No More Hanky-Panky at Goodreads

Goodreads is the largest bookish social network, with over 13 million users- and apparently some of those users have been using the site for something other than book reviewing: sexual roleplay. On Goodreads. Sexual roleplay…on Goodreads. Just marinate on that for a second. In response to the presence of some naughty-goings on, Goodreads has updated their guidelines and sent out a mass e-mail to the group mods. I found a copy on the Goodreads Feedback forum, and have been unable to resist a totally tongue-in-cheek GIF response. From the e-mail: Dear Group Moderator, We wanted to give you a heads up on some updates to our policies for groups on Goodreads. Groups are an important part of our vibrant community and we appreciate and value all you do as a group moderator. For many of our members, groups are a highlight of the time they spend on Goodreads.

As you may have already seen, we have made a few changes to how adults only (18+) groups work. As we have members who are age 13 to 17 on Goodreads, it’s important that we clarify how adults only (18+) groups should be operated on our site. We have therefore updated our guidelines for people creating and moderating groups on our site and you can view these here.

The two key points are:

• Anyone who wants to be a member of an adults only (18+) group, must have provided their birth date, and must be age 18 or older. • Sexual role play is now not permitted in any group or any other part of the site.

From the Updated Guidelines:

“Romance is permitted in role-play games, but pornographic content and explicitly sexual content or scenarios are not permitted. We’ve made the decision that this is not appropriate for our site.”

So for those of you who were getting it on virtual style in some imaginative re-playing of Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy, you will, alas, have to take your shenanigans elsewhere. Like, oh, the rest of the entire internet.