Time to take a break

8 years and 7 months after first signing up, I've finally found myself needing to get away from 3DXChat, at least for a while.

Put bluntly, I've found the whole experience extremely unfulfilled for some time now and I've become thoroughly disillusioned with the state of the game and where the community is heading. Quite frankly, I feel like there is very little keeping me here other than my own stubbornness towards letting go. Really, I've really just been going through the motions for far too long.

But the final straw has been my deteriorating mental health and that is currently my first, well only, priority. I've spoken a little about my struggles with depression on the TTS Podcast, and I think I've recently alluded to the fact that I'm not in a particularly healthy place at the moment without necessarily coming out and saying it,.

Since today is World Mental Health Day, I feel like it presents a good opportunity to open up a bit about what's going on with me and to use that as a catalyst to make some changes in my life to try to address that. The most obvious of which will be that I'm going away for a while to focus on getting myself healthy again.

My struggles

For me, depression kicked in during my late teens, so over 20 years ago now. It's all relative I suppose, but fortunately for me, its always been a high level depression. In essence, its much like being a functioning alcoholic; I can get by day today without most people realising there is anything wrong with me but it fucking sucks to have to go through it. 

It's always tough. Sometimes it's really tough. However, I always find a way through it. Two decades worth of experience has taught coping mechanisms to help me do that. For many years, 3DXChat has been part of that.

Lately though, I've been experiencing a shift in how my depression affects me. My behaviour has become erratic at times. I'm constantly making bad decisions. My relationships with loved ones have been put under strain. 

This is all new to me and I feel I need to try to address it promptly. Nip it in the bud, so to speak. So I'll be making some changes in my life to try to get myself back on track and re-establish my usual equilibrium. And removing myself from this community will be one of those changes.

On balance, being part of this community has always done me far more good for me than harm. Sure, it hasn't all been plain sailing and there have been some dark times, but the good times and how they have helped me manage my mental wellbeing have always far outweighed them.

However, for the last few months, I think that has changed. Although I've always tried to remain positive and try to make the best of the situation, I feel like my disillusionment and frustrations surrounding 3DXChat have actually become a hinderance to my wellbeing and have actively contributed towards me becoming stuck in this downward spiral.

Most likely, from here on it is just me needing to vent a little, so you probably don't really need to read on as I try to explain where I feel things are going wrong with 3DXChat. I expect that what follows will probably be a bit incoherent. Basically just a stream of consciousness as I run through the issues that I've found most upsetting and left me feeling like continuing with the game would just be not only a massive waste of my time, but detrimental to my mental health.

I'll warn you now; if you are coming along for this ride, you might want to buckle up because its gonna get bumpy!

(I'll caveat that by saying that you may find a lot of what follows to be trivial or non-issues, and you may be right. It's true that there might be some mole hill here that I make seem like mountains. Maybe I am just being overly sensitive to somethings. But sometimes it is hard to see things clearly and rationally through the mental fog of depression.)

Community Toxicity

The 3DXChat community is in such a fucking state at the moment. Toxicity is rife everywhere. Bullying, racism, sexism, you name it. And, once again, complete silence from the devs. They have no interest in fostering a welcoming community that will attract new paying customers. Instead, they are content to let it burn.

And there are too many players who are more than willing to be the ones to spark the match that will start that flame that burns the community to the ground.

I think it is fair to say that many people in this community has something missing or broken in their lives, which is what brings them here in the first place. It could be mental health struggles, some sort of trauma they are trying to escape, trying to fill some sort of hole in their lives. 

But none of that can be an excuse for the kind of vile behaviour that is becoming ever more prevalent. Most days, it feels like an adult game being played by a bunch of immature kids. The kind of behaviour we see would not be out of place in the schoolyard. This is no the place for that.

Of course, it's not everyone. Despite what I've just said and what I'm about to say, there are so many wonderful people who are kind, caring and generous. All the skilled builders who spend hours creating amazing rooms and then share them with others to enjoy. The DJs who invest time and money to entertain the masses. The hosts who make visitors to their room feel welcome. And many more besides.

The sad thing is that these fabulous people aren't the ones you've probably heard off because the good people aren't the ones who make all the noise. Instead, i's the fools with egos who you are constantly hearing about with everyone else getting lost in the noise.

Win at all costs

At the heart of it all is the players who treat 3DXChat like some sort of sim game with the object of winning by building the biggest empire. They will trample on anyone who they perceive to be getting in their way. Numbers are all that matter to them and they are more than happy to try to crush the competition to be number 1. It's fucking pathetic. 

If the most important thing in your life is being the dominant force in an online sex game, you urgently need to re-evaluate your life priorities. In the bigger scheme of things, none of that shit matters. As soon as you log out, you are right back to being a nobody again. No-one in the real world cares that you've managed to get the highest peak room population thanks to cramming it with 60 bots.

The really sad part of it is that these bullies see themselves as the good guys in all of this. Much like a certain ex-president, they always project themselves as the innocent victims who are just fighting the good battle against all the horrible people out there that want to bring them down for no reason.

Then there are the others who don't have any discernible goal apart from causing drama and upsetting others. The "professional trolls", if you will. So sad and pathetic.

We have endless cyberbullying for no other reason than 'you exist in a similar space to me and I don't like that'. We've got people in World Chat encouraging others to self-harm and worse. There's casual racism being thrown about. Players faking heart attacks and trying to weaponise the sympathy they get against other players. Dance teams trying to blackmail clubs they are booked to play in. Rival cliques at war with one another and trying to sabotage each other's events. Building competitions where builders try to pass off other people's work as their own. "Open and transparent" community awards that are manipulated by rigged voting and nominees not being included because they aren't aligned with the organisers. The list just goes on and on. 

Often times, it's more like we're dealing with a bunch of savages than rational adults.

And, while I should hastening to add that I, myself, have not fallen foul of any of this bullshit or found myself the victim of anyone else's vile behaviour, just seeing this sort of shit going on is more than enough to fill me with despair. 

The hope is always to try to make the world a slightly better place but it seems like a hopeless task when faced with such insurmountable odds. At the end of the day, good-willed players will never be able to achieve anything so long as the devs are happy to overlook the problems. They need to do way more to combat all this negative behaviour. 

The bare minimum would be to provide links to existing online resources to help players who are the victims of shitty behaviour but they can't even be bothered to do that. So you can forget about any kind of moderation or desperately needed disciplinary system. Which is a shame because it is costing them players who get driven out by all this shit.

And all of the players who engage in all of this shitty behaviour. Well, they just need to grow the fuck up. But without any sort of meaningful bans or punishment being handed out to these cretins, they have no incentive to change. If anything, it just emboldens them to behave worse and worse.

Empty Promises

To re-iterate what I said earlier; I have always been one to defend the devs. They are a small team with limited resources but they don't help themselves. The biggest issue always has been, and always will be, communication. Players would cut them some much more slack for the lack of updates and content if they just explained the situation instead of hiding behind a veil of secrecy.

It's pretty obvious that they've developed themselves into a cul-de-sac and have been busy working hard to refactor the code away from all the spaghetti that they've created. Instead of being open about that, there is just radio silence. There is nothing more frustrating to players than feeling like they are being ignored because they hear nothing from the devs.

To make matters worse, the rare occasions when they do speak up to tell us about the wonderful things we can expect, those features rarely ever see the light of day. I suppose the one thing worse than saying nothing is to say something that is misleading or untrue.

We all hoped that would change with the introduction of a Community Manager. Our optimism was foolishly misplaced. He has done so little, its hard to know if he is still even in the role. After an initial honeymoon period where he was quite active for a few weeks, there's been nothing. 

And let's not forget how he left me in the lurch by bailing on his agreed appearance on the TTS Podcast. He didn't even have the decency to say he was pulling out. He just stopped replying to my messages. From time to time, he would login to Discord though, so he would have seen them. He just choose to ignore me. 

The thing that annoys me more than being ignored is that continually postponing the episode whilst I tried to get any sort of response actually cost me money due to the need to keep my text to speech subscription active just for that one final episode. If the episode had happened on the original agreed upon date, I wouldn't have had to waste another $78. OK, that's not much money at all really, but it pisses me off that I had to spend it entirely due to someone else being unreliable.

Unfulfilled expectations

In the past, I've also managed to briefly speak to Gizmo on Discord when I was trying to find out if they had plans to add the newer Lovense toys. I needed those to take pictures for the reviews I publish. I delayed my review of the Gemini for 6 months because he said it would be in the next release. It wasn't and it still isn't...

And then there was the disappointment over the latest update. Over half a year without any updates and they eventually drop a beta that actually had some cool and exciting stuff in. Which promptly sat completely unused on a deserted beta client that no-one used for several months. 

OK, not the devs fault, but when Gizmo actually communicated with us for once and promised lots of exciting new features, this built a lot of hype for another update with even more stuff in. Considering that I'd already begun to consider quitting, I had had really high hopes that it would be the thing to convince me to put those thoughts behind me and re-energise my engagement with the game. 

Instead, we just got what was already available on the beta client with none of the new poses that had been teased in their Discord. I couldn't have been more let down, even though it was the typical bait and switch that I should have expected.

I know I wasn't alone in feeling disappointed and the many complaints forced Gizmo to scramble and promise that those poses would be coming in a few weeks. Those few weeks have come and gone; still nothing. No surprise there.

I'm just sick and tired of being let down by a dev team who give the impression that they just don't seem to care even if they really do. Moreover, they also seem to have no appreciation of those that actually promote their game and try to make the community a better place. 

The thing is, I'm sure that they do care and want the game to be a success. And I desperately want it to be a success too. I've backed them as much as I can but sometimes you just have to call a spade a spade and call things out when they aren't working. It won't even take a lot to correct most of the areas where they are going wrong. There just needs to be a willingness to step up and sort it out.

Rewarding the wrong people

When they have content creators making great content that shows their product in a positive light, you'd think they'd want to leverage that. Instead, players who infect the community with their negativity and who are proud that they are known for talking shit about the game, they are the ones that the devs choose to amplify. 

I mean, in the official Discord, they repost each issue of a certain magazine that, at times, seems like it is almost dedicated to complaining about the devs and their lack of progress. Where is the sense in that?!

Talk about a kick in the teeth for all the creators whose content is actually showing the positive side of the game and is enticing outside people into the community. Yeah, fuck them! It makes you wonder why you should bother...

Meanwhile, you have people like Loruna who went out of her way to try to do the dev's job for them by providing us with new poses. Her reward for trying to make the game a better place for everyone was to be treated like shit.

Look, it's painfully obviously that the dev team are all just technical types who have no understanding of the basics of marketing and building a brand. However, there is a vast wealth of user skills and user created content that could be used to compensate for these gaps in their capabilities and resources. And, mark my words, they are sorely lacking in many areas because they can't even get the basics right.

How have they not got playlists of all the fantastic movies people are making which showcase the wonderful possibilities of the game?! Why are they not re-sharing links to blogs and websites that demonstrate how much fun players can have?! Come on, this is basic stuff!

Fuck those 100,000 views my videos have had on NaughtyMachina and the 182,000 visits that my blog has had. Not to mention the countless people that have messaged me to say that my content was how the discovered the game. People like me get ignored by the devs because we're not causing them enough grief and that is fucked up. Or maybe I genuinely bring no value to the community and I'm just not worth their time.

If I spent every episode of my podcast talking shit about them instead of trying to spread some positivity. would they then take notice? Oops, looks like I've actually just done that for half of this post. Let's see what happens! Probably still ignored...

Competition stifling creativity

In regards to my complaints about competition between cliques, there are those of you that maybe saying to yourselves "yes, but healthy competition can be good because it encourages everyone to raise their game and strive to achieve great things". And you would be right, except for the fact that this sort of competition is neither healthy, nor does it raise standards.

It does quite the opposite in fact, as we have been left with a stale selection of clubs that offer nothing new and exciting for players to experience. It's just the same old derivative clubs that dominate each and every day. Anyone who tries something new and exciting just gets lost in the noise and quickly disappears. I can't even remember the last time I came across a genuinely exciting new room.

Instead, competition has caused convergence towards a bunch of rooms that are completely interchangeable with one another and offer nothing original.

Of course, this only breeds further drama when the accusations of copying and room stealing start to surface. I'm not even going to get into that...

Using others to get ahead

This sort of 'win at all costs' attitude has also invaded the content creator community. On the surface, it may seem like a thriving space, and in most ways there is, but for too many creators it is just a quest for those all-important likes and follows. In other words, it's still all about the clout and fluffing of their egos.

I've always liked collaborating with others and have made an effort to do so with up and coming players as well as established stars. It seems an an outlier in this regard though as so many people are only interested in you when they perceive you as having some value. Once they outgrow you or find someone with a bigger following to latch on to, you're old news and not worth their time any more. Remember what I said a moment ago; it's all about chasing that clout!

Ironically, you would have thought one of the best ways to raise your profile would be to repost content that you have appeared in order to amplify its reach and get it out to more people. But, bizarrely, many of the 'stars' aren't interested in any sort of reciprocal promotion. They are happy to just appear in your work and then not give anything back by doing a simple re-share. 

If someone has taken the time to prepare shoots or whatever for you to appear in, I consider it just common decency to show some appreciation by helping to promote it. What am I thinking expecting people to show good manners though? 

The thought process is "what can I get out of you?" rather than "how can we work together for mutual benefit?"

Maybe this is all a me problem though. Perhaps I'm just tired of feeling overlooked because I see trendy creators and stars all working with one another and no-one wants to give me the time of day. In my defence, it's hard not to feel jealous and bitter when you see this going on. It just makes you question whether you actually have any value or not.

Uninspired content

I know I'm not the best photographer, editor, film maker or whatever, so I've always strived to be original and innovative. If I want my work to be noticed, that has to be my point of difference. People often tell me they admire this about me. 

Those feel like hollow words as nothing I see backs that up. When the number of likes a post gets is 10 times greater than the number of clicks through to the content it links to, it clearly demonstrates how no one really cares what is posted. Just click that heart and move on to the next post.

Increasingly, the way to become popular is to just continually churn out the same sort of stuff, week after week. I have no interest in being derivative or jumping on bandwagons and so I miss out. For that reason, I have come to feel increasingly irrelevant and inadequate. like I have nothing of value to offer the community, and that weighs heavily on me.

Don't get me wrong, a lot of the content I'm seeing is done to a very high quality level and is beyond what I could do myself. And I know that tonnes of hard work and time gets put into it. But I miss seeing content that made me think "wow, I wish I had come up with that!". 

Or maybe other creators have just learned a lot quicker than me that it is utterly pointless trying to create interesting and thought provoking content when no-one is going to spare you a few minutes to actually take a look at it. It's just wasted effort to post anything other than boobs and butts.

My own insecurities

I've already mentioned my struggles with depression. Accompanying that has often been low self-esteem and confidence. However, as crazy as it may sound, becoming a content creator in an online sex game did wonders to help with that. 

Knowing that all my hard work was somehow worth it because other enjoyed it, and were even inspired by it, helped my grow in confidence. Although I never aspired to be famous, feeling like I had become a somebody made me feel like I actually have value and contributed to the community somehow. From there, I became more confident and this spilled over into my real world existence, not just my virtual one.

Now though, I'm right back to feeling like a nobody again. Whether through my own lack of inspiration or people just not caring anymore, it feels like I'm swimming against the current and getting nowhere. As I said earlier, it weighs on me and that's not healthy. Rather than continuing to toil in obscurity, right now I feel like I'd rather just give up and fuck off.

And, all of the content creator stuff aside, 3DXChat is just an extremely lonely place to be at times. At least it is for me. 

You can easily find yourself in a room of over a hundred people but not one of them will actually have any interest in talking to you. Not unless you are part of one of the cliques or they want something from you (where have I heard that before). Everyone else is just an outsider to be ignored. Or maybe its just me radiating depressed introvert vibes that scare everyone else away. 

Where I go from here

The whole timing of this fucking sucks. Normally, October would be one of my most active months for content. Advocating for Breast Cancer Awareness Month is something I take very serious even if few people actually want to hear my message. I also massively enjoy all of the Halloween festivities and making posts about those. 

Sadly, with my head being where it is at at the moment, I'm simply not able to create the sort of content that I feel a campaign such as Breast Cancer Awareness deserves. I mean, it is hard to inspire others when you cannot even inspire yourself. Just another thing to add to my list of current personal failings.

That said, I do have a few bits of and bobs already written and scheduled for release so those will pop up on the appropriate day even if I'm not actively around (specifically for No Bra Day and National Ass Day).

Instead, I'll be stepping away entirely for the rest of the month to engage in other activities. Activities that I hope will provide me with more positivity and mental strength to re-establish my inner equilibrium. Included in that is some travelling that I think will do me some good. A short change of scene cannot be a bad thing. 

Whether that works or not, only time will tell. All I can say is that I won't be back until I feel well again. And it is impossible for me to say at the moment whether I'll have any appetite to resume being a creator, if and when that does happen. (I might sneak back for a few days at Halloween since that is always one of my yearly highlights)

Perhaps I might decide that it is time for me to let go and accept that this blog, and all the other things I try my hand at, have simply run their course. Maybe it will be time to embrace being a nobody instead. Like I said, only time will tell.

TL:DR

I've had enough with unreliable devs who promise much but deliver nothing, shitty players who take the game way too seriously and try to trample on others, and I feel unfulfilled by the time invested in the game and creating content based on it. I need a break! Maybe I'll be back, maybe I won't...