Fall haul: We’re cleaning up a bit

Similar to a spring clean, we’re doing a “fall haul” and chucking off some things that we no longer need — starting with our private pages on Bateworld.

Brief interjection: Jack-off club organization is so confusing to anyone who has not studied and poured hours into figuring out how to get a club off the ground. This seems silly to say, but we have to state clearly: we’re not shutting down Austin Jacks and we’re not leaving Bateworld. Join our main group page on Bateworld. Back to the blog post!

On Bateworld.com, the pantheon of batordom, you can create public or private pages called groups to gather bators around common interests.

Saying adios to our private groups on Bateworld

When we started this iteration of Austin Jacks in 2022, we didn’t “own” the public group page on Bateworld for Austin Jacks, so we created private group pages for each major locale of Austin (North, Central, and South).

Austin Jacks North for all areas north of North Loop and was created after taking over an abandoned private page (on Bateworld, members can claim a group if the previous owners leave it up for grabs).

Austin Jacks South (for bators south of the Colorado) and Austin Jacks Central (for bators between North Loop and the lake) were created shortly after.

We created avatars using phallic-shaped produce emojis for each group featuring Cowboy Jack (the cowboy emoji) to give some freshness and personality to what could-be Austin Jacks (we hadn’t officially formed).

We saw the main group page (“Austin Jacks”) as a place to gather everyone interested in an Austin Jacks club, and we aimed to have the private pages be more like filters of that group page, like community pages for bators in those specific areas of Austin.

Bate with your neighbor

With our private pages on Bateworld, we aimed to solve the following:

Bring bators in certain areas closer together. The pages were meant to be exclusively for bators who resided in those areas with the concept of “getting to know your neighbor.” On the Austin Jacks Bateworld group discussions, we saw a lot of posts asking “Hey, anybody in [Austin neighborhood]?” and with no responses. Guys were desperately looking for someone to bate with in their neighborhoods.
Eliminating the guesswork of whether a bator was too far away. We also learned that where a hosting bator lived in relation to Lady Bird Town Lake on the Colorado River was a determinant. Guys in south Austin wouldn’t cross the river to go north, and vice-versa. (Understandable. Crossing I-35 downtown, Mopac, and Lamar are stressful at times.)
Get bators excited about Austin Jacks. Before 2023 when we really kicked things off, there wasn’t much activity in terms of organized events for bators in Austin even though there was a lot of demand. We wanted to start with Bateworld and private groups was the best option we could take.

Why we don’t need them

We’ve had some issues and learned some things:

Bators confused joining the private groups on Bateworld as joining the club itself. Because the concept of a jack-off club was new to some in Austin, they assumed that we were a Bateworld-created group, which is not the case (we still have this issue). We love Bateworld (and are down to work together!), but we are not associated with Bateworld.
New-to-Austin bators didn’t get the concept. Austin has had the issue of growing so fast, to the point where there’s the concept of “old Austin,” which is tied to former traditions and customs and haunts that new residents won’t understand. But even “old Austin” is changing and evolving as the city continues to evolve; what was new is now old in a lot of ways. The notion of Lady Bird Town Lake being a barrier to bating was lost on some, especially if they’re new to Austin. Newbies were more eager to get to know the city, so crossing the river (and lake) were less of an issue.
Bators in general didn’t get the concept. We noticed sometimes that guys would request to be in all three localized private groups. Unless they were omniscient beings (which is possible maybe), we think it was FOMO ultimately. Joining every Bateworld group to see where the action is is common.
Bators were unsure if they could attend events being held in other areas of Austin. What’s cool about being a mobile jack-off club is that you can jack-off anywhere in greater-Austin area. While we created localized groups for neighbors to bate together, we also brought Austin Jacks to them so that they and anyone could meet in person. Our events remain for any bator (over 21).
Bators who lived outside of Austin felt excluded. What about commuters, people who don’t live in Austin but work in Austin; what about visitors to Austin; what about residents of greater Austin. We tried to mitigate this by stating the group’s purpose in the description but either the description wasn’t read or understood.
Bators felt it was too organized. Sometimes folks can be comfortable with the status quo, but the status quo wasn’t working for everyone. Catch-22.
We did this to ourselves! Managing the private pages was a logistical strain for the admin (me) to have to check each person’s zip code and message them to make sure they were requesting to join the right group, or if they even lived in Austin (we got requests from other countries).
Are we exclusive or not? We’ve learned that guys (maybe, people?) like the idea of exclusivity but don’t want to be excluded — even if our intentions were to connect bators by neighborhood. Exclusivity conjures quality and likeness of mindsets and goals, etc. We think Austin Jacks memberships will be great for this.

We gathered insights and quotes from bators in those groups

Insights

Click thumbails to view larger.

Notes

Graph 1: You’ll notice that there’s a choice with Austin Jacks North and Austin Jacks South combined. Before we did an intensive member re-organization last year, there were members in both groups.
Graph 2: “Yes” and “Yes, I have connected with other bators…” should be combined as the latter replaced the former to be more clarifying like the other choices.
Graph 3: The responses to this graph conflict with responses. While the majority of responders feel the private groups could be beneficial to meeting local bators, few have found them to be helpful in meeting local bators.

Quotes

For the private groups

“The Bateworld groups at least give your indication of more of their pics and to see if there is a connection. So keeping them should be beneficial.”

Against the private groups

“I think the separate groups are confusing. Might be better to have one Austin group and then post a discussion thread for each area. Then, people in each area can post their usernames if they want to be classified.”
“I understand the difference between the general Austin Jacks and the ‘private groups,’ but I think that system is probably more complicated than need be. My guess is that people will often confuse the purposes of the two, and while closeness is nice, I don’t know why I’d want to post in a group that excludes potential bate buds in North/South Austin who are nonetheless close enough to meet up. I’d personally prefer just a single Bateworld group.”
“Having the different groups seems like it’s opposite of [bringing] bators together. I think it should be one large group and allow folks to meet one another across the city. I don’t think 10-12 miles is gonna stop bate buds from connecting. I would combine the groups.”
“Honestly, I hadn't thought of using the Members of the private group to connect with others before you mentioned it in this survey.”

What you can do now

Ditching the private groups doesn’t mean we aren’t connecting with each other. Bators who have attended our events get invited to our private Telegram, where they can arrange informal meet-ups. We like this because they know our Code of Conduct and can use that (if they like) when they bate together.

In lieu of our private groups, you can…

Join our Austin Jacks public group on Bateworld and hang out.
Post where you live and what you’re looking for in the Austin Jacks Bateworld discussion posts for North, South, and Central. We’ve even added a post for commuters to Austin.
Attend our monthly events, where you can meet other friendly, cool bators in the Austin area.
If you’ve attended our events, then you have access to our Telegram chat where you can also meet guys in your neighborhood. (We do not give access to anyone who has not attended our events.)

In conclusion, we started the private groups on Bateworld (Austin Jacks North, Austin Jacks Central, Austin Jacks South) so that we could solve some issues we’d been seeing in the Austin bator community, but we ended up solving them in other ways by owning the public group Austin Jacks on Bateworld, having a private chat on Telegram, and having regular, monthly events where guys can exchange info.

Was this idea a failure? We don’t think so. It worked for some and for a time, but we’ve outgrown them.

For admin only: This section’s for us

Additional quotes from the private groups survey:

“Doing a great job!” 😭❤️
“I thank you for all you're doing to build an active community here in Austin. I've been here over 30yrs now & this is the first time I believe I'm witnessing what appears to be a safe, sex positive bate club getting the traction you have. You're on track. Grateful.” 🥲❤️