So I received this email yesterday:

Hi,

–
Jay C
Ulust.com
TrafficCashGold.com
LoveDollars.com

This was my response:

Hi Jay,

We don’t think it would be entirely fair to remove the post, as Craig was just expressing his opinion of the site and relating the experience he’d had there. However, if you would like to respond to the review and/or the comment specifically, we would be happy to publish your (unedited) response on the blog or link to a response if you’d like to publish one elsewhere.

Regarding ad space, we’re happy with our current arrangements, but will contact you if that changes.

Cheers,

Janak
CasualEncounters.com

The next day, this comment was posted on the original review:

Dan Says:

In Reply to Craig Eisele-

Ulust is not “fraud”, the member database is from 9 years of doing business. We receive TONS of new profiles daily which are approved by our customer service team to ensure the profiles are real and not fake profiles, we have a team of customer service that works 24 hours a day, 7 days a week 365 days a year. We take providing customer support as a very high priority so our customers stay happy using the site; we also have a security enforcement team in place that does nothing but look for “scammer” profiles and deletes them immediately once found.. If you ever run into one of these scammers you can contact our customer support and get that profile reviewed ASAP and removed if found to be doing fraudulent activity or even if a member is being abusive we will give that member a warning. We try everything in our power to remove these scammers from our site so our members can hookup with REAL members in a fun / adult environment. If you have problems with any member our support team is online 24 hours a day to assist you just visit http://www.ulustsupport.com for LIVE Chat Support.

We will not go into a debate of our member base statistics as that is company data that is confidential but rest assured we have TONS of REAL new members joining daily and what our numbers show for online is accurate.

Also about females leaving the site to go to yahoo / msn / aol … not all members want to give you their personal contact information. That’s the whole reason they joined a dating site so they can have the security of getting to know a person without providing personal contact information until they want to provide that information. I would suggest getting to know the person first before you ask for personal information unless that member wants to give their contact information right away…if you went into a bar and asked a girl for her number you would most likely end up with the same ratio of numbers received. If you are looking just to get laid then you might want to try a escort site as that’s what it sounds like you are looking for,, remember http://www.Ulust.com is a dating site that can provide you with endless possibilities of contacts to a gender your seeking to hookup with but just b/c a profile states looking for “sex” doesn’t mean they don’t want to get to know your before they hookup or give out personal information.

I responded to that comment with this:

Hi Dan,

Thanks for taking the time to respond to our review on behalf of your employer. I agree that uLust.com is not a fraud, and think Craig was getting a little emotive and hyperbolic when he labelled it as such.

Otherwise though, I stand by my review, my description of the experience I had on your site, and the conclusions I drew based on that experience. People are naturally free to try your site out for themselves and make up their own minds.

Take it easy,

-Janak

Would anyone else like to weigh in on the debate? Anything you’d like to add, disagree with, questions? Hit the comments in the original post, over here.

A friend gave me the link to this video the other day. Funny advertisement by Horizonte FM for Mother’s Day. Only-just-safe for work.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering. The song is “Parallel Lines” by Junior Boys. Not bad, huh?

I mean, I don’t know. It actually didn’t even register with me until I realized it was m4w and not m4m.

Myself, I’d hold out for THREE eggs.

Just sayin’.

Oh and hey! The first person to clock the minor chuckle of semantic ambiguity and mention it in the comments gets TRIPLE BONUS AWESOME POINTS!

Top 10 links for week beginning 05/24/2009

1. Hook up airways, boarding now.
2. Porn day on Youtube. Those wacky /b/tards.
3. 10 things you didn’t know about orgasms. Warning: list may contain outrageous lies.
4. Dodgy seduction advice from a dodgy seducer.
5. Vengeance was his.
6. Things to argue with your girlfriend about.
7. Pornography for EVERYONE.
8. A bit late, but yeah. Happy Mother’s Day?
9. Make this penis not look like a penis?
10. Hot pr0n from Wolframalpha. Be afraid, Google.

She had me at “space heater”…

And here’s me thinking that I have the toughest job in the world. Turns out it’s the SECOND toughest, after this guy’s.

*clears throat*

*pulls world’s smallest violin from pocket*

*starts playing*

Top 10 links for week beginning 05/17/2009

1. Slate vs Jezebel… GO!
2. Choose choking. Choose cock love.
3. Taking birth control pills could permanently reduce libido.
4. Sex work after craigslist…
5. Turbellaria flatworms are having all the fun.
6. Is the porn industry doomed?
7. I love you. Leave my butt alone.
8. “This is my mission: to find a hooker, contact her and then have sex with her.”
9. “The only problem was that physicians did not enjoy the tedious task of vaginal massage…”
10. Animated sexual positions – most of them!

Quick Summary:

Value: 4/5 Design: 4/5 Quality: 5/5

• About 25,000 performers on the site, with about 500-1000 available at any given time
• Nice, straightforward, and relatively clean design and layout
• Some of the models get stroppy when you ask them to do unusual stuff!
• Unless you’re spending a LOT of time and money on the site, the upgrade features (premium membership and joining fanclubs) aren’t worth it.

The Full Story:

One thing I’ve noticed with the adult dating sites I’ve been reviewing lately is that the most popular upsell on such sites are webcams. Makes sense, right? You have a membership largely consisting of horny single guys desperate for female attention and you try to sell them cyberhookers.

Reflecting on this, I thought it’d be a good idea to do a review of a cam site, to give you guys some idea of what you can expect should you sign up to one. I decided to start with cams.com as we get a discount there on credits (it’s one of the 12983491764 sites AFF own) but I have some plans lined up to review a few other non-AFF camsites later on, too.

Anyhoo, rocking on. Here’s what the home page of the cams.com looks like. As you can see, the design is a lot cleaner than some of AFF’s other sites. That’s at least partially reflective of the more straightforward nature of the site’s offerings, which are:

1) Camgirls doing and saying stuff that you ask them to for money
2) Watching prerecorded camgirl shows
3) That’s it? Am I missing anything?

Like most similar sites, cams.com offers a free “teaser” camgirl chat to people. You just have to supply them with your email address and confirm it (expect to receive some follow-up marketing emails). Also be aware when you’re chatting to models that the girls can see how much credit you have in your account and whether or not you belong to her “fan club” (it costs extra to join a girl’s fan club, but you receive a discount on her private shows – full details in this image.) Additionally, if you buy more than 30 minutes worth of private shows over the course of a month, you get free access to a girl’s fan club, or an extra month on one you already belong to.

Cams.com also has a “premiere” account–basically a “gold member” type deal that provides further discounts on shows and allows you to have email contact with the models. You can see a screenshot of the signup page for that listing the features and benefits here. My call would be that unless you get REALLY hooked on cams in general or a particular camgirl specifically, the upsell options aren’t worth the cash you’d save.

Well, enough about the options and mechanics. Time to answer the questions you’re really asking.

Are the girls hot?

Well, yeah. I mean, for any definition of “hot” you might subscribe to, with 25,000 models on the site and about 500-1000 available at any given time, if you can’t find one you think is attractive the problem is probably not with the site.

Are the prerecorded shows any good?

I had a look at the top-rated video show at the time of the review, this one here. This is what it looked like in full-screen resolution. The girl was certainly very attractive (face and body), as well as being, uh, eager to please (she accidentally the whole dildo!) I did find the sound a bit jerky, but that may just have been my connection, as the video was streaming (Flash).

I noticed that her accent was Eastern European, something you’ll find with a lot of the camgirls for reasons beyond the scope of this review. Which brings me to a point that might be worth making – a lot of the models will have limited English, even if they SAY they speak it. If this matters to you (and keeping it real – it probably doesn’t) be sure to check out their profiles before paying for a show; they’ll usually give you an idea of where the model is from, which should inform your expectations.

Another thing about the prerecorded shows is that there’s no option to save them, and paying to see one only gives you a single streamed viewing. If you want to record them yourself to re-watch at your leisure you’ll have to find a 3rd party solution–perhaps a browser plugin or standalone session-recording application.

When you ask them to jump, do they say “how high?

Some of the models are picky about what they’ll do or not do on camera. It’s pretty common for them to refuse anal, DP, watersports, etcetera, or to charge a premium for such services. For example, the girl in the prerecorded show mentioned above states that there’s certain acts she’ll only perform for guys who join her fan club. To get a feel for how generally complicit the models are on the site, I thought I’d masquerade as a guy with a slightly unusual fetish and see how many of them I could get to go along with it.

I figured I wouldn’t choose anything too bizarre or disgusting. I settled on just asking to see the performer place a shoe on her head. At $2 a minute, it doesn’t seem like some big huge thing to ask for, right? WRONG. I got turned down by FOUR girls consecutively until this BBW angel gave me what I was asking for. Very disappointing. And what reasons did they give for turning down my entirely reasonable request?

1) Aliciasforms figured she could do better out of one of the other guys pestering her (reasonable?)
2) The inappropriately-named MistressKinks decided playing with her hair and ignoring me was way more awesome than getting paid.
3) Morticia decided she was too much of a big bad dominatrix to do anything so demeaning as putting a shoe on her head. Though she at least had the good grace to laugh hysterically when I asked her if she would.
4) Oxygen thought she could do better out of one of the other guys (reasonable redux?)

Parting shots

So what was my overall impression of cams.com? You get what you pay for. And make no mistake: you will pay. Cams aren’t cheap, and it’s easy to blow a lot of cash very quickly. But if you’re responsible with your spending it’s certainly a cut or seven above the usual “jerking it to a porn movie” Friday night finger-shuffle.

Even if some of the performers are less than accommodating of poor, beleaguered, shoe-on-head-loving fools.

Surprising to almost no one, craigslist have dropped their “erotic services” section in response to pressure from The Man. I’m glad the Powers That Be  in Illinois, Connecticut and Missouri have the time to pursue hookers so vigorously. Heaven forfend they devote any resources to fighting crimes that have, you know, actual victims.

Full article with details here.

Found this over at craigslist. Couldn’t have written a better guide to meeting people for hookups there myself, so thought I’d share it. It’s also a long (though worthwhile!) read, so you might want to grab a coffee now.

Enjoy.

Casual Definitions Of Casual Sex

Far be of it for me to intrude upon our illicit activities here on CL (I am indulging too, there’s no need to get uptight now, is there?), but after a few crossed wires in my (and all of our) effort to find a warm, willing someone to touch our soft parts, I find a need.

Only us overeducated and neurotic San Franciscans can fuck up something simple as casual sex, and all over definitions. So, as a public service, here follows the definitions of some (some is key here) of the sexual liaisons available to the discerning urbanite:

Sex With No Strings. Pretty simple, and to the point – humping. Lots of it. Usually in one session – thus, no strings. In other words, no expectations of future humping, unless a new relationship is negotiated. SWS means I will not a call you later, I will not meet your parents, and no, you can’t sleep over (in my t-shirt no less). This is the traditional One Night Stand, folks, it just doesn’t have to start in a bar, nor do you need to be drunk.

Guys, there are manners. You do not ejaculate, and instantly ask when the next bus runs outside, a smatter of small talk costs you nothing and might reward you with an upgrade to fuck buddy status. Also, this is one you DO NOT call later, drunk, horny, and confused. This is one that is “use once, throw away”. Unless it’s so good, you have to go back…usually you can decide this 30 seconds after you cum…then it’s upgrade time.

Gals. This is NOT A RELATIONSHIP. STOP telling your girlfriends about the awesome guy you met last night, he’s not calling you again. Yes, he used you. You used him right back. Enjoy the power. These are hook ups you don’t talk about, nor do you take them around to meet your pals for drinks the next day. You hump, they leave. Simple.

Booty Call: This is someone you’ve SWNS’ed, or dated. Maybe you were married. Or she is, and you work together. Or you both are. This is someone you can call anytime, day or night, and chances are, you will get laid. You have one or two of these, right? Everyone does. Anyone who’s dating someone else, and it’s the first year, dreads these. We all know who are they. We have ours.

Guys and Gals – these happen FROM previous relationships. Stop asking for them, you’re putting the horse before the cart. One of the important things here is, A., you know calling them is okay, and vice versa, and B., you know what they’re like in bed, they’re acceptable to you, and there will be no uncomfortable “surprises” at the door if they com over. Slow it down, Speed Racer, and try SWNS first. And finally, these are the super, super secret ones. Nobody ever knows. Ever. If you tell your current girlfriend/boyfriend, you destroy the relationship AND the bootycall.

Fuck Buddy. These are the fun ones, and the most dangerous. It’s about sex – lots of it, and all the time. After work, before work, all weekend, in Tahoe on a ski weekend (fireplace sex is the BEST), and they’re allowed to stay over. Can be ongoing, like a booty call, and will be dusted off between relationships. “Funny, I never met HIM the 3 years we dated? Oh, he’s one of THOSE.” You might even date, go out, show each other off, but once things get personal, you both know it’s time to split up, for now. They’re the one person who won’t get upset if you say “I met someone…” because they did, too.

Guys and gals, warning. These relationships are treacherous. They CAN and do sometimes get real, and the other person rarely agrees it’s time to start sharing the bureau and bathroom. Be open, honest, and make sure you’re BOTH on the same page, and the kingdom is yours.

However, for the meek at heart, beware. These are the relationships where fetishes, fantasies, and pure unadulterated hedonism occurs, and it’s expected. This is the time for her to try drinking the blood from a wound on your lower belly while she jerks you off, because those bloody vampire movies turn her on in a way she’s not ready to deal with. This is the time he’ll be into trying threesomes, or more. Do not be offended if he wants to share you, you are his favorite toy, and it’s a mark of honor that he’s comfy with it. Indulge. But if they rock your polite, vanilla ideas of what sex is a little too hard, be aware you are in far, far over your head, and you need to back off and either date (foolish exercise that it is) or dabble with SWNS, so you can at least escape his/her chamber of horrors.

Yes folks, this is the one where you get your stories. Love them, live them, respect them. You’d both worked hard.

Friends With Benefits. Yes, that one. Okay, some blunt truth. Women tend to abuse this one to try and trap a guy into a relationship, and guys generally confuse this with Fuck Buddy, Booty Call, and Sex With No Strings – and generally all in one night. Guys, these are going to be tough for you, for one reason: the word “freinds”. These relationships have a very good shot of turning into a real relationship. See “When Harry Met Sally”. This is someone you’d probably be dating, anyway, and the only difference is no sex. Adding sex can be tricky, as it moves the relationship into a grey area, of where you’re not sure how you feel.

OR

It’s someone you trust utterly, who can share this intimacy with you without freaking out on you, and it’ll be your shared secret, one that means something. Yes, guys, sex can be meaningful.

This is one where friendship needs to be present first – a strong friendship that can survive the rocky shore of sexual relations. If your friendship is rocky, chaotic, inconstant, and does not have solid communication skills on both sides, mutual trust and respect, it’s just a bad idea to begin with, and it will kill your friendship – one that you generally want to cling to, as they count for far more than fleeting sex.

Of all the women I’ve had offer this to me, very few of them could handle it, and were confusing the intimacy of friendship with something else. Two i accepted, one worked, one did’nt, and horribly. The three I offered it to, I knew could, and it was a warm, enjoyable experience we still smile about and hint at when our SO’s aren’t around. These are good for times of stress or tragedy, for the lean times between relationships, and while they tend to be more about married sex than the wild, unbridled fuck buddies, it’s very, very good – you know each other, it’s that much deeper.

Gals: this is a bad way to find a boyfriend. If he’s already a friend, that means you don’t want to date him, or you’re not sure. Make up your mind before plunging in. If you have any feelings for him, and don’t admit it up front, it won’t go well. Don’t dupe a guy – we hate that. Don’t lie. You cannot ASK for this on CL – they are bred during real friendships that happen outside of your nasty little weekend adventures. (You nasty little girl. Bless you.) Asking for a Friends With Benefits on CL screams one thing to me; someone who cannot be honest about what they’re looking for, and is using his/her sexuality, or the lure of it, to bypass the hard work of actually meeting someone, getting to know them, and actually relating to them on various levels. You belong in Casual Encounters, but you need to get real – what you need and all you can handle is a SWNS or a fuck buddy, stop trying to trick people with the lure of sex.

Guys: This is trouble for you, for that “friend” word. Yes, it means you have to be a friend, and all that implies. That means she CAN in fact call you when she’s weepy, and you have to listen. That means you’re NICE to her, and do nice things for her. It may have even occurred to her that you really like her, which is why you’re friends with her. This is one you introduce to your family, if they don’t know her and adore her already, but as just friends – they’ll understand later if that changes. It also means that you won’t be having sex all the time – you’re friends, remember? That means doing things with her, like going to the store with her, getting her medicine and soup when she’s sick, driving her when her car is in the shop…you know the drill. if any of this irks you, you’re not being honest about her, and you need to figure out what you’re doing, or negotiate for a different status.

So, that’s all for now. Please post with care, about what you want and are looking for, chances are there’s plenty of someones to fill your every – and I mean every – need, here in the wilds of CL. But be honest, and get your terms rights. If you want a boyfriend, post in WSM, not casual encounters talking about friends with benefits. Don’t agree to a night of SWNS sex and old black and white films, and then start acting like a girlfriend later, and demanding attention. It’s a waste of time, and that’s time you could be humping.

Hope this helps! Feel free to rebutt, reject, or rejoinder!

Zany Japanese inventor ventures beyond wacky out into the brave new world of OMGWTFBBQ.

I swear. I could live to be, like, 63 and I’ll never understand the Japanese. More specifically, I’ll never understand the aspects of their culture that resulted in the rise to awesomeness of this guy.

I’ve taken care of the main integration issues now, but the site redesign/re-theme is still a work in progress. Feel free to leave any feedback or suggestions in the comments, or use the contact form.

Top 10 links for week beginning 05/10/2009

1. Giving up is on the rise…
2. Police warn ‘casual encounters’ very dangerous.
3. Abstinence clowns freak as Obama cuts their funding.
4. China mom chops willy.
5. Masturbate-A-Thon 2009 Champion Masanobu Sato Speaks.
6. 10 Incredibly Bizarre Sexual Practices.
7. Top 10 non-porn movie sex scenes.
8. How to tie up your boy, girl, or both.
9. Sex in sci-fi.
10. Ted Haggard ridiculed.

Hi there. We’re doing a blog redesign/theme change today, so just in case anything looks freaky and weird, fear not. I AM ON IT. Yeah, I bet that strikes fear and respect and something-not-unlike awe into your collective heart. Or collection of individual hearts. Or, well, you know what I mean. Brace yourselves! This is going to be HUUUUUUUGGGGEEEE…

Korean lady goes into excruciating levels of detail about the joy of masturbation with various kinds of cucumber. Laugh, cringe, cry, learn something interesting: the choice is YOURS.