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.
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.videos in the "woman with large breasts not wearing a bra does something mundane" genre with multiple millions of views.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.
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.
Does not need to be naked, just a pretty woman.
For e.g. there's a trend where painters post a painting of them while standing next to it. I do not subscribe to any subreddits but as some of these become popular, they pop into my homepage. 9 out of 10 of these are painted by a pretty woman.
Wait until you learn that some people abuse this to funnel potential subscribers to their OF. And I don't mean the kind that's about the artwork they show off (which would usually be on Patreon these days, I guess?).
Most woman don't run an OF of course. And wether they do or don't, anyone should be free to socialize over their hobbies on the internet, and/or present their art work for other to appreciate (and get validation with hundreds or thousands of up votes). But those on the intersection that choose to run thinly disguised ads ruin it for me :(
I feel as though my post didn't really connect. Let me give an example, sort of:
This stock image is roughly the level of thing I'm talking about, except even with women who are less obviously chesty:
https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/two-senior-black-fe...
It feels very UNsurprising to me that nudity, or revealing photos, would get more views. There's various ways we can feel about it. But "surprised" would, erm, certainly not be one of them for me!
However, I was still surprised that extremely tame photos of slightly curvy women would get relatively large numbers of views, in a world where most people can easily find all the lewd, nude, and explicit images and videos they want.
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.
> “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.
I guess if you take it literally, yeah.
But I've seen plenty of boring pics of lakes and none were on top posts, contrary to these cases.
It is of course subjective what makes a good photo or not, but sometimes it is pretty clear why a picture reached top posts.
My dad was an amateur photographer for a while, and even got one of his photos published in the newspaper.
He said nothing improves a landscape picture more than having a person in the picture. I didn't believe him.
Later, I went on a trip to Hawaii, and took maybe 300 landscape pictures of its beauty. Upon looking at them at home, I realized he was right. The ones with people in them, even random strangers, were always more interesting.
Amazing photographers can shoot landscapes that are deeply compelling in their own right. Good photographers really can’t. There aren’t a lot of Ansel Adamses out there.
Weeelll, I don't find Ansel Adams's work very interesting. I have several coffee table art books, some of which have old west landscape pictures, and it's the people in them that make it work.
Something I do with my friends is look at Annie Liebovitz portraits and try to recreate the ones we like.
That’s totally fair if Adams’s doesn’t do much for you. Regardless, I’m in agreement with you that most landscapes are not actually that interesting without people in them. Humans are naturally drawn to images of other humans.
I would amend the idea to include artifacts that suggest people activity and wildlife that can easily be personified
It’s like throwing bacon into an otherwise average recipe. Is it a cheap way to make it good? Yeah. But is it good? Probably. And very plausibly it tastes better than the more difficult recipe that lacks the bacon.
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!)
> "This photo is not interesting other than the naked woman", the upvotes arrived anyway.
Art is judged on feelings it invokes. Naked women invoke strong feelings in a lot of people.
/r/analog used to be sooo good!
> 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.
> 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.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2008/apr/04/thelas...
> you builders, stop wolf-whistling, it's coarse. Except if you do it to me. Then I'd be really pleased ...
Attraction and romance is complicated.
And for others, finally being invisible and not subject to leering in public and online is a mercy.
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.
Definitely definitely only works for men
And it will form it's own niche. Rule 34
What do you mean by that? Asking honestly.
I think the t-shirt with the wolf howling at the moon is a bit of a stereotype. If you have watched the Simpsons, something the comic book store owner would wear.
Overweight, unkempt, awkward around women, and guaranteed zero attention from women.
Thanks! I expected that, but never associated it with the idea of a howling wolf.
I have a pet theory that the reason certain men are homophobic is because they're terrified that another man is looking at them the same way they look at women.
No it has more to do with rigid gender roles. Women expect men to be strong, independent and (sexually) dominant. Being dominated by another man is a sign of weakness. A lot of women also do not leave any room for nuance. There is zero tolerance. Anything with a penis is bad, even transwomen. You could be bisexual with a strong preference for women, but you will still be put in the "100% gay exclusively for men" box.
Homophobia arises from seeing homosexuality as a threat to your heterosexuality. The LGBT people are coming after your coveted "straight" status and try to infect you with the "gay" virus which makes it harder to attract a woman.
Basically it's the male equivalent of being "deflowered".
nah, that just projection
Perhaps but I think it's just a normal ick response. People instinctively steer clear of "weird" or "perceived to be dirty" things even if it's illogical. (No matter how much some try to gaslight, homosexuality is abnormal. Note that abnormal != wrong. The former is a factual statement and the latter is a subjective/moral one, though for better or worse most of the globe does still treat it negatively and it's only in the social bubbles that we're in where it's accepted)
Abnormal isn't a good word to use here since it connotates an undesirable condition, implying a need for correction.
Atypical, non-standard, or unconventional are more neutral in tone, so given your desire for a non-subjective word I'd recommend these instead.
If something falls out of the center of the normal distribution, it's by definition abnormal. Once again, that doesn't make it bad per se. But trying to police perfectly good words just makes people become more antagonizing to the position you want to defend.
Very few people would agree that red hair is "abnormal". Why do you think that people in general are more likely to describe homosexuality as "abnormal" when the prevalence of homosexuality is roughly on par with that of red hair?
> If something falls out of the center of the normal distribution, it's by definition abnormal. Once again, that doesn't make it bad per se. But trying to police perfectly good words just makes people become more antagonizing to the position you want to defend.
I mean why do people even post something like that? It takes 2 seconds to look up the definition of abnormal. It's it really not knowing, it's is it (what I believe) trying to sneak in their moral judgements behind a veneer of supposed "neutrality"?
> Abnormal - deviating from what is normal or usual, typically in a way that is undesirable or worrying.
> "[...] is it (what I believe) trying to sneak in their moral judgements behind a veneer of supposed 'neutrality'?"
Yes, that's precisely what it is. Moral judgements based on outdated ("conservative", especially clerical) understandings of the world, wrapped in some delusional sense of "objectivity". Only the scientifically and philosophically illiterate fall for it. In German, we call it Bauernfängerei (swizzling, duping; lit. "pawn catching").
What’s the normal distribution here? If attraction to men forms a normal distribution, it makes the argument weaker. If you are making things up, at least make them up well.
Yes, the analogy to the bell curve doesn't fit this use case very well, I didn't noticed it before. But the point still stands: non heterosexual behaviour is a tiny minority compared to the norm. So, abnormal is a perfectly good word to describe non-heterosexual behaviour. Once again, it doesn't make it bad per se. I just can't stand word police, which is just another facet of thought police.
"Abnormal" has a very specific meaning. It is not used for everything that is just uncommon. It is used for behaviours that are non-normative. If you have an idiosyncratic way you use this word, ok, but communication is supposed to require and assume a common understanding of a language. So there is no point to discuss if abnormal refers to frequency of a behaviour in a population or in a normativity-related judgement of it, because in common usage it refers to the latter, because either we do not speak a common language or I have to assume disingenuity here (and leaning towards the latter in this case).
If the topic is about whether homosexuality is non-normative and heterosexuality is normative (with the actual, common meanings of the words), we can have a philosophical discussion on that.
Meanwhile, my original comment was more intended as commentary on the pervasiveness of leering.
Of course, it's an unprovable conjecture - but it sure would explain a few things.
Abnormal is a completely unscientific and immoral word to use in the context of consentual sexual behaviors for it is factually wrong (see the distribution of homosexual or bisexual behaviors in mammal species including humans), and also invoking a moral presciptive by declaration "what should be normal" via telling other people what "is not normal".
You fall into the same trap ("non-standard", "atypical"); you just stepped on the euphemism treadmill.
It's not abnormal. Statistically, you don't call anything "abnormal". Neither biologically, nor "naturalistically", there are a million things we all do, that are not "normal" in that sense and we don't call it abnormal.
> No matter how much some try to gaslight, homosexuality is abnormal
This is an abjectly silly thing to say, and people who push back on it are not gaslighting. Homosexuality occurs naturally and it's not even rare - it's far more common than red hair, for example.
Calling something like that "abnormal" isn't in the domain of fact, it's purely a side-effect of what you label "normal".
> I have a hunch some people actually prefer this sort of thing to explicit content.
I.... enjoyed looking at that!
The confusing ones in my account were sooooo much tamer though. The chests were not even remotely the focus of the photos. It was subtle enough that it took me a while to even figure out the trend.
The pragmatic takeaway is "making yourself more attractive will make people x100 more interested in seeing you."
So at least there's that.
Hrm, the takeaway is really (IMO) "Have a woman with a big chest in the same picture will get 100x more views"
thanks JohnBooty for sharing your insights about women with certain bodies
Like the valiant Sir Mix-a-lot before him, he can not lie
I think there is a remix that could be made with both of them.... Would sell.
>It also underscored for me how women, especially women with certain bodies, can't escape being sexualized no matter what they do or wear.
And how would you distinguish "being sexualized" from "men finding a woman attractive" ?
It's the same thing. You use one phrasing or the other depending on whether you want to villify of what's happening or not.
It's an interesting question and is, more or less, what the linked article is about. I enjoyed the read.
(While written by a woman, it comes down decisively on the side of "hey - you don't need anybody's permission to find things sexy")
> women with certain bodies, can't escape being sexualized no matter what they do or wear
men with certain bodies, can't escape being tallized no matter what they do or wear
or you could just say they are tall
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.
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.
>It also underscored for me how women, especially women with certain bodies, can't escape being sexualized no matter what they do or wear.
You also can't escape being ugly and receiving the opposite reaction as a man.
There are so many things that you can't escape that it seems pretty suspect to focus on this one in particular. The most obvious aspect of being alive is that your body is mortal. You will never be able to escape that fact. You also cannot escape chronic diseases that negatively impact your life every single day.
The idea that men and women pair up to produce new life together is one of the more wholesome aspects of life. There are plenty of insects where one of the partners dies in the process and many species that don't care for the young.
Real women are sexy. Especially the ones you know personally. The vulgar creatures posing in porn sites not so, but act as a substitute.
But how did only "chesty" photos get 100x views?
Is there an online forum like posting a URL to such photos?
Flickr doesn't break down views, so, for all I know it could have been bots doing image recognition or a single guy in his bedroom clicking on certain pictures 100x a day.
But yeah.... "links shared on forums" was always my leading theory.
In some cases, I'm sure the thumbnails enticed extra clicks. But some of the pictures just had a bustier than average woman in the background or something. It's not clear to me that the thumbnails were enticing.
(99% of these people were my IRL friends as well, so I wasn't really trying to take salacious pictures....)
Its just instinctual
> 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.
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.
It was not normal in a semse normal managers would do it and everyone would aprove.
On 1995, which is 30 years ago, it was neither normal nor accepted. You was major asshole if you did it and lawsuits were already won.
Perhaps in 1975. The earliest I remember a dude at the office getting fired for harassment was around 1988.
> 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'.
That was a huge no-no 30 years ago, at least in the US. In fact, it was a major no-no at my first job in 1979 and would get you fired.
Maybe I'm a few years off but you got my drift.
>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'.
I was in the workforce 30 years ago and, no, it was absolutely not normal.
It was what we called an "HR violation" and a "Career limiting move."
Not sure where you were 30 years ago, but except in bordellos and strip clubs that wasn't "normal." Not even close.
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.
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.
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)
That sounds like a terrible advice that all the creeps are taking with predictable results.
A creep is going to be a creep with or without this advice.
I cannot tell if this is /s or not but yikes…
Yes! Good Working drone! You must keep on working, that’s your purpose after all!
Ah, Anglo-Saxon work culture, where one can't imagine not making friends at work because they have no social life outside of work.
Not making friends at work because you have fulfilled social life already, and not making friends at work to avoid any danger to your career are two very different things.
Not making friends at work, because it's not a good place to make friends, might push you towards ensuring having fulfilled social life outside of work.
I say this without rancor: unless I miss my mark, you don't live or work in the United States. You don't understand the stakes. I envy your life brother; I hope you appreciate it.
I live and work in Europe but I used to travel a lot for work to the US. Friendship or making friends indeed seems to work differently there, which was hard to grasp from my cultural pov. That said, I made a good friend there.
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.
> "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.
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.
- [deleted]
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.
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.
I’m not really sure about that. I think if I told most people in my social circles that, they would look at me like I’m very weird.
I’m not necessarily saying they are wrong either. It’s a tough zone. If I imagine people I know saying that to me, in my head most of them come off lecherous and creepy.
I feel like close friends could say that stuff to me or vice versa but most of the time it would come off weird at best. Choice of words is also a big factor though. “Beautiful”, “gorgeous”, “attractive” are all more reasonable sounding to me than “hot” even though they all basically mean the same thing.
> In my head most of them come off lecherous and creepy.
Wait really, just for thinking someone is hot and telling you, who's presumably their friend?
I’ve got friends that I’ve known for decades and would fly across the world if they needed. I’ve also got friends I see for drinks occasionally. Other people I might call friends that I don’t even have in my phone. It’s a big range and there are a lot of things my closest friends could reasonably say to me that more casual friends couldn’t.
To be clear, I’m also not saying anyone would ostracized for this, nor that anyone would ostracize me if I said this. But if one of my more casual friends randomly commented that their hairdresser is hot, I’d give them a bit of a sideways look, yeah.
This seems like it’s very prone to selection bias. I don’t think most acquaintances I have would be surprised or cut me off; and indeed, I’ve exchanged comments about passing women with people I’ve only met recently.
But that’s why I think it’s self selection:
- you mention that even from friends you would find it strange and seem to flock with similar perspectives;
- by contrast, I don’t and flock with people who don’t either.
And I don’t particularly see a problem with that — the world is a big place and not everyone needs to be to everyone else’s taste. But like many things, people seem to form cliques.
For sure. Selection bias is major here. But I don’t think someone having a negative reaction to this scenario is a 1 in a million chance.
> would look at me like I’m very weird.
Discussing sex in non-sexual contexts is weird. Author goes at length how it was a private, personal experience in her own body and mind. And if it stayed there instead of being babbled out to a friend she would still have that friend.
I think it's a product of the environment. I've lived some places (lower middle class suburban factory towns) where that sort of conversation wouldn't have been uncommon at all. I've lived other places (upper middle class university towns) where it definitely would've gotten you some strange looks or distancing. The 99.9999% number definitely doesn't ring true to me.
It feels weird just having to say this, but none of those examples evoke the word "sexy". Sexualization != sexy. The author is talking about how people interact in the real world, not media consumption.
I don't know if the balance of evidence supports significant changes in sexuality and eroticism or not, but I think the way you've made the case that it doesn't here is unconvincing. Consumption of erotic content on the internet and actually engaging in sexuality as a participant are drastically different matters and both the sign and magnitude of any correlation between them is hard to pin down. From my own anecdotal perspective, there's a weak but significant anticorrelation between how much porn/erotica people consume on the internet and how much they engage in sex or kink or even relationships with other people. Maybe the sample of people I've met isn't indicative, but I would say neither is anything you're using as supporting evidence here
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.
With this post on HN, her 'puritan echo chamber/bubble' meets this 'nerdy/intellectual echo chamber/bubble'.
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.
Good. Let the bubbles collide!
You think watching someone - on your own - on Only Fans is an example of sexual intimacy?
The idea that zoomer Puritanism is only a tiny minority online and not a majority is fatally wrong. You don’t know how badly you will be treated for even small age gaps among zoomers anymore.
Your echo chamber is probably full of virgins. Try a different one.
Puritanism follows a bathtub curve. The most judgmental people are the very young who lack experience in the world, and the old whose experience comes from a different age.
Those zoomers who complain about age gaps will grow up, realise that they quite enjoy such relationships, and laugh at gen alpha for being so puritanical.
> For the most part, sexy never left, and statistics bear this out
Recently I've seen a figure in a reputable source showing that people tend to have less sex than ~20-30 years ago (even if we just look at married couples).
Especially bad amongst male youth. The refusal to acknowledge this epidemic will have extreme consequences going forward. The normalization of incel talking points online is the canary in the coal mine. The average young male in America today is “red pilled”.
OP's point (imo valid) relates to the private sphere, and how we as normal humans are more afraid of outing our sexual fears/desires because of the possibility of them being amplified on the internet.
And you somehow think that millions of men masturbating to a few onlyfans accounts is a counterargument to show everything is actually fine
- [deleted]
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?
Conflict is actually healthy to have as long as it’s not violent and there’s space for other ways of relating to the same person.
The most economically productive places in the world, I.e San Francisco and especially Seattle are famously passive aggressive and avoid conflict. It’s so well known in Seattle they have a name for it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Freeze
Maybe having conflict isn’t healthy, and letting people grumble about things under the breath is the right way forward, unironically.
> 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.