Game-Playing Subs

Recently I was talking to a boy I’ve known online for a couple years; I’ll call him R. R. has purchased custom hypno files from me and occasionally tributes to me when he feels grateful for my advice and support, but he’s not a cashfag in the normal sense of the word–tributing doesn’t arouse him.

R. had been chatting with another dom on Niteflirt, a commercial phone sex line. You can do a phone call with a per-minute rate or text chat for a small amount per exchange or send tribute or purchase ‘goody bags’ with things like nude photos or hypno files. R. was horny and using the text chat function when he was talking to the other dom, so the dom was making a little money off the conversation. R. told the dom that he wasn’t interested in tributing, but the dom demanded a tribute at some point in the chat, which totally killed R’s mood and he messaged me to vent.

R. was right to be upset. The dom had violated one of his clearly-stated boundaries (although R. hadn’t framed it that way for himself until I pointed it out to him). And we wound up talking about why this dom demanded tribute after R. had been very clear about not sending tribute.

As I see it, there are two possibilities. The first, and far more likely, scenario is that this ‘dom’ is just a sex worker bent on making as much money as possible. He was making money off chatting with R., but to make a significant profit he’d have to devote some real time to the chat and he probably wanted to go for a fast profit instead of taking the time to get to know R. and build a client relationship with him. There are lots of findoms like that out there, so that’s probably what happened.

But I think there’s another possibility that gets at something more complex.

Anyone who’s been a dom for more than a few years has run into a sub who plays games. Typically, the game involves the sub trying to get a desired form of play without explicitly saying what it is they want. For example a sub wants to be spanked, so he contacts a dom and says “I’ve been naughty and need to be punished”, instead of saying “I’m really into being spanked. Do you want to spank me?” Sometimes they are doing it playfully, making it clear that they are conscious of their game-playing, sometimes they’re clearly being bratty or cute to get what they want, but in other cases they don’t seem aware of the game and seem to think this is how it’s done.

The origins of this sort of game-playing are complicated. Porn frequently frames physical discipline such as spanking or humiliation as a punishment for the sub’s mis-deeds, and this aspect of kink porn is so well-known it’s become a stock piece of comedy, especially in cartoons like The Family Guy that use it as a throw-away joke. I think it mostly emerges out of the upside-down nature of kinky desire–why would someone want to be spanked? Since it’s (ostensibly) unpleasant, it must be a punishment that is inflicted on the sub rather than something the sub craves. But in other cases, it has its roots in childhood physical punishments such as fathers spanking misbehaving children or English teachers caning students. Many subs want the experience of being ‘forced’ or ‘violated’ (think of how much ‘forced bisexual’ porn there is in which the sub is ‘forced’ by his wife to have sex with another man against his will).

Regardless of what causes it, many subs either want the framing of punishment/force because it adds to the erotic charge of the experience or else they lack the language and mental framework to articulate their desires as desires and so have to request punishment when what they want is pleasure. As I’ve discussed elsewhere, framing kink play as punishment can create a lot of problems so I generally don’t do it, but there are lots of kinksters who do it that way. And the result is that some subs play this game of saying they don’t want something when they really do.

What does this have to do with R.’s conversation with the findom? R. absolutely wasn’t playing games. He was stating a clear limit and was quite reasonably upset when the findom violated it. I’ve known R. long enough to know that he’s not a game-player. He’s a very sincere sub who sometimes pays for attention from doms.

And here’s where we get to my main point. It’s possible that the findom thought that R. was playing the game where he says he doesn’t want something when he actually wants it. If this findom has run into a lot of game-players, he might have interpreted R.’s statement that he didn’t want to tribute as R.’s way of hinting that he wanted to be ‘forced’ to pay tribute, that he wanted the findom to play the part of a demanding asshole who browbeats guys into tributing.

I say this because this is something I’ve run into personally. I’ve talked to a good number of subs who told me they didn’t want something and then got mad when I didn’t do it. Finsubs can also sometimes play a game where they want to tribute but won’t indicate what sort of approach they want, perhaps because they want it to feel more natural or because they’re testing me to see if I can intuit their desired approach from subtle clues. So they make vague leading statements to see if I hit the right button and if I don’t they just ghost or block me.

This problem is most pronounced in online interactions, because without being able to see the sub’s body language or hear his intonation, the ambiguities of the written word are multiplied. And in my experience, very few people are aware of just how much they communicate their intent through body language and intonation.

Now to reiterate, I think it’s much more likely that R.’s findom was just a jerk chasing easy money. But it’s worth thinking about the other possibility because it highlights the need for subs to clearly communicate what they’re looking for. When they don’t, it can cause miscommunication problems where neither side gets what they want and may wind up thinking the other side is an asshole, and it can make it harder for doms to learn to read other subs.

So my point is that subs need to learn to clearly articulate what they do and don’t want (like R. did). It increases the odds of them getting what they want, and the more we doms are able to assume that a new sub is being honest about what he wants, the more fun everyone gets to have!