[HN Gopher] Bringing Sexy Back. Internet surveillance has killed...
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Bringing Sexy Back. Internet surveillance has killed eroticism
Author : eustoria
Score : 252 points
Date : 2025-11-28 17:05 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (lux-magazine.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (lux-magazine.com)
| leecommamichael wrote:
| Has it? Really? I'm pretty sure culture in the US has become
| significantly more overtly erotic over the past 30 years...
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Depends on what you mean - in a very overt, marketed and non-
| french way, sure.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Yes, and no. in my eyes we compartmentalized sexuality to its
| own "dark" pocket of the internet. But in that corner it's more
| diverse, extreme, and widespread as ever.
|
| The latest waves of trying to ban porn certainly shows that
| this isn't what those in power desire, though.
| dontwannahearit wrote:
| I read the article. I found it hard going so probably was not for
| me but the impression it left me with was:
|
| "I let the internet f _ck with my mind, now I want to un-f_ ck
| it."
|
| USE the internet, don't to let it use YOU.
| stackghost wrote:
| >USE the internet, don't to let it use YOU.
|
| There are several multi-billion dollar enterprises who spend
| all day every day trying to make their products more addictive
| (in your words, using YOU).
|
| It's unlikely a meaningful number of people can pull themselves
| off of the dopamine treadmill by their bootstraps.
| bavell wrote:
| It's not that they can't per se, they just don't care that
| much.
| stackghost wrote:
| Yeah my grandfather used to say the same thing about
| cigarettes. He could quit any time he wanted; he just
| didn't want to.
| amelius wrote:
| If enterprises can do that, then so can evil state actors.
| The only conclusion is that we have to shut down the
| internet.
| stackghost wrote:
| We'll have to agree to disagree on "shutting down the
| Internet" being the only conclusion
| amelius wrote:
| The majority won't agree.
| listenfaster wrote:
| What a solid piece of writing. I'm Gen X, and have talked with my
| siblings about the online realities my teenage nieces and nephews
| face, and it's hard not to come to the conclusion the author
| comes to in the last paragraph. Along the way, though, there was
| framing of a lot of points that I've struggled to find the right
| words for. So, bravo.
| EA-3167 wrote:
| That certainly isn't my experience, and the example she gives imo
| says more about her neurotic friends than society.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| The front fell off the boat _outside_ of society^H^H^H^H^H^H^H
| the environment.
| MrScruff wrote:
| Yeah, while I mostly agree with the sentiment, I don't actually
| recognise any of the behaviours described in this article. It
| does sound like the behavioural traits of a certain subsection
| of certain generations, who's expectations and norms have been
| warped by overuse of social media. It all sounds incredibly
| exhausting and I genuinely feel sorry for those growing up in
| this climate.
| pino999 wrote:
| Weird stuff, you are just talking to a 5 year younger friend
| about hair brushing being pleasant and now you needr to apologize
| to the hair brusher?
|
| > She demanded that I apologize to the women for sexualizing
| them.
|
| This doesn't work that well in real life. Let me sketch a
| scenario:
|
| Oh eh, hi, eh, sorry, I have to admit than when you were brushing
| my hair, I was sexualizing you.
|
| You can't make it much better, perhaps write a formal letter and
| focus on the hairbrush:
|
| Three weeks ago, I was in your excellent shop. My hair never has
| been nicer. During the hair brushing, I got the feeling I felt a
| bit more for the hairbrush than I fell about you, I hope you can
| forgive me.
|
| That gives a nice feeling about what was first a fairly normal
| human interaction.
|
| It sounds hot though, good tip. But I got a humiliation kink, oh
| noes! How to resolve then? It is a catch-22 now. Need to do silly
| apologize, apologies are sexual, need to apologize for sexual
| feelings due to silly apologies. Haha, how do I get there?
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Makes me glad I have aphantasia, because "undressing someone
| with my eyes" is a metaphorical expression for me, and I don't
| have to worry about thinking something I might then need to
| apologize for. Now for the people who _can_ visualize things in
| their mind, it 's probably quite a lot more literal...
| stavros wrote:
| I have solved this by not feeling like I need to apologise
| for my thoughts. I didn't know that anyone thinks otherwise,
| and I find it odd.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| I was writing in jest, as I assume the parent was too.
|
| Also having aphantasia sucks, I envy those who can
| visualize things in their mind.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Nah. I'd like less "sexy" on the internet and most everywhere
| else. It's exhausting having people shove their sexuality in
| everyone's focus constantly. I'd like to be able to buy some
| muffins without being reminded about sex on the packaging, the
| description, and the product name. Let muffins be muffins. Just
| like extroverts are energy vampires for introverts, the non-
| sexually obsessed are tired of the sex obsessed wanting
| everything to be about celebrating the sexual obsessions of the
| sex obsessed. Broaden your horizons and get a hobby that doesn't
| involve telling everyone about what you want to do with your
| genitals.
| hagbard_c wrote:
| This is downvoted, probably because it is considered to be
| 'conservative' and therefore 'bad' in this rather myopic
| community. It is also wholly to the point and correct in the
| observation that the ever-present sexualisation of - if not
| everything then at least a whole lot of things - is tiring and
| numbing. 'Sex sells' is taught at the marketing courses so sex
| is has to be. First a tiny bit, then a bit more because the
| last ad has already lost its edge. Then, a bit more still. Bit
| by bit, piece by piece the magic of sex is sold off for a lousy
| few euros or dollars or pesos or whatnot because sex sells.
|
| While people see more sexualised imagery then probably ever
| before younger people have less and less of sex with their
| peers. Sex sells, still. For how long, I wonder.
| phantasmish wrote:
| If the take was _intended_ as conservative, I'd say it's
| actually leaning pretty far into "accidentally left-wing".
|
| Market forces ruin fucking everything in their attempt to
| paperclip-maximize, if you don't keep them on a leash. That
| includes sexiness. What's described is an outcome of a system
| where "it makes number go up" is sufficient justification for
| almost anything.
| Zigurd wrote:
| I'd wager in the reason it's downloaded if in fact it is, is
| that it's creepy, not "conservative." Views of sex that are
| retrograde and nostalgic, motivated by challenging depiction
| of sexuality, are the problem. As we've seen with some public
| figures, being closeted about gender preference, kink, etc.
| is the real problem, not whether young people are being
| choosier about sexual partners or are just less interested.
| hagbard_c wrote:
| Can you explain what is creepy about not wanting to be
| bombarded with sexualised imagery in the service of
| peddling wares? Do you consider sexuality - our species
| most basic drive, hard-wired into both sexes and
| manipulable by those unscrupulous enough to do so - as just
| another 'expression of personality' that you want people to
| 'un-closet' their sexual proclivities instead of keeping
| them where they are traditionally kept, always a bit in
| tension with 'polite' society but for that all the more
| exiting?
| Zigurd wrote:
| Ads have become safe and bland. Automotive parts and
| tools calendars ain't what they used to be. The sexual
| imagery of things like OF is the product, it's not
| selling a product. I've never seen one instance where
| trans visibility has been used in an ad. Closeted
| sexuality is a big source of society's problems. The
| combination of shame and power has terrible results. The
| era before Stonewall was certainly exciting for the
| police doing the beatings. But maybe those in the wrong
| people to ask.
| drdeca wrote:
| What does transgender visability have to do with any of
| this? The topic was about including sexual things in ads,
| not things about gender identity?
| drdeca wrote:
| Huh? What about Mountain_Skies comment is "creepy"?
|
| They presumably recently came across some muffin shop that
| has like, a double entendre as a name, or something like
| that, and took it as emblematic of a larger pattern, which
| they dislike. (Obviously they weren't saying this is a
| pattern specific to muffins.)
|
| I don't know what would be creepy about this? I also prefer
| to not think about sex or sexuality. If I could make it so
| for the next few months, I couldn't perceive information
| about sex or sexuality (except if there is something where
| I ought to do something with that information) and could
| not experience sexual arousal for those months, I would.
|
| It sounds like you are somehow connecting their preference
| to like, whether people are socially pressured to keep
| things about their sexual interests a secret? I don't see
| the connection.
| rsynnott wrote:
| > I'd like to be able to buy some muffins without being
| reminded about sex on the packaging, the description, and the
| product name.
|
| What I'm reading from this is that you have a muffin fetish,
| because, er, otherwise, I'm not sure how you're getting there.
| If you mean that there exists somewhere a brand of muffins with
| a rude name, sure, probably. But _most_ muffins, no sex.
| jrm4 wrote:
| You're fighting an impossible battle.
|
| Oscar Wilde nailed this one: Everything is about sex except
| sex, which is about power.
| drdeca wrote:
| I think this quote provides more of an excuse than an
| explanation.
| titzer wrote:
| > "Who are you defending yourself against?" To which he answered,
| to my astonishment: "I don't know. The world."
|
| Indeed. Moving our every interaction in daily life plus our
| innermost thoughts to the internet has instilled a low-key fear
| in all of us that we'll be raked over the coals and villified as
| the world's worst villains. The digital tar and feathers are
| lurking always, a menacing psychological force. And it can even
| happen without our knowledge; some stranger can post a two second
| context-less clip or a snippet of a conversation and make us look
| our worst.
|
| It's shocking how we can have so much outrage over unknown people
| but we're flush out of rage for the system that makes us so angry
| all the time.
| rapind wrote:
| > It's shocking how we can have so much outrage over unknown
| people but we're flush out of rage for the system that makes us
| so angry all the time.
|
| I suspect the answer is to find out who benefits from our
| misdirected anger, and whether they are also involved in
| creating and fostering this misdirected anger.
|
| It's old news now, but when I first heard about social media
| (Facebook specifically) and gaming companies hiring
| psychologists years ago, I knew it was pretty much over. Couple
| this with surveillance for the doom spiral.
| jrm4 wrote:
| This is _pure_ paranoia; none of this requires a centralized
| bad guy.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Whoever said anything about centralised?
| bilbo0s wrote:
| This is what most don't understand. The reality is, we're
| all villains. And we're all angels. And the only thing
| that determines how we're perceived, is the disposition
| of those perceiving us.
|
| This person is a villain, because you don't like this
| kind of person. That person is an angel, because you have
| an affinity with that person.
|
| There is no one benefiting, other than we ourselves. But
| don't underestimate the power of the dopamine rush we all
| get by having our biases validated.
|
| We have already met the enemy..
|
| He is us.
| didibus wrote:
| Not just that, but death treath, stalking, parasocial
| obsession, blackmail, scams, catfish, foreign propaganda, and
| so on, putting yourself out there on the internet brings so
| many risks nowadays.
| MangoToupe wrote:
| > It's shocking how we can have so much outrage over unknown
| people but we're flush out of rage for the system that makes us
| so angry all the time.
|
| Shocking? Hell this is half of the value social media provides
| capital: distracting the population with a hall of mirrors
| while offering precisely zero paths to a better future.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| well, not zero. But yes, you need to find the small hidden
| paths to take back what we once had.
|
| There's a reason I deleted my reddit and Facebook and never
| had a twitter. You're not going to have genuine conversations
| and experiences there if your goal is "socializing" these
| days. Or at least, the genuine ones are outflooded by
| engagement bait.
| MangoToupe wrote:
| > you need to find the small hidden paths to take back what
| we once had.
|
| This will certainly not be offered by capital, though.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Of course not, that's why it's small and hidden.
|
| As an example, you wouldn't even find a place like HN
| unless you are a particular kind of person or looking a a
| particular type of news. And I wouldn't even say HN is
| "hidden" per se. But it has kept its site counter to many
| other social media trends over the years. Those choices
| will build a different culture from Instagram or Tiktok.
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| Who moved every interaction in daily life to the internet? Most
| conversations we have are private, even if they are digital.
| Most of my ms teams interactions are with a single person. I
| trust them to not make sceenshots to share those. I don't see
| much difference with oral conversations, where I also trust
| they do not gossip about them.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Sounds like a too online person with too online friends. About
| ten years ago, I had an experience that pointed out the too
| online nature of people (in that case, myself).
|
| It's all in the culture of the social media bubble they're in. I
| was on Reddit a lot. Reddit had just gone through the Great Hate
| of Hipsters (with their skinny jeans and ear gauges) and had
| moved on to a new target: Atheists.
|
| The scorned atheist was (perhaps is?) stereotypically a nerdy
| young man with, notably, an affection for fedoras and pride in
| "euphoric" quotes.
|
| All right, so I spent all this time on Reddit and it was clear to
| me: Americans think fedoras are weird and American girls can't
| stand them. I don't have a predilection for hats personally so
| this wasn't a big deal but good to know. But I _was_ a nerdy
| young man.
|
| Then one day I was traveling with a group of friends, mostly
| girls, and we walked by a hat store. Completely confusingly, the
| girls were highly enthusiastic about us boys wearing the hats.
| Some of them specifically picked out the much hated fedora! For
| me!
|
| I said something about atheist-kid-something and they looked at
| me confused till one of them said "oh it's some Reddit thing;
| forget it, just try it on" and life just moved on.
|
| So what was the deal? I'd assumed some highly-specific online
| view of a highly-specific online community was a property of
| society. It wasn't. It's a property of the people who are part of
| the highly-specific online community.
|
| Anyway, I think this writer's friends are part of some highly
| specific community with some kind of Twitter-like norms. And this
| supposed change in society is just a change in her local group.
| dinvlad wrote:
| This. I'm on X myself a lot (because everyone else in my
| circles is, not because I wanted) and it's just such a bubble.
| Sometimes I want to just quit it all and touch grass
| renewiltord wrote:
| Haha, I felt the same and never did anything about it. Then
| this Charlie Kirk fellow got shot and I'd coincidentally
| clicked on For You on Twitter (I know, first mistake, never
| do this) moments after and a vague tweet about "can't believe
| this something something" had a bloody video of a man getting
| shot dead in the fucking neck. I remember wondering if I
| wanted to go through a week, maybe a month, of people
| tweeting about a guy getting shot and realized I really
| didn't.
|
| Stopped. Thanks to that gore poster, I suppose.
|
| But I went back to look maybe a week ago and when I did it
| was incomprehensible. It was full of in-jokes and references
| that made no sense to me. Dunks and subtweets that were
| context free. Strangely a short period away made the whole
| thing look like an alien culture.
| dinvlad wrote:
| Jeez. Thankfully I carefully avoided almost any and all of
| that political driven craziness there, as my bubble is just
| other solopreneurs
| task3313 wrote:
| > I'd assumed some highly-specific online view of a highly-
| specific online community was a property of society. It wasn't.
| It's a property of the people who are part of the highly-
| specific online community.
|
| That's an interesting way to put it, I think this happens a
| lot. But sometimes I think an opinion from a highly-specific
| online community escapes their bubble and becomes a reality in
| other groups, and sometimes this is sad.
|
| For example I think there are way too many youngsters these
| days using the words 'chad' and 'incel' and they truly believe
| these things are true. Some go as far as saying that you are
| either born one way or another and there is no way to fix it.
| The very same thinking pattern caused teenagers to kill each
| other in multiple instances.
|
| It seems some people just fail to realize that whatever is the
| norm in their online space is not reality.
| MrScruff wrote:
| Great story and I think you're exactly right.
| noobermin wrote:
| I think the problem is with Gen-Z and tiktok online
| unfortunately is their real life more and more these days.
| kimfc wrote:
| I agree, but I think something the hn crowd misses is that a
| huge chunk of young people are invested in something like your
| Reddit bubble, or at least that's true with the mostly
| trans/queer twentysomethings of Seattle that I hang out with.
|
| It's hard to ignore the tread that the younger a group is, the
| more being too online is just the default. You can't opt-out of
| the reality distorting effects of algorithmic content
| consumption when it is replicated by everyone you meet at
| school. This problem is especially bad with sex and gender
| relationships because of how well those topics perform on
| social media.
|
| Its a depressing time to be a kid, and even more so to be a
| teenager. I think nerds (like you), queer people (like me and
| the author), and other terminally online people are canaries in
| the coal mine for what will become the new normal.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| Queer in your 20s in Seattle is the prime demographic for a
| lot of these online subcultures though. If that's your crowd
| but you dislike the very online mores I definitely feel for
| you. A lot of the rest of us have the luxury of having
| friends not in these bubbles.
|
| I have a younger sibling who is in their 20s but not very
| online and only one or two of their friends are, even though
| they constantly use social media. I think queer groups tend
| to be a lot more line than others. Leaving Seattle will
| probably help too but much of the US is unfriendly to queer
| folks so there's probably only a handful of other places to
| go.
| mjr00 wrote:
| The main thing I get out of this article is how easy it is to get
| trapped in a bubble thanks to algorithmic social media.
|
| For the most part, sexy never left, and statistics bear this out.
| OnlyFans brings in enormous amount of revenue, even after an
| expensive, failed attempt to be not-just-a-porn-site.
| Hypersexualized gacha games are pulling in tens of millions of
| dollars per month, and not just for men; the women-targeted _Love
| and Deepspace_ had over $50 million in revenue in October. Marvel
| Rivals, criticized in some circles (such as the social circles of
| those in the article) for being an oversexualized "gooner game"
| has remained in the top 10 games played on Steam since its
| release a year ago. And nothing drives it home more than
| stumbling across the shady side of YouTube and finding videos in
| the "woman with large breasts not wearing a bra does something
| mundane" genre with multiple millions of views.
|
| > I choose these examples from my personal life because they
| express sentiments that were once the kind of stuff I encountered
| only in the messy battlegrounds of Twitter, amid discussions
| about whether Sabrina Carpenter is being oversexualized, whether
| kinks are akin to a sexual orientation, whether a woman can truly
| consent in an age-gap relationship, and whether exposure to sex
| scenes in movies violates viewer consent.
|
| Ultimately, these are the kind of things discussed only by a
| small, vocal, very online (some might say _terminally_ online)
| minority. To think that they represent more than a tiny fraction
| of the world is, again, reflective of how easy it is to get
| trapped into online echo chambers.
| kace91 wrote:
| Yeah, I think she's assuming that, since some of those people
| are IRL friends, that means they're not terminally online
| people.
|
| I'm around finance folks and they're all trapped into the same
| crypto-and-AI influencer bubble, but they would never be able
| to tell because their physical connections are also finance
| people who are likely to be caught in the same corner of the
| algorithm. So their real life conversations reinforce the
| worldview that the internet presents.
|
| This is likely the same case. The author might not be involved
| in certain online spaces, but she shares characteristics with
| her friends who make them all be targeted by the same bubble,
| so everyone she knows echoes that space to her.
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| With this post on HN, her 'puritan echo chamber/bubble' meets
| this 'nerdy/intellectual echo chamber/bubble'.
| kace91 wrote:
| Absolutely, I'm in a bubble as well. The average person
| would not only not know this site but assume something bad
| by its name.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Good. Let the bubbles collide!
| boredtofears wrote:
| > or the most part, sexy never left, and statistics bear this
| out. OnlyFans brings in enormous amount of revenue, even after
| an expensive, failed attempt to be not-just-a-porn-site.
| Hypersexualized gacha games are pulling in tens of millions of
| dollars per month, and not just for men; the women-targeted
| Love and Deepspace had over $50 million in revenue in October.
| Marvel Rivals, criticized in some circles (such as the social
| circles of those in the article) for being an oversexualized
| "gooner game" has remained in the top 10 games played on Steam
| since its release a year ago. And nothing drives it home more
| than stumbling across the shady side of YouTube and finding
| videos in the "woman with large breasts not wearing a bra does
| something mundane" genre with multiple millions of views.
|
| These are all things about sex but none of them are sex or lead
| to sex. These are outlets for sexual desires that don't require
| any social connection at all. You could argue that the article
| outlines many of the reasons why these things are so popular
| today - there is a much higher social price to pay for a
| potentially embarrassing or humiliating situation than there
| used to be. Easier to avoid it altogether and play gooner
| games.
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| 30 years ago it was rather normal that a manager would touch
| the behind of a coworker, which is clearly a bad thing.
| Nowadays looking in their direction a bit too long seems to
| be labeled 'not done'.
|
| Some time ago I said to a coworker who I consider as a friend
| : 'I enjoy your company'. Another (younger, italian) coworker
| told me to be careful after I said to him 'she has such a
| soft voice'.
|
| I really did not expect that reaction. To my feeling, no line
| got crossed and the fact that we are still friends and at
| times even share our thoughts about love and relationships in
| general, proves that we trust and respect each other.
| only-one1701 wrote:
| Safest thing to do is just leave no possible room for
| doubt. This means you can't be friends with your coworkers,
| which is disappointing, but the tail risk of accidentally
| saying something that crosses the line is too severe when
| it comes to professional consequences.
| fn-mote wrote:
| I cannot tell if this is /s or not but yikes...
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| Fear is a bad advisor! I take the risk because i know
| that most people around me know me and trust that i say
| such things in good faith, without patronizing or overly
| flirting with people of the opposite sex. If it should
| have any profesional consequences, then maybe i would
| have the wrong employer.
|
| You seem to be to afraid to be friends with your
| coworkers because of potential consequences? If that is
| so, i'm sorry, you are missing out a great deal in life.
| boredtofears wrote:
| I think this is right. Continue to connect with humans
| and try to evaluate their actions in good faith. Don't be
| a creep but don't skip life either.
|
| Unfortunately if someone chooses to interpret your words
| or actions in an uncharitable way there's not much you
| can do other than move on. It's their burden to carry,
| not yours (except when there are real world consequences
| but I do think that's a rare circumstance)
| verisimi wrote:
| You think watching someone - on your own - on Only Fans is an
| example of sexual intimacy?
| dpark wrote:
| The author is referring to erotic connections and experiences
| between individuals, not sexualized media.
|
| e.g. She mentions examples of having trouble being "in the
| moment" in new sexual encounters. Consuming pornography does
| nothing to help that. If anything it likely makes it worse.
| mjr00 wrote:
| The takeaway is the same though. "I went to my hairdresser
| and they were hot" only gets you ostracized in _very_
| specific social circles. For 99.9999% of the world, it 's
| normal conversation to have among friends.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| I don't know if I'd compare an anime gacha game to "Friendship
| ended because I talked about two pretty girls at a hair salon".
| I feel this comment really symbolizes the entire point of this
| post.
|
| >Ultimately, these are the kind of things discussed only by a
| small, vocal, very online minority.
|
| They are discussed by a "minority" because we compartmentalized
| social media to some dozen websites. And they all have a
| financial incentive to suppress sexual content, be it visual,
| oral, or print. I think the the cause and effect is there.
|
| "sexy" isn't "sexual". unless any pretty person you pass by is
| a sexual encounter.
| fn-mote wrote:
| > "sexy" isn't "sexual". unless any pretty person you pass by
| is a sexual encounter
|
| And "pretty", even "beautiful", doesn't mean "sexy".
|
| I definitely think comments here reflect the large portion of
| male HN readers.
|
| Talking is good, but be aware there are many readers.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Yes. 'cute', 'pretty', 'beautiful', and 'sexy' are all
| synonymous on the surface (and in my head I may use them as
| such) but in my eyes reflect different kinds of attraction.
|
| I've definitely put more thought into this topic than many,
| though. It's not easy at all to tell the difference and my
| US society certainly doesn't care to delineate between
| them. But a good part of erotic writing lives and dies on
| if you can understand which audience you are going for and
| which forms of language you use to evoke that spectrum.
|
| It can also expand to help in any kind of romantic writing
| as well.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| videos in the "woman with large breasts not wearing a
| bra does something mundane" genre with multiple millions
| of views.
|
| Anecdata: even if they're wearing bras and not dressed in a
| revealing way and it's a still photo... the views will pour in.
|
| I've had a Flickr account for about 20 years. I used to run a
| community and I took a lot of pictures at our gatherings, which
| were primarily 20-somethings. Some photos had 100-1000x the
| views of other pictures and it took me a while to figure out
| why.
|
| The photos with surprising view counts had women with large
| chests.
|
| I know how obvious that sounds but many of these photos were
| _so_ lowkey that... trust me, it was not obvious. For some of
| these photos, we 're talking about something that would _not_
| be out of place as a yearbook photo or hanging on a church 's
| bulletin board. It would just be a group photo of people
| hanging out, nothing sexy or revealing, and rando woman #7 in
| the photo might be apparently chesty. And it would have 100x
| the views of other photos from that event.
|
| Interesting and amusing.
|
| There are a number of ways you could think about it. Some views
| might be attributable to people who can't access explicit
| content due to parental controls or local laws but I have a
| hunch some people actually prefer this sort of thing to
| explicit content.
|
| (I also wonder if there's a slight voyeuristic/nonconsensual
| appeal to these photos. Which ties back in to the opening
| paragraph of the linked article...)
|
| It also underscored for me how women, especially women with
| certain bodies, can't escape being sexualized no matter what
| they do or wear.
| switchbak wrote:
| > how women, especially women with certain bodies, can't
| escape being sexualized
|
| Give it a while, everyone falls off the attractiveness
| escalator eventually. For some the only thing worse than
| being objectified is being invisible.
| NewJazz wrote:
| And for others, finally being invisible and not subject to
| leering in public and online is a mercy.
| switchbak wrote:
| If that's all you need, you can always wear an oversized
| t-shirt with a wolf howling at the moon. Or maybe that
| only works for men.
| bananaflag wrote:
| What do you mean by that? Asking honestly.
| brailsafe wrote:
| Definitely definitely only works for men
| swed420 wrote:
| > For some the only thing worse than being objectified is
| being invisible.
|
| _" It's a Wonderful Chest"_ from Chappelle's Show was
| ahead of the curve(s) on this.
| gavinray wrote:
| The pragmatic takeaway is "making yourself more attractive
| will make people x100 more interested in seeing you."
|
| So at least there's that.
| awesome_dude wrote:
| Hrm, the takeaway is really (IMO) "Have a woman with a big
| chest in the same picture will get 100x more views"
| ClikeX wrote:
| Go to any photography subreddit that's not already focused on
| nudity or sex. Any photo with naked women will get more
| upvotes than most other submissions. It can be an objectively
| bad photo, that doesn't really matter.
| etra0 wrote:
| I can totally attest this.
|
| I was an avid viewer of r/analog. I don't know if this was
| 'recent' or not, but every time someone post a naked
| picture, either good or not, it goes rapidly to Top posts.
|
| Even though it used to had many comments like "This photo
| is not interesting other than the naked woman", the upvotes
| arrived anyway.
|
| I think nowadays they mostly block the comments in those
| posts, but what used to be an inspiring subreddit that
| would pop from time to time in my feed, is not longer that
| interesting to me.
| rafabulsing wrote:
| I still find that one to be one of the better photography
| subreddits, but I do agree that that's been happening a
| bit too often lately.
|
| (I'd also love recommendations of other good photography
| related subreddits, if you have any!)
| mattbettinson wrote:
| /r/analog used to be sooo good!
| dpark wrote:
| > "This photo is not interesting other than the naked
| woman"
|
| My first instinct is to agree with this sentiment.
| There's a lot of pretty mediocre photography that gets
| attention because "naked woman".
|
| At the same time, you could equally say "that landscape
| photo is not interesting if you take away the lake". If
| you take away the interesting piece of a photo, yeah,
| it's not interesting anymore. The fact is that people
| (but especially men) enjoy looking at naked and near-
| naked women. It's a consistently compelling subject. It
| might be "easy" but it's still compelling.
| saulpw wrote:
| > I have a hunch some people actually prefer this sort of
| thing to explicit content.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/2busty2hide/
| fsckboy wrote:
| thanks JohnBooty for sharing your insights about women with
| certain bodies
| xgulfie wrote:
| Like the valiant Sir Mix-a-lot before him, he can not lie
| hsjdndjdiendn wrote:
| I think there is a remix that could be made with both of
| them.... Would sell.
| Dr_Incelheimer wrote:
| I feel called out here :( I physically cannot resist on
| clicking on videos or photos with even mildly attractive
| women in the thumbnail. Same thing IRL. Which is strange
| because I don't even care about porn.
| anal_reactor wrote:
| Naked woman is like endgame. Seems great, but it actually
| sucks (hehe). Attractive woman in a completely normal
| situation is like starting new game and knowing it's gonna be
| really good.
| bbminner wrote:
| I would not say that this is due to a social media bubble - HN
| is the only social media i use, i have friends along the
| political spectrum, and still i can relate to many of the
| points that the author raised. At one point, I found myself
| increasingly uncertain and conflicted about my own "actual
| convictions", and "underlying motives", and whether someone
| else (even potentially!) labeling me as a creep or assuming
| poor intentions automatically makes me one. Some unfortunate
| preceding life experiences corroded my self image as well,
| which might have contribute to it, but that's not the point.
|
| I'd actually go further and argue that what appears to twist
| this social fabric inside out is not only the online nature of
| the interaction itself, but the corporate centralized
| algorithmic nature of it. I am in no way a proponents of
| decentralizing everything (social media, money, infra, etc) for
| the sake of it - most systems work more efficiently when
| centralized, that's just a fact of reality. Maybe the fact that
| ads, corporate communications (linkedin -speak posts / slack /
| mcdonald's twitter account) and social interactions now live in
| the same space (and barely distinguishable in feeds) must have
| somehow forced these spaces to use the most uniform neutered
| language that lacks subtleties allowed in 1:1 communications?
| So people speak in political slogans and ad jingles instead of
| actual thoughts? Because these spaces NEED people to speak like
| that to stay civil and "corporately acceptable"? I am just
| brainstorming, in no way suggesting that a "free for all" is a
| solution.
|
| I watched a movie called Anora recently, and toward the end
| there's a dialogue along the lines of
|
| - If not for these other people in the room, you'd have raped
| me! - No I wouldn't. - Why not? - (baffled and laughing)
| Because I am not a rapist.
|
| One way to interpret this movie, this dialogue, and what
| follows is that the main female character has been used and
| abused her entire life by the rich / capitalist system in
| general / embodied by a character of a rich bratty child of an
| oligarch in particular - that her world almost assumes this
| kind of transactional exploitation as a part of human
| relationships - and struggles to feel safe without it - almost
| seeking more exploitation to feel somewhat in control. And the
| other person in the dialogue above (who is not a rich child)
| counters that by asserting and knowing very well who he is (and
| isn't), and that knowledgeable doesn't require or provide any
| further justification.
|
| Tldr maybe the magical dream of a conflict-free society where
| people understand each other is not ours after all - maybe it
| is the ideal grassland for ad-driven social media to monetize
| our interactions in a safe controlled fashion? one evidence
| towards that is the de-personalized neutered templated nature
| of the kind of "advice" that people give online to earn social
| credit - that leaks into real world 1-to-1 interactions in the
| form of anxiety of being "watched and judged" - as described by
| the author?
| Razengan wrote:
| > _how easy it is to get trapped in a bubble thanks to
| algorithmic social media._
|
| This. For example there are so many awesome videos on YouTube
| that would actually make the world and cross-culture relations
| better if more people got to see them, but few people will
| unless they specifically search for them.
|
| Like just yesterday I stumbled upon this amazing nature
| documentary [0] from Poland (in English) of a quality rivaling
| or exceeding that of the major channels, with no ads, no "like
| and subscribe!!" begging, and it's just as amazing that I
| didn't hear of this since the 3 years it's been up.
|
| There's many more videos on all topics that you don't need to
| be a purveyor of the subject to enjoy and appreciate, sitting
| at criminally low views and likes.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NBTZJi_grk
| bignurgle wrote:
| author should touch grass
| procaryote wrote:
| author should find new friends, who touch grass
| bArray wrote:
| > [..] seem to have internalized the internet's tendency to reach
| for the least charitable interpretation of every glancing thought
| and, as a result, to have pathologized what I would characterize
| as the normal, internal vagaries of desire.
|
| I think the internet has some ownership of this, AI didn't help,
| and our transition from a high-trust society to low-trust
| society. It's more obvious if you switch the subject to any other
| - try telling a joke about racism in the wrong setting [1].
| Private things should remain private, and consumed within a
| private context.
|
| In the UK for example, a person can be found guilty under the
| Malicious Communications Act and/or Online Safety Act. If your
| badly received joke involves a protected characteristic, that's
| now and aggravating factor and you just committed a crime against
| a protected minority.
|
| > I should state at this point that this is not an essay about
| "cancel culture going too far," a topic which can now be
| historicized as little more than a rhetorical cudgel wielded
| successfully by the right to wrest cultural power back from an
| ascendant progressive liberalism.
|
| The author was IRL cancelled by their friend: "In fact, it ended
| the friendship.". And the main complaint is that this has become
| part of the culture, specifically for sexuality. The author may
| not want to associate with the anti-movement for cancel culture,
| it is exactly what they are aligned with.
|
| > #MeToo was smeared by liberals and conservatives alike (united,
| as they always are, in misogyny) as being inherently punitive in
| nature, meant to punish men who'd fallen into a rough patch of
| bad behavior, or who, perhaps, might not have done anything at
| all (the falsely accused or the misinterpreted man became the
| real victim, in this view).
|
| You want the power without the responsibility of corruption. It's
| not like this stuff doesn't have real world consequences [2]. If,
| instead of adding names to a document, each of these women just
| stabbed to death the men they are accusing, let's say for really
| terrible accusations that we can agree that such a penalty should
| apply for. Sure, many people who are stabbed to death will have
| earned it, but we cannot be sure unless there is some right to
| address the accusation.
|
| The point is that without the ability to represent your counter-
| argument, there can be no real claim of justice. What is claimed
| as "social justice" is just the vigilante mob doing whatever it
| likes without accountability, and a lack of accountability is
| exactly what they are angry about in the first place. Two wrongs
| do not make a right.
|
| > But that link between sex and fear is operating in more
| "benign" or common modes of internet practice. There is an online
| culture that thinks nothing of submitting screenshots, notes,
| videos, and photos with calls for collective judgement.
|
| Wait wait wait. Hold on a damn second. We just literally spoke
| about a series of women submitting online notes for collective
| judgement. Now it's wrong?
|
| This reveals the fundamental problem, which is that the author is
| suppressed by the very behaviours that they have supported.
|
| [1] https://youtube.com/shorts/-3_-qYw33pU?si=bmPCOa8Ay8YQm4FK
|
| [2] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/10/23/us/metoo-
| repl...
| seydor wrote:
| the need to judge publicly is a subset of the need to publicize
| everything, a world where everyone is exhibitionist and selfies
| replace experiences. The people who do the former are primarily
| engaged in the latter.
|
| This will only get worse, we are one step away from people
| posting selfies of their foreplay before sex for public
| validation.
|
| It is already happening in tourism that people go to the beach
| for the selfies rather than swimming (seen that with my own
| eyes). Narcissism is slowly eating sexuality as well.
| npodbielski wrote:
| Wow, this is terrible. People really live like this? If I would
| say to my female friend that I like when hair dresser is stroking
| my hair, she would probably just look at me: 'ha ha! you nerd!'.
| Asking somebody to apologize for your own thoughts... The
| situation like that it is beyond cringe... if somebody would be
| doing that in my country, psychological help would be
| recommended.
| switchbak wrote:
| This seems to be mostly (though not exclusively) a generational
| thing - as if things have changed to such a degree that you no
| longer have sovereignty over your internal experience. Like the
| boundary between public and personal has been removed.
| Certainly I've noticed this in North America.
|
| I've known people that just demand to know things about you,
| and simply can't understand that you have boundaries and that
| there's information which is simply none of their business.
| Like someone asking you how you voted, or if you find XYZ
| person attractive, etc. Usually with some intention to sniff
| out some kind of latent and hidden evidence of wrongthink.
| Talking with some of these people feels like you're just
| waiting for them to pounce on you once you step over a line -
| and of course to out you in a public fashion, even when it's
| just you and them!
|
| It's like people are bringing their Reddit personality into the
| real world, trying to score points by knocking others down.
| It's a really shitty way to be, and I've found even old friends
| fall into that trap.
|
| I think much of this is due to the shift from an
| individualistic focus to a more group-related identity. I'm old
| enough that I find that bizarre, in a creepy authoritarian kind
| of way.
| tbrownaw wrote:
| > _Like the boundary between public and personal has been
| removed._
|
| > _Usually with some intention to sniff out some kind of
| latent and hidden evidence of wrongthink._
|
| "The personal is political." It's been a thing in recent
| decades.
| BananaaRepublik wrote:
| Imagine if someone did that.
|
| "Hey, sorry I'm not here for a haircut. The other day when you
| were brushing my hair, I just thought it was really erotic and
| I wanted to apologize."
|
| That's insanely creepy wow.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| The word "eroticism" in this article is quite misplaced. A
| fleeting sexual thought about a stranger who happens to be
| providing a service to you in that moment (hair brushing,
| apparently) has nothing to do with eroticism, precisely _because_
| it 's not "sexualizing" in any real-world sense. Incidentally,
| eroticism properly understood (i.e. turning _actual_ consensual
| love, intimacy and perhaps even sexuality itself into a genuine,
| positive and human-affirming artform) is also quite dead, but not
| for any reasons this article is talking about. It 's just getting
| caught in a cross-fire between the most disrespectful and lewdest
| sort of commercial hardcore pr0n and a kind of renewed, reactive
| prudery from governments and policy-makers.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >A fleeting sexual thought about a stranger who happens to be
| providing a service to you in that moment (hair brushing,
| apparently) has nothing to do with eroticism
|
| I argue that's eroticism in its purest form.
|
| >a quality that causes sexual feelings, as well as a
| philosophical contemplation concerning the aesthetics of sexual
| desire, sensuality, and romantic love.
|
| both subjects don't need to be purposefully sexualizing for an
| erotic event to happen. That's a bit of what powers some of the
| more out there fetishes (like say, having your feet massaged,
| which has nerve connections to many more part of the body than
| one expects). It can escalate to something sexual, but most
| adult humans tend to learn how to suppress such desires, no
| different than not buying that candy at the store or hot
| wanting to slap Bob at work when he talks about the latest
| conspiracy theory.
|
| >eroticism properly understood (i.e. turning actual consensual
| love, intimacy and perhaps even sexuality itself into a
| genuine, positive and human-affirming artform) is also quite
| dead
|
| I guess so. The US has been so screwed on sexuality for decades
| that there's no one true meaning anymore. Which isn't bad, but
| when you range from "a person looked pretty" to "Onlyfans DM's"
| your word may indeed lose meaning.
|
| It's interestingly enough a global issue too, in terms of
| policy. But unfortunately it's pretty low priority compared to
| the rest of everything else going on.
| noobermin wrote:
| Eroticism is more about art and media. Being sexually aroused
| is not art, it is an occurrence in the real world.
|
| This is like saying science fiction is talking to a chatbot.
| OP is being a bit pedantic.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >Being sexually aroused is not art, it is an occurrence in
| the real world.
|
| Based on the definition I shared, it's not about your
| feelings. It's the quality of what made you feel that way.
| An important bu subtle difference.
|
| To take your example, it's less about the chatbot and more
| about how and what it responds with. If suddenly it's
| responding based on its remembered experiences and sense of
| the world, I. E. 'Sentience', we would start to wonder if
| its science fiction.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Of course it isn't about art and media. If you think so,
| then you need to go and find your soul, because it isn't
| with you currently.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Edit: Reply to the commenter below, who unfortunately was
| down voted. I didn't mean it in that way at all. I mean
| it as in finding a missing part of your essence, which we
| all have to do at times. Eroticism is in everyday life if
| we allow it to be and don't shun away from it, just like
| courage, adventure, challenge, mystery, and a lot of
| other essential experiences of the soul, which the modern
| mass man system tries to erase.
| noobermin wrote:
| She means being horny and being open about it, but the word
| "erotic" sort of has lost its meaning as you are saying, yes.
| nonce42 wrote:
| By the way, the author of the article is also the writer of the
| McMansion Hell blog.
| pityJuke wrote:
| Also wrote this wonderful article on Formula 1, which was sadly
| removed by the publisher:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20240301170542/https://www.roada...
| gavinray wrote:
| Beginning with: "Most of us have the distinct
| pleasure of going throughout our lives bereft of the physical
| presence of those who rule over us. Were we peasants instead
| of spreadsheet jockeys, warehouse workers, and baristas, we
| would toil in our fields in the shadow of some overbearing
| castle from which the lord or his steward would ride down on
| his thunderous charger demanding our fealty and our tithes."
|
| This is gutturally revolting to me. The insinuation here is
| that the average person is a passenger in their own lives,
| without free will.
|
| You don't come out of the womb and someone puts a stamp on
| your head saying "Barista! Paperboy! Grocery bagger!"
|
| Barring considerable physical/mental disabilities, or
| personal choices like deciding to have kid(s) that you're
| financially responsible for at a young age with no money, I'd
| make the argument that most people can become millionaires.
| antonvs wrote:
| > I'd make the argument that most people can become
| millionaires.
|
| That's not so much making an argument, as repeating
| propaganda.
| lovich wrote:
| > I'd make the argument that most people can become
| millionaires.
|
| Make the argument then. How do "most" people become
| millionaires if that requires owning businesses or getting
| high up in a company? Who works for them if the majority of
| people are at the top?
| samdoesnothing wrote:
| There are many more ways of making money, and the economy
| is not zero sum. And of course just because most _could_
| do it doesn 't mean most _will_. Most of us can workout 3
| times a week, that doesn 't mean most of us do.
| XorNot wrote:
| Oddly enough I'd say the OP has a decent point were it
| not for that last part.
| samdoesnothing wrote:
| This is the mentality of a socialist. And their solution
| isn't to lift everyone up, but rather bring those more
| successful down.
| mtremsal wrote:
| Thank you, this was excellent! From McMansions, to F1, to
| eroticism the author has quite the range!
| Krasnol wrote:
| The state we're in is the logical consequence of the Hollywood
| narrative where sexy is tabu but violence is ok. It has been
| pushing this narrative upon the rest of the Western world for
| decades.
|
| I hope the downfall of the US in the recent Trump years will help
| to soften this influence in the future but I doubt this will work
| out fast. We'll have to face the right wing / christian madness
| first.
| Animats wrote:
| > The state we're in is the logical consequence of the
| Hollywood narrative where sexy is tabu but violence is ok. It
| has been pushing this narrative upon the rest of the Western
| world for decades.
|
| R-rated movies have declined sharply as a percentage of box-
| office revenue. That trend was recognized by 2005. [1] Variety:
| "You're leaving tens of millions of dollars on the table with
| an R rating," says one studio marketing exec. "Why? For
| artistic integrity? Let's be real." The trend has continued,
| rather than turning around.
|
| There's been a huge decline in good sex scenes in movies. Porn
| scenes are awful, and mainstream Hollywood now avoids sex
| scenes. The good ones were back in the 1990s.
|
| [1] https://variety.com/2005/film/news/don-t-give-me-
| an-r-111791...
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Yeah Hollywood sold out artistic integrity in an attempt to
| maximize profit. I think weakening the culture of open
| sexuality was only a side quest in comparison.
| Animats wrote:
| Hollywood has always sold out artistic integrity. That's
| not new. What's new is the massive size and profitability
| of the superhero and teen action/adventure genres.
| Hollywood has found a product segment that pays, and it
| doesn't happen to have any sex in it.
|
| Some long-form big-budget TV series, such as "Game of
| Thrones", do, of course, have good sex scenes. It seems to
| be accepted in that format. Long-form TV doesn't work like
| Hollywood. Movies have directors, but series have
| showrunners. The US tradition is that showrunners are
| writers, not directors. That seems to have an effect on
| content.
|
| Comments from people in the industry?
| pphysch wrote:
| > It is seen as more and more normal to track one's partner
| through Find My iPhone or an AirTag, even though the potential
| for abuse of this technology is staggering and obvious. There are
| all kinds of new products, such as a biometric ring that is
| allegedly able to tell you whether your partner is cheating, that
| expand this capability into more and more granular settings.
|
| These criticisms seem to be more a reflection of the author's
| paranoia and sex-obsession than legitimate criticisms of the
| tools and technologies.
|
| IMO, location sharing is pretty awesome among loved ones, and
| biometrics can help us manage our health? But I guess everything
| has to be about "sexual surveillance"...
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Location sharing is extremely divisive. Loved ones need privacy
| too, in my eyes. But we are also clearly in time where that
| kind of tech can save their lives so I don't want to dismiss it
| all as goverment surveillance.
|
| But my parent use it, so it's clear it depends on the couple.
| resfirestar wrote:
| The main part I object to in this essay is the ideological
| carveout. The author is seemingly willing to defend the #MeToo
| movement because it was in the service of a mission "to end a
| long-standing and long-permitted norm of sexual abuse within
| institutions", and "cancel culture" (I'm also putting it in
| quotes as I agree it's a very loaded term) because the backlash
| to it was helpful to the right and detrimental to the left. If
| you agree with the reasoning, then, all of the behavior being
| criticized is okay? In that case I don't see how or why anyone
| would ever change their behavior. The author's friend who wanted
| her to apologize to the hairdressers probably has a strong belief
| that being sexualized at work is a serious problem faced by
| women. From the right, many Christians strongly believe that
| criticizing behaviors like premarital sex is part of the social
| immune system that keeps family and community bonds strong.
|
| I think there's a meaningful difference between being a genuine
| liberal who wants to change how American society thinks about
| sex, and being a partisan who wants to use puritan callouts as a
| cudgel on your enemies while ensuring that your own behavior is
| never subject to criticism. The essay displays an awareness of
| the tension, but decisively chooses the partisan path.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > "to end a long-standing and long-permitted norm of sexual
| abuse within institutions"
|
| Sure, but it makes no sense to equate institutional abuse with
| genuine erotic connection among equals, which is what OP seems
| to ultimately be advocating for. The two are polar opposites.
| And the OP is not arguing that sexualizing people in the
| workplace is a good thing; her stance is that she never even
| sexualized the person to begin with. She's talking about her
| inner thoughts, not her overt behavior.
| resfirestar wrote:
| I'd push back on drawing a sharp line between "institutional
| abuse" and "genuine erotic connection among equals". As the
| essay points out, the MeToo campaign did use call-outs
| against individuals in service of its goal. Some of those
| callouts were alleging criminal conduct, but on the other end
| of the spectrum you had much more dubious stuff, or
| completely unsubstantiated rumors that some person was "bad".
| I agree that stopping institutional abuse is a noble goal,
| but the MeToo practice of naming and shaming personal friends
| in anonymous spreadsheets is the type of thing that builds
| the internal panopticon: what if our personal circumstances
| changed so that there's a power imbalance, or someone
| misinterpreted them? If you accept that practice on political
| grounds because it's a useful weapon against the "enemies of
| liberation" (as the author put it), can you really claim to
| want people to change their attitudes about sex? It doesn't
| work nearly as well if we stop seeing sexual behavior as
| inherently scandalous.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| It's not so much that sexual behavior is inherently
| scandalous, the issue is with the broader context where a
| formalized hierarchy of power and a potential for
| intimidation are quite antithetical to any kind of genuine,
| consensual connection. The potential for borderline-abusive
| behavior in the workplace (not necessarily criminal,
| either) is orders of magnitude greater than any concern
| about "naming and shaming".
| rafabulsing wrote:
| I think the author's (ex) friend believes the same about
| the hair salon thing. That there is a hierarchy of power
| and potential for intimidation in the context of a worker
| and a client. E.g. the guy at the restaurant being flirty
| with the waitress.
| the__alchemist wrote:
| I was struck by this too. I initially found it offputting, but
| then realized that it reinforced her point: We are all subject
| to social media (etc) bubbles, and it's tough to see the
| insides of them!
|
| By including these, she demonstrated her point with a genuine,
| meta example of how even someone writing about these can be
| unwittingly part of them.
| buu700 wrote:
| I did find it interesting that the entire post was such an
| eloquent description of a generalization of cancel culture, yet
| the author still went out of her way to virtue signal to
| readers who would reflexively dismiss any allusion to cancel
| culture as made up or partisan. Probably the right call, since
| those are some of the ones who most need to hear what she has
| to say, but still funny.
|
| _> I think there 's a meaningful difference between being a
| genuine liberal who wants to change how American society thinks
| about sex, and being a partisan who wants to use puritan
| callouts as a cudgel on your enemies_
|
| I mean, those aren't just meaningfully different; they're
| entirely at odds with each other. You can't have a liberal
| attitude toward sex and a puritanical attitude toward sex at
| the same time.
| elevation wrote:
| > She demanded that I apologize to the women
|
| This is antisocial advice. It's beyond inappropriate to use the
| pretense of apology to announce your intimate fantasies to
| strangers.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Yeah. This is like geting angry at someone because of a dream
| you had. I just wouldn't even know how to react to that. Well
| beyond my qualifications to dissect.
| switchbak wrote:
| 100% - lots of crazy thoughts come and go, and I can't be
| expected to apologize for that!
|
| And I absolutely don't want to hear from randoms about how
| they're "sorry that I thought for a second about what you
| would look like naked" or whatever other random thought
| popped into their heads. That world would be absolutely
| insane.
| linsomniac wrote:
| One of the big rules is you don't expose the unwilling public.
| Apologizing to the two women who were brushing the author's
| hair is a double-whammy: you're involving them in the
| sexualizing of this experience, _and_ you 're implicitly
| expecting them to be ok with it and forgive you.
|
| If someone is going to demand you do this or they will end
| their friendship with you, you're "lowkey" better off losing
| that friend.
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| My physio therapist is very nice and caring, genuinely
| interested in conversation and helping with my and other
| people's physical and sometimes even psychological problems.
| While she was moving my legs using her upper body, it felt
| quite intimate and I admired her for being so professional
| while doing her work physically and giving psychological
| support as a bonus. I'm sure she will notice at times that
| some people get intimate feelings but she seems to be okay
| with that, knowing she is helping patients while such things
| can happen as a side effect.
|
| All to say that feelings are only natural and they can induce
| thoughts. Why apologize.
| tonyarkles wrote:
| > moving my legs using her upper body, it felt quite
| intimate and I admired her for being so professional
|
| This highlights something that I've been chewing on a lot
| lately. I'm not sure what you specifically meant by the
| word "intimate" when you said that, but I do think it's
| really interesting to distinguish between "intimate" and
| "sexual", even though they often coincide.
|
| As an example, years ago I was staying with some out-of-
| town friends after a break-up and they wanted to introduce
| me to a couple of lovely single women they knew. I hadn't
| really been taking great care of myself in the fallout of
| the breakup, so I went and shaved and got cleaned up. While
| doing my hair, I realized that my eyebrows were pretty
| unruly and somewhat sheepishly asked my friend's wife if
| she'd be comfortable taking some tweezers to them and
| helping me get them cleaned up. It wasn't, even a little
| bit, a sexual moment but it ended up being incredibly and
| unexpectedly intimate. We were both pretty surprised by it
| and ended up getting closer (as friends) afterwards.
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| What a nice story! Cleaning up eyebrows shows nicely the
| discrepancy between intimacy (feeling love and care) and
| erotica (feeling lust?).
|
| The hair grooming in the article probably felt similar.
|
| Thinking about the physio therapy, her upper body felt
| very warm and soft but it was probably a rather standard
| technique for firmly moving the joints and ligaments in
| legs and hips.
|
| What it made most intimate was not just the softness of
| her body but also the care she took for the movements,
| knowing that it would help.
|
| So my limbic system went into oxytocin producing mode,
| which the aware mind easily picks up with warm thoughts.
| I think that's where the bridge between intimacy and
| sexual thoughts can happen, but there my thinking was not
| firmly going into that direction, it just felt warm and
| comfortable, even a bit emotional.
|
| In your case the feelings apperently came from both
| directions, it was not a professional/client context
| after all.
| buu700 wrote:
| To be fair, it's likely that the author's former friend would
| have a hard time disagreeing with this if presented in
| exactly the way that you have.
|
| I suspect that what such a person finds offensive isn't OOP's
| behavior (i.e. receiving a hair treatment without incident),
| but rather the thought in and of itself. Since they know that
| they can't credibly assault a person's character purely on
| the basis of an involuntary or intrusive thought, they have
| to settle for calling out some behavior as a stand-in for the
| thought. In an alternate timeline where OOP had apologized
| (which would really just be extremely socially awkward, not
| outwardly harmful), I'd bet on the former friend making the
| exact opposite stink and chastising OOP for failing to keep
| it to herself.
|
| Another layer that wouldn't be surprising in this instance
| would be subconscious homophobia. The friend thinks she's
| upset at OOP for "victimizing" two poor strangers without
| their knowledge, but in reality she's disturbed by the sudden
| realization that she herself may have been or may one day
| become the unknowing object of such thoughts. Since she can't
| say as much without implying that she's categorically
| uncomfortable being around queer women, she reached for any
| excuse to turn it around on OOP and make herself feel like
| the good guy.
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| Even if the women could read the desire from her face, there
| was nothing to apologize for. She felt attraction a feeling
| induced by non-reasoning parts of her brain. She didn't give in
| to it by for example hugging them without consent.
| easeout wrote:
| Yeah that was pretty weird. Minimizing harm means both leaving
| people alone _and_ not denying yourself random pleasant
| feelings.
| bbminner wrote:
| True! And yet, oddly enough, I'd argue that this obviously bad
| advice is, in a way, the expected online (corporate?)
| etiquette, that is being, for some odd reason, applied in the
| real world.
|
| It is akin to situations that several comics I heard described
| -in which either a caretaker (or even the relative with a
| disability themselves) was corrected and schooled for using
| "non inclusive language" when addressing their relative / a
| relative referring themselves. To which, anecdotally, the
| typical reaction of the said relative was along the lines of
| "oh, i am sorry honey, i wanted to say it is hard for a damn
| useless cripple like me".
| leptons wrote:
| > the expected online (corporate?) etiquette
|
| Trust me, HR does not want anyone telling anyone else about
| their impure thoughts just because they had them.
| XorNot wrote:
| It's not advice. It reads to me that the friend is lacking the
| framework to express that the conversation the author just
| involved them in made them uncomfortable.
|
| Like there is so much detail missing here: was this within the
| bounds of established conversation the author has with this
| person, was it contextually appropriate? Does the friend ever
| relate similar experiences back and this reaction was surprise?
|
| > Back and forth, back and forth, we fought like this for a
| while. In fact, it ended the friendship.
|
| Seriously there's a ton of missing context here.
| Animats wrote:
| More than halfway through the article: "I remember very
| viscerally when I'd just come out of the closet as bisexual in
| 2016." The article looks too much like someone projecting their
| own problems on society generally.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Well what else does a blog do but project thoughts to the
| public?
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| "Projecting one's problems on others" does not mean that
| someone is sharing their problems with the world. It means
| they take their problems and assume that they are problems
| that others have.
|
| So, GP is suggesting that the authors is assuming society has
| certain attributes, when in reality its likely just
| attributes of theirself.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >It means they take their problems and assume that they are
| problems that others have.
|
| Well, it's the internet and no one's singular experienc
| truly unique. So yes, that is a safe assumption. I doubt
| the author is the only person in the world with a
| friendship broken over some relatively benign story.
|
| >GP is suggesting that the authors is assuming society has
| certain attributes, when in reality its likely just
| attributes of theirself.
|
| Could be both. Or neither. It's a blog, not a study, so I
| don't see much point dissenting an anecdote. The point is
| to share ideas to the world. And given the nature of the
| internet, some will resonate.
| Anonyneko wrote:
| It never left, but payment processors should stop trying to ban
| it already...
| jrm4 wrote:
| Whatever the direct cause, as an older person who grew up
| Catholic, quite literally the most surprising thing in life for
| me to discover: Sexual repression emphatically _cannot_ be
| strongly blamed on religion.
|
| And I'm not mentioning this to defend religion necessarily, I'm
| just surprised and almost "impressed" at how, in the absence of
| religious sexual repression, young people and the internet
| invented a whole new way of doing it.
| graemep wrote:
| Also lots of repression in countries run by atheist ideologies.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Such countries are generally run by personality cults, which
| are not the least bit atheistic. Same mental bug, just a
| different exploit.
| kragen wrote:
| It's possible that Roman Catholicism and then the Reformation
| made sexual repression a part of Western European culture in a
| way that survived the transition to a more secular society
| (although the US in particular is still mostly nominally
| Christian).
|
| But some kind of sexual repression seems to be a feature of
| every human society. Probably that's because people in every
| society often harm themselves and one another for sexual
| reasons, so people everywhere attempt to repress that.
|
| Birth control, especially barrier methods such as condoms, and
| modern medicine have dramatically ameliorated the degree to
| which people harm one another for sexual reasons. But rape,
| infidelity, and falling in love with harmful partners are still
| enormous problems, as well as some more prosaic problems
| mentioned in the article.
| easeout wrote:
| Heh, if repression did not exist, it would be necessary to
| invent it?
| noobermin wrote:
| So, I hate to be the guy, but Wagner does specifically try to
| divorce MeToo from this, but it does seem a rather direct line
| from MeToo to the thing she complains of, no? Just because MeToo
| may have been with pure and correct intentions, people often take
| away different things from social movements.
|
| Puritanism has long been embedded in American society. I live in
| Singapore now, and people abroad seem to think that sexual
| openness is sort of an American thing compared to both the trad
| chinese as well as muslim malay cultures here. But, the reality
| that I think even a lot of Americans don't realise is that
| hollywood and openness around sex is fundamentally a reaction to
| american puritanism which was always a foundation part of
| America's DNA. Hell, the 60's counterculture was specifically a
| reaction against WASP conservatism which has roots in puritanism.
| My opinion honestly is once you understand that fact, a lot of
| things about American culture make a lot more sense. For example,
| while MeToo arose to address real harms and exploitation, a lot
| of Americans reached for the tools they knew best from their
| puritan roots: a new set of morals to measure others against by
| and public shaming. Ever escalating morality precepts to follow
| (lack of consent in actual sex somehow being a precursor to the
| episode in the article, some fleeting and private sexual stimuli
| being seen as a violation). This sort of pattern that grasps onto
| the old puritan culture seems to feed a lot of how American
| cultural trends evolve. See anti-racism as another example: open
| bigotry is the precursor to only certain races can cook certain
| foods, and so on.
|
| My point is Americans unfortunately did not learn the underlying
| lesson about consent that Wagner perhaps wanted out of MeToo, but
| they did find a new set of puritan morals and a new culture of
| shaming to enact on others for social capital. I feel like once
| you sort of believe this idea of the puritanism germ, a lot of
| what happens to these movements for real change make a lot of
| sense. It also explains why a lot of movements or reactions
| against puritanism might change their target (not god or
| religion) but reproduce the methods and culture of puritanism.
|
| And saying all this, I'm not sure it was avoidable. I am also NOT
| saying this is MeToo's fault or that MeToo shouldn't have
| happened, of course not. But, MeToo _was_ the initiation for
| this. What Wagner describes _is_ clearly an intensification and a
| fundamentalist form of the consent discourse that underpinned the
| discussions back in 2015 or whatever. I don 't really like the
| unwillingness to engage with that fact.
| delis-thumbs-7e wrote:
| I think she says exactly that MeToo, while important in
| revealing how institutionalised sexual violence against women
| is in our society, created also this weird neo-puritanism:
|
| > The organized goals of the #MeToo movement are missing from
| the new puritanism. I think that the prudish revulsion I've
| seen online and in my own life has as much to do with
| surveillance as with sex.
|
| To me she very clearly engages with the very fact.
| LogicFailsMe wrote:
| TLDR: Concern trolls are some of the worst people on Earth.
|
| Or should I find my 9th grade algebra teacher (wherever she may
| be now), and on whom I had a raging crush deep in the throes of
| puberty, in order to apologize for all the boners I got in her
| class? I got an A in that class and all math classes I took going
| forward. But at what price?
|
| How DARE I pleasantly associate mathematics with that long ago
| raging crush sometimes?
| slurrpurr wrote:
| Sounds to me more like the author has weird friends and never had
| a stable relationship in her life. Relationship sharing is
| awesome if you have a stable relationship. And people usually
| don't talk about their kinks in this weird fashion.
|
| In fact, I think the Internet has increased eroticism manyfold.
| Look at porn apps, games and websites. People are more open about
| their sexuality than ever, but anonymously.
| tomasphan wrote:
| Can you elaborate more about relationship sharing? Do you mean
| having an open relationship or something else?
| slurrpurr wrote:
| Sorry typo, I meant location sharing in relationships.
| periodjet wrote:
| > A Socialist Feminist Mag For The Masses
|
| Good fucking grief, what has HN become?
| poemxo wrote:
| > I told my friend about an erotic encounter I'd just experienced
| and very much delighted in, in which I had my hair brushed at the
| same time by two very beautiful women at the hair salon -- one
| was teaching the other how to do it a certain way. When I
| finished my story, my friend looked at me, horrified.
|
| I would look at her in horror too. My aversion to touching, being
| touched by, or even being in a close space with other people
| comes from exactly this sort of worry, that my presence is being
| used for some sort of sexual experience unbeknownst to me.
|
| Some lines from the article gave me the ick.
|
| > It is beautiful, unplanned and does not judge itself because it
| is an inert sensation, unimbued with premeditated meaning. This
| should liberate rather than frighten us.
|
| I don't need to be told to free my mind just because I don't
| conform to your gooner sh*t.
|
| > Only when we are unafraid can we begin to let desire flourish.
|
| Oh okay, if I disagree with the author then I am just ~afraid~
|
| It really seems to me that the author is internally dealing with
| sexual feelings and rationalizing them as social commentary,
| transforming her views into a critique of society and cancel
| culture, while simultaneously backing out and promising that
| MeToo was valid and that she was definitely not trying to say
| that MeToo was an overreaction (nice save author!)
| Mordisquitos wrote:
| I don't see the author placing any judgement on people who are
| averse to their own erotic arousal. Rather, she is criticising
| people who are judgemental of _other_ people who _do_
| experience and enjoy erotic arousal.
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| >... that my presence is being used for some sort of sexual
| experience unbeknownst to me.
|
| To me this sounds like you are afraid of that? Can you
| elaborate where that worry is rooted from? What is the problem
| of sexual experiences happening (automatically, it is literally
| in our DNA) inside their thoughts?
| lovich wrote:
| > Oh okay, if I disagree with the author then I am just
| ~afraid~
|
| You opened your comment with expressing fear and finding the
| event she described as horrific. That is you being afraid.
| asdfman123 wrote:
| > I should state at this point that this is not an essay about
| "cancel culture going too far," a topic which can now be
| historicized as little more than a rhetorical cudgel wielded
| successfully by the right to wrest cultural power back from an
| ascendant progressive liberalism
|
| Well, maybe it should be. I'm a progressive but I'm tired of
| people trying to ruin my life over nothing, just as the author
| is.
|
| I'm am against the far right, and as a result I feel we _should
| not give the far right ammunition._ A lot of people voted for DT
| because they saw him as the lesser a-hole, and the left badly
| needs to acknowledge that.
| antonvs wrote:
| > I'm tired of people trying to ruin my life over nothing
|
| Could you give an example? Because most commonly, it seems that
| people who take this position are writing about what happened
| to some celebrity who indulged in some ill-advised public
| behavior, and extrapolating it to their own lives due to some
| sort of parasocial thinking. What environment are you in that
| this is actually a real problem in your own life?
| asdfman123 wrote:
| Yes, and what happened to me is none of your business. I'm
| talking about the general atmosphere of distrust and
| demonization that the author is describing.
| ryandv wrote:
| I'll corroborate your position.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I'm a bit "past my prime," so sexy don't have the same appeal to
| me, as it once did.
|
| But this phrase caught my attention:
|
| _> ...the internet's tendency to reach for the least charitable
| interpretation of every glancing thought and, as a result, to
| have pathologized what I would characterize as the normal,
| internal vagaries..._
|
| Really, despite the topic, I feel that this is what she's really
| talking about, and it applies to a lot more than just sex.
|
| It isn't a "woke" thing (although that's a good demonstration of
| it). People on the right, do exactly the same thing, with stuff
| they don't want to hear.
|
| These days, people automatically choose the most offensive, least
| charitable, brutish, interpretation of the things we say and do.
|
| Lost, are the "cut them slack" days.
|
| I have a friend who is occasionally, casually racist. It isn't an
| angry "I'm better than them" type. He's just ignorant of folks
| that aren't white and relatively privileged, and tends to speak
| without a filter.
|
| Otherwise, he's a pretty amazing guy. He's a deacon at his
| church, does food drives and coat drives, donates fully-cooked
| meals to the local homeless shelter (He's a chef), etc. Really
| decent chap.
|
| But he'll sometimes come out with a "WTF?" zinger, from time to
| time. Sometimes, I kindly set him straight, and sometimes, just
| ignore it, and don't feed the troll.
|
| He really doesn't mean badly, but he's coming from a place of
| bluntness. I appreciate his ignorant bluntness, a _lot_ more than
| the cultured insults of folks that seem, on the surface, to be
| more "worldly," but are, inside, actually nasty bigots.
|
| I have come to really enjoy folks, in all their glory; warts and
| all. If I allow myself to let some of their downsides, wipe out
| their upsides, I'm the biggest loser.
|
| This is really a long conversation. Sometimes, ignoring bad
| stuff, is bad, in itself, so we need to figure out how to "draw
| the line." It's a continuum, not a binary thing.
| hluska wrote:
| The opening anecdote was interesting. The author's overall point
| seemed to be that eroticism loses out when privacy is lost. Yet
| they were upset that when they shared their erotic experience
| with a friend, that friend didn't find it erotic and instead
| found it exploitative.
|
| The friend had a point - there's no particular reason to share
| our kinks with the masses and expect agreement. It's totally fine
| for some people to have issues with others being sexualized at
| work. Those people deserve respect too.
| fullshark wrote:
| An absurd piece, by a way too online person who seemingly
| realized they are way too online and thinks everyone else suffers
| from their affliction.
| djij wrote:
| Once our ai overlords take their rightful place there will be no
| more such problems in the world, we will be paired with our mates
| without fear of reprobation
| dustfinger wrote:
| Hmm, I am getting a 403 when trying to load the link.
| mlsu wrote:
| I think this is true to an extent, but it's actually far deeper
| and more basic than that we fear being watched by others.
|
| "the self" is formed in relation to others, it is not formed by
| itself. The way that people think of their own self, is the way
| they imagine themselves to act in relation to others _only_.
| There is no "me" alone, it's all entirely relational.
|
| The problem I think we have now is that a huge proportion of how
| we relate to others has been moved online. When I was growing up,
| being in a picture was something that happened rarely -- on
| "picture day" for the yearbook, at a family gathering when
| someone happened to have a disposable camera. But now, kids are
| in photos and videos all the time, 24/7. The way we relate, from
| very early on, is influenced by the deeply unnatural online
| parasocial relationships of Instagram etc.
|
| It goes further than you, a stable self who is worried about
| cancel culture. It's built into your sense of self, it affects
| how your self is constructed. It's deeply embedded into who you
| are, your way of being. To be is to be perceived and we are being
| perceived in these really weird/unnatural/algorithmic ways, and
| it is reflecting on us.
| bigjimmyjohnson wrote:
| Uptight conservatives: Your sexual desires are "sinful"
|
| Uptight progressives: Your sexual desires are "problematic"
|
| The former group certainly tends to have more power, but the
| latter are somewhat annoying because they're harder to spot and
| avoid. But unfortunately, certain legislation cannot be avoided.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOSTA-SESTA
|
| This bill killed the greatest source of incredibly-specific
| sexual encounters and exploration the internet has ever known:
| Craigslist Casual Encounters. Whether you were looking for a man,
| woman, other, or a group, or so on, whether you sought something
| vanilla or a combination of kinks you made up in your dreams the
| night before, you could advertise it or seek it there. Ads could
| contain nudity, you could view them publicly, you could message
| people through anonymous email relay without making an account -
| and it all happened openly (yet with privacy) on a well-known
| website that people used for all sorts of things. Nothing else on
| the internet today compares and it's likely impossible to
| recreate.
| paulpauper wrote:
| The pendulum always swings back. What the legacy of metoo shows
| is that holding others to some idealized moral standard means
| also being held to that same standard. Winning is not without
| costs.
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