The other day I received a DM from another rigger with a very large account, one of the biggest. Not the largest I know of, but above the 50K follower margin. It came to mind upon reflection of their message, after feeling honored for even having been outreached, that sometimes I have taken some posts a little far that could be struck down by the IG Gods. While I am pompous to think now, I am doing okay, okay enough to not be deleted, I wonder if I really should be “guilty as charged’ just like the others who have gotten ‘deleted.’

Many before me on IG and currently, have been deleted to only begin again, and sometimes again and again.

The message I received; was ‘to please be careful of your posts as others are going down. We have worked hard to get here (paraphrasing here).’

I can imagine with the size of their account of the person who DM’d me that it was no small climb to get there, a Mount Everest climb to ascend to their stature on IG with more than 50K followers. I might say that I worked strategically to also rise above the fray, it took patience and more patience, digging and digging to find the mother load deposit for some moderate success. Like an old prospector in the desert who eventually found a load.

Mind you, my IG growth came from my rope skills and in great part from collaborations with other talent so that we grew from other, and let’s be honest, me mostly with them. Though at least they too felt some wind at their sail as my followers grew and so did theirs in kind. In tandem, our sails rose into the internet, and our skiff ran quick in the oceanic currents powered by the all might IG Algorithm. Gaining followers like wind against our sails. 10K, 11K, 15K, 20K….

You see one doesn’t just grow a follower base alone. It is done through collaborations with others; models, photographers, others rope artists, photomeets, and rope jams of yore (pre-pandemic days). And some plan chops on knowing how to tie, or by God learn the tie the night before. Yeah, I have risen to the challenge.

More often than not, we have made great content and sometimes, content best suited for Twitter. I posted a few and a few more, and luckily I took a step back and sanitized my account as others pushed the limits of the bubble. Good for them, but at their peril. Deletion.

So while sometimes I pompously sit and say, that was kind of a suggestive post by them…they summarily got charged, tried and sentenced, they were warned through summons….so now I sit and wonder, have I now been summoned by this kind unsolicited warning. Am I pushing my limits to be charged?

Am I Guilty? I hope not.

So I tonight sit more modest and humbled before you as I pontificate. I will moderate myself a little more and appreciate that I got to a modest number, over 20K followers. For our little Scene, rope bondage niche in the IG world of 1 billion users, it can likened to climbing a small local mountain, like Mount Whitney here in California, a 14K foot peak. While I sit up here, I look to other ranges, Kilimanjaro (19 feet), K2 (28 feet), and of course, Mount Everest 29 feet….where those with over 50K followers sit…..and for someone like Kinoko, well they sit nicely in orbit at 150K followers and growing….