Rob, I am surprised to see a flurry of posts by you after such a long absence from the forum. You have been away a long time, and many of the posts that you are now responding to were written many months ago.
I thank you for your past openness with us on the forum. You were a very active poster, sharing many aspects of your private life with us too. I will never forget how you opened up to us about your hiding from your family, and particularly your father the fact that you were earning a living performing gay sex on an internet site. It was a very interesting and a very real process that you shared with us, and I thank you. I also loved watching you interact with Jimmy in the many BTS that you starred with Jimmy and Cole in. They were always entertaining and informative.
However, I am a bit surprised by the negative tone of some of your posts today. I think that it is unfair for you to criticize "all the people that turned on me quicker then Benedict Arnold".
As you are in show business, both in your former porn career, and now in your musical career, I would think that you understand that the public can be demanding, and when people are paying out of their hard earned income for their entertainment, they do tend to be vocal about the product being delivered. I thought that you had thicker skin than to be insulted if your fans were unhappy with your performance.
Every great entertainer and not so great too, have had negative reviews. If you put yourself in the public eye, it goes with the territory. You were a great asset to this forum, and I would hope that you are proud of the work you did, and the joy that you brought to many forumites.
I just hate to see any bitterness in your feelings about us now. I'm sure that everyone on the forum joins me in wishing you all of the success in the world in all of your future endeavors, and hopefully you can come back to visit us from time to time to let us know how the career and the real person that you are, are doing.
Best wishes to you Rob.
I could not have said it better than this Rob. I am happy to see you posting in here again. Those of us who have known you from the very beginning will always hold you in very high regard. I am very sorry if negative reviews of your work here have left you bitter.
Your fans are still your fans even if not all of your scenes get great reviews. With movie stars the story is the same. Just because people loved and became fans of Tom Cruise in Risky Business, Top Gun, and Rain Man...doesn't mean they stopped loving him or being fans of his because they didn't like the movies Days of Thunder, or War of the Worlds.
I consider the negative reviews to be the result of mgmt dsecisions rather than the quality of your work onscreen. And certainly not as a slight on you as a person. Could I personally and others have been kinder and gentler in our reviews? Absolutely! That's why I was apologizing profusely all over the place. And still do...
As you said yourself you were told to pretend that you had no prior experience doing porn. So mgmt tried to go for scenes of you that would impress non forum members as to how great you did as a new "amateur" Broke Straight Boys You said yourself that that resulted in forum members going into your scenes with vastly different expectations. You were told that you couldn't be Rob Ryder. You had to play the part of some random, fictitious guy fresh off the street. Not that of a very popular professional porn model with years of experience in the business.
The site has had at least one professional porn model come in here before and be welcomed with open arms. Mostly because all of this was disclosed up front. "Porn Shane" being the one who comes most to mind. He was accepted as a model in here by forum members and non forum memebers alike. Mostly because we were told right away in his first video that he was a professional gay for pay model. One who could tutor and teach the shyer amatuers whose skills could use some spicing up.
Of course there was disappointment in the forum when we were looking forward to Rob Ryder showing up and showing off his great charm, outgoing personality and many skills. Then some guy shows up who's unrecognizable as the Rob we have grown to know and love in here. He gives performances that would be considered very good for a total amateur. But not that of a professional. That was not your fault. It was not your decision. In hindsight they should have foreseen exactly how it would play out in the forum vs the general membership.
The marketing and presentation of your upcoming scenes, along with your introduction to the site here, were handled poorly. Then you were paired with a very young inexperienced model who you were not comfortable working with as a top...even though there were plenty of other older and more experienced Broke Straight Boys models to choose from. As I believe I said before...with all of your seniority and significant contributions to the company...you should have had some input as to which model you were paired with. Again, that was never your fault Rob. For those in mgmt it was just an unfortunate but valuable business lesson. The worst part though is the collateral damage that personally your feelings are still hurt. I'm so sorry...
I dare say that if you ever did want to choose to come out of retirement that you would be welcomed as a model here by a majority of members. (Myself included of course!) A stellar experienced model who could show newbies how it's done. All that many of us wanted in the forum was for Rob Ryder to be allowed to be Rob Ryder. But of course whether you ever choose to come out of retirement is totally up to you.
Wherever your journey takes you in life Rob I will always wish you nothing but the best. I would still love to hear about how you are doing. I hope you will stay in touch in here. I have no doubt at all that you will be sucessful in life.
