LW Has Turned Into a Misogynist Wasteland

[Trionyx]

This is one more plea to the owners of Literotica to split LW into two sections. One for the angry misogynists who want to stone adulterers and another for the erotic fantasies of the loving wife lifestyle - the original intent of the category.

Those who vote and comment negatively now would do so to both categories you propose.

 

[NoTalentHack]

Oh, we’re doing this again.

Look, I love BillAndKate’s stuff. I enjoyed Monster, too, and The Hit Man, and a lot of other stuff in LW. The idea (as in Monster) of a high-functioning sociopath giving up on the mask he wears is an interesting one, and it was well told, especially for its length.

The arguments about what LW should and should not be strike me as being much like linguistic prescriptivism. Yeah, maybe people shouldn’t use “literal” unless they mean “literal,” but trying to force that is a waste of time. And trying to get people to stop downvoting Hotwire stories in LW is the same way.

Yes, at one point LW was what it said on the tin. It’s not now. At one point, anything more than the lightest of BDSM in Erotic Couplings would have gotten a story panned; now there’s free use and collaring stories in there on the regular. Anal as a category is almost quaint; it’s in literally every category now. And Fetish? Jesus, don’t even get me started. There’s shit in there that would have turned the original readers of Literotica white when the site started.

If you want to write hotwife stories, put them in Group or EC, depending. You’ll still get the -1 cuck wimp shit anons, but you’ll find folks a lot more receptive. Or post them in LW. I’ll rate them good if they’re fun; but no matter what you wrote, LW is not a place where anything gets a good rating anymore.

 

[NoTalentHack]

I have a different opinion on this matter. In my view, a wittol story that is well-crafted, imaginative, innovative, hot, and avoids excessive negativity towards the husband has a good chance of scoring around 4.

Maybe. But if you take that same story and drop it in group or Fetish, it’s probably going to get an H. There are so many factions with vastly different wants in LW that it’s much harder to hit high scores regularly. And maybe that’s a good thing. Keeps me on my toes.

 

[stickygirl]

Even the most beautiful house needs a trash can. Imagine filth scattered in every room - much better that it's thrown in the landfill of LW

 

[Zenith77]

Even the most beautiful house needs a trash can. Imagine filth scattered in every room - much better that it's thrown in the landfill of LW

Ha. Exactly. I've never written or read anything in LW, and another of these threads doesn't persuade me to go digging through the trash.

I'm a massive fan of LW - it keeps the majority of the trolls in one place, and away from me.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

Well, this thread has made me read my first LW story ever. Thanks @Lifestyle66 for linking it. The story is not erotic and is quite misogynistic, although not directly. It is a very hateful thing with fucked up morals and a desire to justify revenge in the worst possible way. It is also directed more towards men who "steal" wives than the wives themselves, but the misogyny is obvious in a sense that wives are seen as some defenseless prey falling to such men. I don't understand why someone would write something like this and put it in what is still an erotic category. The story feels like a vent for someone's personal frustrations and anger. Finally, it's amazingly high score for LW tells me that all the things that have been said about that category are not exaggerated one bit.
I would like to say that I have never kink-shamed people nor have I criticized anyone for liking something that I don't. But this is not kink-shaming. There is no kink here. Just anger, frustration, inverted morality and malice.

 

[Emilymcplugger]

Kate and I have posted multiple stories, most of them in the LW category, but maybe never again. This week a story titled 'Monster' - which set a new low standard in misogynist porn - was published and currently has a 4.23 rating - plus numerous comments cheering the psychopath for his behavior. The man was betrayed by his wife and best friend, indefensible behavior, but the jilted husband threatened the pair, telling them he tortured the man who seduced his married cousin by cutting out the man's tongue and eyes - and implied they deserve the same treatment.

Anyone who thinks this is an appropriate response to adultery is either mentally ill or a Taliban. Yes, we wish the couple who committed such a grievous betrayal a lifetime of sorrow, but mutilation? Nothing erotic about that. LW has descended into a wasteland. The truly erotic stories of 'married extra-marital fun...' are rated low, no matter the content. And 'burn the bitch', the more harsh the better, are rated high and are cheered in the comment section. Kate and I published some hotwife fantasies - yes, fantasies - and we removed them after receiving comments that included death threats.

This is one more plea to the owners of Literotica to split LW into two sections. One for the angry misogynists who want to stone adulterers and another for the erotic fantasies of the loving wife lifestyle - the original intent of the category.

Easy.

Post in group of they’re swingers, exhibitionism and voyeur if they like watching their partner, romance if it concludes in a romantic way and novels and novellas if it features all of the above and make sure your tags are on point.

Job’s a good un.

 

[SimonDoom]

Personally, I always prioritize views over ratings. Why invest so much energy if not to be read? If I can get twenty thousand views with a rating of 4, or a rating of 4.7 with only four thousand views, it's a no-brainer. And I'm not alone in this attitude. If you promise me another hundred thousand views this week, I will bombard myself with enthusiasm all the way to 1.

I agree. I don't understand the concept of crafting and reducing one's audience so one can get a higher score. That gets it backward. The purpose of a score is to get readers, not the other way around. Scores have no other value, as I see it. For an author the real pleasure of publishing should be knowing that your story is getting read and enjoyed.

Others see things differently, I realize.

I agree, too, that as crazy and unpleasant as LW can be, it's the right place to find the largest audience of readers who enjoy these types of stories, even if you ALSO pick up readers who don't like them.

I'm not convinced that creating new categories will solve the problem, because I suspect many of the BTB readers will infiltrate the new category and downvote the stories there too.

 

[NoTalentHack]

Well, this thread has made me read my first LW story ever. Thanks @Lifestyle66 for linking it. The story is not erotic and is quite misogynistic, although not directly. It is a very hateful thing with fucked up morals and a desire to justify revenge in the worst possible way. It is also directed more towards men who "steal" wives than the wives themselves, but the misogyny is obvious in a sense that wives are seen as some defenseless prey falling to such men. I don't understand why someone would write something like this and put it in what is still an erotic category. The story feels like a vent for someone's personal frustrations and anger. Finally, it's amazingly high score for LW tells me that all the things that have been said about that category are not exaggerated one bit.
I would like to say that I have never kink-shamed people nor have I criticized anyone for liking something that I don't. But this is not kink-shaming. There is no kink here. Just anger, frustration, inverted morality and malice.

“I picked a story I was told would piss me off and based my entire understanding of the category on that one story.”

Makes sense.

Look, there are a huge bunch of different types of stories in there; some are romantic, some angry, some erotic, some not. And some are just fucking terrible. But you have to think of it more as a catch-all category like Fetish than anything else. “What’s in this one? Oh, it’s water sports. Pass. Over here? (Insert favorite Fetish here). Yay!”

If you want an erotic LW story that’s highly rated, you can find those, too. Shit, I can give you a list, if you’d like. But the one thing that LW hates almost as much as “wimp cuck shit?” Bad writing. I’ve seen truly awful stuff, from a technical or storytelling standpoint, get an H in other categories; similar stuff gets slaughtered in LW. The flip side is that a well-written story, even if it’s about a subject distasteful to the typical reader, gets a fair shake. Not an automatic pass, but a fair shake.

 

[NoTalentHack]

I'm not convinced that creating new categories will solve the problem, because I suspect many of the BTB readers will infiltrate the new category and downvote the stories there too.

This already happens, to an extent. Go check out anything in Group or EC or E/V where the wife cheats on the husband. It’s better received there, but the same anons show up over there to be angry, too.

 

[Lifestyle66]

This already happens, to an extent. Go check out anything in Group or EC or E/V where the wife cheats on the husband. It’s better received there, but the same anons show up over there to be angry, too.

There are people here throwing out their opinions based on the assumption that the anon haters are following that one LW category. And while there are a few who do focus on one category, I believe many readers just go down the "New" category list, looking for titles and description lines which catch their attention. IMO, that category shown along with those items is merely like a first-level tag for many readers. I noticed those stories of mine which posted closer to the top of the "New" list got more views than those which came out on LitE page two or three of "New" stories on their first day.

And yet, despite being a "landfill," this category attracts the most intelligent and talented writers. It's the second-most viewed category because every week, you can discover gems there that you're unlikely to find elsewhere.

I posted my Valentine's Day swinger story to Loving Wives (The Real Gift: Her Fantasy). It has over 31K views, and 4.1 rating with 242 raters. Ten of the fifteen comments are negative, with the expected "pathetic", "crap", "whore", and "cuck" examples. But I have those other five positive comments with "great", "fantastic", "well written", too.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

I agree. I don't understand the concept of crafting and reducing one's audience so one can get a higher score. That gets it backward. The purpose of a score is to get readers, not the other way around. Scores have no other value, as I see it. For an author the real pleasure of publishing should be knowing that your story is getting read and enjoyed.

Others see things differently, I realize.

I agree, too, that as crazy and unpleasant as LW can be, it's the right place to find the largest audience of readers who enjoy these types of stories, even if you ALSO pick up readers who don't like them.

I'm not convinced that creating new categories will solve the problem, because I suspect many of the BTB readers will infiltrate the new category and downvote the stories there too.

I agree most of us want readers. Thing is, getting loads of clicks and Views doesn't mean you're getting readers. If the Views counter looked at how many people opened all pages of a story it would be closer to the number of actual readers, but it only reflects how many people liked your Title and Description enough to click.

I'm not convinced that putting a story in a large category and pissing off most (but not all) viewers will necessarily get more readers than in a smaller category where most will at least like That Kind of Thing. It'll depend hugely on the exact nature of the content, of course.

How many potential readers would never find a happy hotwife story because they never look in LW any more? No idea, though I know I'd never look for stories about polyamory there.

 

[SimonDoom]

I agree most of us want readers. Thing is, getting loads of clicks and Views doesn't mean you're getting readers. If the Views counter looked at how many people opened all pages of a story it would be closer to the number of actual readers, but it only reflects how many people liked your Title and Description enough to click.

I'm not convinced that putting a story in a large category and pissing off most (but not all) viewers will necessarily get more readers than in a smaller category where most will at least like That Kind of Thing. It'll depend hugely on the exact nature of the content, of course.

How many potential readers would never find a happy hotwife story because they never look in LW any more? No idea, though I know I'd never look for stories about polyamory there.

If you know that story A has 100,000 views and story B has 10,000 views, you don't know how many actual readers either story has, but you can say with near certainty that story A has far more readers than story B. You can say that because view:vote ratios are reasonably stable and tend to fall within a certain range, with few exceptions.

It's not accurate to say these stories piss off MOST of the LW reader. I think the majority of LW readers are perfectly accepting of cuckold/hotwife stories. If that weren't true, then the scores would be even lower, because the BTB crowd gives these stories 1s. This is a case of the negative LW readers getting all the attention.

I'm not sure if readers care about the BTB crowd. I assume they probably don't notice or care. It's authors that get upset. I assume as new readers come to Literotica they look at the description for LW and continue to assume that's the place to go for these stories.

That said, there may be something to the idea that if a story gets bombed badly enough in LW that the low score may deter some readers, and in some cases the story might be better off in another category.

I'm going to be submitting a hot wife story soon to test whether this works. It's not a cuck/humiliation story. It's pure hot wife. It will be my first full-length story of the sort published in LW so I'm eager to see how it goes.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

“I picked a story I was told would piss me off and based my entire understanding of the category on that one story.”

You misunderstood my post. I never said I understood LW category. As I said, it was the first story I've ever read there. When I said what I said about LW I was referring to the large number of claims from authors who DO write LW stories, about a part of readership they call "incels" who support such stories and downvote other types of LW stories. I don't doubt there is healthy readership there too, but the category as a whole strikes me as hostile and together with non-con, it is probably the only category where a story like this would be well liked. That is as far as I dare go with LW as I don't have any intimate knowledge about it.

There is one thing that was mentioned here that I found somewhat pretentious though. There seems to be a claim from some people that LW category attracts the most intelligent authors and readers and that readers there have high standards about story quality, as opposed to other categories. Those claims contain an inherent disdain for other categories and their authors and readers. What exactly are you basing this claim on?

 

[SirBurnInside]

Well it's been a few days now for me, and my experience has been kind of interesting.

Hour 0-12 of story being up - got slaughtered in comments, nothing but negativity and bile spewed on both me and the story, rating completely in the toilet (1.79ish)

Hour 12-24 of story being up - couple of more positive comments come in, just a few negatives still coming in, rating rises a little (2.23ish)

Hour 24-48 of story being up - next to no new comments any more either negative or positive, rating continues to improve just a bit (2.53ish)

So what I'm seeing is, the BTB brigade all jump on the stories on page 1 of the New list, going down it with the sole purpose of trashing each cuck/hot wife story and its author, but once it's moved off page 1 it's mostly forgotten and the process moves on to be repeated on the next batch that have been published.

This suggests that if you are someone who cares about what people say, and it really effects you badly when the comments are negative, you should ignore all those that come in right away and focus mainly on those which are posted after a few days as they will be from those who actively searched and found your story so are more likely to appreciate it.

Of course the really simple answer for us authors is to turn off comments if you really don't want to see all the bullcrap that will head your way and just enjoy knowing some people out there are enjoying what you wrote from seeing the favourites pile up.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

Personally, I always prioritize views over ratings. Why invest so much energy if not to be read? If I can get twenty thousand views with a rating of 4, or a rating of 4.7 with only four thousand views, it's a no-brainer. And I'm not alone in this attitude. If you promise me another hundred thousand views this week, I will bombard myself with enthusiasm all the way to 1.

I appreciate the sentiment that I think you are trying to convey but question whether "views" is a valid metric to use. All a reader has to do is open the link to a story for a "view" to be recorded.

While it would be nice to believe that these clicks resulted in people reading a story through to completion, that simply isn't the reality here. I doubt that Laurel and Manu will ever institute an actual "Read" number because that is much more difficult to track.

 

[Duleigh]

This is one more plea to the owners of Literotica to split LW into two sections. One for the angry misogynists who want to stone adulterers and another for the erotic fantasies of the loving wife lifestyle - the original intent of the category.

I like that, but it's never going to happen. Try locking out voting and comments on your stories. I've only done that once (for an essay on veteran suicide) because I didn't think it was appropriate to be voting on that subject, and my readers understand.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

Kate and I have posted multiple stories, most of them in the LW category, but maybe never again. This week a story titled 'Monster' - which set a new low standard in misogynist porn - was published and currently has a 4.23 rating - plus numerous comments cheering the psychopath for his behavior. The man was betrayed by his wife and best friend, indefensible behavior, but the jilted husband threatened the pair, telling them he tortured the man who seduced his married cousin by cutting out the man's tongue and eyes - and implied they deserve the same treatment.

Anyone who thinks this is an appropriate response to adultery is either mentally ill or a Taliban. Yes, we wish the couple who committed such a grievous betrayal a lifetime of sorrow, but mutilation? Nothing erotic about that. LW has descended into a wasteland. The truly erotic stories of 'married extra-marital fun...' are rated low, no matter the content. And 'burn the bitch', the more harsh the better, are rated high and are cheered in the comment section. Kate and I published some hotwife fantasies - yes, fantasies - and we removed them after receiving comments that included death threats.

This is one more plea to the owners of Literotica to split LW into two sections. One for the angry misogynists who want to stone adulterers and another for the erotic fantasies of the loving wife lifestyle - the original intent of the category.

I want to revert back to one of my frequent points here in these threads, in that context matters over content. I'll add to that the matter of perceptions affecting comprehension.

I read the referenced story. I understood the rage and anger felt by the victimized husband. I also clearly understood his implied threats and his allowing his ex-wife and former best friend to believe he was the one responsible for Gene's torture and physical injuries.

The reality is that he never claimed responsibility for the stated torture directly. He definitely played mind games with his ex-wife and her new husband, but there was no physical abuse directly attributable to the MC.

The fact that you don't ever see me and Superman together doesn't mean that we are the same person. Implying things doesn't make them true.

I believe the author did a good job of making readers "wonder", but BillandKate took it all on face value.

 

[NoTalentHack]

There is one thing that was mentioned here that I found somewhat pretentious though. There seems to be a claim from some people that LW category attracts the most intelligent authors and readers and that readers there have high standards about story quality, as opposed to other categories. Those claims contain an inherent disdain for other categories and their authors and readers. What exactly are you basing this claim on?

I wouldn't go quite that far, although I think there is a grain of truth to it. There are some categories where, as long as you give the readers the plot points they want and don't mangle the technical/storytelling stuff too badly, you can do okay. I'm thinking specifically of "mom's hot, why not" stories in I/T as an example, but there's also the "oh thank god, someone hit on my specific kink after a month without" for certain Fetish stories. That's not to say there aren't good writers in those categories; there are a lot of excellent ones in pretty much any category you want to look at.

There are others where you can't do that, and LW is pretty far up on that list of "difficult to write for" categories. Even if you give the BTB crowd what they want (the easiest path to success), if you do it poorly, they'll still rake you over the coals. Like, a lot. I remember a few months back one of the folks in AH wrote an intentionally bad BTB story; it did about as well as I expected.

The floor for ratings in LW is very low; it's one of the few places I consistently see scores in the 1.X - 2.X range. I just took a look at the new lists in about a dozen categories, and outside of LW, I saw almost no stories below a 3.x score. In LW? There's 12. And before you ask, no, not all of them are cuck or sharing stories, nor are all of the ones in the high 3.x and 4.x BTB ones. There's a melodrama in there, a humorous story, a romance (of sorts) between two cheaters, etc.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

I wouldn't go quite that far, although I think there is a grain of truth to it. There are some categories where, as long as you give the readers the plot points they want and don't mangle the technical/storytelling stuff too badly, you can do okay. I'm thinking specifically of "mom's hot, why not" stories in I/T as an example, but there's also the "oh thank god, someone hit on my specific kink after a month without" for certain Fetish stories. That's not to say there aren't good writers in those categories; there are a lot of excellent ones in pretty much any category you want to look at.

You can't possibly base this claim on your own impression of 2 out of 32 existing categories? I mean, I don't have anything against bold claims such as yours, but you need to back it up with some actual sensible data. Otherwise this is just some silly talk.

The floor for ratings in LW is very low; it's one of the few places I consistently see scores in the 1.X - 2.X range. I just took a look at the new lists in about a dozen categories, and outside of LW, I saw almost no stories below a 3.x score. In LW? There's 12. And before you ask, no, not all of them are cuck or sharing stories, nor are all of the ones in the high 3.x and 4.x BTB ones. There's a melodrama in there, a humorous story, a romance (of sorts) between two cheaters, etc.

There has been a gazillion of topics where many authors, myself included, claimed that scores aren't a good measure of story quality, but a measure of readers liking some content or not. You are taking the fact that most categories have higher overall scores as a proof that LW readers have higher standards, yet it makes more sense they are just much more radical about things they like and don't like. Such lower overall scores are just a measure that readers give far more 1* than anywhere else, which I feel proves my point to an extent. There aren't many stories that actually deserve a 1*. Most 1* are given as an angry response to some content readers disliked, rather than some actual opinion about story quality. The amount of hateful comments that many LW authors get, far more than in any other category, seem to further support my point of view.
The irony is that the argument you provided could actually be taken as a proof that LW authors are just much worse writers compared to authors of other categories
That is obviously not so, I am just showing how erroneous impressions can be if based on insufficient data.

 

[NoTalentHack]

You can't possibly base this claim on your own impression of 2 out of 32 existing categories? I mean, I don't have anything against bold claims such as yours, but you need to back it up with some actual sensible data. Otherwise this is just some silly talk.

There has been a gazillion of topics where many authors, myself included, claimed that scores aren't a good measure of story quality, but a measure of readers liking some content or not. You are taking the fact that most categories have higher overall scores as a proof that LW readers have higher standards, yet it makes more sense they are just much more radical about things they like and don't like. Such lower overall scores are just a measure that readers give far more 1* than anywhere else, which I feel proves my point to an extent. There aren't many stories that actually deserve a 1*. Most 1* are given as an angry response to some content readers disliked, rather than some actual opinion about story quality. The amount of hateful comments that many LW authors get, far more than in any other category, seem to further support my point of view.
The irony is that the argument you provided could actually be taken as a proof that LW authors are just much worse writers compared to authors of other categories
That is obviously not so, I am just showing how erroneous impressions can be if based on insufficient data.

No, it’s more based on having read here for over 20 years. There are categories where poor writing aren’t punished much, and ones where they are. I’ve intentionally written stories that went against the grain of a category, and ones that went with it, and they’ve performed about as expected.

I’m not trying to do a “real” statistical analysis. I’m just saying what my personal experience as both a reader and a writer here are, and, while the stats are a poor representation of reality, they’re the most useful benchmarks we have when it comes to talking about objective quality.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

LW has the oldest, most educated, most demanding, and yes, most intelligent readership.

Based on what, exactly? You do realize how arbitrary your claim is?

 

[KeithD]

All the yammering done about the LW category pretty much justifies to the Web site keeping it as it is.

 

[PastMaster]

LW is not a place where anything gets a good rating anymore.

I respectfully disagree - I have a number of stories in the LW catagory. Two scored 3.65 and 3.98 respectively currently but the rest are in the mid fours - and 3 have the HOT badge.
If you give people what they want - they will score it appropriately. Sadly in LW what the majority of them want is to see the bitch burn brightly and long and painfully. If you write that, you will score reasonably.
BUT - is that what you are writing for, for the adoration of neanderthals?

Yes I tend to write btb and really struggle with the concept of writing a cuckold story, but that is more about me and my past. I dont write for them, I write for myself.

As lc69 is fond of saying, LW is trash written by trash for trash. and while i dont tar anyone else with that brush - when i write LW stories i accept i kind of fall into that trap myself.

 

[PastMaster]

"... as someone who has visited all the categories and enthusiastically read tens of thousands of comments (which are often more interesting than the stories themselves.)"

You have made an arbitrary claim that the comments on LW are hateful based on just one story that you read. What evidence do you have to support this claim? (Until a week ago, you did not even know what BTB meant.) I suggest that you check the comments on my or NTH's latest stories and tell us if you found any hateful comments there. I can assure you that neither of us writes misogynistic content.

As someone that writes in that sector - I have to say I have certainly received some quite nasty, and hateful comments. If they are left anonymously - i delete them. If they are left with a name then i leave them in situ - for two reasons - firstly they have the right to their opinion if they are prepared to stand behind it with their name and second, it illustrates what kind of persion they are. And the nasty comments are not limited to the comments section either - I have been roundly abused in the forums, by other authors and their ass licking wannabee 'please pick me' hangers on.