Kinky Dating | Deviantside.com Review

For this kinky dating site review, we cover the perks and not-so-perks about Deviantside online dating community. Is it full of creepy robots or worth your time and energy?
 

Editor's note: as of July 2019, it seems that deviantside.com is no longer in operation, but we've left our review published, below. 

Looking for BDSM dating with an authentic community feel? Check out our kinky dating listings to find kinksters like you, near you - or visit our magazine for info, advice and how-to's on BDSM for everyone from beginners to the well-practised. Sign up is FREE   

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Deviantside.com Review | First Impressions

I delved headfirst into Deviantside, keen to learn and excited to see interesting content. I must admit, I was pretty disappointed from the get-go. The front page is poorly formatted with grey text on a grey picture, a classic rookie mistake. The sign in/sign up facilities that look a little less Mr. Grey’s dungeon and a little more Runescape. The whole page just gave off an amateur vibe, but I persevered nonetheless.

The site describes itself as helping you to discover your ‘darker side’. It is a ‘100% free community geared towards the BDSM, Kink, Sugar Daddy, and Swinging lifestyles’. Deviantside.com considers itself not just a dating site, but a dating community (I’m not sure how I feel about this dating community just yet). They are ‘open, nonjudgmental, FREE.’ All of this information is from the front page, and it does get repetitive. 
 

Deviantside Review | Sign Up

The sign-up process on Deviantside is fairly middle of the road. Not totally arduous, but required more information than I was keen to part with so early on just for the privilege of browsing the site. Especially as I didn’t yet know what it had to offer me. All of the usual details are required: name, date of birth, gender, sexuality, interests, etc. It didn’t take too long but a few things stood out for me.

First off, the only gender options are ‘male’; ‘female’; ‘couple’; and ‘transgendered’. A little limited for a website that considers itself alternative. It also offered the relationship status ‘taken but playing’, not something I would want to condone, and certainly not something I’d word so playfully. Perhaps I’m just too new to the scene, but that didn’t sit well with me. You can also add your Skype number to your profile, perhaps quite an irresponsible suggestion? I certainly wouldn’t want my email address on a public kinky dating site (or should I say dating community?).

You are also required to post a photo of yourself before you can browse the site. Some people may see this as a positive as it weeds out the catfish to an extent, but it was clear that people didn’t want to comply with this. A lot of profile pictures were of famous people, or basically anything other than the user. An added inconvenience in what felt like an already extensive process. You also can only put your age as 23 or older, and can only seek people aged 23 and older – this seemed odd to me, but there must be a reason behind it.

You can choose what you’re seeking: friendship, a Dom, a slave, swingers, etc. The list certainly wasn’t extensive, and for a specialist fetish website, I would expect a much broader range of options. One thing I can say for the site is their list of sexuality options was a lot more thorough. It listed 12 orientations, all of the usuals, plus some fun ones such as ‘heteroflexible’.
 

Deviantside.com Review | User Experience

The first thing I noticed upon completing my profile was the option to rate my photo. I found this a little strange. What if I don’t want strangers to reduce my appearance to a number of stars? A lot of people use dating sites for the ego boost. I don’t think this mandatory knock to your self-esteem is a great idea. This function was also very confusing, not at all user-friendly. Luckily no one rated my picture…because no one was online (but we’ll talk about that later).

Honestly, the site is very clunky. I spent a long time just staring at it trying to work out where to start. The style is extremely outdated. It looks like a forum you stumbled across when you were 15 and believed you were a vampire. Appearance isn’t everything, but the site was also clumsy, cluttered, and actually quite difficult to read at times. I only realised on my second day using the site that I had a mailbox (it’s hidden in the corner next to Logout, written in red on a black background).

Fun fact: you can drag components of your profile into a different order. I don’t see the point of this, but you can. You can also add comments forum posts, blog posts, videos, events, and friends to your profile – although don’t ask me how.

The main content categories are: Members, Photos, Videos, Forums, Blogs. None of these areas are particularly user-friendly. I didn’t really know what I was doing as I attempted to browse them. Content is quite thin on the ground. I don’t know if this is a glitch or on purpose but there are only three pages of content available per category, and they’re not super recent. I also frequently found that content supposedly had hundreds of comments, yet when I clicked on it, there were no comments or only a couple.
 

Community Feel on Deviantside.com

I used the ‘See who’s online’ function. It was me, and two men. Sure, it was 1:00 am, but it’s a global site, so I really don’t see any excuse. Compared to the user base of mainstream dating sites like Plenty Of Fish, the number of members is very underwhelming. The few members that do use the site also do not use it frequently, most of them being cited as online 3-5 days ago.

It seems that the users simply aren’t active. Hardly anyone posts, comments, rates, responds. Every corner of the site is bare. Users seem disinterested and half-hearted. It seems the site is fading into obscurity, or perhaps never took off.

Users that you can find seem to be fairly balanced in terms of gender. Many of the female accounts appear to be fake, or at least using fake pictures. The classic catfish habit of using images of porn stars and alternative models in what is clearly a photo shoot. Many people also do not have pictures of themselves, but things like sports teams, cartoons, etc. so it seems anonymity is key here.

The ‘real’ users on the site tend to be a mix, not necessarily a bad thing, and not very surprising. Many of them also appear to be married – this I did find surprising, and quite uncomfortable. The women seem very confident in their sexuality and fetishes, whereas the men seem more hesitant. Perhaps newly kinky, and looking to discover their fetish.

Deviantside.com Review | Final thoughts

Deviantside.com is a well-meaning, but ultimately outdated, inactive, user unfriendly site. It’s lacking in quality content and its user base is very modest. It’s actually not even a particularly kinky site – considering its specialist labelling, it is very tame. I saw nothing I haven’t seen before, and would even say that it contains less kinky behaviour than mainstream dating sites that I’ve used such as Plenty of Fish and Tinder.

Cover image released from Shutterstock.com