FetLife iCalendar: Hate FetLife, but want to know what’s going on in your Scene? There’s an App For That.

Hi folks!

I imagine that we would be likely to have a conversation that goes something like this:

ME: “FetLife is shit.”
YOU: “I know, I hate FetLife. But it’s where I learn about what’s going on in my community!”
ME: “You mean like for events and stuff?”
YOU: “Yeah.”
ME: *sigh.*

I get it. Like all social networks, the killer feature is the one that connects you to events in your *real, physical life*. Message boards and profiles and stuff, that’s all fun, but what really matters is not being the last to know about the party on Saturday night!

Well, if you really do hate FetLife, but you really do feel like you *need* to use it because it’s where everyone keeps posting events, allow me to offer you a more functional alternative: FetLife iCalendar is a simple FetLife Event to iCalendar exporter.

In literally 1 click, you can now import any city’s FetLife Events to your iCal, Google Calendar, Microsoft Outlook, Mozilla Sunbird, Yahoo! Calendar, and so on. Yes, LITERALLY 1 click. Plus, you never have to give anyone your FetLife username or password.

Kink In Exile wrote a wonderful, but for obvious reasons rather short, how-to guide showing you (with screenshots!) which button to press for FetLife iCalendar depending on what kind of computer you have.

But the short version is:

1. Go to http://fetlife.maybemaimed.com/icalendar/
2. Click the “webcal” link next to the name of the city you want to subscribe to events from.

And, yup, I said “subscribe,” not “download.” Every so often, FetLife iCalendar can *automatically* check for new events posted to FetLife and then will *automatically update your calendar* with that event information. That literal 1-click you used to subscribe to events from FetLife? Yeah, that one click means you *never, ever, ever again* need to browse events by going to FetLife directly if you don’t want to.

In other words, remember when you told me you hate FetLife but feel like you need it to know what’s going on in your community? Yeah, well, now you don’t.

Given all the recent #FAIL that FetLife has had lately (and if you’re not familiar with the story of how John Baku bullied a 9 year old boy on YouTube, of how the caretakers are selectively enforcing their own Terms of Use agreement even in the face of some of their own members getting outed by to convicted murderers, and worse [I SHIT YOU NOT, just check out FetLifeFail.tumblr.com or the #FetLife hashtag on Twitter right now]), maybe it’s about time we all ditched FetLife—but not its usefulness in our lives.

Also, if you’ve got a website of your own, you can download and install FetLife iCalendar yourself. If you can do this, please do, as this will save my servers a lot of hardship! Otherwise, no worries.

Also, if you once used FetLife a bunch but want to keep a backup archive of all your content yourself, then you can also try out this free FetLife Exporter/Backup tool.

I’m putting this on Tumblr (and sending this an as email to certain folks) instead of tweeting about this issue because just yesterday, Twitter suspended my account. I suspect it has to do with FetLife sending possibly illegal DMCA takedown notices that meet the legal definition of frivolous. I’m very upset about being silenced like this.

That’s why, if you have a FetLife account or a Twitter account or anything of the sort, it’d mean a lot to me if you could please write a short post letting your friends know that this tool exists. Please spread the word! Forward this in email! Share the link! :)

(This post was cross-posted from my other blog.)