Made a dark but accurate joke satirising how much harrassment female forum members receive which goes completely unpunished. This was then deliberately taken out of context to imply he was the one that had somehow aggressively trangressed against a female poster, even though it was mostly because his critical, weary (but always solidly well-intentioned and moral) irreverence had embarrassed Messmaster by drawing focus on the fairly critical flaw of untrammelled harrassment within the UMD's ecosystem.

It is of course easier to whitewash the problem rather than letting anybody even hint at the existence of oceans of constant, offensive crap littering the inboxes of any female forum member with a profile photo. This is going to backfire one day though, as for various reasons the age of budgeted 'producers' is coming to a gradual but very obvious end, to be replaced by more-and-more individual self-shooters, and as a larger and larger percentage of these end up being the very same women who *have* previously received "packets of dick pics" and floods of stalkerish PMs, one day they will repay the UMD's disinterest in their online safety by moving their business somewhere else.

Noticed there are some posts vanished from this thread as well, ones which alleged some quite serious things about a UMD-affiliated client, now completely vanished. There are some pretty depressing censorship patterns forming here which I think we can all see. Never mind, this will probably get deleted soon as well.

Or... we could take a drastic turn left here and start to prioritise the welfare of the women on here who actually "run" this industry and are more essential to it than every producer, webmaster and moderator put together. Most big decisions here are taken for business reasons. Well this *is* a business reason.

True, my own post too.

I know, I know most of us are here for messy fun and this kind of things is rather boring, isn't it?

So:

- the original thread was deleted where 1 poster expressed problems with his custom production, he then was backed up by a 2nd user of this forum that had experienced similar problems.

- the post in this thread by the courageous model was deleted. She told the bad custom production had been a result of a.o. lack of preparation. Also she had the courage to stand up and tell she had not received her full pay yet -> deleted

- my posting, as I cited that model and said it was a no go if models don't get good working conditions incl. a fair pay

Then I got a PM asking why I participate in this thread and why I only support 1 side



I very much support all messy producers!
But for me it's essential they have clean hands
Models should feel well and get their pay. That's just part of the fun for me.

I understand this thread may have been uncomfortable reading for a producer and I very much understand we as simple users don't know what has happened behind the scenes.

But the deleted thread and the deleted post must have been kind of an alarm bell for both the OP, the 2nd user that shouted up AND the model that had (sorry) balls to stand up

Although I don't know what may have happened, I support the 2 customers and the model because it could have been me and my custom production.

The producer could very well have explained himself here in a decent way and have communicated in a proper manner so things got settled. He still can do so.

I rather have these things discussed in an open way without judging anyone.

This is another way of closing a discussion. I think you call it shooting at messengers, not grasping the message, it seems to me


If I have understood something wrong, then I apologize.
Just my 2 cents

Who are you -- Regis' press agent?

Regis occasionally took some moral stands, I'll grant you that, but "his always solidly well-intentioned and moral irreverence"?!? In his dozen+ years here on the forum, the guy made approximately 12,412 jokes to the tune of "look at me, I'm Regis, the hilarious sexual predator." I don't doubt for a second that these were anything but jokes, and they were often pretty clever ones -- but they were rarely "moral" in any sense of the term. About a third of such Regis jokes involved him threatening, jokingly, to fill one woman or another's inbox with dick pics (these I did not consider clever). In fact, such numbingly endless repetition of sexually predatory language and scenarios was a little troubling in and of itself, since I believe it actually contributed (unintentionally on Regis' part) to the normalization of such behavior on the UMD, especially with newer or clueless forum members who didn't know Regis or who didn't get that he is joking. ("Oh, I guess it's cool to treat the women here that way," more than one dimwit surely concluded while reading Regis' endless stream of sexual harassment jokes.)

I brought up this normalization argument to Regis once, about 1-2 years back, in a huge thread about abusive behavior to women on the UMD (not started by either of us, but he was taking active part in it). He did not respond to my comments in any direct way, but he did cease his participation in this very long and involved thread after my comment (this pillar of morality had had mostly just been making jokes along he lines of: 'does this mean I'll have to stop filling up X's inbox with dick pics?') and briefly changed his status message so that his avatar read "Regis is bad now." From what I could see, he also briefly halted his sexual predator jokes for maybe a whole week or two, but was pretty quickly back in the saddle with those again. So it would appear he thought I had a point... and then decided I didn't... or perhaps he felt that the sexual predator jokes were just too much fun not to continue with. I can't know what went on in his head, but it does seem my normalization argument at least gave the Reege pause for thought.

Regis certainly took some moral stands too, as I mentioned at the top of my post. I don't mean to deny that at all. But morality crusades were hardly his primary mode or goal here, so please let's not go casting him as Martyred St. Regis.


Now THIS is totally ridiculous. We've heard over and over again from female members about all the ugly, harassing, pleading, whining, demanding, obsessive/compulsive, and/or relentlessly repetitive shit that fills up their inboxes and instant messaging apps here. It's been MUCH MORE THAN HINTED AT, it's been spelled out in great detail by any number of the brave female UMD members who've suffered through it and stuck around despite it. I'm not aware of any of those messages about these serious problems ever being "whitewashed." I've read lots and lots of such comments, and I read less than 10% of the threads on this forum; at least half the controversial threads that get deleted on here I never actually see... at best, I see after-the-fact conversations about their removal (more on this below). So there have clearly been plenty of posts spelling out the abusive behavior of a deranged minority of UMD members toward females on this forum, threads that haven't been deleted by the admin to create some false illusion of a utopian UMD experience. I've even seen MessMaster himself acknowledge the issue in certain threads and encourage anyone who's being harrassed to contact him. It's a BIG problem here, undoubtedly, and I don't suggest that the mere acknowledgement of it has done anything to fix it. But your post suggests any hints of the problem even being mentioneda are thoroughly scrubbed from the forums, which is not even remotely true.

For what it's worth, I do agree with you that the lack of transparency re:thread removal and member removal on this forum is a lot less than ideal. Controversial threads (or subthreads, meaning controversial portions of bigger threads) are often just deleted and effectively swept under the carpet. UNLESS someone brings them up in a new thread (this very thread being a prime example), a probable majority of UMD members would never even know the original thread/subthread existed. And even those who did see the original thread/subthread usually have no idea WHY it as deleted, except occasionally when a second thread ends up resulting in an explanation from MM. And while all that bums me out a bit, I have to remember that this is not a democracy, it's a business. A business that is owned by MessMaster and run by him as his full-time job; he therefore gets to make the rules and the ultimate decisions about what goes on here. I've talked to MM about the thread deletion stuff before too. His opinion is that nothing is swept under the carpet: there are a set of rules in place; and when posts violate those rules, he removes them. Obviously in any such scenario there is some subjectivity in the application of rules; that is truly unavoidable. Personally, I'd prefer it if there were at least some marker left in each case explaining why a thread/subthread was deleted.

I didn't remove him because of that. He removed himself after that. Which means the rest of your post doesn't really make much sense. Hit me on inbox if you want detail on what actually happened.

Messmaster

Looks like another one has been taken down

I've just checked this out and it was actually deleted by the OP. Not by Messmaster in this instance.

Soon I will be working on a way to leave a public trace of deleted messages (like admin can see), perhaps with an explanation. I don't like it when people assume the worst.

I deleted the post. The last thing I wanted when I posted it was drama and friction, I just wanted some advice and too see if I was being too picky. It turned into a discussion that was doing way more than that. I apologize if deleting it caused anymore problems than I did when i posted it.

I didn't see any drama or friction just a worthy discussion. Glad it's been mentioned here though so folk can see it wasn't MM who deleted it

100% agreed. You had a legitimate grievance. You laid out what happened and the timeline for how it occurred. You asked for advice on how to proceed. Regardless of what anyone else on that thread said, YOU did nothing wrong. You have absolutely nothing to feel bad about or apologize about. I get the idea from this that you're a person that doesn't like conflict, and that can be an admirable trait. But if you don't voice when someone/something is wrong you will be walked all over.

I have to admit Oberon, even though we have had differences of opinion in the past I did agree with a lot of things you have said.

My two sense as a long time lurker and barely active poster.

1. This site belongs to MM. For better or for worse whatever your opinion is of how it is managed. To my knowledge, other than VIP status it is free to the public to post here, if not I owe some money LOL. As this site belongs to MM it is his to maintain and protect as he sees fit. He can remove posts and he can remove threads that he feels has cause.

2. I HAVE NEVER known MM to be a power hungry tyrant removing posts because he has favorites. I have had interactions with him about posts that have been removed. There is never any doubt left as to why the posts were removed. If you have a post removed and have not been contacted with reasonings, you definitely have a bone to pick.

3. This past year or so I have noticed people being more critical of MM and the job he is choosing to do with this site. There has also been a level of transparency that I do not see anyplace else. Can you think of anytime that a social media place has been this transparent? What makes people feel so entitled that they can call out the owner of a free site and demand justification for actions taking that suits their satisfaction.

4. When it comes to playing favorites as you say, people are quick to forget the Jessie incident and why she is no longer here. I also seem to recall as part of making things right that MM donated the bandwidth for a user to download movies that had been won in a rigged contest. MM had every right to wipe it all clean and be done with it. It got pretty heated and I am sure there are still people with ill feelings about it, but MM was straight forward like he has been with everything and drug it out into the public. I am sure there was money to be made from Jessie and the work she was doing. If I remember right she had either completely moved or was in the process of moving all of her stuff to the UMD store. Keeping her here was bad business and MM did what was best for the community and not the pocket book.

Think about it. There are a lot of producers here selling content. Why would it be in MM's best interest to remove bad reviews? The reviews section is easy to find if you know what you are doing. If you are smart enough to make a purchase, you are smart enough to find the reviews. If MM is found to be pulling a Yelp on people and getting a pay for removal type agreement that is bad word of mouth. That loses money. Look at all the posts that are critical of all things MM that are still here. If someone was going around deleting posts, don't you think they would delete negative posts calling them out? Don't you think that MM could easily block the people from posting here and creating accounts and only people that saw the original post would know anything? You really think he has time to do all that shit??