Written by Nath

Please note, I didn’t write this, but I really felt that more people need to read this. The author has given me permission to share it. This was written by Winskote. It appeared on another site. (He asked me not to link to it.)

I grew up in a culture where driving drunk was accepted, tolerated. Encouraged, in a way. A rite of passage. Laughed about. A family friend drove his car into a ditch, and the cops took him home and told his wife to let him sleep it off. I remember laying in bed. listening to the adult party break up with laughing banter about the roads being more dangerous for a while. Dean Martin went on the Carson show doing his drunk in public schtick, and told jokes about driving. The nation laughed.

I remember the resistance when people started working to change that. Laws targeting drunk drivers met with angry rejection of the concept of changing one’s behavior. Changes in law enforcement training and attitudes leading to stops and arrests and getting the drunk off the road, causing outrage about ruining someone’s life. Mothers Against Drunk Drivers as the target of televised humor. Those bitches.

And yet, by the time I was driving, the culture was changing. By the time I could legally drink, the culture had changed. Not completely, but substantially,and with momentum. Party hosts paid attention to sending their guests home. The jokes shifted from the funny things that happened behind the wheel while drunk, to the funny things that happened when taking your drunk friend’s car keys from him. The outrage shifted from ‘how could you ruin his life like that!’ to ‘What the fuck were you thinking ruining your own life like that!’

The culture changed because we went after the toxic damaging behavior. We stopped excusing a choice that puts other people’s lives at risk. We started putting the accountability on the person doing the bad thing. We shifted from - ‘It’s Saturday night - be careful driving out there with all the drunks,’ to 'It’s Saturday night, get those fucking drunks off the road.’

We stopped putting the onus on the ones who would die and be maimed, and started putting it on those who took risks with other people’s lives.

Please note, I didn’t write this, but I really felt that more people need to read this. The author has given me permission to share it. This was written by Winskote. It appeared on another site. (He asked me not to link to it.)

I grew up in a culture where driving drunk was accepted, tolerated. Encouraged, in a way. A rite of passage. Laughed about. A family friend drove his car into a ditch, and the cops took him home and told his wife to let him sleep it off. I remember laying in bed. listening to the adult party break up with laughing banter about the roads being more dangerous for a while. Dean Martin went on the Carson show doing his drunk in public schtick, and told jokes about driving. The nation laughed.

I remember the resistance when people started working to change that. Laws targeting drunk drivers met with angry rejection of the concept of changing one’s behavior. Changes in law enforcement training and attitudes leading to stops and arrests and getting the drunk off the road, causing outrage about ruining someone’s life. Mothers Against Drunk Drivers as the target of televised humor. Those bitches.

And yet, by the time I was driving, the culture was changing. By the time I could legally drink, the culture had changed. Not completely, but substantially,and with momentum. Party hosts paid attention to sending their guests home. The jokes shifted from the funny things that happened behind the wheel while drunk, to the funny things that happened when taking your drunk friend’s car keys from him. The outrage shifted from ‘how could you ruin his life like that!’ to 'What the fuck were you thinking ruining your own life like that!’

The culture changed because we went after the toxic damaging behavior. We stopped excusing a choice that puts other people’s lives at risk. We started putting the accountability on the person doing the bad thing. We shifted from - 'It’s Saturday night - be careful driving out there with all the drunks,’ to 'It’s Saturday night, get those fucking drunks off the road.’

We stopped putting the onus on the ones who would die and be maimed, and started putting it on those who took risks with other people’s lives.

He's back and he hasn't changed. So let me share with you a list that summarises what we know about this predator

🚩His first consent violation in the Dutch kink scene that we know of was over 20 years ago. This is a long established pattern.

🚩He has been known to groom people under 18 years old. One such person reported Nimja to NEEHU because they wouldn't feel safe if he attended.

🚩Both Nimja and the organisers of NEEHU are accountable for the fact that Nimja attended NEEHU online under a pseudonym after he was banned for above reason.

🚩Multiple bans from hypno kink events in the US, UK and internationally

🚩One case of hypnotising a person who did not give consent to be hypnotised. She was traumatised and still gets very angry talking about this, even fifteen years after the event.

🚩One case of a little agreeing to play with him on the condition "nothing sexual" and he proceeded to give her a hypnotic orgasm. This was so traumatic to her, she never wants to be hypnotised again.

🚩Numerous cases of creepy behaviour.

🚩One case of sexual assault at a kink event and numerous consent violations.

🚩Multiple cases of online hypno D/s play that he ended abruptly and without giving proper aftercare, leaving them addicted to files without any recourse. Some of these women flew to the Netherlands to meet him only to be dumped.

🚩Multiple cases of gaslighting his victims into believing he had done nothing wrong and they must be bad people or they must need mental help for reacting this way.

🚩Numerous cases of trying to remove complaints and information about his abuse from online spaces, accusing people of harassing him and badmouthing his victims.

🚩The parasocial relationships he develops with his fans are unhealthy because there is an imbalance in power and he has taken no steps to change that over the years. He still uses predatory tactics to lure in young women who are inexperienced in kink and hypnosis so he can teach (groom) them. He prefers them young or little so they don’t talk back.

Afaik, he's hanging out in his quiet little corner of the internet because he's not allowed to attend any local or online events. I've heard talk of an online event that asked their presenters if they would be uncomfortable if he'd attend (in a misguided attempt to avoid the same mistakes NEEHU made) and after some kerfuffle, that idea was cancelled too.

There was a middle bit, where I came to have a bit more self-awareness. I kinked the most on what I had come to understand as "real hypnosis" and which was not very similar to the fantasies, but the fantasies existed inside of the real world now, so they were often easier to achieve, though not as intense. We were playing with real mind control, after all, so we needed to temper our fantasies and be more careful, more safe.

I had discovered that I could modify and remove suggestions on my own, which I saw as self-hypnosis, or I wasn't sure what I saw it is. I realized I could update Good X to Good Y to Good Z without needing a whole new trance. I realized talking about how we wanted a suggestion to work after the fact seemed to change how it worked without a new trance. It became increasingly clear the trance wasn't really what was doing things, but they still all felt like compulsions to me. If I did wake myself up, I thought of that as "lucidity" not "agency."

Then there was a period where hypnosis didn't feel very real. I wasn't in a good spot with my then-hypnotist, or playing with other people. Our relationship was nearing its end. I was not very motivated emotionally to lose myself in the experience. Following hypnotic suggestions felt like faking orgasms to make an experience end.

I started attending local hypnokink classes occasionally around this time, even though they were all 101s, but it was community with people besides my then-partner. Long distance and nearing its end. I saw a class by HypnoStory and PandaPet where they did a demonstration of Subject Agency. Story said to someone "You can assume nothing I say is said with the intention of hurting you so if I accidentally say anything that would you can ignore it." It was so broad, it required subjects to actively interpret things, and it was amazing.

Something clicked in my brain, it was amazing, it completely changed how I saw hypnosis, and as beautiful as it was, hypnosis now felt faker than ever.

I broke up with that hypnotist, and started to see hypnosis as a silly thing from my past, something I had grown out of. Perhaps I could have a normal non-dysphoric relationship to sex. Perhaps I was becoming vanilla.

This was very brief. I attended a local hypnokink event (the classes that were our intermediary space between mindplay and trancesylvania) and enjoyed myself. I felt motivated to be in the community again so I could make new friends. I discovered hypnosis discord. and then I got a head injury.

Discord group calls were easy ways to feel less alone while stuck at home unable to handle a one-on-one conversation. The head injury totally killed my sex drive and the meds suppressed my libido. Hypnosis played with intense emotions and there was satisfaction to be had without necessarily involving sex. This was very good at the time. I found myself even more deeply enmeshed in the hypnokink community than I ever had been before.

I learned more and more about subject agency from people I was meeting and things I was reading. I learned about newer models of hypnosis like Phenomenological Control and I read about predictive processing theory. I became enmeshed in agency-forward subject-centered New School hypnosis which saw everything as active collaboration.

I learned to see hypnosis as decidedly NOT mind control. Hypnosis "worked" better than ever and it felt so much less like mind control. I could bring myself to experience any suggestion vividly regardless of the skill level of the hypnotist. I learned about blueprinting. I started getting exactly the trance I wanted. Scenes went off perfectly. I rarely if ever had abreactions or negative experiences.

And it didn't feel like mind control anymore... and I missed that.

And lately, I've been planning scenes where I view the part where I find hypnosis hot and the part where I find mind control hot as two different parts of planning the scene.

I go into the scenes with the intention "I want it to feel like mind control" and I blueprint how it can feel like mind control. I plan scenes where we intentionally evoke our old fantasies from McStories and cartoons growing up. I blueprint how to make something feel more like a compulsion, or more automatic. What if we incorporated amnesia? What if we were just a bit less careful with our phrasings? I have common sense. I know not to interpret things irresponsibly.

For over a decade, I was so used to the carefulness of "You will feel obedient, a desire to do as I say, within reason, so long as it's safe, and you're comfortable doing it, and nobody else is around, and..."

And lately, instead, we've let all that go unsaid, and I did a scene at Beguiled where it was just "You're going to do anything I ask of you. You're going obey me completely, no matter what."

And, of course, that was not true. I have agency. I can intercept this to have those caveats implicitly.

and it was SO MUCH HOTTER. To just play with those tropes. To play with the fantasies of the extreme version of mind control from the stories. When I thought hypnosis was mind control, we couldn't fully enter those fantasies. When I see hypnosis as a tool to create scenes inspired by mind control, to create the illusion of mind control, then I can actually do mind control scenes, actually experience those deep fantasies of powerful mind control and intense experiences. It's edgier, and yet safer, more honest.

All the safeties and negotiating and detail consent still happens, but we do it all before the scene. We blueprint and plan. I don't need to be told in trance not to leave the hotel room, because before the trance we negotiated that I wouldn't leave the hotel room, and that can carry equal weight. The trance is not the only time I can accept suggestions or how to interpret them, it's the time to get myself lost from reality, to enter the fantasy.

So I've come full circle again, having hot hypnosis scenes that feel like mind control, and in many ways they're hotter, and in many ways they're safer.

"Is it real" is the wrong question. The whole point is to experience the unreal. No, the scene is not real, so it's best not to worry about the tools. The point is to become so lost in the fantasy that it feels real, and so I know I can get into the science of why it all works, and talk about how it overlaps with lots of other things we do that aren't called hypnosis, but I don't need to.

I went to a concert last night with one of best friends (who does not know about Tennfan), and the topic of polyamory came up as well as the topic of meeting Internet friends in real life, and I was SO CLOSE to just spilling the beans but couldn’t do it.

Also, the dance of how to talk about my set of Internet friends and also how to like… discuss polyamory vs. swinging vs. just being weird and horny in a way that was knowledgeable but not, like, *too* knowledgeable.

This is all to say that I’m having Some Complicated Feelings about my double life this morning. I feel sad and a little guilty that like, my closest hypnosis friends know, essentially, a very full picture of me. My closest vanilla friends are missing this huge chunk of what makes me… me.

These are people who have known and loved me for a very, very long time. They’re also people who have no sense that this side of my life is even possible, much less plausible.

Except it's not my friends, because (thankfully?) I've never been a super social person and the people I consider my closest friends know about my extra-curriculars.

But 100% my relationship with my Mom has suffered because of my foray into hypnokinkland. In a lot of ways, discovering all y'all saved my life, and as time has gone on the hypnokinkland part of my existence has become the greater percentage of my life in general.

And that means that I cannot talk with my Mom about 80%-ish of my life. Which means that we just... don't talk that much.

Some people know that my upbringing wasn't the best, and being able to talk with my Mom on a regular basis as I worked through all that was a very real part of me getting to reclaim her as a positive person in my life, and for all intents and purposes that is now just gone.

And my life is better without it. Objectively, the life that I live now where I have friends and found family and community is so much better than what I had before.

Funnily enough, my wife remained friends with them after her transition. I mean, I'm glad they didn't reject her because she's trans. But I also feel a little bitter that they rejected me because I love many people. Because I like sex and kinky fun. Maybe they are accepting of her because she adheres to feminine stereotypes and I don't.

Is a question someone asked on Reddit. My answer is a bit of a hot take, but I think it's important to share

I think online files are the most dangerous way to do hypnosis. It's very hard to tell how dangerous a file is going to be before you try it, and you're doing it alone, the creator of the file is unavailable to provide aftercare or help you get back on your feet. On the contrary, many content creators make more money if you buy more of their files, so they encourage a dependency or addiction to their files in their fans. It's very easy to (through peer pressure or because you're a newbie) stumble upon bad stuff and get drawn in without knowing how to keep yourself safe or free yourself from it. The shame of getting yourself caught in this mess because of sexual desire often makes it very hard to seek help.

Firstly, I think I would like to acknowledge where I think Nath is right on this topic. There are people out here making work with no scripts or CW (content warning) present and this is still a very normalized thing from the people I've spoken to over the years. I know there is a trend to "tag" the work with key words but as a personal preference I would rather feature a detailed description as well as tags because a tag doesn't tell me as a listener exactly what is in the file. Yes, we all make mistakes and sometimes things don't make it into the cw but that is always why it's important for our audiences to hold us accountable and I am always thankful for feedback.

On the topic of addiction, yes this happens and yes it is a gross use of platform, however there is also a market/niche for this style of content and where there is want for it there will be people profiting off of it. I'm not saying that is good, its clearly not but also I feel like listeners also need to take accountability for what they consume. If you can't do a conscious listen of audios ahead of time, maybe it's best to stick to playing either with friends you know, or only using SFW audio hypnosis. I speak from experience, I am a person with a "sticky brain" and I've been down that rabbit hole of content before. I learned how to manage myself and have some self control when it comes to what I am listening to. It wasn't easy but it has made me a better subject for it.

Finally, I want to say something as a long time creator who's entire income comes from hypnosis content and my incredible supportive audience who have listened to my work over the years. We have been stigmatized heavily on the internet by both people within the community and those vanilla people in power who do not understand what it is we do. We are not dangerous on the whole. There are so many of us who only want to do good and provide a space for safe, effective and kinky fun times. Platforms demonize and demonetize us constantly for no reason but saying we are mind controlling people and coersing them into paying us for content, which is so far from the case. We have been fighting to stay here to the point that honestly, I've been very close to retirement myself due to the stress it puts on my mind and my body (I am chronically ill and stress physically hurts me). I hate soapboxing like this, but I truly feel that this conversation is a lot deeper and I really encourage people to open a dialog about better (not best because no one is perfect) practices when it comes to doing this.

And yes, I appreciate hat it's hard for content creators out there because Patreon and OnlyFans and porn sites don't allow hypnosis for absolutely bullshit reasons that have nothing to do with how dangerous or harmless the files actually are.

I do also agree that some people who consume lots of files need to take accountability for the content they encourage creators to make. I had this conversation with someone recently where I told them "if you break someone, as a top, and I don't care if you're doing it in a file or in person, you have the responsibility to provide the aftercare needed to put them back together again. You can't just break someone and abandon them."

And they said "But people don't want files with long aftercare wake up time." And that's true. The people who want files that really break and destroy them, don't seem to want aftercare with that. These fans have to take accountability for the dangerous shit they ask for. I for one am not willing to put out what they ask for, and I think neither is Secret.