#fppp answers

[flyingpurplepeopleprogrammer]

So, reading your latest post talking about why many of us like hypnosis, I have to ask:

Do you think being into hypnosis is inherently negative?

No.

[flyingpurplepeopleprogrammer]

You know, I get some questions often enough that I think I'll just start posting the answers.

Let's start with a classic: "How did you get into hypnosis?"

The short answer? I like brains! That and lots and lots of reading.

The long answer? Well...

It was a long time ago. I can't recall exactly what all happened in what order: there was bad television, of course: cartoon hypnosis and movie mind control. X-2? Telepathy. Matrix 2? Who remembers the scene with the cake? I could list bits of media that are fun with kink glasses for awhile, but you've probably already heard of most of them anyway.

I was curious outside of that, though. There were also encyclopedia artcles about the mind and a grab-bag of probably-mostly-nonsense you could find in books and on the internet about meditation, altered states of consciousness, psychoactives, brainwashing, cults, ritualistic spirituality, BDSM, MKUltra conspiracy theories... whatever. If you can name it, I probably read about it. It's alarmingly easy (or, at least, it was for me) to find your way back to mind control from philosophy, religion, any kind of "why?" question you might go about exploring while you're young and don't know anything.

This was back in pre-video days of the internet and - honestly - I think it was mostly easier to find sources on obscure stuff in the days before youtube and AI generated clutter. I can't really say how much of what I read stuck, but I definitely spent some of my days sat around trying to figure out meditation or getting my awareness out of my head experimentally. It's kind of wild to think back on that, honestly. I can still remember a nice out-of-body experience against a lone oak trea out in a pasture. The dirt around it was always fine and powdery because the horses would clomp and roll by it, and it made the loveliest spot to lay and daydream in a summer heat.

But I digress -

I also worked my way through the EMCSA: first by looking for keywords and themes I liked, then alphabetically - compiling reading lists based on whether or not a given sypnosis caught my eye. Ya boy has read a lot of smut. Hypnosmut - like all art - is mostly rubbish, but you'll find some writers that give wonderfully educational descriptions of hypnosis. That and a few scraps from outdated, untrustworthy papers by Names of hypnosis past and a couple of ill-advised, late-teenaged forays into power exchange and I ended up playing with brainwashing, imagery, and... yeah. I had the tools and opportunity to experiment with some kind of mental play that was hypnokink or hypnokink-adjacent. I can safely say I've been doing this shit since before I was old enough to vote.

Now, nobody should be reading this who's under 18, but just in case you are:

- I cannot stress this enough: do not be like me. I got into a lot of trouble that wasn't good for me and I would've been better off in a lot of ways if this hadn't been the route I'd taken.

- You shouldn't be reading this. This blog is 18+ for a reason. Feck off.

Eventually, like so many of us, I found my way to some shady corners of the internet and made an ass out of myself in ways that - while new and exciting to me-from-the-past - are fairly standard for newbie hypnokinksters. (I'm still out there, btw: Out on the internet, Being an asshat. I don't use this name, though. This Flying Purple People Programmer business is my first foray into not using my usual name.)

When I started out in these spaces I set out to get hypnotised by a bunch of different people because - well - what better way to learn different approaches then to see them firsthand? This taught me a lot about different techniques and - perhaps more critically - what it was like to be hypnotised by a shitty hypnotist. I don't recommend that second bit, but it probably did a good job of encouraging me not to be a dick. I've run into a lot of community folks over the years, but not in a very loud way. That's not uncommon in the hypnocommunuty, by the way: if you've been around for any length of time, a lot of people are floating around who will know who you are and remember you from this event or that website. It's a small world.

Looking back on it as if I had a thesis when I started writing, I think that the best thing I picked up in my adventure was the idea that we don't know what we're doing, really, and that our ways of experiencing things are both wildly diverse and not quite knowable. Hypnosis is a big fuzzy mess in a range of human experiences and hypnokink might not actually have all that much to do with hypnosis. We can be meditating or conditioned or daydreaming or a million other things in the course of our play and often times "hypnosis" is just an aesthetic we dress it up in. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

So. There's me rambling about me. Hopefully that saves me going on for a thousand words next time somebody asks me that question hoping for a gentle conversation starter.

[flyingpurplepeopleprogrammer]

A lot of people are calling you the David foster Wallace of hypnosis but you unpretentiously say “ain’t” a lot so you’re of the people

Does that ring true

Oh crap. People are calling me things? Nobody ever tells me anything.

So I looked up David Foster Wallace and can safely say that I don't understand the question.

I do unironically "ain't." And I do rather hope I'm of the people. I don't think class consciousness is a matter of accent, though.

[flyingpurplepeopleprogrammer]

Why I negotiate up with my partner

Oh no. I'm doing ✨discourse✨.

So I've seen a post going around about negotiating up as a concept, why you shouldn't do it, and why newbies need to watch out for it.

And it's right. Mostly. Negotiating up is potentially very very bad. If you're not comfortable with negotiating in general, then it's probably not something you should be doing.

But - Well. That's as far as we can go. Ruling out negotiating up at all is just plain wrong. While I'm sure intentions are good, negotiation just isn't so simple as that, and I'm remarkably uncomfortable seeing a whole host of consensual play that I and others engage in be branded as noncon.

This is a long post, so if you want to keep scrolling and avoid ✨discourse✨, this is your chance to roll on by.

So. How we talk about consent matters:

Consent in the real world does not follow the nice, contractual structure that we often assert onto it. Negotiating consent requires figuring out and articulating how we feel or what we want and sometimes we're just really bad at that.

We also don't always how whatever we're planning will actually work out in reality, so we might assent to something with one expectation and find out that - oh no. actually we definitely don't like that. not at all.

Because of this, consent needs to be an ongoing and collaborative process. Both parties have to listen to and consider the other's needs.

In common practice, we're recognising this when we say that consent has to be revocable, that is, that we should be able to negotiate down. We also recognise this when we say that, even when a person has given explicit consent for something, you should check in on them and make sure that it is continuing consent.

With consideration and good communication, negotiating up lets us do the exact same thing that negotiating down does. We're assessing and revising our play to get closer to whatever our mutual ideal is, and that's a good thing. This can - perhaps ironically - be particularly positive for people who are new to the play du jour. This let's you do a little something to start and dip your toe in the water before so that you have more information from which to make judgments and negotiate your own play.

Negotiation - all negotiation - is partly an exercise in risk management. It's also an exercise in communication, empathy, emotional awareness, and about a bazillion other things that are both intensely personal and not particularly easy to simply model. How two people negotiate is going to be unique to those two people, and while there are absolutely wrong answers to how to do it, there is no one 'right' answer. What works for my partner and me won't necessarily be what works for you, and that's OK. Maybe ask us before calling it noncon, though.

It's absolutely so that negotiating up is a potentially riskier proposition than negotiating down. It makes sense that you shouldn't hop right into it if you aren't comfortable in whatever context you're in. Negotiating up requires that parties involved to assess their own emotional states, communicate clearly, and try to manage risk all at the same time. It's not necessarily easy, but that's a different matter.

"But FPPP," you might say, "being hypnotised compromises your ability to give consent!"

Well- yes, no, maybe, it depends:

Hypnosis, while being a phenomenon characterised by suggestibility, can take a lot of different forms. Can you still be loopy, disoriented, or suggestible to a degree that compromises your ability to give consent after trance? Absolutely. But this always nonsense has got to go.

How we do our play matters:

Play can be empowering. We can use our play and ritual to help people feel calm, centered, and able to communicate as easily as we can use them to help people feel docile and obedient.

How we set boundaries about trance matters:

You're loopy and suggestible when you're fresh out of trance? Great. Let's go get a glass of water, walk around a bit, and shake the cobwebs out. Then we'll talk.

How we communicate with our partners matters:

We can practice communicating in and around trance, and even make sure to frame communication in context of consent and self-care. We can set the expectation that communication - real communication, not just a safeword - can happen at any time. Answers to questions like "how am I feeling?", or "is this OK?", or a million other things that we might need or want to talk about in or out of play make it easier to identify potential issues before they become problems. We can make set the expectation that communication is bilateral. That I don't need to specifically ask what's in your head as a hypnotist, but you can just - in whatever way is compatible with your state and how we're playing - start communicating.

It turns out that it's a lot easier to communicate clearly in and around trance if you're given the space to do so, rather than being limited to monotonous affirmation and a safeword.

How experienced we are matters:

People who are more familiar with their own experience of trance and practiced in communicating in and around trance are much more able to judge if they're in a place where they can negotiate or not.

Learning how to talk about trance and consent lets you better communicate it with your partner, too, which helps out with the whole consent-as-an-excercise-in-collaboration-toward-mutual-benefit thing.

Not unlike negotiation, trance is an individual experience. It won't affect us all the same way or even one of us the same way every time. It's on us to evaluate that experience and how it affects us for ourselves.

I am probably well more incensed about reading OP's take than I ought be. This is because negotiating up is a vital part of my play with a particular partner:

This particular partner and I routinely negotiate up and down during our scenes. We're both experienced hypnokinksters, which means that we've each got a pretty good handle on how to recognise and express our feelings. We've also known one another for years and worked hard to communicate openly and healthfully.

In our particular case, being able to negotiate up as well as down is hugely beneficial. This is because we don't feel pressured to anticipate and plan out play in huge detail beforehand, which helps our anxious selves. It means that if our exploratory tendencies lead us in a direction we didn't plan on, that we can take a look and decide "yeah, OK, let's do that!" For us, at least - with our particular anxieties, traumas, and desires - it just makes play easier and enables us to do a lot more of what we want to do.

Maybe it's not for you. That's fine, but it is a good thing for us, and you shouldn't invalidate that.

tl;dr:

Negotiating up isn't inherently good or bad.

Negotiating up is difficult, though, and doing it poorly or irresponsibly can lead to a very bad experience.

Talk about how you negotiate/communicate before trying to do complex consent stuff.

If you're a newbie or not confident in your communication and negotiation skills, maybe don't.

And because this is the internet and anything not explicitly denied is implied: Bad people negotiating up in an attempt to subvert consent are bad. Yeet them to the sun.

PS: I didn't reblog OP because they made the post, like, 2 years ago and I doubt they want to get dragged into a ✨discourse✨ based on that.