the_dunk_tank
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Also, I'm too young to know the answer to this, but what effect do we think internet porn has had on spawning a generation of incels? Idk what the pre-porn incel market was like.
Sex is great, intimacy is wonderful, but I don't like porn.
Doesn't mean it should be illegal tho
porn didn't create any incels, people who have no sex education or 'visualisation' still have the social expectations of patriarchy. 'internet porn' largely coincides with the long-run alienation trends of the last decades, it's a relatively unimportant part compared to economic outlooks and social isolation.
Good distinction, I think porn hones incels rather than creates them
idk, historically the alternatives might have been worse; would the 'incel' archetype be more likely to be violent with more available prostitution? it's easy to imagine the stewing that goes on in shut-in incel's minds but before we had as widespread porn, seeking out transactional sexual gratification would involve them interfacing vulnerable laborers.
Some effect, but likely a negligible one. Most dudes of childrearing age, cause I'm not gonna sit here and act like they're all fathers even if they sired a child-- most dudes won't cop to it, but Gen Xers and boomers are where this started. They taught their boys a very specific way that offshot of the way they acted, even if what they SAID ran contrary. It's what their fathers did that these incels want to emulate, not what they said.
I'm speaking from personal experience here; because I was once very much the same way. One bad relationship with a cheat had me misogynistic as fuck at one point in my life; and what I fell back on was all of the maladaptive, machismo-type bullshit my father lived by. "Never let a hoe fuck with your money", "never trust a hoe with your feelings", the whole nine-- and this experience is what kind of. I might verbally john on incels every so often, but I consider it genuinely tragic because they were maladaptively socialized for a society that is quite literally disintegrating in real time.
tl;dr I think it might tweak the dynamics of the incel/manosphere, but not in a way that'd undo the phenomenon. If anything, you're gonna see more Andrew Tate-alikes who talk about porn and masturbation being mentally or spiritually crippling, but still keep up all the regressive misogyny if not stronger because dollars-to-donuts says they'll just default to "blame women" for why the porn is gone. (Despite all their slagging of OnlyFans models.)
just watching movies from the 80s and 90s is enough to see how incel-type behaviour not only existed, but was somewhat normalized as "romantic protagonist" behaviour
You could probably argue that what makes the incel is the rupture from the rest of society not accepting that behavior from all men. The friction between men who want the benefits of the patriarchy without the downsides, and the rest of everyone, including those who want the end of the patriarchy as well as those who are okay with the status quo, is what creates incels as a specific group.
NoFap is already a reactionary thing and basically General Ripper from Dr. Strangelove except unironic.
I don't think it's a gen x or boomer thing, I think there have always been men we'd now identify as incels in patriarchal society, as it's the logical end point of male sexual entitlement. The way we describe them has changed, but ideas like women not being able to be trusted with money or men not showing their feelings go back hundreds, if not thousands of years. I think what's really changed is the internet has given those people somewhere to gather and jerk themselves off about how unfair it is, intensifying their persecution complexes and causing them to act out more.
This is a pretty good macro-level way to look at it, I'm just trying to keep my lens fixed to recent history, y'know, likening/affixing the concept to 'sources' (even if not primary sources) that we all know and can identify immediately in our orbits. It's absolutely the logical endpoint, but to me, at the point where it affects us all, I see it all starts again with each man that COULD have broken that cycle, but couldn't even be incentivized to.
Cause there WERE some that actually tried NOT to; I've seen them, I've met them, but I've also seen their kids just totally go sides-up from proper teaching and acting to sink into this incel shit because of the crowd the kid keeps-- and the cycle in their bloodline starts again with the kid that went sideways, y'know?
Ah, I see what you mean, I'd misinterpreted you as saying the wider phenomenon only started with genx/boomers. Definitely agree with everything you've said, then.
The prevalence of the male incel identity coincides with sexual harassment becoming less socially acceptable.
That's the main part of it. It's the shadow of lingering social misogyny trying to reassert itself through the very real phemenons of alienation and loneliness.
I would at least ban porn networks, since they are nothing more than socially accepted pimping.
idk, I think it's hard to separate the effects of internet porn from the effects of the internet in general. i think regular ol' internet forums (some of which host porn but not necessarily as the main focus) are the biggest factor in the proliferation of "incel" mindsets / identities. you know, before the internet if you were somebody who can't get laid, you'd maybe talk to your friends about it and get encouragement or advice, or talk to family, or just be sad basically. the chances of you independently coming to the conclusion that there's something about you that makes you completely unlovable (maybe even to absurdly specific degrees, such as that you will never be able to get laid because your wrists are too narrow) and that the problem will never ever get better and that all women are unthinking evil creatures who want unlovable men like you to die so they never have to be reminded that anyone but
exists... are pretty slim. nobody comes up with those kinds of ideas on their own, that requires insular groups that take time feeding each other's frustrations and insecurities and slowly building up a mythology. if you dont have access to the internet, you're going to have to discuss your difficult love life with someone who can get laid. but incel internet forums provide an extremely unhealthy outlet for those frustrations that don't involve ever talking to someone who can get laid.
I also don't think internet porn is significantly more harmful than the good ol' magazines and VHS tapes and whatever that we had before. though, one way in that it is obviously more harmful is in the sheer availability. if you've got a dirty magazine you've got, you know, one magazine of porn. if you've got a smartphone you've got more porn than you could ever desire to look at in a hundred lifetimes. and if you're a kid, you at least have to hide a dirty magazine. teens these days have basically no risk of being caught being addicted to (even extremely niche) pornography. i think that's gonna be the biggest effect of internet porn for the next few generations. when millennials (and anyone older) were growing up, their experience with porn, if any, was maybe a few dirty magazines where they could look at some tits. now kids are growing up totally addicted to enormous amounts of wild, hardcore porn.
i generally agree with you that porn is bad. by volume, anyway. like 99.999% of all porn is bad for a wide variety of reasons. I think it's possible to make porn ethically. Very difficult unless there are no humans involved (like with drawings or pure writing), and even then it's still possible to do it unethically (sexualizing children still sucks even if there are no real kids involved, for example)
I do think that the 99.999% of porn I'm talking about should be illegal, though.
I'm so extremely glad I didn't get a smartphone until after I started dating
in a utopian vision of communism porn absolutely would not exist. far from the first thing on the list (i agree making it illegal under current conditions as a lone act would be useless and probably regressive) but if we take the abolition of exploitation seriously it's gotta go