) being appealing to anybody. The real kicker, Mr. Douche 'Tist actually has a really good reputation around thereabouts - it seems not being a predator makes him look good in comparison, and he probably doesn't often run into subjects as high-maintenance as myself. (That's not an excuse for him, by the way - if your sub needs care, they should get it. Period.)

Argh.

This has been Frustrated, Snarky, Pissed-Off Spiral. In the next post, I hope to bring back Sexy, Fun-Loving, Happy Spiral.