I think hobbyist is a lot better than the older term of Johns

I don't doubt that a number of posters don't like the term "hobby" or "hobbyists", but I don't agree that it is necessarily the majority.

Yourdictionary.com defines it as: "An activity or interest pursued outside one's regular occupation and engaged in primarily for pleasure". Sounds about right to me.

Most people can barely tolerate their jobs, but they do live for their hobbies. In the case of this board, many of the hobbyists spend as much of their discretionary income as possible to be with providers. In pursuit of the pleasurable aspects of this activity, these hobbyists have to put up with "cash and dash" girls, LE, the rare robbery and/or murder, and possible disease. Some married hobbyists with much too lose are willing to send personal identifiers to someone on the web they've never met. Sounds to me that hobbyists take their hobby very seriously, indeed.

On the other hand, these hobbyist behaviors are probably no more strange than those exhibited by sports fans, bird-watchers or golfing enthusiasts. I think they've done some neural imaging studies indicating that sports fans experience the same sort of pleasurable activation of the brain that we hobbyists feel when we see or have sex with beautiful women. Given the central role that our hobby plays in procreation, one could even argue that our's is the original hobby, superceding all others.

"Hobby" may be viewed as a pejorative term by some, but that's probably because they don't have any real hobbies. If they did, they'd understand.

I would think that as it is so innocuous, it is something that would be favored by the TER hierarchy, as it is in line with the "fantasy" nature of this site in the first place.  There are terms that are more "business like", but that would imply business.  There are terms that are more accurate to the activity, but that would implicate specific activities.  As a "hobby", it is non-threatening, and casts our "fantasies" as socially acceptable behavior, which, of course, we all know it is, but much of the "outside world" doesn't.

As such, I doubt that you will find something that will be as acceptable to as many of the interested parties as "hobby" or "hobbyist".  While I admit that I don't use the terms myself (they make me feel like I am something out of a Tolkien story), it is something that most I talk with understand is a necessary quirk, and we just use more direct terms in conversations with each other.

How about "Hamster Pilots"?

  : )

I guess we'll stay with it then - for the verb, the noun, the community!

Ya sure? Last chance..LOL

and others have said The Game and Players..

we could certainly have fun with that! We could say that he's truly 'taking one for the team'; when she looks at her calendar, she can say 'who's up next?', and when he gets there she could say, "Let's play ball!" If she's juggling a few, it might be a question of 'who's on first?' and if something goes wrong, they can just call 'foul'.
If she goes to the gents house, it's a 'Home Run', if it's a 'no show', it's a 'strike out' ....

No what about 'slide home'...?