Consent, ethics, indulgence, and showmanship

[Feverdream]

I'm not the only person around these parts who is structured more like a loose confederation of more or less related personas rather than a solitary entity. I'm well more than 50% composed of submissive, masochist, bottom-material. There might only be a few shards of me that could be considered dominant/sadistic/tops. And those bits are usually more than adequately occupied inflicting their impulses upon the more docile parts of my head.

Every now and then, one of those parts gets around to producing content for the ?benefit? of other people. I'll record and release content... and then run away when people respond to it and want me to actually be in charge of them. I'm too unreliable to be anyone's Master, or at least that has been traditionally the way of it.

Lately, though, I've found myself wanting to make more and more of the kinds of files that I would want to trance to myself. I play very rough when I'm fucking with my own mind. Sometimes, I leave marks that turn into scars. And that is okay for me, when I'm doing it to and for myself. The damage I do to my own sanity is relatively well contained, but not everyone is as sturdy, and that is one of the things that makes me hesitate to just leave my sharp toys laying around where someone could really get hurt with them.

An example... I like to play around with making myself distrust my own perceptions and sense of what is real and what isn't. Playing tricks on myself. That sounds childlike, sweet, almost benign, really. Playing tricks, like that cereal pimping silly rabbit. For me, filing away at the moorings that keep me from floating right off my rocker into looney tunes land is just an afternoon's delightful mischief. I'm like 99.9% sure I won't actually become psychotic, and that last 0.1% is where virtually all of the fun comes from for me.

But what if someone's grip on reality is already tenuous? What if someone who isn't mentally robust trances to a file where I suggest doubting their own capacity to evaluate the reality of their memories? The safe, sane, consensual ethic says that at least I should put big scary warning stickers on it, and include lots of safeties and exit signs and other ways to find the shore way up stream of the waterfall. And that completely ruins it. Total deflation. Way to turn a raging river into a kiddie pool. I'd rather just throw in my towel and go back to playing with myself, thanks. It just isn't fun and games for me unless someone could potentially lose an eye.

And yet, I have this nagging wish to behave ethically. I can't quite trace the origin of the motivation. Is it that I care what others think of me? That I long to be respected by the community which has indulged so many of my kinks over the years? Or do I really care so much for people unknown to me that I should be concerned for their safety even when it is only hypothetical to me?

So, throwing out safe, and sane, I cling fast to the life preserver of consent. My files are endlessly permissive. They keep reinforcing positive feelings, positive experiences, positive decision-making. Every step of the good-intention-paved road is optional. There are some double binds, forks where either choice will really serve my purpose, but there is no force other than the listener's own desire. I'm not sure if it is enough to resolve my dilemma, or to salve my conscience should someone actually do themselves real damage through the use of a file I made. I'm thinking hard about that, and trying to come to an internal consensus.

Meanwhile... I'm still going to record these scripts and publish them here. I kind of hope that the casual listener will risk them only to find them far less worrisome than I do. Maybe decide that I'm blowing this all out of the water, that they aren't really dangerous just to listen to, and that all such discussion of them... including this conversation here... is just part of the showmanship, a man-behind-the-curtain routine, a hand being tipped for misdirection, carnival patter. So, sure, believe that this is that, a ballyhoo hyping up the marks so that they'll line up for admission. And then, when you get into the carnival tent, the big blow off... the pickled punk was really just a little two headed lamb in a jar. Maybe a bit peculiar, but hardly the world-redefining arcane oddity that was promised. Right?

Better listen again, to be sure, though. And maybe again after that. Maybe listening every day will clear up the confusion, and so on.

I don't know what this is. A confession? A pre-transgession apology? It is certainly an opening to further the conversation.

[OxyFemboi]

Feverdream wrote
I'm not the only person around these parts who is structured more like a loose confederation of more or less related personas rather than a solitary entity. I'm well more than 50% composed of submissive, masochist, bottom-material. There might only be a few shards of me that could be considered dominant/sadistic/tops. ...

Trust me, you're not the only person around here who had multiple personae and desires pulling him/her/them in multiple directions. I'm one as well. And I know of others who are waging the same war on multiple fronts. The problem of posting a file that will totally fuck with someone's mind and leave them in a totally new country with new rules and new languages and expectations is one I fight daily.

I -- more accurately, it's "we" since I used files that split my mind into multiple personalities; some of them are totally evil -- am only winning because my natural procrastination makes it easier to put off finishing a file that is designed to make someone totally paranoid or evil or sociopathic ... or whatever. Yes, I have files like that in development. I'm queasy at times about finishing them and posting them.

Interestingly, the file that I'm working on now -- this file makes someone totally dedicated to being evil -- is helping me "lose". This file has made certain it will get posted. You see, I need to listen to my files to see what needs work and what works well. Listening to the continual alpha file of of becoming an evil asshole is helping me become one ... which is getting further reflected in the file as the evil writes and reinforces itself.

I have come to a conclusion. Someone who downloads a file without reading the description and believing that the tist has done everything in his power to make this happen is ... stupid. Users who write "I didn't think it would happen to me" are ... potential Darwin Award winners. (Trust me, I thought of many other ways to complete that sentence. None of them were complimentary.)

Feverdream wrote
For me, filing away at the moorings that keep me from floating right off my rocker into looney tunes land is just an afternoon's delightful mischief.

I've love to listen to that file. I doubt if any person who has hung around WMM for along is totally sane (whatever that means) any longer. I'm certain I'm playing with a deck that has had more than a few strange cards substituted for the original cards. I know I don't believe the same things I did when I began. I can't begin to tell what changes are the result of my natural growth and what is the result of hypnosis files ... and I don't really care any longer.

I have the same desire to behave "ethically" -- my file descriptions are accurate and so are my warnings -- as well as produce the most effective mind warping files I can. I'm not sure how i'm going to reconcile these impulses. They may not be reconcilable. Is Caveat emptor enough?

The most I can say is that Caveat emptor is a beginning.

[zapnosis]

Hi Feverdream.

Your thoughts and feelings on this are so familiar to me that I could almost have written that myself! My files raised a few ethical eyebrows around the place and that doesn't bother me so much - that's what ethical eyebrows are for after all. However, from time to time I ponder that I may have done serious damage to someone, somewhere. For the record, I am not a psychopath and so that idea DOES bother me, deeply. But the truth is that I have no logical reason to beat myself up. The feedback I have received to my files has been very positive and where it has been negative, it is almost always just "not for me, thanks." No problem. Oh I've had a couple of messages along the lines of "I love what's happening, but now I can't focus on work!" - I take those as compliments! I have also done my share of "vanity searching" and suchlike. Nowhere on the searchable internet has anyone ever indicated that one of my files has done them harm. I am a monster, but not even I can censor the whole internet!

I've recently come to the conclusion that there is some difference between psychological domination/submission and psychological sadomasochism and I am definitely a sadomasochist. I want my listeners to crave and tremble and agonise over what's happening to them. That's not a bad thing, but it's not for everyone. Say that again, IT'S NOT A BAD THING. Some people really do like to be tied up and whipped until they bleed... and some like to have the poo scared out of them by mind control. I should know because I'm one of them (the latter). So I'm happy that this stuff doesn't get thrown around on social media and pushed into people's faces, but there should be a discreet corner of the world put aside for those people who enjoy such things. Many thanks to EMG, we have one.

As far as safe, sane and consensual goes, I think they're all relative. You set the boundaries where it works for you.

For my files, the clinching argument was: There are always reasons for doing nothing. If you agonise over every little thing that could possibly go wrong, you'll never achieve anything.
Good luck,
Z

p.s. Your new project sounds a lot like gaslighting. I've played with this idea a few times but have never been able do much with it. I look forward to seeing what you come up with!

[Feverdream]

How very nice to hear back from a couple of folks who I've found influential, either via files or forum posts!

Reflecting on these things further, I've made a "curse removal" type file. Sandcastles. Probably my only work ever that isn't at all tricksy. Just does what it says on the tin. I had read a few posts on the forums where something like that would have been very handy for someone. And while I know that such files already exist, it occurs to me that if someone has installed suggestions they don't want by trancing to a file of mine, then maybe hearing me talk them through getting rid of those would be especially effective. In any case, it is balm for my conscience. Now there is no reason I can't make the most toxic files that it enters my head to try... With fair warning on the label and a way to back it up if it is really unwanted, I'm pretty comfortable leaving full responsibility for outcomes on the listener.

Regarding the idea of gaslighting... I think that plays some role in everything that I make. It is such a handy tool when one is working through asynchronous media, like recorded files. If I have someone with me, I could actually be in tight rapport with them and guide them directly through the experiences that I want them to have with really tight control. Working at a distance, you have to instead shape the range of possible experiences in such a way that the subject is always going to be choosing something that falls somewhere inside that frame. Creating some doubt about what one really thinks and recalls is just one more way to blur the edges of truth and thus erase the potential for incongruity.

I will think more on what you've both had to say. Thank you for sharing your thoughts!