(NSFW)Have you ever encountered a question that seemed OK, although it contained some sexual content, only to find out that the OP was mostly out to get his/her sexual jollies?

@Kardamom – I know of whom you speak from the other day.

I guess that my question is searching for a middle ground. It comes down to – *what is a pervert? *

A person, usually a male, asks a question that is potentially sexually charged. You (or others) are bothered by the question. Does that make him a pervert?

Along the same line – OK, let’s say that he has an unusual way of ‘getting his jollies’ to use your term. Does that make him a pervert? Or is he perhaps a lonely or shy person?

Another side: he may be normal, and your ‘pervert antenna’ may be tuned in too high. Perhaps oversensitive?

I don’t know the answer, because the person apparently isn’t into 50+ year old men :-)

But I am always very wary of people who sling words like “pervert” around.

Yeah, I know the ones you’re referencing. It was two questions along the same lines about nudity, embarrasent, bla bla bla.

So I basically didn’t answer it by saying I’d never make a bet like that in the first place and also got the stupid PM attempting to justify it. I chose to ignore that as I should have completely ignored the questions to begin with.

Whenever I encounter stuff like this or trolling type Qs I usually ignore them and allow the mods to deal with it.

After all, we are not required to answer any questions for any reason (or no reason at all) so it’s just not worth wasting time on.

There are all kinds of people with all kinds of fetishes that the majority of us would consider perverted. But as long as they find someone who agrees to participate in whatever it is that turns them on, I don’t have a problem with it.

If something is done by adults with mutual consent it’s not up to me to be their judge. But unfortunately for some of these folks with atypical fetishes, they have not yet learned to only seek partners who consent to participate. They attempt to manipulate others into their scenario. That’s when the perv alert radar starts to ping.

But on a site like this, no one is required to participate in any question they don’t wish to, so when my perv radar starts going, I usually just pass it on by.

I remember a few years back there was some guy grooving on white linen clothing (or something like that; details are a little hazy) and I just found it amusing.

With Search here being as wonky as it is lately, there’s no way I can find it. And the recent one, we all remember.

@jca I answered his PM without thinking through it. Now I want to go back and see what I sent him, and found out he deleted my message @@

The questions themselves and the fact that they sounded similar bothered me. At first I thought it was just some kind of joke (though I felt a bit uncomfortable because they asked about my age and how I felt being naked). But then I saw the second question. I didn’t know why they asked this but I could felt that something was fishy about the OP. I didn’t know they even asked a third and sent flirting PM to people. Now I’m glad I didn’t answer anything.

There’s just no predicting what turns folks on or off. The first one of those ” locked outside naked” things just made me think “oh oh, this one has trouble”. You wonder whether or not these folks wind up in serious trouble behind their aberrations. I also wonder if it’s just some 14 year old with boiling hormones. In any event, the questions seem harmless enough, but so silly and pointless.

I knew what he was doing as soon as he started PMing me, so I was getting very technical with my answers, instead of giving them what they wanted. At one point, I blatantly stated that there was nothing wrong with what he was doing, though it would have been more understandable if he hadn’t been trying to be so sneaky about it and was honest about seeking out someone who was a willing participant. He still tried to trick me into thinking it was for research, so I just reiterated my answers and it got to the point that we were basically going in circles, because I wouldn’t answer his questions the way he wanted me to. Then it occurred to me that maybe part of his fetish was that the person didn’t know they were a participant in his fantasy, but meh. Not willing to play along, but not necessarily going to condemn them, either.

I was trying to reach a point of honest dialogue, but I kind of gave up because I don’t see it happening.

@elbanditoroso Even though you said it politely, it is sooooo common for women to be called oversensitive or crazy when voicing a legitimate complaint. Also on this spectrum is when someone tells a woman “they were only joking” if she points about inappropriate behavior.

This is insidious because it falls back on a pervasive stereotype of women to disarm our argument. The more we stick to our guns, the more “sensitive” or emotional we are- a catch-52 that shuts down the argument. At the same time, it lets the wrongdoer off the hook. If the problem is just in our heads, whatever thing we’re pointing out must not be a big deal.

Needless to say, women hear this a lot when pointing out sexual harassment.

@DrasticDreamer “Then it occurred to me that maybe part of his fetish was that the person didn’t know they were a participant in his fantasy” I kind of thought that too. By the time I saw the questions there were two of them, and both of them together pinged my radar.

From the way people described the messages, I think tricking unknowing participants into it was probably part of the appeal. Like the internet version of a flasher in the subway. The details themselves were all about the element of surprise, someone hypothetically finding themselves naked in public when they didn’t sign up for it- in other words, a nonconsensual situation.

If they wanted a consenting person to talk to, there are probably plenty of chatrooms for every kind of fetish. Instead they came to a general Q&A site and tricked unwilling people into participating in their sexual fantasies. Bleargh.

@Haleth wrote:

Instead they came to a general Q&A site and tricked unwilling people into participating in their sexual fantasies. Bleargh.

Here I agree with @Haleth. It certainly seems to be deceptive – no argument. Unwanted, too. Possibly rude.

I just think there’s a line between tricky and rude, and ‘perverted’.

@elbanditoroso What do you think are the odds that this person was jerking off while writing these questions and PMing people?

The person wanted unwilling participants to help them get their jollies off. Talking on the internet (or in the article, clapping) is fairly innocuous, but it’s still sexual harassment. That’s not ok.

Before I was censored by the moderator, @Haleth , I had answered:

“I have no earthly idea what that person was doing”.

But the deeper question is – should I care?.

I read dozens of questions each day on Fluther – some have to do with relationships, some with food, some with technology, some with families, and so on. Each of these questions is motivated by something, and 99% of the time, I, the reader, have no clue what that person’s motivation was and what their answer will be.

To take a trivial example: The OP might ask “Do you like red wine with your steak?”. That’s a perfectly legit question. It might elicit 30 responses, some of which agree and some of which do not. Let’s say that you were one of the ones who said, “steak and red wine are great together:”

The OP then decides to rub his body with raw steak and red wine. That got him off. Kinky, even weird, but that’s what he wanted to do.

In my example, the OP asked a question, and then and went and did something sexual.

1) Would you feel ‘violated’ for answering the question and saying you liked steak with red wine?

2) Were you an ‘unwilling participant’ in answering this question? I’d have to say no.

3) Did the OP (in my example) harass you? Again, I’d have to say no.

If the original asker of last week’s question decided to jerk himself off (and that’s in no way proven), so what?

[Mod says] Please remember – this question is in General. Answers need to address the question. Attacks and posts quoting the content of PMs are removed in both the General and the Social section.