There did exist some scrapers but they are fighting to keep those off the site. The first hurdle is that you need an account with a phone number to see anything on there. Makes it easier to ban anyone caught scraping or trying to do other shady shit.
Fetlife isn’t a dating site. Sure, you can try using it like one. Just like you could try using Facebook like one. Or Lemmy. But just because it’s sex positive doesn’t mean it is for hookups. Like you noticed they are deliberately limiting people’s ability to use it like a dating site.
Dating sites (especially the fetish ones) attract creeps and bots and Fetlife already has plenty of those. Managing it like a dating site would just make that so much worse.
If you are desperate to meet someone go to the events listed in your area. But again, if you go there with the intention of immediately hooking up you’re going to be severely disappointed.
If you want to be derogatory towards Fetlife call it a porn site. Because that is the main reason people pay for it. To get access to videos.
When we opened up our marriage I wasn’t as interested in meeting new people as she was. So she did her thing and I listened to the stories she told of her dates and also the stupid dudes that messaged her
That actually got me interested as well so I created an account on the same site without a picture and without telling her. So the first thing I did was message her, pretending to be some unknown dude. I got her hooked with just one short message. Felt good to know that I could still rizz her.
Of course I knew that all in all she would be more “successfull”. But we both had our ups and downs, had fun, broke hearts, got our hearts broken. Eventually she stopped dating and I kept going until I couldn’t go on.
In the end, I have slept with more women after marrying than before. Met many interesting people and learned a lot of stuff about myself.
But the most important thing about an open relationship is that it is open in communication. In that way we were open even before we started dating other people. And I think that is why it worked.
One of my subs started working for Subway. She quickly got tired of people in the community ordering the Sub of the Day, hurr hurr, from her.