Always Aroused Girl

Tonight we’ll take a look at one of the biggies, a veritable matriarch of the sex blogosphere, Always Aroused Girl.  This blog is interesting for several reasons.  First, its longevity allows a reader to observe its evolution.  Second, it manages to combine sex, life and, yes, business, in a way that seems, well, not as jarring as it should.  Third, it does these things in a pretty unassuming and down-to-earth way. 

 

Although the genesis of this blog is apparently lost to a hardware/software catastrophe some years ago, you can still go back and find where the famous AAG started, tentatively posting pictures of flowers, working through separation and divorce and a somewhat, at least it seems, halting reintroduction to sex in all its forms.  The thing is, AAG doesn’t seem to make a big deal of it.  It’s just the way it is.  Kind of like my observation of the other evening, though, AAG seems to be tiring of the sex part a bit.  Lately, a large percentage of her posts have been categorized under “Family” and just the other night she waxed eloquent about just wanting to have some plain home-cooked human contact.

 

Along the way she has picked up a lot of pointers and is more than happy to share her knowledge and experience.  Thinking of trying anal sex?  Look here.  Want to change the taste of your semen?  She has the answer. Need to torture a rapist?  Got you covered.  Sex toys?  She’s tried them all (no need to link, they are all over the side bar).  Just don’t ask her to wear sexy shoes. 

 

Back to evolution for a second.  Things here start kind of slow, pick up some pretty good sexual steam as AAG leaves her marriage (you can learn a lot about the good and bad of online dating here), then more personal non-sexual stuff comes in, and eventually we have…blogging as a business.  By now you probably have figured out that I would ordinarily jump all over (and not in a good way) any blogger with a virtual tip jar. I surprised myself here though, after thinking about it a bit.  AAG has a lot of wisdom and plain old advice, from which we can all learn something.  I charge for my advice, why shouldn’t she? And with her, payment is still optional.

 

Blog type:  Sport Utility Blog

 

Erotic Quality:  Anymore, this blog is not really about sexual adventure or experiences, except to the extent they serve to illustrate a point.  Lately, it hasn’t been about sex very much at all except to the extent you want to try to win a prize by writing a story about one (or more) of her sponsor’s sex toys.  Still, there is a lot for those who will take the time to go back into the archives.  The sex is not always perfect either, just like it isn’t for the rest of us.

 

Honesty:  I think this factor is one reason for the appeal and longevity of the site. AAG manages to make some more “out there” aspects of her sexual evolution and make them seem natural.  If you want her own take on the issue, look here, a post from 2006.  I do think AAG is getting a little tired of things, though.  It sure seems like she is ready to move on, but is staying around because her audience wants her to stay around.  Maybe I’m wrong, but I think this blog is entering its autumn, even if the some of us still don’t want to acknowledge the dropping temperature.

 

Presentation:  Go back awhile if you want the flower photos.  The commercial aspect is a little annoying, but the site is very easy to navigate, an especially useful factor given how much material there is here.

 

Comments: Lots and lots….just what you would expect.  The more interesting are those that pop up every now and then to question things like whether family belongs on a sex blog.  AAG’s many fans usually drown those folks out.

 

Fetish Factor:  I already mentioned AAG’s aversion to sexy shoes, but pretty much everything else is apparently fair game.  She does have a real affinity for mutual anal sex.  If you really want to test your mettle, read this: Snap. And then…read the comments…yikes!

 

Overall:  There is a lot of material here.  We get to know AAG as much as we can through an electronic medium, and clearly there are many who feel they know her well.  She is a supporter of many bloggers in this genre and has lots to offer anyone who will take some time on her site.  Maybe the thing I like the most is her accessibility.  Success may have tired her out a bit, but it hasn’t changed her much.

Expiration Dates

Reviewing blogs one at a time can give a different perspective than one seen by a regular reader. Instead of just stopping in for the latest, I make an effort look at the site in its entirety.  When I review a site, I try to go back to the beginning to see how the blog and the blogger evolve.  Sometimes this is just a matter of a few months.  Other times, it means years, and in those cases, hundreds of posts and thousands of comments.

 

The more blogs I look at, especially in the erotic genre, the more I wonder if blogs shouldn’t have a built in expiration date.  I’ve noticed that there seem to be stages in a blog’s evolution.  The beginning is often timid, even inhibited until the blogger becomes more comfortable with issues like expression, message and audience.  Sometimes, new bloggers have a lot on their mind and come out blasting.  While usually better initially, the reason quickly fades and one can feel both the author and the audience losing interest.

 

Most blogs seem to hit a stride after a few months.  By this time, the blogger develops a rapport, and often a dialog, with her audience and is getting enough out of it to keep up with regular posting.  After that though, it becomes more difficult to sustain momentum.  In the sex blog context, the subject matter is necessarily narrow and does not always lend itself to constant evolution.  The better bloggers seem to be aware of this reality and have developed various means to manage it, whether by selective embellishment of their adventures, actually trying new things, modifying their literary technique, or by slowly shifting focus.

 

The best examples of this evolution are the “lifestyle” sex bloggers.  When they start, almost all they talk about is the sex, sex, sex.  Sure, they pepper tidbits about their lives into the mix, providing context (or perhaps false realism) to their salacious tales.  If they hang around for awhile though, we start seeing more life and less sex life in the posts. 

 

When I started reviewing, I went to several of the more venerable blogs, all of which had been recommended by readers as “classics.”  The blogs were good, but they really weren’t about sex very much anymore.  I had to go back months in some cases to get to the stuff that made the blogs famous in the first place.

 

None of this is a criticism.  It is just an observation.  In some cases, the evolution itself is interesting, and what it means really depends on the original nature of the blog.  One generalization that does strike me, though, is that the long-term evolution far more often moves from more sex to less sex than it does the other way around.  I guess even sex bloggers get tired of it after awhile, and just want to talk about something else.