QAnon Connection to "Company of Men"

[Suckrates]

1 hour ago, stevenkesslar said:

I agree with your main point.   But I'll add a few qualifications.

Arguably, the interest of the "owners" is the community itself.  I'm not even sure who the "owner" of that website is.  Or whether there is one.  And it's pretty much none of my business, is how I view it.  That said, I don't think that site is a business in the sense that it makes money for an owner. If anything, the opposite.  As I said earlier in the thread, after Bill died a member of that community generously stepped forward and said he could help fund the operations of the site.  Basically because he hires escorts and likes what it does.  At least mostly.  Not necessarily, or perhaps not particularly, the politics forum.  So in that sense you could stretch the limit and malign it as a friendly dictatorship.  As in:  have fun!  But just don't talk about politics, or it's off to the gulag for you!  

My guess is the tension, or conflict, has more to do with different ideas of what "community" even means.  I agree with @Latbear4blk that the politics forum was a small, and often annoying, part of that community.  Which is primarily built around an interest in male escorts.  That would be very different than the broader LGBTQ community organized around groups like HRC.  Which sees the Gay community as a political community, and their mission as advancing the rights and political interests of Gay men. 

Having lived in both communities for a few decades, the spirit of Company Of Men goes like this:  let's have a pool party!  Let's go to a stripper bar!  What escort did you hire?  Was he cut or uncut?  Nobody much cares whether the cock is attached to a liberal or conservative.  If anything, the fact that the typical escort is younger and more progressive than the typical older and more affluent client who hires him suggests that it is best to keep your mouth shut.  Or, if you can't keep your mouth shut, then at least keep it primarily focused on other activities.  😛

I know Bill basically lived hand to mouth for much of the time he ran that website.  Hence  my involvement in helping him create a volunteer donor base for the site.  Much of his income from the review website was based on some percentage of the clicks from people who spent money on Flirt4Free or whatever webcam websites he had up there.  So to that extent, simply having less people who visit the website and can click on shiny objects, or shiny boys, that generate revenue is bad for business.  But I don't think the forum itself ever did, or does, operate that way.  That was the escort review website.

 

Getting back to the OP topic,  all this analysis aside,  if the opinions of the management lean MAGA-right,  I would not/was not interested in participating in that rhetoric... And it seemed the Politics Forum operated in that bubble, so for me, Syonara Baby !     And now that the Politics Forum has been erased, the rest of the site holds no interest for me, and most of the other forums get very light traffic,  usually only the usual suspects and an occasional Rando who thinks it might be cool to make his first post. 

[Mavica]

1 hour ago, stevenkesslar said:

 So to that extent, simply having less people who visit the website and can click on shiny objects, or shiny boys, that generate revenue is bad for business.  

Ok, then let the site die.  Someone else will start another site to live another day.  In the grand scheme of things, what happens there isn't all that important, is it?  

[stevenkesslar]

2 hours ago, Mavica said:

Ok, then let the site die.  Someone else will start another site to live another day.  In the grand scheme of things, what happens there isn't all that important, is it?  

It is to the people who post there.

And, just so it's clear, I like the site and hope it flourishes.  Which @Latbear4blk says it is, and will.   I think they were dumb to kill the politics forum, because it will give them headaches in other ways.  But that is their problem. 

My point was very narrow.  To the degree that these sites make their revenue based on web traffic, where people then click on some other webcam site like Flirt4Free and the originating site gets a little piece of the money, anything that reduces traffic to their website hurts their revenue.  But Company Of Men does not operate that way.

It's off topic, but we now all know that something like this is precisely the problem with the algorithms of Facebook and Twitter.  They get us to stay on the site by getting us riled up.  It doesn't matter whether it MAGA mad, or Bernie mad.  It's just a business model.  Thankfully, the moderators at Company Of Men are not trying to get anyone riled up to make money.

companyofmen.org Traffic and Engagement Analysis

If that is correct, it gets about 300,000 visits a month, almost all from the US or Canada.  Not bad.  Rentmen gets about 10 times as much.  Masseurfinder gets like 500,000 a month.

[unicorn]

7 hours ago, Mavica said:

Web forums serve the business purposes of their owners and advertisers, first ... and though site visits dropped the owners were happy with their choice.

Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't see how a marked drop in activity helps the owners or advertisers. Yes, having your members go elsewhere does mean less work for the moderators, but is that the only goal? Business which aren't forward-thinking will end up being lonely. And maybe out of business. 

[nynakedtop]

One of my favorite CoM members who has historically varied from displaying his inflated sense of self and his anger management issues likes to refer to people he disagrees with as "the crazies" over here.

Somehow, the QAnon'ers over there cannot help but revert to their compulsive behaviors given half a chance. Of course the mods look the other way as long as no one ventures even slightly to the left of center.

Other than such amusing displays, for those of us who find our porn elsewhere, the site has become pretty darn boring I would say.