So I’m going to put myself out here; I’m 30 now and have been in the RP scene since I was around 15 years old. I’ve been a young, impressionable and horny teenage boy and with enough motivating factors it’s real easy to get pulled into ERP, whether you intend to go in that direction or not.
Over time I engaged in it as an extension of my otherwise normal (if super edgy at times) RP in WoW and other games in the early years, and it took longer than I’d like for the shame and disgust to set in with what I was doing. It became an almost inevitable and mandatory facet of my RP sesssions at one point.
Did I know the people I was engaging with? Not beyond what they told me about themselves, and you surely can’t verify that and likely have no interest in doing a thorough background check. Why would you?
Did they know much about me? Not at all; I shared very little about my own life and would lie about myself just for kicks because my reality was not at all interesting or glamorous.
It’s a dangerous and skeevy activity that is only ever self-gratifying in the most base of ways, with little to no care for who it may potentially damage, and that person may well end up being yourself.
It polutes an otherwise fun and collaborative hobby and pushes you into the shadows with a small group of people or individual where the activity can only ever self-perpetuate. You already know what you’re doing is not cool with the majority and so better to stick with people you’re ERPing with, and certainly hiding it from people who don’t already know.
To claim that there is anything noble or “true RP” about it, as a certain someone on these forums once claimed, is a blatant lie both to the people you spout it to as well as to yourself. There is nothing to deepen the relationship of two romantically involved characters that can’t be done with a fade to black emote or just not addressing that aspect at all. It’s entirely unnecesary.
One-handed typing is a meme but is 100% true when referring to ERP. You are engaging in sexual acts with a relative stranger on the internet, regardless of how close you might think you are, and if you know the person in reality then I don’t see how that makes it any better.
If you’re into it, try breaking yourself out from it and actually just engage in roleplay that is about the activities of your character, that you no doubt love, outside of a bedroom setting and live their adventures in a world that is about a lot more than how sexy the races are, and develop that character that you have created and watch them grow (the person grow, not their genitalia). That’s the heart of RP, and ERP is just a corruption of that original goal that warps and distorts the boundries between IC and OOC into very uncomfortable and unhealthy places.
I haven’t spoken about the child grooming issues and implications here, as I feel like the above posts and posts made in other threads have covered this point already and in a better way than I could.
Akamito out 