The board · Germany
BDSM contacts in Berlin
Berlin puts limits in the bio and does not treat that as a confession. Posts here are often shorter than elsewhere because the writer assumes the reader already knows the words, and working out terms reads like ordinary admin rather than a difficult conversation. A large share of the pool arrived in the last few years and writes in English, so the board is more international than the city on a map suggests.
Posts come from Kreuzberg, Neukölln, Prenzlauer Berg, Friedrichshain and the west of the city. On an app that is a radius setting. Here people say it in words.
Dominant in Berlin
Leading, and saying in the post what that actually means to them.
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Nobody here has ever demanded a photograph, and I notice that
Looking for: somebody who will accept a video call in place of an album
Nine years, two dynamics, both begun without a single photograph.
In nine years on these apps in this city not one person has demanded pictures before a conversation. Friends who do this elsewhere describe the opposite as normal. I have no idea whether that is the city or luck, but it has shaped how I run the beginning of things: nothing visual, a short live call when both people are ready, and a public meeting soon after.
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I am not going to teach you the vocabulary before we have met
Looking for: somebody who has done the reading and wants the practice
Twelve years, three dynamics, none of them with a complete beginner.
About a third of my messages are requests for definitions. What does this mean, what is the difference between these two things, what would that involve. Each one is polite and each one is a small piece of unpaid work, and collectively they take up more of my week than the arrangement I actually have.
Submissive in Berlin
Submitting, on terms set out before anyone opens a conversation.
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My limits are the first thing on my profile, not the last
Looking for: a dominant who reads a list of limits as information
Six years, two dynamics, both of them agreed in writing first.
The top third of my profile is a list of things I will not do. Not softened, not explained, not apologised for. People who have used these apps in other countries tell me it reads as cold or as a challenge. Here it reads as somebody who has thought about it, and the conversations I have because of it start about four steps further along than they used to.
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In the most open city I have lived in, I am the one who is hiding
Looking for: a dominant who can keep something entirely private without resenting it
Five years, two dynamics, both of them completely unknown to anyone.
Everybody around me is remarkably relaxed about all of this. My colleagues talk about their arrangements at lunch. Half the profiles I read have a face on them and a full name in the first photograph. And I am the person with no picture, a written profile that says almost nothing identifiable, and a family in another country who would take it very badly indeed.
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People here state their terms beautifully and never ask about mine
Looking for: somebody who asks a question after they have finished explaining
Seven years, two dynamics, one of them four years.
The directness here is genuinely a good thing and it has a failure mode. I get long, clear, admirably honest messages setting out exactly what somebody wants, how they run things, what they will and will not do, and then nothing. No question. The conversation is a statement delivered to whoever happens to be standing there, and I could be anybody.
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Three people have told me that what I want does not exist
Looking for: the specific arrangement I have described, or an honest no
Eleven years, two dynamics, both of them close to what I am describing.
I want a service arrangement with a fixed weekly structure, no impact of any kind, formal address at agreed times only, contact twice a day, and a written review every three months. That is the whole specification and I have been told by three separate people that it is too particular to be findable and that I should be more open.
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My profile has not changed in four years and I have changed completely
Looking for: somebody who will read the post rather than the fossil
Nine years, three dynamics, and a self description that stopped being true.
I wrote it in one evening four years ago and I have not touched it since. Everything in it was true then. Almost none of it is true now: I want different things, I have different limits, and the arrangement I was describing is one I would politely decline today. It has kept working as a profile, which is the strange part, and that is exactly why I never fixed it.
Switch in Berlin
Both directions, and looking for someone who can follow the change.
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I withdrew from everything social and this app is what is left
Looking for: one arrangement, found privately, with no social element at all
Twelve years, three dynamics, the last two found on apps.
For years I did all of this the way people used to: through people, gradually, in company. Three years ago I stopped going out entirely for reasons that were mine and that I am not going to detail in an advertisement, and what remains is this application and the small number of conversations I have on it.
Curious in Berlin
Downloaded something, has not decided yet, and is honest about it.
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Everybody assumes my age tells them what I am, and it does not
Looking for: somebody who asks rather than assumes what a man of sixty wants
Eleven months on the app, several conversations, none of them about me.
Every message I receive assumes I am the one in charge. Not one has ever asked. Apparently a man of sixty who writes in full sentences must be the person giving instructions, so the conversation arrives with my part already cast, which would be flattering if it bore any relation to what I have been thinking about for two years.
Before you write your own
Reading the board tells you what lands. These four decisions happen before you write a word.
- The same person, compressed into an app bio
- Honest and anonymous are two separate dials
- A handle nothing about you comes back from
- What a photo says before anybody reads the words
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Post yours in Berlin
Reading them costs nothing. Putting your own where people near you will see it, and answering theirs, happens in the app this site connects to.