Foot fetishists and audio porn fans are evading the social media crackdown on NSFW content – and raising questions about how we police sexuality
If feet aren’t your thing, you might not have realised that foot fetishists are thriving on social media. In fact, there are currently over 44,000 posts catalogued under the “feetish” hashtag on Instagram, a clear indicator that IG is a hotbed for foot content. This, in itself, is not all that surprising – an affinity for feet is a pretty common kink, after all. However, in today’s digital climate, where anything remotely sexy is routinely shunned, censored and shut down on social media, the blossoming of the feetish community is a bit of an anomaly. Elsewhere on the internet, Tumblr’s audio porn enthusiasts are flying below the radar of the site’s adult content ban, with posts still racking up over 1000 notes. So, what can these online sex subcultures teach us about dodging internet censorship?
In case you hadn’t noticed, internet freedom is shrinking with each passing day. Tumblr, the platform of choice for avant-porn and erotica throughout the 2010s, banned all NSFW images from its site as of December 2018, leading to accounts being shut down in droves. Meanwhile Instagram, despite being the rightful home of the thirst trap selfie, arbitrarily flags and removes posts or accounts deemed to be offending its “community guidelines” with provocative content. (Needless to say, the Facebook-owned photo app still allows hate speech to flourish.) To top it all off, you’re going to need ID to watch porn in the UK from April 2019. It’s clear that the internet free-for-all which epitomised the 2010s is in its twilight hour is coming to an end, with collective panic about the ubiquity of online pornography leading to a clamp-down on adult content across the web. Yet this does little beyond creating an even more segregated digital landscape, marginalising sex workers and porn performers who are trying to make a living, whilst elevating large companies like Facebook, already so pervasive in every aspect of our lives, to become the moral arbiters of what content is or isn’t acceptable.
When it comes to censorship, Instagram is one of many sites to showcase puritanical vigour. Unrelenting with their tiresome no-nipple rules, they’ve also been known to be completely off the mark with what they term ‘explicit’. The IG community guidelines are clearly informed by a single, narrow definition of what is erotic – it sees most instances of nudity as pornographic, even when it’s purely artistic, or simply a mode of self-expression. Tumblr’s porn crackdown was also preceded by a scatter-shot algorithmic attack on vast swathes of content, before content makers were able to appeal and have their posts reinstated. Now, it seems that the platform is governed by a form of censorship similar to Instagram’s, albeit more stringent.
Up until recently, the Internet was a no-holds-barred arena for exploring desire: a place to play with modes of erotic self-expression and to learn more about LGBTQ+ sexualities and kinks, with sites like Tumblr allowing sexual subcultures to foster an online community. The fact that all this is under threat is pretty disheartening – but is there a way to evade the moderator’s net? Beyond airbrushing out the nips on your nudes (it doesn’t always work, believe me), you can look to more niche corners of the internet for ways to say a big “fuck you” to censorship. The thing is, while foot fetish content can conform to more typical notions of what is NSFW (yes, foot jobs are a thing), it can also take the form of tickling videos, or pics of feet in their various guises. Given the wildly unoriginal way that Instagram moderation operates, by seeking to define and police a single vision of sexuality, many of these images and accounts go unflagged.
Over on Tumblr, it’s something of a running joke that this same community forms a vital pocket of resistance to the oppressive adult content rules. However, speaking to feetish content creators, it’s clear that they too have been hit by the porn crackdown. Ali, the creator of feetish account f00tography, explains that she was targeted once the blanket ban on porn came into place: “After December 17, I found about half of my content flagged for removal. Simple images of my friends showing the soles of their feet while fully clothed except for their shoes and socks.” However, despite the initial scare, the vast majority of her content was reinstated: “Tumblr gave me the option to appeal these flags on my post and I appealed most of them, except for the very few posts that their adult content hunting algorithm was right about. After a day or so I started to get an email from Tumblr for every post I appealed, apologising for the removal and telling me my post had been restored.”
“A lot of people with this fetish are closeted, even though it’s a very common one! Running this page has actually been insightful because from people and fans messaging us, we can see first hand how lonely people are” – ticklishcouple
Whilst Tumblr’s algorithms were right that, yes, foot pics can be a form of porn, feetish blogs are safe as long as a human — undoubtedly subscribing to narrow definitions of sensuality — makes the final call. For other creators however, the crackdown actually has had zero effect. This includes the owners of feetish and tickling blog ticklishcouple; a couple with shared foot fetish interests who would rather not reveal their real names. As they explain: “Our experiences with the new Tumblr community guidelines haven’t changed (our experience on the platform) severely due to the fact that we post SFW content, although we have had our posts rejected quite a few times.” They are concerned, however, about the way Tumblr is headed, particularly as its new guidelines are splintering the online fetish community: “It is disappointing that Tumblr has strict guidelines now, because many people have left due to this and are looking for other ways to be in the same community. We ourselves actually recently created an Instagram (for feetish/ticklish content).”
Elsewhere on the platform, audio porn fans constitute another NSFW community to survive the adult content cleanse. The mandate that pornographic images be banished from Tumblr has left this corner of the site, normally consisting of erotic audio, relatively untouched. Typically submissions-led, audio porn Tumblr allows fans to contribute to and shape a growing corpus of material which often takes the form of recordings of sex acts or narrations of fantasies. Whilst one of the leading audio porn platforms, Audible Porn, is currently flagged as explicit content, the creator is in the process of moving to an account with a less tell-tale name, where all types of audio naughtiness can flourish.
Feetish and audio porn communities have found ways to battle against censorship on social media, dodging detection by changing names or skirting community guidelines, and branching out into new platforms. However, sitting reading this at home, you may well be thinking, “why do they bother?” The truth is, censorship is tightening up, left, right and centre, and there’s nothing any of us can do about it. Whilst these communities might be safe for the time being, surely it’s only a matter of time before the moderators come for the foot fetishists and audio porn fanatics of the world. Yet, persistence in the face of censorship is to be lauded, especially as social media platforms are a vital resource for online fetish and alternative porn communities, ones which can help them to feel less alone in the face of dominant sexual norms.
For ticklishcouple, social media has been an instrumental part of their lives together and their sexual exploration. The pair actually met two years ago via the Tumblr feetish community, and instantly connected over their shared interests – sexual and otherwise. They created their Tumblr to tell their story, but it has also provided a means of educating themselves about the shame and stigma other foot fetishists experience, one which has made the community a vital outlet for them. “Tumblr allows different communities and groups of people to form together and share interests. A lot of people with this fetish are closeted, even though it’s a very common one! Running this page has actually been insightful because from people and fans messaging us, we can see first hand how lonely people are, and that this is really their only way of expressing themselves.”
Moreover, the forums provided by social media help to create a conversation around some of the more problematic facets of porn – in fetish and kink communities or otherwise. This is certainly the case for audio porn, whose community-led approach allows its users to help shape a micro-discourse on sexuality. Anna, 25, an active audio porn fan on Tumblr, states that, as her involvement with audio porn grew, she noticed that many of its users were helping to generate discussion about porn more generally: “There are topics covered (in audio porn) that people might not consider feminist e.g. calling women sluts, whores, consensual non-consent scenes, etc, but... it is engaging with kink from a more feminist standpoint, because there’s a comments section where women can give their thoughts.”
The resilience of feetish and audio porn subcultures is a necessary reminder of the internet’s power to inform, educate and bring together disparate groups of people. However, we can learn something even more fundamentally important by speaking to these groups. Namely, the constructed nature of what social media networks, and society at large, identify as ‘sexual’. Needless to say, to some people, a foot is just as erotic as a pair of breasts and, to others, visual stimulation pales in comparison to aural arousal.
Nothing is innately sexual, and it’s high time we started opening up our vision of the erotic to being more inclusive, generous and whole. Whilst we can’t necessarily stop internet censorship in its tracks, we can learn from the niche adult content communities that persist, resist and remain despite it. By removing our own preconceptions and sense of what “correct” sex constitutes, we can start building our own, highly personal visions of the erotic — ones which your average Instagram moderator might not share.