At some point around the turn of the millennium, my first tentative tiptoes into the internet led me to a website called Informed Consent, recommended by a dungeon monitor I met at a club night. Through IC, directly and indirectly, I’ve met some of the most wonderful and important people in my life. There have been enlightening discussions, dramas, trolls and tribulations. Now, sadly, it’s nearly over. Today at 6:57pm, Admin posted this:
“IC was started during the Christmas holidays of 1997, and has gone through several stages of evolution over the years. From the start, it had a thread of activism, as reflected in the name which stresses the consensual and legitimate nature of what we do. Even publishing BDSM listings was part of that activism in those days, as it was created when publications like Time Out and the Guardian refused to take BDSM ads, and it was genuinely hard to find people, shops, and events. But now we’re in a world where daytime TV talks about “Fifty Shades of Grey”, and sites like Facebook, FetLife, Twitter, Pinterest, and WordPress make it easy for people to network and to talk about their BDSM ideas, or their business, or their event. So there are a lot of alternatives now, and we’ve taken the hard decision to close www.informedconsent.co.uk in February next year. There are several reasons for this, some of which we can’t talk about. We have looked at other options for the site to continue but none of them are both practical and consistent with our aims and values. Informed Consent as a project will continue as an activism site which will be developed using informedconsent.org.uk, and with the InformedConsent Twitter feed and Informed Consent activism and news group on FetLife. We’re also going to try to resinstate our Facebook page. The timetable is that www.informedconsent.co.uk will close at the end of Sunday 24th February 2013, with posts to the boards, groups, and blogs finishing at the end of Sunday 17th February 2013. The archive of posts made to the boards etc will be maintained as part of the informedconsent.org.uk site. If there’s anything you’d like to save from your profile, in particular pictures and blog posts, you will need to download them from IC before 24th February. We’d like to say a huge thank you to everyone who has made positive contributions to the site over the years, either by helping to maintain it, test it, donate to it, sponsor pages on it, or post on it.”
RIP IC.
