This past week got away from me, y’all, and before I realized it, the end had come and I had not written a blog post. For that, I am super sorry. I confess that balance is something I’m still working to find. I would, however, like to take a moment to address the “Meatlist,” which has sparked an outing fear of epic proportions. If you’re not familiar with it, you can read the Frisky Fairy’s post here.
I’m not going to make this about the so-called hacker who is responsible for the list, claiming he did it to prove a point about the safety of Fetlife’s members. Attention is what the douchebag wants and I refuse to give it to him. Now, did he breach Fetlife as he’s claimed? Of course not. That takes a skill he lacks. Were the women whose information he published on the list “outed” to the public? Nope. Personal information was not compromised. Does the list make them a target? Unfortunately, there is that possibility, but there are steps that can be taken to prevent discovery, such as changing usernames, profile photos, ages, and locations.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not downplaying the potential damage the predator has created by making this list public, and make no mistake, he IS a predator. What he’s done is a violation for sure, and even though I wasn’t affected, I would take great pleasure from punching the spineless asshat in the balls repeatedly. But he didn’t hack into Fetlife–he created a user profile to gain access, and like a predator, he moved among us unnoticed until it was too late. His program crawled the site, scraping pre-selected data including user names and numbers, age, location, gender, and BDSM roles–all of which is public information to fellow Fetlife members. Very few users have identifying profile photos and no one, as far as I know, uses their given name. And as far as location goes, it’s not broken down by zip code like it is on other sites. Also, Fetlife’s user profiles aren’t indexed by search engines because it’s a private community. Regardless of what so many are screaming, this fuck-up is not Fetlife’s fault.
The bottom line is Fetlife is a social media platform and profiles and photographs are forwarded and shared with others every day. If anyone is going to be outed as a kinkster, that is where the bigger risk is, not from a vindictive jackass who clearly has an ax to grind. Again, I’m not saying there shouldn’t be outrage in the kinky community, there absolutely should be. Trilema is a predator with harmful intentions, but if there is going to be a trial, just be sure you have the right witch in the noose.
