Since MySpace has just announced it is giving in to the anti-porn lobby by instigating various ‘protective’ measures including deleting all profiles with links to adult sites, what better time for us finally to compile that list of the networking site’s top-ranking fetish models that we’ve been promising for so long?

Deciding on the best way to compile it was not as easy as it might have appeared. We had no way to automatically search MySpace’s millions of profiles worldwide, extract the names of everyone who might be describing themselves as a fetish model/performer, and rank them in order according to the number of friends they have at a single point in time.

So arriving at some kind of meaningful list involved a certain amount of subjective judgement, using our combined knowledge of who’s out there to assemble a working checklist of around 100 likely candidates whose stats we would then manually check on their respective MySpace pages.

The people we set out to focus on were those most widely recognised within the international fetish scene as fetish models and performers, first and foremost. However, the chart does include people whose careers have taken them beyond ‘pure’ fetish work into other related genres.

It includes some fetish models who are big in the bondage industry, some who cross over into more mainstream porn, some who are identified with the burlesque or vintage glamour scenes, and some who are prodommes as well as models and performers. But we have done our best to exclude people who have moved in the other direction, for example, vanilla pornstars who don’t ‘come from’ fetish/BDSM but have embraced it as a way of adding versatility in their porn careers.

Those 100 or so candidates turned out, at the time of researching, to have friend counts ranging from around 1,000 to almost 250,000 in the case of Masuimi Max, who occupies the number one spot with well over 100,000 more friends than her nearest rival. It soon became clear that to be in the Fetish Top 30, a model was going to need at least 10,000 friends. That may surprise those of you impressed by anyone who has managed to amass even a couple of thousand friends, in which case it’s worth bearing in mind that one person’s true friend is another person’s statistic.

Some of the people out there collecting friends are purely in the numbers game, using every available means to add to their buddy counts. In the right hands, big-number friend lists are not just exercises in vanity — they’re valuable databases that can be used to market your own products and services and those of third parties. True, the really high numbers on MySpace do tend to go with pretty indiscriminate friending policies, but that’s a choice anyone is free to make. It doesn’t make you a bad person.

High numbers can also, of course, be an indication of how long an individual has been playing the MySpace game. Early adopters who embraced the concept with enthusiasm from the start have obviously had a lot more time to amass stratospheric friend counts than someone who has only recently enrolled as a MySpace cadet.

‘Low friend numbers do not necessarily indicate a lack of popularity. They may mean the person only friends MySpace people they actually know’

Low friend numbers, however, do not necessarily indicate a lack of popularity. They may mean that the particular person only friends MySpace people that they actually know, or people that evidently (from their own profiles) have some genuine interest in fetishism or BDSM — as opposed to just being serial collectors of ‘hot chicks’. It may mean the person has elected not to accept friend requests from that most hyperactive segment of the MySpace community — bands — who only want to be our friends because they’re all desperate to be the networking site’s next big direct-marketing musical success story.

It may mean that the profile of the model that you are currently looking at is actually the second, third or fourth she has uploaded, having had to start more or less afresh each time her old profile has been hacked, or been deleted by the dreaded Snatch Squad — MySpace’s team of tirelessly dedicated naughty-bits spotters. Or it may be that the individual is just too busy to spend all the personal time that maintaining a MySpace page and building a friend list involves, and is not in the fortuitous position of being able to delegate/pay someone else to look after it.

So, ultimately, our Top 30 can’t be used as an absolute measure of fetish model popularity. But it is fun to see who among the fetish community are the really big players in the MySpace numbers game.

Unsurprisingly, the vast majority of high rollers that we found are based in the States, with only a couple of UK and European models making it into the 10,000-plus club. But we are willing to accept that we may have missed out some people with a perfectly legitimate claim to be in our chart. If you know one — or you are one — please let us know (via info@thefetishistas.com) and include the MySpace URL that we should be taking a look at, as we will be updating the list.

Finally, you may be wondering why all friend counts have been expressed in ‘thousands-plus’. Figures were checked and rechecked over the course of a week at the end of January and most candidates’ counts moved both up and down during the checking period, but stayed within the same thousand range. So rounded-off thousands seemed the fairest way to represent these ever-changing numbers while still indicating everyone’s position relative to everyone else.

MySpace Fetish Model Top 30

01 MASUIMI MAX (USA) 274,000+ friends
www.myspace.com/masuimi_max

02 ANGELA RYAN (USA) 144,000+ friends
www.myspace.com/angelaryan

03 RUBBERDOLL (USA) 69,000+ friends
www.myspace.com/rubberdoll

04 BERNIE DEXTER (USA) 61,000+ friends
www.myspace.com/bernie_dexter

05 DAYNA DELUX (USA) 44,000+ friends
www.myspace.com/daynadelux

06 APNEA (USA) 35,000+ friends
www.myspace.com/apneatic

07 APRELLA (USA) 34,000+ friends
www.myspace.com/aprella

08 JAMI DEADLY (USA) 26,000+ friends
www.myspace.com/jamideadly

09 ASIA DEVINYL (USA) 24,000+ friends
www.myspace.com/asiadevinyl

10 DARENZIA (USA) 23,000+ friends
www.myspace.com/darenzia

11 HAZMAT (USA) 22,000+ friends
www.myspace.com/hazmatinfection

12 FRANKIE SIN (USA) 22,000+ friends
www.myspace.com/frankiesin

13 STACY BURKE (USA) 22,000+ friends
www.myspace.com/stacyburke

14 ATHENA FATALE (USA) 21,000+ friends
www.myspace.com/athenafatale

15 ULORIN VEX (UK) 19,000+ friends
www.myspace.com/ulorin_vex

16 ADRIANNE ANDERSON (USA) 18,000+ friends
www.myspace.com/adrianneanderson

17 FETISH DOLLY (USA) 18,000+ friends
www.myspace.com/fetishdolly

18 KUMI (USA) 17,000+ friends
www.myspace.com/kumimonster

19 GEISHA (USA) 16,000+ friends
www.myspace.com/hollywood_geisha

20 MORGANA (UK) 15,000+ friends
www.myspace.com/threnodyinvelvet

21 SCAR (USA) 14,000+ friends
www.myspace.com/scar13

22 BIANCA BEAUCHAMP (Canada) 14,000+ friends
www.myspace.com/biancabeauchamp

23 PIA KAAMOS (USA) 13,000+ friends
www.myspace.com/eurycea

24 PERSEPHONE (USA) 12,000+ friends
www.myspace.com/mspersephone

25 JULIE SIMONE (USA) 12,000+ friends
www.myspace.com/juliesimone

26 XANTHIA DOLL (USA) 12,000+ friends
www.myspace.com/afetishdoll

27 RUBY LUSTER (USA) 11,000+ friends
www.myspace.com/rubyluster

28 IDELSY (USA) 11,000+ friends
www.myspace.com/idelsy

29 NATALIE MINX (USA) 10,000+ friends
www.myspace.com/missnataliem

30 KATAXENNA (UK) 10,000+ friends
www.myspace.com/kataxenna