Journey on AFF

I first joined AFF in March 2009. Don't remember the date, tho.

I was separated at the time, heading for divorce, and decided to try my hand at online dating, since my social circle was pretty small and I'm not one to hang out at bars. 

I started off joining a few vanilla sites and found out about AFF from a dude I was chatting with at the time. He said the site was nothing but exhibitionists and the likes. Since I wasn't all that impressed with my pickings on vanilla sites, I decided to give AFF a go. 

I found out what the dude was talking about when I first signed up--my homepage was filled with dick pics. I was not impressed. 

I discovered the chat rooms right away, and ended up practically living in the Japan chat room. The warm welcome I received in the Japan room was what kept me coming back to the chat rooms. 

It didn't take long for me to earn Standard Privileges, where if a user got so many unique profile views for 3 consecutive days, the user earned Standard Privileges and could read messages, send up to 10 messages a day, and view up to 50 profiles a day. So I could answer emails coming in, tho most were basically "wanna fuck?" one-liners not deserving any responses. 

Through chatting, I learned about the blogs and groups and got involved there, too. My blogging life started in April 2010. I also became the moderator of Coffee Break a little while later and organized dinner get-togethers with my local chat buddies. We had always enjoyed great food and shared a lot of laughs at these dinners.

Despite the slew of one-liners that came to the Message Center, there were a few decent messages that lead to in-person meets. The first guy I met was so sweet. I guess I was lucky. For the most part, the in-person meets were on the nice side, although most didn't go anywhere. I've had some interesting chats on the IM, too, since the IM was free for all to use. 

As the years went by, Japan has experienced economic downfalls, natural disasters, and I changed jobs a few times. Quality playmates became few and far between and dinner get-togethers dwindled as many group members found themselves being sent back home and not many new ones joining. My site activities mainly centered around the blogs.

People have come and gone in the blogs but there was always interesting content to follow. I made friends, got involved with a group beta testing new features, took over the HNW group when the group founder left the site to pursue happiness, at one point, I even got to know the then CEO and had chats with him about the pros and cons of releasing certain features, and in recent years, helped Andrew beta test his new brain child--the new Community.  

While friendships were cultivated and communities were built, the dating side became just an afterthought. More and more features become closed off as premium features and the chat rooms became a haven for third-rate porn or fly-bys leaving their phone numbers or Kik/Snap contact info. 

It appears that those who simply see the site as a means to get laid or post explicit photos or photos stolen off the internet are favored over those who really care about the site and post meaningful content.