But I see the realities of competing media, for sure. I don’t like the idea that it might disappear into history some day. Each generation has its own preferred media. I don’t go around surveying people, but anecdotally, there are large portions of the LGBTQ+ community who never have heard of Nifty, especially among younger generations. It’s not the hot, pretty young thing anymore. I try to remain unattached to the fame or the fade. I’m trying to ensure that Nifty doesn’t completely fade away into irrelevance, but everything peaks. Within the LGBTQ+ erotic story community, Nifty remains well known. Nifty remains active, but it’s viewed somewhat nostalgically. There definitely is a generation that grew up with Nifty, like a generation for whom a particular band was meaningful. I think that it matters more as a touchstone for a generation. I see the website statistics, but it’s hard to gauge what that means.
#Gay nifty family how to#
I’m not sure how to phrase this exactly as a question, but do you (and the rest of the people who have been involved with Nifty over the years) understand what a big deal this site’s continued existence is? How much it matters? The topic was more taboo in the past and there were bookstores, for example, that specifically catered to homosexual topics, but I never specifically felt those restrictions on the Internet. There are many outlets for homosexual writing, including major commercial publishing sites. I am not aware of any problems specifically due to homosexual themes.
#Gay nifty family archive#
I would absolutely agree that you have, and (pardon the circle jerk) am really heartened that you view it that way! Would you say that the struggles the Archive has faced in the past have been largely because of discrimination about the subject matter and the fact that so much of it is homosexually themed (although lots of it really defies precise classification)? It sounds cliche, but it’s nice to feel that Nifty and I have been a net positive influence and have created a little more happiness and love in the world. It is very gratifying to hear from people that have been helped by Nifty – either feeling less alone in their sexuality or fetishes, or people who found a mutually consensual relationship. When I first got online in the late 90s, Nifty already WAS felt like it always was. There is a sense of ubiquity to Nifty, for me personally, because it has always been, in my understanding. I read the history lesson in the About section of Nifty and was so fascinated by the journey that’s brought this site to where it is today. It seemed like a given to me that this site had always been and would always continue to be, but he was less sure. I had a chance last year to ask some questions of the guy behind the site – the Nifty Archivist – and talk a bit about where Nifty fits in to the internet landscape in our current era. Other porn would come and go, but Nifty would always be there for me with new stories each week and month in almost every category a blessing I could just take for granted. It was a haven and an accompanying set of rituals (browsing favorite categories according to today’s mood and then seeking out tried and true favorite stories in each) that would follow me to college, to my first apartment, and all through my adult life. And the selection felt limitless – endless entires into nearly two dozen categories. And in contrast to chatrooms and forums, I didn’t feel the pressure of two-way communication I could just read and jack my dick in peace. I was a reader as a kid anyway, and so the site’s all-text format suited me fine. Nifty (or the Nifty Archive) played an outsized role in my online sexual development, partly because it was a one-way enterprise that felt safe and relatively discreet. I had memorized all the urls of favorite sites, and knew exactly where to go when these rare opportunities presented themselves. This was long enough ago that browers didn’t autocomplete urls, and I was operating on a shared family computer, so bookmarks and history were completely out of the question.
#Gay nifty family full#
I can still remember being a bad kid on the internet and waiting endlessly for my parents to leave me alone with the computer long enough to look up the previews of the newest Handjobs magazine each month (I couldn’t afford to download the full versions, and my days of piracy were a ways off still), and then skate over to /nifty/gay. The Nifty Archive has been dear to me for as long as I’ve known it, but what becomes of an all-text empire in the time of unlimited, uncensored hardcore visuals?