There’s a Dom I follow on Twitter, Will Hartley (@willhartley1980–seriously, check him out), who recently said something that really triggered my thoughts. In a post about things he dislikes he included “fake authority built entirely on aesthetics”.
This immediately reminded me of the legions of shitty findoms on twitter. These are young guys, most commonly guys who work out a lot but not always, who engage in a sort of performative dominance that emphasizes things like biceps flexing, middle fingers, the soles of their feet, and similar visuals meant to draw in submissive guys. These visuals are often backed up with a lot of toxic masculine posturing about how worthless subs are and performative contempt. There’s a female version of this as well, although I don’t follow many female findommes so I can’t comment much about their clichés.
Hartley’s comment cuts to the heart of what’s problematic about this stuff. It’s based on a false assumption that visual aesthetics (how a guy looks, his mastery of posing for a camera, his ability to convincingly perform contempt) automatically equals authority. In other words, if a guy looks like a Dom, he must therefore be a dom.
This is not a new phenomenon in the leather world. Back in the 80s and 90s, serious kinksters occasionally bitched about the “S&M Crowd–Stand and Model”. These were guys who had a great leather wardrobe and would go out to bars to be seen looking like a Dom, but who either didn’t actually engage in kink or did it badly–mostly they just wanted to have vanilla sex. I’ve occasionally heard subs complain about guys who look really manly in their leather, “but when they open their mouths, a purse falls out”, which I presume means that they talk in a way that seems insufficiently masculine and therefore lack the authority a Dom is supposed to have. And I’ve heard from some good-looking subs that they often meet guys who pose as Doms but who really just want to get fucked.
But Twitter is a very visual medium, and it’s become a breeding ground for young guys who want to make money by posing as Doms. These guys are typically not kinky and are really just looking for a way to make money. They figure out that subs will send money to guys who perform dominance for the camera. Not being dominant, they don’t actually understand submissive psychology–why someone would send cash to a total stranger who treats them poorly–but they learn to imitate what they see other findoms doing–flexing, flashing middle fingers, holding the sole of their foot up to the camera. And sometimes they do all three in the same absurd picture, apparently under the misconception that this awkward pose somehow conveys power.
I suspect that most of these guys make very little money from tribute. It’s hard to say for sure, but it’s pretty easy to fake tribute–just take some money out of the bank and claim someone sent it to you, and it’s not hard if you have photoshop skills to fabricate a Cashapp receipt. And I expect that some of these guys get just enough random tributes to make them keep going, convinced that they’ll break through to a real living as a findom, which requires them to keep talking about their success on Twitter.
So they just keep imitating what they see other guys doing, with the result that a clichéd visual vocabulary has built up around these gestures. A couple years ago, there was a brief fad for guys taking pictures of their feet with $20 bills between their toes; that one fizzled out and failed to become inscribed in the lexicon of findom.
And periodically the performance fails disastrously. Back around 2019, there was some college kid who tried his hand at findomming. He was kinda scrawny, but he filmed himself flexing, yanking off his t-shirt, and screaming at the camera about how much he hated faggots and how he was having so much sex. “I eat pussy for breakfast!” he shouted, before furiously knocking over the camera. It was such a ludicrous performance it got brutally mocked, going viral in the findom community for the wrong reasons. He deleted his account the same day. For a long time, “I eat pussy for breakfast!” was an easy joke in the findom community.
And unfortunately, there are a lot of subs who fall for this. Maybe they’re lonely and desperate for a Dom to talk to. Maybe these images hit their sweet spot–lots of subs have a foot fetish and who doesn’t love a good bicep pic? And as a result they get drawn into sending money to these guys, maybe just randomly tributing while they jack off or perhaps coming to fixate on one guy who really hits it for them.
But here’s where we circle back to Hartley’s point. Too many subs make the mistake of thinking that a hot visual aesthetic automatically equals authority. They assume that a guy who acts like a Twitter findom automatically is genuinely dominant and deserves to be obeyed.
But genuine authority is a very different thing from having a hot body. A real leader has to understand why his subordinates follow him and what they need to obey effectively. A real leader has to think about the consequences his orders may have on his followers. A real leader understands that there is no power without responsibility. Any Dom who wants to control a sub’s life, body, or bank account has to demonstrate that he is concerned with the sub’s well-being and won’t make choices that seriously harm the sub. That requires real trust-building and communication. A good Dom has a ground in BDSM ethics, which includes an understanding of the importance of not actually harming the sub. A good Dom understands the importance of aftercare. Sadly, a majority of Twitter findoms generally don’t understand this stuff.
That doesn’t meant that there isn’t an aesthetic component to genuine authority. There most certainly is. A good leader knows how to look the part, knows how to express authority in ways that motivates his followers. A good Dom generally needs to look good in leather or other fetish gear or at least know how to use fetish gear to convey the kind of experience he can give a sub. He needs to know how to trigger a sub’s submissive urges, which often involves using performative contempt and humiliating demands. It’s not that pictures of the Dom’s foot are bad–I’ve occasionally posted them myself. It’s that there needs to be substance and intentionality behind that. The Dom has to have some understanding of why a sub would find such an image arousing.
In other words, the aesthetics are a way to advertise to subs. But if there’s no genuine authority behind the advertising, all the sub is getting is an empty box with nothing inside it.
If you’re a sub, my advice to you is to look past the sexy pics a guy posts and actually look at how he behaves. Look for evidence that he cares about this subs, or at least builds a serious dynamic with them that keeps them coming back to serve him. Look to see if he has the maturity to be responsible with the power his subs give him. If he’s constantly emphasizing that you need to send money, that’s generally a sign of a guy who’s not a good leader.
If you’re a Dom, my advice to you is to think about leadership issues and develop your skills as a kinkster and as a leader. Recognize that with great power comes great responsibility. If you don’t want to have the responsibility of looking out for a sub, don’t take charge of him. There’s no such thing as free money, despite how findom appears on the surface. If a finsub is sending you cash, you have a relationship with him, even if it’s just a casual one, and every relationship is a two-way street. If you want to be a leader, you need to actually act like a leader.
Leather-Bound Press 