Non strip club related

Maybe we're unconsciously starting to realize that everything can be related to strip clubs and strippers. Is it possible that they're real people after all and have the same emotions and motivations as "normal" people?

Casualguy: I've never used any of thse sites, but from the sounds of what you are telling me, I see S-C-A-M written all over it. My guess is someone is sending those emails to you in order to picque your interest enough to joing the membership - afterall, without that membership you cannot see the pics very well, and you can't respond to the emails. My guess is, if you join, you will not receive any more emails, and you won't get a response from the ones that have already sent to you.

I advise against it, tempting as it may sound.

Again, I agree with DougS. I believe most of the dating websites are legit, but others (escorts, hookers, etc) also use them to further their business interests. Proceed with caution.

Girls on the adult dating Web sites generally don't contact guys. they don't have to. One girl I talked to said she got 50 e-mails a day from guys, 40 of which had pictures of genitals. If a girl contacts you with an offer like that, you can bet it is a scam. One of the most common is the girl who wants to talk to you over the Web cam before she meets you ("just so she can feel comfortable"). She doesn't tell you that the web cam site she uses has a setup fee and a per-minute charge.

Have these five letters on a post-it on your monitor: TGTBT

I tried to find "real" dates through the internet once a while back. I had just moved back to the USA from Toronto and had not yet created a social network in my new location. I thought it would be a good way to simply figure out, for my geographical location, where good places to hang out would be, so that I could get that network going. Is the social-dance tango-foxtrot scene hot here in this town? Or is it all about car racing? Do the hot young women who have college educations prefer the coffee bars or the strip malls?

What I found out was none of the above. After trolling the ads (and carefully, PAINStakingly creating my own) at about three "free" services, I figured out that there wasn't going to be any contact with humans until I started ponying up the money. $10 here, $40 there, monthly recurring free extra satisfaction guaranteed personality test etc. etc., and STILL all I was meeting were shills and hookers.

I think maybe, juuuuust maybe, if you have money to burn and you're in a major metro area, you might be able to use these internet sites for no-holds-barred sexual activity with people who OTHERWISE would have no outlet. This means, for example, married women who need to meet nearly entirely anonymously in order to keep their secret from their husband, kids, friends; or, young college girls who don't want to consider themselves to be "really" prostitutes but do need someone to "help out" at electric-bill time; or really really geeky frighteningly FAT women who feel down about life and replace their doldrums with A FANTASY LIFE on the internet, using online services to enjoy the attention for a while. You can't find a "normal" relationship but you can, probably, find relationships / interactions that are essentially internet-necessary: interactions which otherwise simply would not happen at all between two humans, can be fostered by online dating services.

I think the super-premium services (E-Harmony and its legitimate competitors) have a good idea, and I believe those will grow in utility and popularity. (E-Harmony essentially rejects you automatically if you test for low interest in organized religion. I think it's a fundamentalist outfit; maybe it's just overtly Protestant Christian and not truly fundie, I dunno. I took their test umpteen times, and after all the pointing and clicking, it just came around to, "We're sorry, but we're unable to offer you our services at this time." At least they let me know before charging my credit card!)

Here's an idea for an internet-based business. Become a personals-service service. You take Mister Busy Dude X's name, vital stats, ALL of his interests in a woman, ALL of his selling points. Mr X. signs up for seventeen or twenty or fifty online dating sites. You provide the service of writing brilliant killer online profiles for him at all the sites. You then provide further service, of doing all the searching for him at all the sites, perhaps programming an interface that will read and chart the results from disparate databases and cross-reference them properly (Yahoo allows you to search for non-smokers, Hot-or-not calls it "athletic" while Date-a-Girl calls it "sporty," etc.). You tabulate his results and ask him which ones he wants you to contact briefly, you deliver those contacts, you set up meetings with the ones he picks. You can charge by the click, basically. And if you could REALLY program an automated tabulator which read the output of all the top most-popular online dating sites and coordinated it so that an end-user could search through his hits without having to use the site's (always kludgy, web-based, deliberately resistant to speed) result pages, you could simply sell the software itself. A sort of Google for personals sites: Whoogle? Scroogle?

Thanks for the help guys. My scam sense went off a bit too since it seems to good to be true. I had 4 more emails from the site when I checked my email today. 2 more nice looking girls sent me an email but they just wanted to exchange information. No more girls saying they had a bet. I even had one ugly one send me an email which I definitely can believe she would not be too good to be true. I never had this many emails from good looking girls when the only thing I did is put in information such as male, age, location, and looking for fun females. Then I found out after getting the free part that they try to get you for over 30 bucks for one month or 100 bucks for a whole year just to send email and look at bigger pics of the girls. The last 2 emails seemed believable so I still wonder. Maybe more girls did sign up to use that site and the guys smelled scam and didn't pay so there aren't many guys. I somehow doubt that. I still smell something fishy about the whole thing. Considering my reluctance to use a credit card online, I've only done that one time in my whole life, I somehow doubt I'll being doing that anytime soon. However it really makes you wonder.

I guess if I really wanted to know more I could check to see if the Better Business Bureau knows anything about them. I think I'll just forget about it though. May have to delete my profile if the site will let me. I might believe I had a lot of girls interested in me if I had information and a pic on that site but I don't have jack on there. Seems suspicious. I guess I could always believe there are no single males in my age group in the western carolinas but I somehow have a hard time keeping that illusion alive. I'll go with 90 percent chance of scam. 10 percent chance I stumbled upon a website full of pretty nymphomaniacs. Hey, I've gotten lucky before so I'm generous with my percentages. I don't recall getting that lucky though with total strangers who don't know jack about me.

CasualGuy:

I still recommend against it, but heck, if you are still intrigued, what would it hurt to sign up for a month. It'd be about the price of a lap dance or two (depending on the club), and maybe you COULD get lucky. As long as it's not a minimum investment (1 yr membership, or the like), you don't have much to lose.

If you are looking for a relationship, you've got to have a better chance with the internet dating service than trying to hookup up with dancers and the local SC. You could most likely trust girls from the dating service more than strippers, too.

You could even report back here and let us know how it went!

(just playing the devils advocate)

I got 2 more emails from that same site again today. Something does smell fishy especially when one girl who had not emailed me before said in her email "what are you waiting for?" Almost all the pics of girls on that site look good. Too good to be true is what it seems to be. I'm not about to give that site my credit card information. I can't understand why a whole lot of great looking females would be trying to contact someone with a basic membership with no description except, age, location, and want to meet fun females. haha, maybe I should create another profile and name and give an awful description and see if that profile gets more email. For a scam they do a lousy job with showing pics of the females, maybe they think if you can just barely make out the pic and the girl seems to look good but its hard to tell, you'll be more likely to sign up using cash or credit.

I did some searching, either that site has some unique paid advertisements, (I don't put that past some people) or there are a large number of females on that site. I searched for comments and info on the site. What I found (don't know if any of this is true). Over 9 million females on the site. One guy posted a blog with pics saying Girls he fucked on that web site. Reminds me of shadowcat talking about the techniques he used. They do offer a one month or 3 month membership so I'm curious yet again.

Maybe I should keep it simple and just start with a dancer whom I already have her name and phone number.

CasualGuy:
I would certainly start with the dancer first. You at least already have a rapport established with her. BUT (and it's a ginormous but), you will have to deal with the same thing with which I am currently dealing. When you attempt to take a customer/dancer relationship to the next level, with intentions of making it a boyfriend/girlfriend relationship, it comes with a pricetag. (yes, sometimes literally)

You will be asking yourself the questions that have appeared in these discussion board threads countless times. "How can I be sure that it's not Stripper Shit?" "Is she pretending that this is more than a business deal to her, in order to get more business?" "Can I trust her?" Yes, the list of questions is endless. Questions that you'd never be asking yourself if you'd met this girl at the mall, for instance.

Many posters here will say that it can't be done. "A dancer is never going to date you" She will never consider you to be anything more than a customer. That's probably the case 99% of the time. You can always hope that this dancer will be in that 1% category. You wouldn't be thinking about doing so, if you thought she was in the 99% category.

Taking a customer-dancer relationship, as already established (status 1) to "the next level" can mean two different things. It can mean (A) having even greater intimacy, contact, service, and probably price, in the interactions in which dancer gets paid to do things for the customer. Or it can mean (B) changing the relationship to one in which the customer is no longer paying for the dancer's affection because she begins to give it freely, in whatever form, including intimacy, contact, or service.

I think the change from 1 to A is possible and quite regularly happens. I think, however, the change from 1 to B is highly unlikely, except among a certain few rare men who "got game" in a manner that most of us can't mimic.

So for me, the question of getting to point B is usually, NOT going through stage 1 ever. Much advice which I've read says, that if you want to DATE a dancer as a non-customer, then you should never let her know that you'll pay for her attention. Let the chumps spend money on lapper grinds, you be aloof. Or so the advice goes.

I have a good deal of experience going from a paying customer inside a club to a friend outside the club that doesn't involve money. I would usually continue on as a paying customer inside the clubs but the dancers would spend a lot more time just talking to me and offer me discounts on their dances. I tend to get a lot of that already if a club allows a dancer to set prices. I would say in most cases, spending time with a dancer outside the club that didn't involve money happened as a result of the dancer asking or giving me strong hints that she wanted to meet me outside the club environment. I even remember passing up the opportunity to meet up with 2 or 3 dancers. One dancer is easy to remember because she is the same age as me and still dancing and still looks pretty good. She has been involved with a guy for several months now. I can't remember why I didn't try going out with her. Maybe I was busy but I don't remember. Oh, maybe it was because I told myself I wasn't going to go out with any more dancers after I moved to South Carolina. I remained committed to that for a long time.

It was the stripper shit that got me a bit ticked off. I was tired of it.

As has already been stated, if you go out with a dancer, you will find yourself constantly asking yourself questions if you're not careful that you wouldn't be asking with someone you met in a bar. It's not a bad idea to clarify some of those concerns with the dancer if you want to avoid the possibility of a major blowout between the two of you.

BookGuy: I don't really consider taking the relationship from 1 to A, "taking it to the next level." I s'pose if it involves taking the business OTC, it could be considered the next level, but not what I was talking about at all. I was referring to the 1 to B upgrade. And yes, it is highly unlikely.

CasualGuy: That's the rub in all of this. Absolutely, if you are in the process of going from 1 to B (using BookGuy's terminology), you have to keep the communication channels open and you have to clarify your concerns. But the exasperating aspect of it is, even if you clarify that yes, she likes you for you and not for your money, how can you take her at face value when she could easily be deceiving you. In my case, I've had that talk, and have received those words, and I trust her completely (well, for the most part), but still... deep down... in the back of my mind... there are those doubts...

As I've said many times before, why do you care? If she treats you the way you want to be treated, and you're pleased with what your money is buying you, why do you care what her motivations may be, especially when the answer is unknowable and she probably isn't entirely sure herself? And why do the two things - who you are and money - have to be mutually exclusive, can't she like both? And isn't your money a part of who you are anyway? Stop worrying about things over which you have no control and enjoy yourself.

>And isn't your money a part of who you are anyway?<

Something tells me you aren't being facetious, FONDL. My answer is no, which pretty much sums up the issue for me. I know I'm the same person, whether I've got money or not. But I know in which situation a stripper is going to act like she wants to please me, and it ain't the one where I'm broke.

Sorry, I don't have anything to add to the topic of dating sites.

I remember several times I have been surprised by different dancers. One time that just came to me was when I was telling dancers who kept asking me for dances "I don't have any money left." They kept immediately leaving after I said that. However, one dancer responded "I don't care about that. I still want to dance for you." Now that surprised me.

Chandler, maybe I should say, "FROM THE GIRL'S PERSPECTIVE isn't your money a part of who you are?" Maybe you think you're the same person with or without money but I doubt if most girls would see you that way, stripper or otherwise. Some girls obviously prefer a guy who has some money and is willing to spend it on them, just like some girls prefer a guy who is tall.

But I don't understand how any guy can be concerned that some girl, stripper or otherwise, is going to take him for a bundle. Seems to me a guy should know what the girl is worth to him and not spend any more than that. In which case he's getting his money's worth regardless of her motives. So what's the problem?

FONDL, I can't speak for the girl's perspective. I assume those who are working to get my money think that way. It's only a problem for guys who care about being "more than a customer". I'm not one. I know when I'm a customer.

FONDL: agreed. I always wondered about someone who pro-actively exercised his voluntary muscle control to reach into his own back pocket and open his own wallet and grasp is own $20 bills and hand them with his own hand to someone else, and then complain that the other person was responsible for the disappearance of his money. :)

Chandler, I wasn't just talking about strippers trying to earn a living. I've known lots of women, and I'm sure you have too, for whom the amount of money the guy has and his willingess to spend it on them is, to them, a major part of who he is.

FONDL: Sure, I know of women like that, but they aren't a concern for me. Outside of a strip club, I don't pay women to act affectionate towards me. My carefree acceptance of being a customer only applies inside the club.

Well I could be a pill and bring up the whole anthropological bit about woman looking for a mate that can provide and being predisposed to men who can display the ability to provide, wether it be as a mighty warrior, a great hunter, or perhaps someone with a few nickles to rub together. Of course no women, or men for that matter are ever influenced by shallow things like looks or status. We all look to the quality character as the first sign of a good mate. I could go on, but then that might hijack the thread.

I could also posit that a man's financial situation does directly reflect on many aspects of his character. Ambition, intelligence, work ethic, thriftyness, all of these, while not entirely connected, are reflected in someones financial status.

Lastly, I could mention that a woman might want to feel valued by a man. A man that takes a woman to the Burger King for dinner might be suspected of not thinking much of a woman he is trying to woo, or of being a total dork.

But then we've had this discussion, many times...

Let me see if I've got this right. You go into a strip club where you encounter a stripper doing her job at her place of work. You agree to have her perform for you in exchange for $20, $50, $100 or whatever. Her performance consists of acting like you're her lover. And afterwards, you say to yourself, "Gee, I wonder if she really loves me? Or could it be the money I paid her for doing her job? Oh, what difference does it make anyway? My money is part of who I am! That $100 I handed her just reflects on what a quality fellow I am, much like if I took a date to some place better than Burger King."

If it makes you guys happy, that's just dandy for you. Forgive me if I don't buy it for a second.

Well said, AN, my point exactly. Money is a part of who we are. Just like any other attribute which someone has worked for. Like their level of fitness. Or their ability to play a musical instrument. Or brod knowledge based on extensive reading and study.

But FONDL, your actual original point, taken in context, was that a habit of *spending* large sums of your money on women, strippers or not, is simply another personal trait, like being tall or fun to be with or appealing in some way. Using your standards, a man who pays a boxer to take a fall should consider himself a knockout artist. Can't you see how patently preposterous that is? I thought part of growing up for everybody was learning to distinguish between who you are and the things you've bought. I know that if I lost all my money tomorrow I'd have to give up strippers and other stuff I surround myself with, but I would learn who my true friends are.

Just an update here. I stopped getting email from that website after about 7 days. I suspect new members were listed in a more noticeable section even if they don't have anything in their profile. I'm planning on going on a little adventure at a water park with the dancer. I prefer to call it an adventure instead of a date. For some reason, I don't like the word date too much. She told me she would bring some money even though I don't believe that will be necessary. I have a number of freebies which I've used in past years but I keep getting them (fringe benefits). After talking to her for a little while, I got some lap dances from her. I kept thinking she was dancing extra songs without charging me but I was a bit distracted and decided to let her tell me when the set was over with. Those 2 for 1's seemed to last a long time not that I was complaining.

Meanwhile in a another club, another very nice looking blonde came over to me and said it's been a long time since she danced for me. I think she missed me on my last visit so it must have been about 2 weeks ago. She told me she was planning on dancing at a nude club next weekend. I said pretty quickly "I'll be there." She smiled and said "you haven't seen my cootchy yet." I'm wondering if she just wanted to talk to me since she knows I occasionally visit other clubs or if there might be more to it.

Some of the time a dancer will get a tip from other females or another dancer before she gets your tip. I was actually hoping for that last night so I could watch the show but instead she practically hopped on me first. Guess you can't have it both ways. I got to watch the two of them earlier on another stage though. That time both were topless and one was leaning against me as she tipped the girl on stage. I was in a great spot that time. :)

Chandler, I thought we had moved the discussion beyond simply the strip club and to how women can see a guy's financial situation and spending habits as a part of his personality. So no, I don't think you have it right. Once again FONDL and I are getting all fuzzy brained and theoretical and moving the discussion on to something else, as you may have noticed we tend to do. That was the context of my comments. In strip clubs money and your willingness to spend it is almost all they care about as opposed to it being one aspect of your personality, but dancers are human, I'm sure they have favorite customers who only tip so-so and customers who tip well but they hate. For the most part I agree with FONDL, you can never know their motivations, so why worry. Spend what you are willing to spend and if you get what you want, be happy.

AN, I agree you can never know strippers' motiviations, so why worry about being a customer. FONDL seems to be essentially saying we're all customers outside of a strip club as well, because our money reflects on us in the eyes of women. I think that's just a poor rationalization for brushing aside the obvious role money plays in a club. Any of us should be glad to be considered a good customer. It definitely has its advantages. But a good customer is just that, not "more than a customer" and not the same as real life.

Chandler, I still don't think you understand what I'm trying to say, probably because you don't want to. My point is that the abiliby and desire to make a lot of money is just as much a part of who you are as any other desire or ability. Some people make earning lots of money a high priority in their lives; others have different priorities. That's part of who they are.

FONDL: I took issue with the connection you appeared to draw between that simple point and a customer's attitude towards a stripper he gives his money to. If you disavow that now, there isn't much to discuss. I don't contend that earning ability is not a personal trait, obviously.

FONDL said: "My point is that the abiliby and desire to make a lot of money is just as much a part of who you are as any other desire or ability. Some people make earning lots of money a high priority in their lives; others have different priorities."

Unfortunately for me (and a lot of other people, probably), earning money is a high priority in my life (I can't ever remember a time that I didn't want to "be rich" and I can't tell you ANY career I want to be in, other than one that "pays a lot"); but ABILITY is not something (evidently, by current results) have.

I think a lot of dancers are probably in the same boat. Hmm, maybe that's why I get along with them?

Chandler, I don't recall attempting to make any such point so I do hereby so disavow. I think my opinions about money are strongly influenced by my personal voyage - when I was younger I wanted to get rich, then when I joined the world of big business and saw what it took, I lost interest. In fact the older I've gotten the less important I think money is. I think one of our biggest problems as a society is the emphasis we're all taught to put on money, I think that's a huge source of unhappiness in our world. I seriously doubt if anyone ever laid on their death bed with the final thought, "I wish I had made more money." Although Donald Trump might. So I realize that money means a whole lot less to me than to some other people here. Which is probably why I don't mind giving some away.

FONDL: Having money isn't very important to me, either. However, I realize it can mean a lot to people I give money to, so I'm careful about that. It's why I recognize that being a customer in a strip club is unavoidable. And why I try not to be a customer of women's affections outside a club.

Money seems to mean more to those who don't have much of it.

Look, it is fairly simple. In a strip club you show appreciation with money. The dude that sits in the corner nursing one coke all night and never tips is not going to be well thought of, and not just because he doesn't tip. The girls will call him loser, perv, whatever else. He goes into a place where the dancers equate appreciation with money. A dude who doesn't spend apparently doesn't think much of the dancers. The dancers are putting themselves out there in the most literal way. Now, as has been mentioned how one values money and balances that with courtesy, or one shows appreciation can be considered a part of who you are. In a club being willing to at least tip the nominal ammounts shows you appreciate the dancers, or are at least willing to treat the dancers with courtesy. The dude nursing the coke in the corner wants to take without giving. He may be the most decent chap in the world, kind to his mother, rescues dogs, reads to school children and delivers meals on wheels, but what the dancers see is someone who wants to use them without having the decency to give back. Who he is in the club is very tied into money, and I'd venture that in my example, correctly so.

OTC, regular date. I'm not saying that you are buying affection, but in a similar manner, what does it say to a woman if a guy doesn't seem willing to try to impress her. Face it, dates are a sales pitch...OK, maybe second dates since both parties may realize they don't want what the other has after one date. Now of course there are a ton of caveats, we all know the stories of the poor pure hearted boy who is wooing the wealthy girl, blah, blah, blah. What it comes down to is that he must go to greater lengths to show he values her if he doesn't have money. Interestingly the corollary to almost all those stories is the cad with money who thinks he can buy the girl. We've all seen, I'd wager, the PL or the whale who thought that since it was a stripclub he could. I'll even stipulate that in some cases they're right, at least in the physical sense. I think we've also seen guys who feel the same on regular dates. What it comes down to is that, although in different ways being willing to show that you value a woman is part of who you are, and pays off in both situations.

Chandler, as I recall you aren't one to cultivate regulars. Both FONDL and I do. We may have different perspectives on that basis.

I think I should also add, for both FONDL and Chandler, I understand what you mean about not caring about money and having it. But what I think you mean, please correct me if I'm wrong, is that you don't care about having money beyond a certain point. You care about having enough to live comfortably and enjoy life and beyond that don't see wealth as a great motivator. I agree, but if I were to lose my job and go heavily into debt I think I wouls care a lot more about money, as I'm guessing most here would.

I think the reason I want more money for my work, is so I can have more time and / or do less work.

Money, itself, isn't a goal ever; purchasing things with it, including making the trade-off of less time at the goddamned mother fucking office, is what I want to do with it. I would have liked to have thought that at 40 hours a week "typical" office job, working hard and seldom screwing up, bringing ability and training and experience, being a member of the team, doing the work well, etc. etc., I'd be able to afford my own housing and meals. And saving for retirement? But it hasn't turned out that way. There's this generational shift out there, before which a great "generalist" degree meant a generally wide array of options, and after which it meant no options at all. I got caught in the switch-over, and STILL haven't managed to be able to afford to re-tool.

Frustrating. Makes me whine. EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEaoaoaoooooooooooooooo. Whine. Sorry ...

Hey, if a guy wants to go sit in a club and just have a drink without tipping he should be entitled to do so unless the club has rules against it. Personally if I see a pretty girl on stage, I like to tip her. I've noticed some dancers in my area seem to keep their clothes on until they are tipped on occasion. Either they believe the guys just sitting there are not that interested in them or they don't realize that guys are visually stimulated. Keep the clothes on and they won't be. Now I have seen some dancers that I unforunately saw on stage and went eewwww, I wish I hadn't looked. A number of other dancers look less desirable than many girls on the street. I go to look at and tip nice looking dancers. However I don't believe tipping should be required if you're not that interested in the dancers.

AN: What you say makes pretty good sense to me. I was mainly drawing a contrast between the role of money in a strip club and outside. I may have overstated my indifference to it, which isn't absolute. I don't think I let it run my life the way some people do, but I'm sure that could change under other circumstances.

AN, of course money is important if you don't have enough to eat or to put a roof over your head, and I didn't mean to imply otherwise. What I did mean is that what I consider "enough" is a much smaller number than when I was younger. I've discovered that "things" just aren't very important and rarely bring happiness.

And what you say about the dynamics in a club and us preferring regulars makes sense. I'd add, though, that a waitress in a restaurant is going to feel exactly the same way as does the stripper about someone who doesn't tip adequately. The money issue isn't limited to strip clubs. I just don't see the ITC/OTC distinction about money that others here do.

The ITC/OTC distinction isn't about just money. It's about money for affection. A stripper provides simulated affection, while a waitress provides delivery of food and drink - with a smile, hopefully, but not usually in a way that could be mistaken for love. Much like the power company has a money issue - they deliver electricity to your house only as long as you pay them for it.

Power company, and waitress, deliver something OTHER THAN access to themselves. The waitress has to be around only as long as it takes to receive an order and then deliver food. The stripper is providing access to "me," not something other than her.

Isn't it interesting that in a post titled "Non strip club related" we've managed to steer the discussion to, of all things, strip clubs and strippers!