You’re a kinky person. You want to meet other kinky people in order to do kinky things with them. Naturally, you turn to the internet to help you do this. But oh boy it’s not always easy.
There’s a dizzying array of dating apps and websites available… most of which aren’t much good. Either they’re not kink-friendly, their messaging system is broken, or the nearest other member is on a different land mass than you are.
To help you avoid a frustrating search, here’s a frequently-updated list of every available digital dating solution. Good luck out there!
FetLife
[ Visit FetLife ]
Sometimes it can seem like FetLife is pretty much it when it comes to social networking among kinky people – and it certainly is worth having a profile to keep in touch with your real life contacts. For dating, though, it’s of relatively limited use.
FetLife is specifically designed for social networking, and not for dating. There’s no good way to search for nearby members, or filter for conpatibility. It’s also flooded with dicks (that’s a technical term), which means that most members won’t be up for chatting to people they don’t already know.
If you want to use FetLife for dating purposes, find a geographically appropriate “personals” group, read the rules, and post an ad (or respond to posted ones). You might get lucky. You might not. Probably not. If you’re looking to date, don’t make FetLife the start or end of your search.
Dating Kinky
The hipster option. Dating Kinky is a small-batch home-brew beer of a kinky social network. It’s run by a tiny team of super-friendly people, and as kinky dating sites go you’ll likely find it warm, welcoming and snug… if a little sparsely populated. If FetLife is a music festival in a crowded London park, Dating Kinky is a nearby house party with much better music, nicer food, and far fewer people jostling you or trying to show you their dick.
All the basic functionality you need is free, although there is a premium option. It’s a wee bit difficult to get the hang of at first, but once you’ve spent an hour or two looking around you’ll likely find Dating Kinky a nicer option all around than its grey and red cousin.
Tinder
[ Get Tinder ]
Ah, Tinder. The app which defines an age. Almost everyone who dates online tries Tinder at some point – and that’s one of the best things about it. There are lots of people on there. Wherever you live in the world, it’s unlikely you’ll be alone.
On the downside Tinder isn’t particularly kinky. The sheer volume of people on there means that your chances of meeting someone kinky are quite good, but that you’ll probably have to do a lot of patient swiping to get there.
Bumble
[ Get Bumble ]
Bumble is a reasonably high-profile, yellow-not-red alternative to Tinder. It is among the least kinky popular dating apps you’ll find. You’re likely to have more interesting and pleasant conversations here than you might on Tinder, but the chances of encountering anyone kinky is close to none.
OKCupid
[ Get OKCupid ]
OKCupid is excellent. Or… was excellent, anyhow. It used to be a quirky, soft-bellied, queer-friendly dating app with lots of weird bells and whistles – not least the ability to “endorse” people you’d dated, and an excellent blog full of sexy, sexy data analytics.
In recent times, OKCupid has changed hands. The blog is dead, the quirky stuff has been culled, and it’s slowly edging towards becoming a Tinder clone. Ho hum. At the time of writing it’s nowhere near its former glory, but is still a decent place for meeting queer, kinky, poly, or other alternative folk.
Feeld
[ Get Feeld ]
A dating app designed specifically for people who want to date as a couple, find unicorns, or experiment with sexy stuff. Great, right? Theoretically, yes, but Feeld is still – even years out of beta – littered with bugs and incredibly unintuitive to use.
Feeld has a great deal of potential, but it’s not fulfilling it yet. Frustration with the clunky interface means it has a stunningly low member retention rate. Naughty app. See me after class.
Fetish.com
[ Visit Fetish.com ]
Fetish.com has all of the functionality of FetLife and then some, including photos, videos, event listings and profile walls. It’s also a hell of a lot slicker than FetLife – it’s easy to join, and intuitive to use, plus all the basic functionality you need is free. You can pay for a premium membership if you want to be able to send an industrial volume of messages, or if you want extra features like filtering search results or seeing if your messages have been read.
Moreover, it’s actually used. If you’re anywhere near a population centre you’ll find active members near you, with more joining on a pretty regular basis. If the same number of people used Fetish.com as used FetLife there’d be very little contest between the two.
CollarSpace
CollarSpace (née CollarMe) looks like it hasn’t been updated since the internet was run off a lone server under some guy’s desk. It’s seriously clunky, unintuitive and ornery to navigate. Despite this, people do quite often recommend it. Why?
Back in the day (the day being the early 2000s) CollarSpace used to be a decent way to meet people. Even though it did look awful, it at least had a large and active member base. Lately, though, the site has changed hands, and in doing so misplaced the last little bit of functionality it had tucked away in a corner. Would not recommend.
Whiplr
[ Get Whiplr ]
Whiplr represents the most serious attempt to date to make a functional, popular kinky dating app. It looks great, and setting up a profile is relatively easy. It even appears as though there are a lot of profiles on there.
Unfortunately, communicating with other members is paywalled – making it unlikely that you’ll form any meaningful connections. Most profiles you’ll find here are dead ones.
Whiplr has the potential to be amazing. It just needs to completely change the way it operates. When that happens, I’ll be among the first to let you know.
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