I am wanting to explore my kink-side more and have been thinking about attending a munch (or, at leasting talking to some organisers), but in order to sign up for Fetlife you have to go through phone number verification and I am not comfortable giving out my phone number in case a hack or sonething occurs and my secret is out. What's it got to do with fetlife? A VPN covers you when communicating online. It's up to the OP if they want to verify, I don't think kinksters are going to be attacked over moral ethics like whatever happened with that Ashley Madison case, however, anything can be attacked, you cover certain numbers when using your ID to verify. As others have suggested, start with FetLife and look for events in the B’ham area. The Red Chair operates in B’Ham and manages all their events on FL, and usually has multiple small events a week. There are also communities in Montgomery and Huntsville, as well as some smaller things going on between Anniston and Talledega. For the size of Birmingham it has a surprisingly active kink. I'm assuming you've asked this on Fetlife? There is a large tokyo scene represented there so many more would have detailed answers. If you havent heard of it you should sign up! Fetlife is a good starting point. There are several groups in the area: Richmond Lifestyle Group, Greater Richmond Polyamory, The Next Generation to name a few. I've been to munches, sloshes, and parties for the first two groups. RLG is probably the safest in that they have the most rules in place at their parties for everyone's safety. Fetlife is a social media platform aimed at kinky people. It's not a dating site, it's not a forum. It's often described like kinky Facebook and that honestly comes pretty close. It's not built for that, and most people don't use it for that - if you're trying to do so, you're going to find it frustrating and largely unhelpful Fetlife is best used for finding munches & other events, attending those, making kinky friends at those events, and then you can add them on fetlife to keep contact with them. Fetlife is more kink based but you can find munches (kink based happy hour usually vanilla) and listings for parties,gangbangs, and orgies in your area. Reply reply I got fetlife the other day and all that has happened is I've had a series of horrible experiences with Doms in messages and now I want to cry. I didn't approach them, they approached me and when they told me their ages I said the gap was too big and they got angry at me Has anyone had positive experiences on this site? Hi, I am wondering, from your perspective, what should a good alternative to fetlife offer? From my experience there are telegram, WhatsApp and Facebook groups specialised on a certain country/region/city. Different countries also have their small alternative set of sites to fetlife but often it is not as widely used and it is very fragmented.