Well here’s the explanation. Not always a popular thought but this is why I’ve not done it. The question seems to come up a fair bit and even though I’ve answered it in other formats over time I decided to create this general answer for my Youtube channel.
Why don't I put more tie tutorials online?
About the Author: wykd
WykD_Dave (Dave Rickman) is a UK-based shibari bondage enthusiast, who now teaches and performs internationally accompanied by his partner Clover. He started exploring bondage 27 years ago and was autodidact for the first 17 years, until a lesson with shibari professional Osada Steve changed his way of tying. Dave loves Japanese style rope work, and decided to dedicate himself to this. “It isn’t about the rope, it’s about the expression, the look in the eyes, the hopelessness, the agony”.
Now, Dave & Clover teach and perform all around the world. He takes great pleasure in seeing people get it and open their minds to what rope bondage can really be. “Not just a means of restraint but a much deeper and personally connected experience than any other I’ve ever found.”
Running into Dave means running into his lovely partner Clover. She is very passionate about shibari bondage too, she models and performs, as well as makes impressive photos of Japanese rope work done by Dave.
Her photography focuses on the feelings involved in rope play, not just the pretty ties, and she tells stories with her pictures. Dave: “Of course Clover’s a huge part of everything. Without her photography would people ever have noticed?”
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I agree with your analogy entirely, and your implication that learning from videos alone is dangerous. But I strongly disagree with your conclusion to not put videos online as a result.
To use your analogy, that is the same as not providing maps online, and requiring someone to show a drivers license before you hand them a map. As you might have noticed, google maps does not work that way.
Another analogy without a car would be: don’t provide maps of dangerous mountain terrain, because then people without the required skill might go there. This is not how this works. People will go, but then they won’t have a map.
I think you’ve misunderstood the nature of the analogy. I’m illustrating how learning from an inappropriate source is harmful. It’s an illustration not a direct comparison. You cannot over extend the analogy because the two are not directly comparable in all cases.
In your comment you kind of make my point for me again because maps are used for navigation and information in other ways yes, but they are not used to teach people how to drive which was the point I was making. This is because they are inappropriate for that purpose. We would still not let someone drive without their first learning how to operate a vehicle competently. It’s not about having information, it’s about learning a skill and what is appropriate in learning that skill.
Bondage tutorials are made specifically for the purpose of teaching bondage. My point is that sometimes they can be as inappropriate for this purpose as using maps to teach driving. No you don’t need a driving license to buy a map, you need one to drive a car. Why do you need to learn to drive a car properly before you are let out on the public highway? Because it is obviously highly risky to let someone incompetent engage in a potentially very dangerous activity. This is why you don’t just give them a map and let them have at it.
Your last point is something that I’ve had put to me a lot unfortunately.
Saying that people do stupid things so why not enable them isn’t for me a winning argument for me.
I agree with your distinction of “drivers license” and “map”. I guess the analogy breaks down because driving can be policed while rope can not.
I don’t think providing teaching resources is enabling people to do stupid things. I think it’s preventing them from it.
Bondage tutorials can be a means to teach a tie to someone that knows bondage.
I agree that they need to learn it before they can properly use the video. But there are many people out there that are capable of tying, but maybe want to know how exactly you tie your favorite futo.
And if you teach in person, do you really check the skill level of everyone in the room? [I haven’t seen you teach at events, maybe you do]. The person standing in the back when you teach at an event gets exactly the same information that the person watching the video gets.
Restricting access to information has never been the solution. Can you give me one example of an area where restriction information has been a successful solution to preventing people from harming themselves outside of kink?
OK, that’s your opinion but I don’t share it for reasons that I have made more than clear. My thoughts on this are informed by my experience of students, and observations of people’s actual behaviour and the outcomes that really come to pass rather than those that people would wishfully hope come to pass.
What’s a ‘futo’? Do you mean a futomomo? This is a Japanese word and I know Japanese people who get very upset at the language being abused in this way and frankly in this case reduced to a meaningless sound. How does this happen that people don’t know to use the word and that this corruption renders it meaningless in the very language it belongs to? Because of incorrectly transmitted information.
Yes of course I do. Is that even a serious question? What competent and conciousness teacher wouldn’t?
This is a ridiculous thing to say. Nobody is trapped at the back, nobody goes without personal attention. I restrict the size of my classes to enable me to teach competently and to give appropriate attention to every student. Good grief this is a none point, and frankly an insulting assumption.
Scuba-diving (there is no way to enforce the training of divers and several divers that learned from theory rather than from proper training have died as a consequence) You can’t prove they wouldn’t have dived without that information, in fact it’s a bit hard to ask them. However they certainly thought they had enough information to do something that in the practical application had factors they could not deal with.
I could name more but I’m really not inclined to waste more time on this given how this post has revealed that you don’t know how I teach, understand my points even though I’ve explained them in detail or even it seems how personal teaching should work.
And maybe to add to that: there are the two “all of shibari” books out there. So people already have a lot of information to do dangerous things.
How does providing additional instructions enable them to hurt themselves more?
Your argument here boils down to… Hey other people have done things you consider inappropriate and frankly wish they hadn’t, so now you should do things that you very firmly feel to be inappropriate too.
No, I should do as my conscience dictates rather than what other people think that I ought to do.
Likewise, The Anarchist Cookbook has been available for decades. It does not mean everyone has a copy, nor that they know how to perform each of the sequences for say, making Nitroglycerine. With anything that is dangerous without adequate instruction, putting a video demonstrating what printed literature details might present enough further information that someone with only the book did not know enough to go ahead and attempt. A video can just as easily reach a completely new audience that have no idea of the book’s existence, thus missing all the safety info, ie: on avoiding nerve damage, quick release ties, and having a hook knife on hand. Ultimately, it’s to avoid having someone whose experience amounts to having watched 50 Shades and once spanked someone at a B&S Ball causing permanent damage or death to another who also knows no better.
I apologize. I’ve been to many classes by many instructors and the only time my skill level was ever checked was before suspensions, never for teaching ties.
You are right, I don’t understand how you teach, and I’ll try to make it to one of your classes.