I’ve been a Professional Dominatrix, working primarily in Sydney for 18 years now, and was lifestyle prior to that. During that time, I’ve seen some changes in the kink scene. One of the biggest has been the effect of the massive increase in the visibility and acceptance of kink and the kink aesthetic in mainstream society.

“We’ve arrived at a level of commodification that may have negated the concept of counterculture,” William Gibson. Gibson could have been talking about kink; the more it’s packaged for mass appeal, the more it risks losing the transgressive energy that gives it life.

The Mainstreaming of Kink

From Madonna to Trent Reznor, to Lady Gaga, the music industry and other celebrities have long dabbled with kink aesthetics to signal their affiliation with rebellion, sexuality and power, bringing the visuals of BDSM into the spotlight.

However, a watershed moment in the process of bringing kink to the mainstream was the release of 50 Shades of Grey. I wrote and spoke about this quite extensively at the time. You can find some of my thoughts here in the Sydney Morning Herald and here Mamamia.

Since then, interest in kink and kink aesthetics has only grown.

From Print to Pixels

Kink media has been available for close to as long as people have been kinky, but in the past, print media and video porn were challenging to find and not prolifically produced. A small percentage of kinksters had impressive collections, painstakingly assembled. This physical media was not only hard to find, but expensive to purchase.

With the rise of clip and subscription sites, there has been a change in how people consume and interact with kink media. Kink content is now easy to find and almost frictionless to consume. Many ProDommes have now branched out into producing content for clips and subscription sites.
This shift to digital consumption hasn’t just changed how kink is accessed; it’s also transformed how ProDommes market themselves, blurring the line between practitioner and influencer.

Marketing vs Mastery

“Far more creativity, today, goes into the marketing of products than into the products themselves.” ― William Gibson, Pattern Recognition.

As well as Dommes branching out into clips and subscription sites, changes to the marketing of in-person Professional Domination are also relevant here, as it is now standard for ProDommes to produce extensive marketing content for social media to connect with their existing and potential clients. With very few exceptions, to run a successful business, ProDommes must now not only be kink practitioners, but also kink influencers online.

In a competitive market, this raises the question: Is too much emphasis being placed on brand, marketing, and aesthetics (both within the industry and by clients) versus the actual product of in-person sessions and the expertise, connection, and embodied experience they provide?

As a ProDomme with 18 years of experience, my focus is firmly on delivering authentic, in-person sessions that prioritise connection and skill over fleeting aesthetics, as well as nurturing long-term relationships with my loyal submissives.

Performance vs Practice

More people are consuming kink content, and more people are performing kink to meet this demand.

The upside is that a more visible kink world helps people feel more open and less ashamed about their kinky proclivities. There are more opportunities to explore and fewer barriers to doing so. The downside is that performance and reality are not the same thing. Kink aesthetics are easy to replicate. Ethical, embodied kink is not.

The challenge here is that consuming content isn’t the same as a lived experience of BDSM, just as performing kink, or the aesthetics of kink for consumption, isn’t the same as the embodied practice of kink. What may thrill, challenge and delight behind closed doors is not necessarily the same as what performs well as content. A dungeon scene is layered with skill, consent, emotional intelligence and embodied presence. That does not always translate to content, when kink is performed for an audience, those elements often get stripped away.

Censorship and The Algorithm

We see this effect magnified with kink content created to perform in increasingly highly censored and/or algorithmically shaped environments. The algorithm does favour outrage, which we see occasionally when Jackass style shock clips circulate featuring wildly unsafe practices, like “Dommes” setting people on fire or hitting them with cars.

In contrast to viral extreme outrage content, day-to-day online censorship and algorithmic bias distort what people see and consume. “Safe” content such as very light play, content that focuses purely on the erotic aspects of kink that are palatable to more mainstream values and thin, young, white, cis bodies get served to us by the algorithm. The rest gets shadowbanned or risks account deletion.

The risk of the dreaded shadowban or account loss also discourages Dommes from posting play pics and clips. It’s far safer to stick to latex glamour shots. While they’re always hot, their prevalence compared to depictions of what we actually do contributes to flattening our subculture into an aesthetic. Many of us would prefer to post more play-focused content, but need to minimise the risk of losing our accounts.

Subculture vs Aesthetic

Another challenge we are facing is the disconnection of the aesthetics from the BDSM lifestyle itself. This challenge is not unique to the BDSM, Punk, Goth, and other subcultures are sharing the same issue right now. Their aesthetic stripped away from the very values that gave birth to it.

With enough cash and an eye for detail, anyone can mimic kink aesthetics. Perhaps on a somewhat diluted level, because much of what we consume is a copy of a copy. With each replication, though, nuance is eroded.

Where copies of copies become more dangerous is in clips that feature actual play. High follower counts are mistaken for expertise. The clout economy rewards attention, not skill. When clips featuring techniques that are not best practice circulate widely, unsafe play becomes normalised. The desire to avoid conflict with peers with high follower counts, or simply a desire to avoid “drama”, means that this often is not called out, or if it is, it is dismissed as “negativity”, “gatekeeping”, or “elitism”.

There’s enormous value in educational kink media, produced by experienced dommes who demonstrate and explain safe techniques. Porn, however, is designed to be erotic, not instructional and rarely shows negotiation, prep or risk mitigation. Yet, people do try to learn from it or replicate scenes, without considering the missing elements.

The medium of consumption shapes our experience of BDSM. The kinks we see most frequently represented are more likely to become part of our personal erotic landscape. It’s worth examining how the types of content we consume, that censored environments allow and that the algorithm shows us affects us and our kinks. Our desires do not develop in a vacuum.

An embodied experience of kink in the dungeon is an entirely different experience from consuming content through a screen, or indeed performing and creating content specifically for consumption through a screen. The algorithm can’t teach you how any of this feels in real life. Safe behind your screen, you can’t know what it feels like to hand over control.

BDSM is much, much more than an aesthetic or a performance. BDSM at its heart is a visceral, embodied experience that fosters expansion and connection. The feelings of desire, trust, and vulnerability experienced in the dungeon are not an aesthetic to be appropriated, nor can they be fully felt through a screen.

We do BDSM culture and our personal experience of it a disservice when we treat BDSM as something to consume. BDSM is something to experience. An embodied experience of BDSM is not so much about consumption as immersion.

An in-person session with a skilled professional gives you a boundaried container in which you can immerse yourself in BDSM.

The right skilled professional is someone who is there because they want to immerse themselves in BDSM right alongside you. Making it their career allows them to devote maximum time, energy and investment into their craft and passion.

The mainstreaming of kink has opened doors, letting more people explore their desires without shame. However, it has also created a divide between performance and practice. Consuming kink content or experimenting with its aesthetics can spark curiosity. Still, the heart of BDSM lies in its embodied, consensual practice, a visceral experience of trust, desire, and connection that no screen can replicate. In my immaculate Sydney dungeon, I guide submissives through tailored sessions that honour their fantasies and foster deep connection, curated in a way no algorithm can match. Ready to step beyond the screen? Apply to Serve and experience kink as it’s meant to be—safe, consensual, and unforgettable.