I’ve seen and read a lot of stuff in my life that was shocking. From the mild things that made me feel a bit queasy, to the more extreme stuff that has given me the shakes or prevented me from sleeping. However, I’m lucky enough that I don’t have PTSD, or any other significant issues that would cause me to be seriously affected by this. The worst I get is anxiety, and that’s more related to my to-do list than my reading habits.

So. Lucky me.

If you’d asked me five years ago whether we should print trigger warnings on books, films, and other media, in order to warn people who could be seriously adversely affected, I’d probably have accused you of trying to sneak in some censorship. What’s more, as a sex writer I’d have told you that my sexual fantasies are sometimes dark, and that you should take that as read when you read this blog.

Surprise! I was wrong.

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If you hate graphs and stats and nerdy things, please look away now. If you run a sex blog, or you’re just curious as to how one works, step a little closer.

I’ve always had a theory, based on what I tend to see on Twitter and Facebook, that despite billing this as a sex blog, the most popular posts are actually the ones that are fairly tangential to sex acts themselves. Posts about feminism, dating, the Friend Zone – anything that falls roughly into the category of ‘ranty ones.’ These posts tend to get more retweets, shares, comments, and all the things that a wanky social media manager would irritatingly call ‘engagement.’ But when it comes to traffic, the filthy blog posts get far more, by quite some margin.

When I’ve chatted to other bloggers about this on Twitter, some of them have been as curious as I am. If you’re a sex blogger, is it worth sprinkling some politics in with your filth? If you’re a different kind of blogger, is it worth expanding your reach with some well-targeted sex chat?

And, the thing I’m most intrigued about: despite occasionally being annoyed when I link to filth, are people on Twitter actually more likely to click a link if they think it’s #nsfw?

Let’s have a look.

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Yesterday I told people to tweet me with any topics they wanted me to cover. The suggestions ranged from quite bizarre through really fucking bizarre to seriously interesting. I haven’t been able to tackle all of them in depth, because blimey there were a hell of a lot of them. If you’ve better answers than I have (and why wouldn’t you? I basically know nothing), then please do join in below the line. Some of these I might do more on later, because there are some really interesting topics here.

So here goes: a slightly weird meta-blog, in which we discuss everything from knickers to nearly injuring yourself during sex, and ponder the intensely philosophical question: why do most people think it’s OK to eat a pig, but not to fuck one?

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When you tell someone a story, how much of it is true? Every detail? Probably not. Whenever you tell someone something that actually happened, there’ll be elements of it that you remember perfectly, and other elements that you don’t. You’ll perhaps gloss over some of the awkward details, or play them up to comic effect, or tell a story in a context which doesn’t fully explain the whys as well as the whats.

And so it is with sex stories.

During an email interview the other day, someone asked me how much of what I write is true. My initial, kneejerk response was: all of it. And that’s the simplest answer. Everything I write here – unless it’s specifically marked as a fantasy or bucket list shag – actually happened. But to say it like that is to gloss over what actually happens when you write up a sex story – whether it’s a relationship you had ten years ago, or a quickie you had last night.

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