Kinky Dating | ShinyKicks Review

If you’re looking for some fetish fuck fun but time's short and you fancy a change from the clubs, online dating is a great option. So, in our series of fetish dating website reviews, we check out ShinyKicks. But will you manage to find a kinky date here?

 

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

Looking for BDSM dating with an authentic safe, sane and consensual community feel? Check out our kinky dating listings to find kinksters like you, near you - or visit our kinky forum which is filled with 1000's of threads on many fetish and BDSM topics.  Sign up is FREE   

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ShinyKicks Overview

www.ShinyKicks.com is another free BDSM dating site which claims to deliver a community experience. They had a pretty big overhaul last year and the pages are much cleaner for it.

Initially it looks encouraging; the homepage is tastefully presented, it's well put together and includes a few forum posts relating to the BDSM lifestyle.

Better still, joining is free, secure and doesn't take up a lot of time. After completing some general questions, new members are sent a welcome email and you’re allowed in to browse around.


Sign-up is easy and members must complete their profile to get full site access

We found that ShinyKicks works to make sure the BDSM community on their site is real. In fact, in order to access the sites' deeper areas your profile needs to be at least 20% complete. Profiles can be padded out with photos, details about your kinky pleasures and also your more conventional non-BDSM pastimes.

There are plenty of tick boxes, so browsing through is given an extra frisson of voyeuristic excitement. You might discover that sexy dom (me) you've got your eye on likes snowboarding or baking, along with their nipple clamps and mummification. After all, we're here to meet real people, right?
 

ShinyKicks Review | Lots of Members... in the US

Most fetish dating sites offer especially robust searches because the BDSM community is so diverse and the lifestyle offers so much choice. Being able to chat about new kinky activities is stimulating, but you might also want to find people who appreciate some old school moves.

Frustratingly, ShinyKicks gives few advanced search options. In terms of fetishes, it limits you to Dominant, Submissive, Slave or Switch, the tip of the iceberg. After performing a very general search, 18 results came up for London. In the whole of the UK, there are many more members, but most people on ShinyKicks are in the USA or Canada.

Once past the first few pages, it becomes clear that ShinyKicks' website is in drastic need of some TLC, the content is poorly maintained and minimal effort has gone in to creating an enjoyable user experience.

The news section has a few articles from a year ago, there’s a neglected blog and a pictures section with a ton of boring selfies. The videos area is dominated by one member who has posted six of the seven entries and the other has come from an admin.

None of the content on the site is particularly interesting, all tame enough to be posted on YouTube. You won’t learn much about the lifestyle as a newbie and seasoned BDSM demons will get bored within minutes.
 

ShinyKicks Offline Action

Catching up with people for a chat at real events can be a heady experience, you get to socialise and hangout with a BDSM crowd in a no-pressure atmosphere. 

Sadly, the shinykicks.com community events section is also empty. To add insult to injury, the calendar is broken, so if you click forward it links to a ‘Member not found’ error message.

Next in line is the Hot or Not tab which presents you with a selection of member pictures to rate. No complaints about that, it’s a subtle way of attracting attention and works well on Plenty of Fish, too.

Last of all is the Forum. This has been set up for members to chat about their lifestyle, but the admins have invested little here. There are a couple of sporadic posts but nothing regular or organic, tellingly, the most members ever online was four.
 

ShinyKicks Review | Final Thoughts

The whole experience of writing this review felt the opposite of kinky: the site is lonely, isolating and makes you feel deflated.

Cover image released from Shutterstock.com