How “Vanilla Tourists” and Threesome-Hunters Ironed Out Feeld’s Kinks
January 03, 2025 at 08:30PMAs people become frustrated with more mainstream dating apps, Feeld—an app built for sexual nonconformists—has risen in popularity. But its success is leading to discontent amongst its old-school users. Is the community being ruined by the flood of new “vanilla” swipers? Josiah Gogarty delves into the gripes in this entertaining look at the world of Feeld.
In the beginning, Amsterdam’s Feeld community was small, and felt like a secret, exclusive part of the city’s queer scene. Béa would often bump into matches at parties. Now things have changed. As well as vanilla people joining the app, and horny men posing as doms, who are really “just assholes”, Béa says, there’s been a surge in users that they feel are only engaging in ENM in a superficial way. For them and their primary partner, with whom they share a house, going nonmonogamous was “the hardest thing we’ve done in our life” and has required a “strong foundation of really good communication”. Sometimes this is on an emotional level, like texting “I love you” when they’re staying over with other partners. Sometimes, it’s more mundane: the pair share their Google calendars with each other, and go through their schedules every week to keep track of who’s in the house or walking the dog when.
from Longreads https://longreads.com/2025/01/03/how-vanilla-tourists-and-threesome-hunters-ironed-out-feelds-kinks/
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