I thought I would post something I put up on another CD friendly website. Crossdressers.com is my go-to for genuine feedback, support and discussion. There are others out there with their own angle, mainly catering towards the private hookup market. So what I say below relates to how the CD community is affected by the rise of the latter. Some of what I mention might be the same where you live.
My other reference point for much of this is my experience of having returned to New Zealand after 15 years away. NZ has always been a very permissive country. We were the first country to give women the vote (1890). We elected the first openly transsexual major (1995) who later became the first openly transsexual member of parliament (1999). So there's a bit of background for those who think NZ is actually Middle Earth. But we are a small country. 4.5 million people in an area the size of the UK ... and cut into two islands ... with mountain ranges and volcanoes thrown in just to make that road trip a little harder to organise.
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The internet is killing the CD community. (And probably other niche/kink communities too.)
It's ironic that the very mechanisms that were put in place to bring us together are what is sending us underground.
I have spoken to other CDs who were active in NZ 10 - 15 years ago and they all speak of the community being so much more active then than it is now. They met in person, either in public or in private. It would have been that way because that was the only way for it to have been.
When I started CDing 15 years ago in the UK, we didn't rely on technology to do the work for us. Just having a digital camera was a huge deal. Some of the really technologically minded girls had websites which were just dumping grounds for their photos. It wasn't interactive. It was pure Web version 1.0. We went out because how else were we going to interact with others like us? You had to go out there and find them. We exchanged email addresses and phone numbers, not friend requests and profile comments.
What the modern day internet has given us is a watered down and vicarious experience. Flattering friends lists, likes, loves and comments on that favourite outfit of yours. It's mostly vacuous. Like a kinksters way of virtue signalling to one another. Now we can all live out our CD desires without leaving the comfort zone of our computers. But is this what we really want?
It's Stevia in your coffee when you prefer brown sugar, it's a porn clip when you want sex, it's methadone when you need a proper hit. It's enough so you can say you're involved but not enough that it genuinely satisfies the urges that brought you here in the first place. It might be a tool, but it's also an excuse not to bother: 'I have to live it out on the internet'. No you don't.