Our latest poll, “Strip It Off Or Rip It Off?”, is creating a lot of excitement on the blog (if we can measure excitement by the number of reader comments). I’d like to thank everyone who has felt the need to make comments—audience participation is an important part of this blog. All of the enthusiasm for the topic of how a man removes his shirt before flogging got me to thinking about what a friend said to me a few weeks ago. After reading the blog, he said “you’re doing a public service”.
People don’t always know what they don’t know. I think flogging as entertainment is one of those things: Many people like it but don’t realize they like it. Most people don’t experience the intense rush that many of us on this blog get when we watch a man endure punishment. We knew from a young age that watching floggings got our blood flowing, but for most people the pleasure of watching is created with the scene itself and becomes a passing fancy. Like the scene where Casper Van Dien is flogged in “Starship Troopers”—they enjoy it during the scene, but forget it once the scene has changed away from a shirtless young man taking the lash on his bare back.
But that just means they don’t understand that flogging is a spectator sport. They therefore need to be introduced to the idea of watching it for the pleasure of it: The athleticism of the participants and the physical and mental endurance it requires.
So, I ask everyone to forward the URL for this blog to at least five friends to do your part in this public service. We need to raise awareness and build the community so that more people will get involved by participating in this blog—maybe some will start filming their own floggings and uploading them to YouTube for all of us to enjoy.