Is balloon (and similar) fetishes slowly dying?

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  • Non_Popper
    Junior Member
    • Nov 2021
    • 9

    Is balloon (and similar) fetishes slowly dying?

    Hello all,

    I have a short reflection...
    I don't know if it's just me or not, but I find it harder and harder to find good material online.
    20 years ago the abundance of balloon related images and videos were plenty, but now, when technology would allow for some amazing material, I have a hard time finding ONE good site...
    IRC is as close to death as it can come and there are very few souls still keeping it alive. I can't take credit for this though since I'm visiting about as often as an egoistic child visiting his dying relative.

    I miss the good old days. There were more people into this (As it seems) and more material...

    Are we all getting old?
  • Axle
    Senior Member
    • Jan 2022
    • 136

    #2
    Re: Is balloon (and similar) fetishes slowly dying?

    i was around at that point too and i know the feeling. though i often think that maybe it's not the scene dying out as much as it's me losing touch with where things like that fit into the modern internet. there used to be a lot more free content dotted around the place but as guidelines and controls have gotten tighter those have reduced. not to mention people working out what they can get away with monetizing.

    if only i had the foresight to save more stuff from the 2000s.



    i'm perfectly willing to own up to being 'old man yells at cloud' on this one.
    Curiosity killed the cattex.

    Comment

    • AJK64
      Moderator
      • Jun 2018
      • 725

      #3
      Re: Is balloon (and similar) fetishes slowly dying?

      Try thisvid.com
      Loads of joiners uploading good content in there. Join and upload things you have yourself too

      Comment

      • bobgoz
        Junior Member
        • Nov 2022
        • 5

        #4
        Re: Is balloon (and similar) fetishes slowly dying?

        With the internet not being as safe as it was way back when a lot of people just don't post content through the fear of being recognised. I personally have a lot of content I've made myself but it also wouldn't take much for someone to find it and out me in public.

        Plenty of us out there just not so many willing to share unless your professional or willing to put it behind a pay wall for some protection.

        Comment

        • Dust of the Saturn
          Stretched like space-time
          • Feb 2018
          • 300

          #5
          Re: Is balloon (and similar) fetishes slowly dying?

          They're not dying, just moving and adapting to a changing world. We tend to hang onto the stuff we grew up with.

          Clips4sale has a million and one proffessional studios catering to our fetish.

          Every Instagram model is also giving balloons a try.

          Now about the fetish itself "dying out", I think for as long as balloons are going to be present around us, the fetish will stay.
          And I ask myself, why? and all I hear is the cold, dead silence of the cosmos.

          Comment

          • Mike D.
            Moderator
            • Mar 2020
            • 77

            #6
            Re: Is balloon (and similar) fetishes slowly dying?

            As someone that chose to finally hang it up a couple years ago, I can certainly bring my perspective to things. I believe the peak of commercial, quality balloon material, peaked in the mid 2000s. There were probably up to 10 quality sites out there that really understood what we liked. IMHO, things started to turn with the start of sites like C4S. Suddenly, anyone with a video camera could make money off of the balloon fetish community. While this sounds great for the consumer, for the producer, it became harder and harder to compete with the masses and get our material out there for people to see. Add to that the file sharing sites that started to crop up. I remember specifically Loons-elevator citing piracy as the main reason they decided to close up. Eventually it just became too much for a lot of websites to continue to operate. I held out updating my sites until early 2020 when I had just decided I no longer got much fun out of it. The constant battle with piracy did not help either. There are a few quality sites out there, but I only know of one left that is run by a real Looner and that it Italoon.

            Mike D.

            Comment

            • Scooter
              Senior Member
              • May 2022
              • 246

              #7
              Re: Is balloon (and similar) fetishes slowly dying?

              Originally posted by loonerfun00
              They're not dying, just moving and adapting to a changing world. We tend to hang onto the stuff we grew up with.

              Clips4sale has a million and one proffessional studios catering to our fetish.

              Every Instagram model is also giving balloons a try.

              Now about the fetish itself "dying out", I think for as long as balloons are going to be present around us, the fetish will stay.
              This I agree with. It's less that there's less stuff, and more that the stuff is being consolidated. It's a trend with the internet in general, where there used to be a lot more niche sites, but now there's a couple "go-tos" to fill a role.

              Now, there could be a case where there's less content that's good, with a larger amount of it being mediocre. That's personal taste, and I don't disagree with there being a change in the style of content produced. This is why it's good to support the creators who make something you do enjoy, as long as you're able to, financially or otherwise.

              Comment

              • Ronnie
                Junior Member
                • Oct 2022
                • 18

                #8
                Re: Is balloon (and similar) fetishes slowly dying?

                I don't think it's dying out at all. There's way more content now than there was back in the 90s when I got online. There are dozens of studios uploading to clips4sale every day. You also still have sites like Club Steffi and House Of Loons producing great content and there's sites like loonerlanding that are great. It doesn't help how rampant piracy is for looner content and I was even surprised to see people endorsing it on this very forum recently and quite sad that the mods allow it.

                Comment

                • ferguson
                  Junior Member
                  • Nov 2021
                  • 19

                  #9
                  Re: Is balloon (and similar) fetishes slowly dying?

                  I think that many People moved from "free" to "paid". As it was mentioned before- everyone with camera can make a video (and expect that make millions € on it).

                  Comment

                  • Vicci
                    Blown to bits
                    • Oct 2009
                    • 655

                    #10
                    Re: Is balloon (and similar) fetishes slowly dying?

                    Instagram is full of people claiming to be looners, but, I'd say 95% of them are just people trying to get you to subscribe to their onlyfans/manyvids - simply doing it for the money, they just seem so fake and forced with what they're doing.
                    Vicci x

                    Comment

                    • TheMole
                      Senior Member
                      • Nov 2019
                      • 214

                      #11
                      Re: Is balloon (and similar) fetishes slowly dying?

                      I think it's flattening out rather than dying. Looner content isn't held in a few small, centralized place anymore like it once was. It's available just about anywhere material from other fetishes is nowadays.

                      My biggest complaint right now is the tendency for quantity over quality. Sites like loonerlanding for example, really sexy girl and really nice balloons but I swear half the time they just turn a camera on and tell the girl "I don't care, just do whatever looks cute with the balloons" and it end up being a really rushed, played out, forgettable clip.

                      C4S seems to be where it's at for quality these days, sadly. Places like BalloonDorado and Studio Fuusen are always guaranteed gold. The last really good subscription site I know is houseofloons.com

                      Comment

                      • SusieDK
                        Senior Member
                        • Dec 2017
                        • 201

                        #12
                        Re: Is balloon (and similar) fetishes slowly dying?

                        Hi there,

                        This is quite an interesting topic. I don't think either that the fetish is sort of vanishing og dying out. There are however quite some areas in which the communication about it has changed, - and not really to the better.
                        These days it is very much about videos and going to places with 'balloon action' like night clubs and such. If one has other interests it is not so easy to find people who are willing to discuss these matters. This forum is one of the rather few exceptions where it is still possible to find people who are willing to talk about the nature of the fetish, how we/ended up with it and how we deal with it in everyday life. Most discussion is at a much more superficial level, and like Vicci I have the impression that quite some - even in this forum - are not really 'into balloons' (as I prefer to think about it myself), but seek customer for their sites or simply want to draw attention.
                        Part of the reason for this development is that it has become business, kind of like pornography (just of course on a lesser scale), and as it is quite easy to make a video of having fun with balloons one way or another, there are lots of people who are after what they think is easy money. As they have no idea about what they are dealing with, the content is of course not especially interesting. There are also sites that put great effort into making good content, either due to the owner having the fetish or due to some serious reasearch, but it is not easy for these sites to compete with all the 'rubbish' ones, and the quite widespread sharing of videos is also making it hard to make things 'balance' for these 'higher quality sites'.
                        As for myself I am however more affected of the change in nature of the communication. Earlier people were far more interested in discussing the nature of the fetsh - as I mentioned initially', it very quickly changes into sharing photos, videos or having 'online sessions', which is probably all fine for many, but not really something I am especially interested in. I have (what I think of as) a normal life with family and job, I live in a small town where everybody knows everybody, and I have no wish to mingle my feelings and ways with balloons into my everyday life. On the other hand I am hugely interested in getting to know as much as possible about 'this balloon thing I ended up with at an early age - I was 13, and I love to discuss these matters, and also how to deal with balloons and the feelings they stir up inside me/us whenever something with balloons shows up. It is also great to share experiences and ideas for funny things like games and such, but being married and true to my husband I am not into 'online sessions'.
                        Sadly the content in most 'balloon forums or forum-like places', there is little interest about these more 'serious' matters, so I hope this forum will continue to function and still leave room for people like me.
                        When 'complaining about how things develop towards more superficial issues is of course also important to remember that we are part of it ourselves, so it is important to contribute to the best of our ability. Don't btw think that I don't want to leave room for the more superficial stuff, it is all fine, - just I am sad that it seems to push the 'deeper' issues away.
                        But dying? No, definitely not. It is just changing in 'nature', and we are to quite some extend driving this change and its direction ourselves.

                        Thank you for reading my posting.

                        Sincerely
                        Susie

                        Comment

                        • craggy2012
                          Senior Member
                          • Jan 2012
                          • 824

                          #13
                          Re: Is balloon (and similar) fetishes slowly dying?

                          I wouldn’t say it’s a dying fetish all together, but there’s definitely been a shift away from dedicated balloon content producers to what I suppose you could call mass produced content of today. As I said elsewhere on here still today the best content in my opinion is home made content by genuine fetishists, over this more generic “oh we can make those” sorts of videos for you. Some are great clips- but there’s many modern clips that just don’t engage or grab your attention, especially if the model is bored, or excessively lays on the I wana be a pornstar dialogue!

                          You don’t need it, just keep the dialogue natural, add a bit of fear and trepidation in the models face (bouncing away on a massive, big balloon fearing the pop) and I’m more than happy!

                          Emmanuel’s Balloon Bounce clips were great for this way back!

                          Comment

                          • Meililoon
                            aka lyckr
                            • Sep 2014
                            • 700

                            #14
                            Re: Is balloon (and similar) fetishes slowly dying?

                            As others have said, it's more a case of things changing. Forums have been losing users to modern chat services like Discord and the big social media sites.

                            When it comes to videos, I get the impression that dedicated member sites don't seem as viable anymore. I imagine the running expenses are quite high these days, with 1080p, or even 4k, video files taking a lot of space. Then you're expected to churn out two quality videos every week, which I imagine must take a lot of time, planning and work. All this for a €30 monthly subscription, in which the customer can pay once and get 30-50 videos, then repeat a year later when enough new interesting content has been released. Also makes it very easy for someone to share their content in bulk somewhere.
                            Compare that to selling your content on a clip site, where you usually charge €1 for every minute of your videos (minus the site's cut) and have a lot more freedom in terms of when you release new content. It's also a lot less risk, as you don't have to invest nearly as much time and money as with your own site. This in turn drasticaly lowers the barrier of entry, meaning a lot of people make a few videos to dip their toes into it, or just push out loads of low quality content, hoping to sell enough to make a profit. Add to that the massively increased availability of video recording devices and you have a flood of people trying it.

                            Free content (that isn't just pirated stuff) has become a lot rarer now than it was 10-15 years ago. I'm guessing a lot of this has to do with places like Youtube cracking down on this kind of content a lot more than back then. As bobgoz said, there's also the increased risk of being recognized. A lot more people are browsing the internet now than in the past, so there's always a small chance of someone you know randomly coming across a photo or video of you. I also imagine a lot of women who have tried to do this have been put off by nasty comments from men and stopped doing it.

                            Comment

                            • Dust of the Saturn
                              Stretched like space-time
                              • Feb 2018
                              • 300

                              #15
                              Re: Is balloon (and similar) fetishes slowly dying?

                              Thinking about it, I think our fetish might have just hit the mainstream. Like most media, nothing can stay "underground" forever.
                              And I ask myself, why? and all I hear is the cold, dead silence of the cosmos.

                              Comment

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