I may try it some day. Still getting my head around it; I don’t adapt to change very easily.

Third, if she’s going to be picky, she can weed out those she would rather not see.

I vaguelly recall someone — maybe it was Alea — who used to require such advance meetings with all clients, for that very reason. And there were in fact guys she’d meet and then decline to see for an appointment.

On the other hand, a $50 coffee/lunch meeting, with a chance but perhaps a low probability that it will lead to a regular client, may not be a very attractive option to most ladies.

I’m not sure why it wouldn’t. First, she does have to eat. Getting paid $40-$50 to do it seems like a pretty good deal. Escorts don’t have so many clients that getting paid $40-$50 to eat lunch is going to pre-empt a real appointment (at least not any escort I’d want to see). Second, she has the opportunity to meet the client in a situation where she can’t be arrested, so it’s additional screening. Also, LE is unlikely to pay for that much for coffee/lunch meetings with women on the possibility of setting up a meeting in the future to bust one escort. Third, if she’s going to be picky, she can weed out those she would rather not see.

I thought the guy was just desperately seeking attention from providers.

Could be; I don’t know him. Of course, you can say the same about many if not most of the guys on discussion/review boards.

Flooding a forum with bumped up threads of the geniusman variety is unfair to providers who are just new and starting out. Providers who may not have pics. Their reviews will get buried to the bottom of the heap.

I think the argument for prohibiting it would be stronger in cases where someone is bumping reviews two or three or four days later. On the other hand, if the review were posted — or someone replied to it — only an hour or two before, that may mean just moving the review from 6th on the page to 1st on the page. Even with three or four reviews in the same forum on the same day, that may not be as dramatic an impact as “bumping” often involves. Or any more dramatic an impact than caused by some others who bump their favorites’ reviews, with a comment about how much he likes her too, a week after it’s posted just to give it more attention. In some respects, geniusman’s pictures are a very small component of a much larger phenomenon — and arguably add more value than lots of other replies.

*shrug* I haven’t looked at his threads or the forums in question enough to know if others were really being harmed significantly, or balance that against the benefit of added “information.” It struck me as causing a problem (from bumping) that defenders of the practice were ignoring — but not as much of a problem as the staff was implying in prohibiting it. Although my inclination would be to have let it slide, I can understand the decision they made and who knows what I might have decided if I’d looked at it in more depth.

I think the best solution would be to disable post bumping in the review forums. If someone posts with a reply or comment or a picture then the thread will lay stationary, not bumped to the very top of the forum. I think this adjustment can be done via Vbulletin control panel.

That would certainly eliminate some (most?) of the frustration many people have with replies to reviews. The downside would be that readers might not notice that new information had been added to the thread. At least, if it really is “information” as opposed to fluff. It would be interesting to see a change like that, at least on a trial basis. Try it, see how it works and how people feel about it. Wanna bet how much it would reduce the volume/frequency of replies to reviews?

On the other hand, at this particular time, I would err on the side of caution in making any change to a system that is apparently held together by bailing wire, chewing gum, and spit; a small change like that could bring the whole system crashing down.

I can understand the decision of CK and the staff on this one. Flooding a forum with bumped up threads of the geniusman variety is unfair to providers who are just new and starting out. Providers who may not have pics. Their reviews will get buried to the bottom of the heap.

I think the best solution would be to disable post bumping in the review forums. If someone posts with a reply or comment or a picture then the thread will lay stationary, not bumped to the very top of the forum. I think this adjustment can be done via Vbulletin control panel.

But it may not be worth insituting that change just to suit one attention seeker. Unless if there is a groundswell of support for it. That’s something they should debate.

This ties in with your “Options” entry pretty well.

I hadn’t thought of it that way, but I guess it does.

Deciding whether I might “click” with someone before scheduling was one of the theoretical advantages of socials, of course. Although it didn’t work that way in practice for me. I’m not good at mingling and small talk in a setting like that, and it’s difficult to spend enough time with one specific person since the ladies are trying to interact with several potential clients.

A one-on-one for a small fee would make more sense. It always seemed a bit strange to me, perhaps because I was comparing the wrong things. Instead of comparing $50 for coffee or lunch meeting (no BCD) to non-P4P uses of my time, a better comparison might have been $50 for coffee or lunch (no BCD) versus $250 for BCD. If it’s someone that I would wind up not particularly interested in seeing again, is the latter a better use of my time than the former? I get laid, but I also use more of my budget to determine that we don’t connect. Maybe it would be better to have five coffee/lunch meetings rather than one BCD session, if the goal is to find someone I’d like to see on a regular basis — more exposure for the same cash outlay. Although more time, and that is a scarce commodity these days as well.

Of course, even getting to the point of having the coffee/lunch meeting takes an initial degree of interest/attraction. I haven’t run across many recently who even sparked to that level. Not to mention that few women offer such meetings for a small fee, although I suppose some who don’t advertise it would be open to the prospect. I may have to rethink my approach. At least, when I lose another favorite/regular or two or get more anxious about the list being so small.

I’m at a stage where who is more important than what.

This ties in with your “Options” entry pretty well. I would have been more than happy to pay a small fee to meet first for compatiblility reasons. I was (and I think to at least some extent, you are) looking for a “Friend With Paid Benefits” as opposed to a Paid Friend With Benefits. The distinction is probably non-existent for a great many hobbyists and providers, but to me there was a difference. I would have been perfectly happy to find one person to see evey two week or so for several hours at a time if I perceived the time as mutually enjoyable.

I never found that to the level of satisfaction I sought, so I decided to date instead, although a relationship was initially more than I really wanted at the time.

I’m not entirely sure whether I follow.

I shoud try to slow down when I write. First I assumed that by “dating,” I am not paying her. (I assumed you meant this too, but blowpop seemed confused, so I’ll just add that in case my assumption wasn’t accurate). What I meant was that when I would see a provider, I wanted something in the way of a connection. On the other hand, if I were dating a provider, I would not want her to be the type of provider who connects well with her clients in the sense you and I generally think of as a connection. So basically, a provider who could offer what I would want from a provider as a client is not the type of provider I would be able to date.

I think this in general indicates that a provider who is in a relationship is less likely to offer what I would want as a client. (I can think of a counterexample to that, but her circumstances were quite unusual.)

The other funny thing about this topic is that discussions usually focus only on sex. While that may be the primary (only?) motivation for some guys who are excited about the idea of dating an escort, real dating — whether an escort or a civilian — is about a lot more.

Precisely! That is essentially how I came up with the list of things on which I would need agreement to date an escort. The list I had basically reflects my idea of when her sex for business starts heading into the grey area of more than just business. It’s obviously no guarantee of anything, but it’s what I found acceptable from a personal experience.