Findom: Then and Now

You may have seen this title some time ago. A few dommes and subs participated in a little project that I only discovered recently and discussed with someone.
And while its purpose is not to preach about how “things were better in our time” (read it in an old lady’s voice), those were a fun read and we agreed it would be interesting to see more stories of personal journeys through the scene.

Since I come from the ancient time before the internet was so available (one home PC, dial up connection) I only started exploring the world of BDSM when I was around 20. I was something you see just bits of in movies, music videos, and you get curious about. Spanking, bondage and the basic stuff. I was wild, me and my best friend were two hot goth/alt chicks and things came naturally. We wore combat boots, fishnets, shorts skirts, corsets, dressed in black, dyed hair black and fire red, same as our lipstick… typically men immediately read it as dominance. So even though we didn’t dress to dominate, it accidentally led us to the right people, lol. We soon had “play friends” who’d do “stupid thing for us”. That didn’t involve money at first, but they were paying for parties, concert tickets, rides… we didn’t call it femdom or findom at the time, but kinky play. Then we started selling dirty socks via local forums and chat rooms. It was easy money. You’d meet a guy, hand him over a bag, he’d hand over the money. If you added a few insults or spat in his face, he’d usually tip extra. Was it safe? We were not even thinking about safety. But it was the closest thing to findom I’ve done at the time.
Then came years of getting more familiar with the real world of femdom. Internet gave so much info, communication and connecting was easier, and people even started organizing “kinky” evens. By that time I already had my own inner circle of very kinky friendly people and we would mostly find those events lame and boring and go to home to have our own party. I hanged out with dom(mes), straight, bi, gay and trans people, all kinky, but none was a pro. We practiced BDSM within regular relationships. We were dating likeminded people so being compatible in BDSM preferences was the same as being compatible in bed was for vanilla people. (I am not saying it was like that for everyone, obviously there must be many at that time too who were surrounded by vanilla people and struggled with that).
Anyway, real pro dommes were rare where I was, and we were not aware of findom, or just thought it was the same as prodomme.
But we lived it. Not by many complex rules. Mostly just consent. You didn’t choke someone if they didn’t like being choked and that’s all.
And we lived it through all aspects of life. Watched Hellraiser. Listened to Nine finch Nails. Loved a specific aesthetics. Sounds cliche, I know, lol. But it was not vanilla. It was everything the opposite.

Lifestyle dommes were strong independent women. However, at one point, a girl I knew was telling us about picking up cash from a guy. Random guy she met online who liked to be financially dommed. He bought her things and gave her cash. No socks were involved. No ropes or stepping on him. Just that. And it sounded exciting,
I told my then bf about it, and he bought me boots and gave me cash to try it out. It was exciting for me, but did nothing for him, so I didn’t push it any longer. But my mindset permanently changed from “I’m a strong independent woman and I spend my own money “ to “…and your money”.

Then life happened. Real careers. I was still a domme, but within my relationships and inner circles. A lifestyle domme. I gained a lot of experience in the following years. Mostly orgasm control, edging and psychological forms of dominance. Wax, ice, feathers and other kinds of sensory play. Then I started playing with cages, anal play with my bf, dressing him up... We could find a lot of info about femdom online now, yes, but mostly explored through play.

During the lock down is the time when the new era begun. Everything changed. A great shift online. With schools on hold and me as a teacher with plenty of time at my disposal, I discovered online femdom/findom. And it was everywhere soon. I had a lot to learn again.

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- All in all, the main difference is that earlier you evolved into being a findomne. Or o prodomme, whatever.
Now you watch a few tiktoks and you engage into activities that you know nothing of.
That doesn’t mean I’m saying older dommes are necessarily better than the young ones. All of us can now read, explore, upgrade our knowledge much easier than we once could. Just saying that many skip the process of learning

- Another thing I noticed is that once you really had to love it. It was mostly in person and it wasn’t THAT profitable, so no one really did domming unless they really loved it and felt it. Now, on the internet, you can be anyone. Literally. A fat guy trying to make a quick buck. A submissive girl whose dom boyfriend talked you into taking money from horny men. A wealthy Nigerian Prince. A dog. Literally anyone.

- Unlike then, findom is now present everywhere. What once was an underground, secret society now is a trend. Pretty much like anything, it’s about how good you market yourself. How many platforms you promote on? How often? What strategy? The numbers of dommes profiles on here, X, Discord, IG, TT is equivalent of “fast fashion”, just in kink.

- And so did change the ways subs approached - it’s so easier for them to do it now. They will have fun tonight. They will delete tomorrow.

- We didn’t call the ones we didn’t end up in dynamic with scammers, and they didn’t call us fakes. On the other hand, we were raraly approached by scammers, it took courage and real interest to engage in kink.

So yeah, I won’t be saying if it was better once. But it was different.