A huge essay about revealing this fetish.

20 posts / 0 new

Tue, 04/26/2011 - 00:51

caffiene

Something I've noticed over the past several years of browsing these sites, it seems like the community at large is terrified of anyone finding out about this fetish as a whole; and especially anyone finding out that they, as an individual, have this fetish. It's really bothered me for a long time, as I just keep wondering why?

Why is everyone so afraid of people finding out about this fetish?

Now, obviously you don't need to tell your family or friends that you have it, granted. The only person in your personal life it would be worth talking about with would be your partner; who you absolutely should tell. I've told every girlfriend I've ever had about my fetish, and only one of them had a negative reaction. Even then, she didn't dump me or call me a freak, she just said she wasn't comfortable with it and wouldn't do it. We kept up the relationship for a while and we're still friends.

On the broader scale, why is everyone so afraid of people in general finding out it exists? Obviously trolling is a concern, but G4 did a segment on us where they were not particularly kind or flattering, and it's not like the board was overrun with trolls or anything. Short of an in-depth segment on CNN or a major motion picture, that's about as much coverage as we could expect from any kind of tv show, and we weren't overrun or dragged from our homes into camps or something.

Finally, there's the subject of gatherings. Admittedly, the concerns on this one are more valid: Not wanting to meet your fellow inflationists and find out they're not who you think they are? That's understandable. The fear that it's going to be two or three girls surrounded by a ton of guys? First off: it'll be real life, not the internet. The idiots who pull that shit online are usually too shy to bother in person. Also: You will be there. Don't behave like that. If everyone agrees not to behave like that, we shouldn't have a problem.

The biggest problem with real life gatherings is that since body inflation doesn't really exist, it would just be a bunch of people hanging out talking, maybe somebody brings an inflatable suit... but it would certainly cut down on the awkwardness since everyone's not going to be engaging in sexual behavior left and right.

And finally: the biggest concern is basically the idea that this community is fine as it is. The forums on the internet and the fantasy of it all is fine; and I don't really have an argument for that, however it's beside the actual point of this post.

The point is: why does everyone flip the fuck out when the idea comes up of revealing this fetish to others, either on a personal or broad scale?

There are much "worse" fetishes out there. Guro, amputee fetishes; the example I always use is that at least we don't want to pee on anyone.

This fetish is essentially just bondage, which is already widely accepted (for a fetish), crossed with transformation, which isn't all that weird in and of itself; with a little bit of fat admiration or balloon fetish (depending on how you look at it), both of which are fairly common/accepted and have gatherings.

It's not freakish. Having this fetish does not put you on par with Kuato from Total Recall. Revealing yourself is not going to make people recoil in horror from you.

And what's more, the ultimate saving grace: It's not real. It's all just fantasy and roleplay. We're not hurting anyone.

Anyway, after that huge essay: I really just want to know why every time the subject of revealing ourselves comes up, everybody here just hisses and retreats to the shadows? Why do you find the idea so horrible?

...I meant that sarcastically.

Tue, 04/26/2011 - 02:28

xlrxlr

i always felt that the reason people dont want to reveal it is because its weird. The idea of someone inflating like a balloon is just... well whats there to think of it? its mostly used as slap-stick comedy but even then people dont think about the character inflating. its not something that someone would think to be arousing. im tripping over my words here with my bad english but my point is that its weird.

inflation dosnt have nearly the same disgust factor as ero-guro, beastiality, pedophilia, scat, aliens (depending on the alien), or the infamous tenticle rape. all the while it is treated as if it were one of them. i think its because of how well hidden it is. foot fetish, bondage, s&m, latex, fat fetish, and pregnancy fetish are already well known to the public and is parodied in the media multiple times. maybe if inflation was put out to the public it would be better accepted by people and we wouldnt have to get our panties in a bunch everytime we think of someone finding out. although how it could possibly be in the media in a positive light i still dont know.

also the fact that it isnt real actually makes it wierder, like how furrys are considered wierd. it can be real to an extend, i myself am on of those inflatees but that is also very weird.

maybe im just babeling on here but i hope i added something useful to this post :)

Tue, 04/26/2011 - 05:31

Anonymous

Personally, I don't like the idea of telling anyone because I'm just too introverted and shy.

Back when I was younger, there were times when I felt like bringing it up with friends, but fortunately I was smart enough to know that it wouldn't have the results I would like, so I never bothered.

The thing to consider is, if you actually told your girlfriend about your weird little kink, than she would eventually go and tell all of her stupid friends about your weird little secret. So unless you end up with someone who you feel you can fully trust and have nothing to hide from each other, than there will always be that catch 22.

I've never told anyone about my fetish, but I just felt that I never had any reason to. The way I like to look at it is, everyone has their own skeletons.

No matter how good you think you know someone, they'll always have a deep, crazy secret they'll always keep to themselves, which is how I've always felt about it.

Maybe someday, I'll end up with someone I won't feel ashamed of hiding something from them.

But for now, I just feel that no one in my life needs to know about my secrets except me.

Tue, 04/26/2011 - 07:06

nineteenthly

I agree with you, Caffiene, which is why i'm pushing it on YouTube and started the blog. I do have one quibble though - for some of us it's real. I do it and some people do it to others too. I wonder if there's also an element of the secrecy making it more exciting for this specific fetish. One of the things this is about is people having to contain stuff inside them when it's trying to get out. We've all heard of people "bursting to tell" people secrets. I think maybe some of us, or at least i, use that tension of secrecy in the same way as we get off on the inflation thing itself. Maybe those of us who are into popping want to reveal it more than those who don't.

I'm also conscious that for me, actually revealing the "secret" itself might have a subliminal sexual element, and i think that might be a problem because it means something sexual to me but not to the person i tell.

Having said that, i'm basically going to "come out" about this very slowly and cautiously.

Oh, there is one other thing. If you're in a stable relationship and you tell your partner after a long time, it could place a question over what the sex in the relationship has really been about all that time. This is why i let on very early in my relationship that i was into this and the other thing.

http://www.youtube.com/user/nineteenthly

Wed, 04/27/2011 - 21:47

DisruptedOriginal

Of course I would only reveal this fetish to people whom I know very, very well. There's one other person on this planet that knows and that's my brother, but I wouldn't mind sharing with other people as long as we were extremely close.

It's kind of similar to how I don't tell many people that I don't masturbate. The people I have told all expressed shock at that, despite how dirty it is seen (as far as I know). I didn't realize how widespread it was until I actually told someone.

Thu, 04/28/2011 - 00:48

Yousuck

It's not other people's business to know every single thing about me. Except for maybe that one special someone, whom I've not met yet. That's all.

Thu, 04/28/2011 - 07:53

nineteenthly

Fair enough if that works for you. It doesn't work for me because try as i might, most of the things other people generally find a turn on simply don't work for me and that means there's a conflict in sexual relationships. I have a number of unusual paraphilias and little interest in vanilla sex. In conventional terms i am asexual, so for me, sex is about an expression of love and bonding but is never, ever going to be exciting in itself unless it includes this stuff, and i think it's only fair to warn people about this. Otherwise it's a barrier to a happy relationship.

On the other hand, many people presumably can be more adaptable than I am about this, and in that case it makes more sense to keep it quiet. For me, it makes a difference to how i relate to everyone because the sexual element is absent in some of my interactions with others when it might be expected to be present, and present when it might be expected to be absent.

It's almost true to say i'm asexual but not quite, and that "not quite" is vital.

http://www.youtube.com/user/nineteenthly

Thu, 04/28/2011 - 19:30

Anonymous

Yousuck wrote:

It's not other people's business to know every single thing about me. Except for maybe that one special someone, whom I've not met yet. That's all.

Agreed.

Fri, 04/29/2011 - 11:40

caffiene

Lateralus87 wrote:

The thing to consider is, if you actually told your girlfriend about your weird little kink, than she would eventually go and tell all of her stupid friends about your weird little secret.

That hasn't been my experience. And anyway, so what?

I think I shot myself in the foot as far as what I was trying to ask. I'm not trying to get everyone to tell all their friends; and I'm not saying we should organize a march in the streets.

I was just wondering why everyone gets so up in arms when the idea of anyone who doesn't subscribe to this board finding out about this fetish comes up.

Like I said: there's no reason to tell your friends or family.

I was just curious why everyone seems to want to keep this fetish as some kind of underground cult. That knee jerk reaction dumbfounds me. I'll tell anyone anything about me as long as I've got my "caffieneaddict" alias to hide behind. I'll tell girls I'm with that I have this fetish, because I feel that's important to a relationship. However it seems I'm unique in that thinking. I just wanted to know what everyone's afraid of.

...I meant that sarcastically.

Fri, 04/29/2011 - 12:54

#10

nineteenthly

There are reasons to tell people. What is sexual for us is not the same as what's sexual for others. A friend of the opposite sex who wants to stay friends may have a right to know if certain things they do or say is turning you on if that would disturb them otherwise. It's not necessarily OK just to get free sexual arousal from a friend who thinks things are entirely Platonic. For instance, if a friend is pregnant or overweight and married to your best friend, it might be turning you on and it's only fair to them to tell them that's happening. The alternative would be that you start to avoid them so you're not, to be frank, "perving" on them, so it would only be fair to tell them why.

And that's just one reason. There are many others.

http://www.youtube.com/user/nineteenthly

Fri, 04/29/2011 - 18:12

#11

carnatic

nineteenthly wrote:

A friend of the opposite sex who wants to stay friends may have a right to know if certain things they do or say is turning you on if that would disturb them otherwise.

I don't think that's a good reason. What turns you on is your own private business, you don't have to share it with friends and I'm sure most people don't particular want to hear it.

And why shouldn't sexual arousal be free? If something about someone else turns you on, you aren't taking anything from them, there's no need to be guilty about it.

Put another way, what if your best friend's wife is simply hot? Do you have to then tell her that watching her turns you on? Is that right, or best for your relationship with your friend?

I understand that you might feel awkward if a friend appealed unknowingly to your fetish, but there is no right answer for how you deal with that.

Sat, 04/30/2011 - 03:45

#12

Inflate123

On a broad scale, I don't think we're any weirder than other stuff.

On a personal scale, telling my wife was one of the best things I ever did. But my mom doesn't know, nor does she need to.

On a professional scale...if my fetish was linked to my public identity, I would probably lose my job, or at the very least, be a target of intense ridicule -- just from the "oh, a sexual fetish -- and a weird one" stigma. I work in a field that puts me in the public eye for a skeptical/gossipy audience. It would not benefit me at all to be open about my personal interest in this regard.

Twitter | DeviantArt

Sat, 04/30/2011 - 06:25

#13

nineteenthly

As i said, i do also wonder whether there's a symbolic connection between secrecy/desire to confess and the nature of the fetish itself.

http://www.youtube.com/user/nineteenthly

Sat, 04/30/2011 - 08:48

#14

Junk_Diver

Touching on your main question of why the idea of the world finding us is such a big deal around here, I think the reason is a lot more general than just some local quirk.

When it comes to revealing a personal oddity, no matter how small or simple, there is always anxiety attached. It doesn't really matter if you know nobody will care in the long run, or if everyone has skeletons of their own. There's a tendency to assume that normal people are clean and wholesome and wear monocles and say things like "Well, I never". This is admittedly odd, since most of us are normal people and I've certainly never worn a monocle, but the point here is that there's an instinctual need to fit in with the public identity, and risking that conjures up mental images of the worst case scenario. Compare this to the idea of telling someone else you masturbate. Most people do. We just all pretend we don't because the public identity frowns on it.

Consider the act of buying a big-screen TV. We stand in the store, looking right at it and seeing the picture is fine. We wonder if it's okay to spend the money even though we budgeted for it explicitly. Each time we reach for it we think about how we're effectively throwing cash away if the item turns out to be terrible, even though we can see it clearly isn't. It's anxiety over taking a risk, even though it's a relatively small risk (do you really think the $4000 TV will explode three weeks from now?). Once the cash comes out and it's sitting in your living room though, the anxiety is gone. Now, when you look at the open fetishes, many of them have already been cracked open and made known to the public identity (seriously, who doesn't know what bondage is?), which is why we can reference them at all. So, like paying for a TV once you've decided to buy it, the initial worst-case rejection anxiety has faded and all that's left is backing up the choice. As a community, we're still 'hidden' in a way, so it's easy to imagine the whole world looking upon our little space under a rock and reacting with disgust, even though we know they almost certainly won't care.

As a final example, take this post. I've pressed preview at least a dozen times and reread this whole thing. I feel some anxiety over posting, because I don't want to make an ass out of myself, sound stupid or long-winded, etc, even though nobody here will care. Once I press submit, and my previously secret views on this topic become public, I won't care either. I'll freely expand upon, defend, and critique my words because I didn't get ostracized for them.

I knew I wouldn't, but I still imagined I would. And that's the crux of it.

Sat, 04/30/2011 - 13:49

#15

nineteenthly

It's almost tempting not to answer your post just to mess with your head!

Yes, i take your point. It's a step into the unknown and it's a little like the first day at a new job or visiting another country for the first time, and, come to think of it, asking someone out.

I sometimes wonder if it's sort of mainstream already though. Maybe there's a little bit of inflation fetishism in everyone, like the idea that nobody is entirely hetero or homosexual. When stuff like Violet Beauregarde happens, or the cartoons, maybe people are subconsciously into it but don't realise, if that makes sense. I sometimes think sex is the adult version of children's games, so the fact it occurs in cartoons and children's stories might be a sort of prelude to the adult version. Most people just stop going there after a while, but a few of us carry on.

http://www.youtube.com/user/nineteenthly

Sat, 04/30/2011 - 21:31

#16

Wren

The main concern I have with publicity is that I don't want things to get to the point where I have to explain to people that I don't want to shove an air hose up my ass. All it would take for things to get to that point is for a major news outlet to report that is what inflation fetish is all about. I don't think that's far fetched--a lot of the news I see these days is not well researched at all.

That is also one of my concerns about an inflation gathering. I think you'd have to either exclude or make separate accommodations for some types of inflation fetish. Otherwise you could have people show up who consider themselves to be inflationists but in reality have completely different fetishes.

Please visit my Body Inflation Fetish Fantasy Clip Store:

http://clips4sale.com/studio/52559

Sun, 05/01/2011 - 14:13

#17

nineteenthly

On the whole, i'm into the freakier stuff but my interests include things like cartoon balloon women too, so i think there are probably common denominators which would include most of us. The biggest one of those would probably be inflating breasts (which does nothing for me though). What i'm saying is, a gathering could work if people stuck to what's popular.

http://www.youtube.com/user/nineteenthly

Sun, 05/01/2011 - 18:21

#18

carnatic

I'm not against us having a bigger profile per se, but again I don't see any particular reason for us to have one. We're here for our own purposes for our own private fetishes, I see no benefits of going to all the trouble of trying to be more noticed. I'm sure most people don't really want to know about us and would be irritated if we became all 'in your face' about what we were in to.

And I agree with Wren. I'm not too keen on the idea of people lumping us all in the same boat. With all this Violet Beauregard stuff on here I would worry that people thing I'm a paedophile because they see me on sites which have that stuff.

Mon, 05/02/2011 - 11:47

#19

Kadche

Lateralus87 wrote:

Personally, I don't like the idea of telling anyone because I'm just too introverted and shy.

This... Pretty much sums up my reasons for being completely unable to say anything. It kills me that I can't tell my boyfriend, but I want to very badly. I just... Wuss out at the last minute. I've tried to several times now, but I can never seem to muster up the guts to do so.

Mon, 05/02/2011 - 18:05

#20

nineteenthly

I agree that it would be easy to confuse with paedophilia. I suppose it's partly that people i know are unaware of something quite significant about me, and it does influence how i behave towards people.

http://www.youtube.com/user/nineteenthly

A huge essay about revealing this fetish.

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