Spanking is a pretty good gateway kink, right? It’s easy to do, it’s fun, and it doesn’t really require any special equipment other than a hand or a butt.

So why, on Fetlife’s “Explore” page (formerly “Kinky & Popular”), do I so rarely see spanking images or videos?

Explore is mostly attractive people in various states of undress, fellatio, facials, a little bondage (rope or otherwise), at least one golden shower video or picture, and several images of people who have both breasts and a penis. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with any of those things (even though I am not into some of them), but where’s all the spanking? So many people have some form of spanking listed in their preferred fetishes, and there are plenty of great butts with some sort of redness or marking on them throughout the site. If you’ve seen my personal Fetlife feed (as opposed to my JJ Rose one) you’ve likely seen a whole lot of spanked butts. But I find those through my network on Fetlife; I don’t find them on Explore. (Well, hardly ever. Definitely not in the past week or so.)

It almost makes me wish Fetlife was listening to me the way Instagram, Facebook, and Reddit do. (Even if they say they don’t do that, you know they do. How else would Facebook suggest a friend to me whose name has been mentioned audibly one time twelve hours prior? No algorithm is that good. Although one time I said very clearly “I need a new pair of gloves” and neither Facebook nor Instagram gave me any ads, so… who knows, really?) At least then it would know how much I love spanking, and it would give me ads, posts, images, and videos that are spanking-related. Oh, and events, too, because sometimes I hear about events too late since I don’t actually spend much time in the Groups section of the site, and that’s where a lot of events get posted first. I have to depend on them showing up in my feed because someone else has shown interest.

And then there are all the other algorithmic ads across the internet. I’ve worked for media companies before, and people often will complain that they’ve seen ads for things that they consider inappropriate. If only they realized that a lot of these ads are driven by what they look at on the internet. So where are my ads about spanking? I read spanking websites, look at spanking pictures, buy spanking-related items, and yet no ads about spanking.

Though I suppose that’s probably best. The last thing I want to see on my work computer as I’m scrolling Facebook is a big ol’ picture of a spanked butt.

Well. Maybe not the last thing.