{"id":664,"date":"2010-01-05T05:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-01-05T09:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/?p=664"},"modified":"2010-01-05T05:00:00","modified_gmt":"2010-01-05T09:00:00","slug":"internet-influenced-perceptions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/?p=664","title":{"rendered":"Internet Influenced Perceptions"},"content":{"rendered":"

I continue to follow what people are searching and what brings them to this blog, or my personal “boot and leather<\/a>” website. I remain intrigued.<\/p>\n

What I am observing is that there is a lot of curiosity out there, and perhaps a bit of fear or confusion, especially among straight people.<\/p>\n

When I was blogging in December of 2008<\/a> and 2009<\/a> about perceptions of Wesco Boots being “gay,” I delved into my web logs and statistics, and followed leads to posts on some blogs, YouTube, and websites such as hotboots.com. What I found was not surprising: the vast majority, if not 100%, of web-based postings about Wesco boots are by those who have a fetish interest in the boots. (I excluded vendors and the company’s website.)<\/p>\n

I explored further. Postings about other kinds of boots, while not as numerous, are also made almost 100% by those with a gay fetish interest once vendors are excluded. For example, on 4 January, someone from Maine searched with the question “are ostrich boots gay?” and right before that, someone from Quebec searched, “cowboy jeans gay?” Seriously, I kid you not. This is an example of dozens of such questions I see every day that generate visits to this blog and my website.<\/p>\n

Many people are searching the internet with questions like that, which they wouldn’t have the courage to ask a live human being or if they did ask someone, they would likely receive an affirming answer to a preconceived notion. (That is, they ask people who are like themselves, and who will tell them what they expect to hear.)<\/p>\n

Straight people develop perceptions about certain kinds of boots and guys who wear them based a lot on what they are seeing from internet search engine results. Ahhhh! Run for the hills! The boots or jeans are gay!<\/b><\/p>\n

It is not true that boots can be gay or that gay men choose certain boots or jeans to wear<\/i> BUT the postings about boots on the internet (especially YouTube) usually are by a gay man (not a woman) and reflect some serious fetish-related interests.<\/p>\n

There are a lot of postings on the Internet and on YouTube that combine gay fetish interests — leather, smoking, mild BDSM, stomping, boots, socks, feet, suits, etc. It is not surprising to me that straight people get confused and develop some pretty wild misunderstandings.<\/p>\n

But there are very few straight people who post videos or write blogs about leather, boots, etc. (I have linked to two from this blog — Jennifer June’s Cowboy Boots blog, and the Engineer Boot blog, but there are not many others that I could find.)<\/p>\n

My assertion remains: you won’t find many straight guys posting videos about their enjoyment of Wesco boots, engineer boots, or cowboy boots. Thus, if all you are seeing on YouTube (or elsewhere) on a non-vendor internet posting is by gay people, it is easy to jump to a conclusion and engage in “guilt by association” — if the poster of a video or website or blog is gay, then what they post about<\/u> therefore must be “gay” as well. Quod Erat Demonstrandum <\/i> or <\/span>\u1f45\u03c0\u03b5\u03c1 \u1f14\u03b4\u03b5\u03b9 \u03b4\u03b5\u1fd6\u03be\u03b1\u03b9<\/i>.<\/span>

Interestingly, I have not found quite the same large correlation between gay fetish interests and leather gear. Sure, there are a lot of postings related to leather by gay men (and even a few women.) But there are also many postings by straight guys (particularly in the motorcycle forums) about leather gear. They are asking, “what is functional? What works? How much does it cost? What’s the value?” … all good questions.<\/p>\n

I have noticed sometimes that in these forums in which the vast majority of participants are straight guys (including “hard core bikers”), some of them have used a search engine to explore their questions, and the results link to a lot of gay fetish stuff. Some of them post their “concerns” on the forums. I have commented about that behaviour in the past. Usually, such posts by straight guys reflect a generalization about gay people and leather gear. In order to make themselves sound more masculine and “not gay,” sometimes these insecure individuals say some very rude and\/or imbecilic things. But just pity and pray them, for they know not what they say, as they do not realize how much the internet is affecting their perceptions.<\/p>\n

Life is short: take time to understand the bigger picture. Don’t accept what you see prima facie<\/i> — especially from Google searches! <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I continue to follow what people are searching and what brings them to this blog, or my personal “boot and leather” website. I remain intrigued. What I am observing is that there is a lot of curiosity out there, and … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-664","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogging","category-website"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=664"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}