Shell and Dr.D
I can understand your desire to empathize with shawn, and try to understand why he has been behaving the way he has. But I can't agree that anything that's going on in his outside life should mitigate his behaviour here.
Your compassion towards him is admirable, and I agree that some of the comments on this thread have been overtly aggressive towards him, perhaps needlessly. But your efforts are just enabling him, and opening up a debate that isn't really relevant. The way I see it, Shawn was warned about his behaviour many many times. On many different occasions. The mods have said, he was given several warnings, by more than one mod.
And that is before you consider his attitude towards other users that he's not playing with. More than a couple of people have spoken to me about him on more than a few occasions, about how rude and obnoxious he can be towards people. The picture that has been painted seems to be that he's generally a bad egg. And I don't think it's fair to overly criticize the mods decision to remove him from the chat. I'm sure you both remember bee, and how damaging her behaviour was, and how the inactivity of the mods allowed that to drag on for far too long. This is the mirror of that situation, the mods now have the confidence and the power to deal with problems like this one. I can't see that as anything other than a good thing.
Indigo.
The idea that subs should hold some form of responsibility has already been discussed. Sure everyone holds a personal responsibility to look out for themselves. But we aren't always talking about people who are in a responsible state of mind. As has already been discussed with some pretty extreme examples from Dr.D and Jasmine.
I'm not suggesting that extreme tasks and riskier elements of play shouldn't be explored, but the riskier things get, the more the situation, the scene and the sub, need to be handled with care.
When I was starting out here. A dom, whom I respect and have learned a lot from once said to me, that the sub holds all of the power, they control what they do and don't want to do, he was right. To an extent.
The subs limits and capabilities are the canvas upon which a dom can paint their scene. But if you don't respect those limitations once you are in the scene, things can go wrong. Some people can slip into subspace very easily, people especially newbies, can be very eager to please their dom, and are simply happy to have the attention of someone with a dominant tendency. We all know the ratio of subs and doms that exists in the chat room here. So it's very easy for inexperienced subs to stumble into the room and fall in with someone that is wielding a power over them that they don't even know themselves. We all know the kind of thing...
s1ave4u wrote:8.01pm: Hi M sub 22 here, will do anything for domme.
-----silence-----
s1ave4u wrote:8.15pm: Any dommes in here to play with sub M 22? I will do anything.
-----silence-----
s1ave4u wrote:8.22pm: Please can I have a task! I will do ANYTHING 4 U
They are an easy target for ridicule, and all to easy to dismiss. But I can guarantee that many many of the regular chat users started out this way. I know I did. Lucky for me I came in on a good day and was welcomed by most, though not all.
But what if s1ave4u has already done a couple of teases and is feeling really submissive. And he stumbles into the room, desperately trying to extend that high, that amazing feeling of submission, and someone with no respect for him tells him to go and carve the word slave into his arm with a razor blade. He's either going to scar himself for life, or be snapped out of his evenings fun by such a cruel suggestion. Either way, he's going to get the impression that Milo isn't the most welcoming of chat rooms.
