9 ms·

The Secretive World of Penile Enlargement

83 points by wiradikusuma 3y ago

WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
Back when I was a regular listener to talk radio, the ads for PE snake oil were absolutely ubiquitous. They aired more than any other product I can remember (except maybe Bose Wave radio). I never knew how to feel for this target audience. It sucks people are vulnerable to obvious snake oil ads. It also sucks that PE is a thing that's important to people. Male body shaming is weird and oogy.
- gjvc 3y ago
  Bose Wave radio adverts on the radio. Damn.
  - mbg721 3y ago
    My parents actually did buy, not a Bose Wave radio, but one of the South African wind-up ones they advertised heavily just before Y2K. (My parents were insomniac Art Bell fans.) It came in pretty handy for sporadic weather-related stuff.
    - WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
      > one of the South African wind-up ones they advertised heavily just before Y2K. (My parents were insomniac Art Bell fans.) That'd be C.Crane. Looks like he and Bell were into each other https://ccrane.com/art-bell-an-interview-with-a-legendary-talk-show-host/ https://ccrane.com/art-bell-an-interview-with-a-legendary-ta...
      - mbg721 3y ago
        Gushing affair or not, it's an impressive radio.
  - WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
    I knew a few listeners who bought them, typically on credit. I inherited a couple but passed them on.
- lotsofpulp 3y ago
  One of the funniest things is Reddit “evolving” to lock threads or downvote comments about people’s appearances on popular threads, but simultaneously embracing comments that associate a man with perceived negative qualities as having a small penis. And it will almost always be the top comment.
  - networkchad 3y ago
    [dead]
  - Tao3300 3y ago
    The double standards are shocking. If a woman says "if he cheated on me like that, I'd (fill in horrid genital mutilation)" and everyone has a laugh about it or cheers her on. If a man responds in kind, people are mortified, too shocked to even speak condemnation. Likewise for prison rape. It seriously troubles me how many people celebrate the prospect of that happening to male convicts. If you suggested it as a fitting punishment for a female offender, you might not even exit the room you uttered the words in unharmed.
    - WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
      > The double standards are shocking. If a woman says "if he cheated on me like that, I'd (fill in horrid genital mutilation)" and everyone has a laugh about it or cheers her on. One of my earliest memories of mom: Her in traction for two broken vertebrae, thanks to dad and a bakelite phone. Of all the relatives and friends who've been physically assaulted by someone close, about 99% were female and about 99% of them were hit by a male. The exceptions were older sisters and that ended when the younger sibling got big enough. Because size matters. I did 25 years with a profoundly abusive spouse and know a bit about being abused by women. To believe I was at physical risk would be a sad delusion to have. In my experience, efforts to marginalize the risk that men pose to women don't come from a place of sound analysis and good faith.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- mbg721 3y ago
  They're still on AM radio, along with the "buy gold" ones. It's weird.
- Tao3300 3y ago
  Radio and sports ads are the worst. This. Penny auctions. Crypto. Gambling. I tune out of things I might have otherwise listened to because it feels filthy.
SV_BubbleTime 3y ago
The summary actually does it’s job: > Kevin said that he had undergone five surgeries with Elist, including two upgrades, a revision and a removal, and his penis no longer functioned. Still, Kevin had always found the surgeon to be caring, if a little preoccupied. “He reminded me of Doctor Frankenstein — the intensity of him wanting this thing to come to life,” Kevin told me. It sounded strange, he acknowledged, but before each operation he’d been filled with excitement. “You just feel relieved that you’re fixing something,” he said. At an appointment earlier this year, Kevin said, Elist promised to fix him again with a sixth procedure, but one of the surgeon’s assistants discreetly advised against it. Kevin thought he could spot “the other experiments” in the clinic from their loose-fitting sweatpants and the awkward way they walked. There were so many men waiting to see the doctor that they spilled into the hallway. … I think I’m of the ideal height, with the ideal penis size… so there’s a requisite for this entire article that I just won’t understand. But that last paragraph would scare the hell out of me if this was something I was interested in.
- Tao3300 3y ago
  Is there anything left after 5 surgeries? After 6? There has to be a lot of scarring inside and out.
whimsicalism 3y ago
This is so sad. I think there is an underdiscussed crisis with some segments of men.
- JKCalhoun 3y ago
  It was hard to read. I'm here (wincing in imagined pain) shouting, "No! What if it is irreversible?! What if your dick gets screwed up?!" I confess that after reading it I began to feel that it is even unethical to be in the penis-enlargement field.
- MildRant 3y ago
  Men have a lot of problems that are under discussed and swept under the rug. Loneliness issues, confidence issues, perception issues, issues with men thinking their life doesn't matter to just name a few. The suicide rate among men is so high for a lot of reasons.
  - Two4 3y ago
    Suicide rate is around 4 times higher for men in Western societies, but suicide attempts by women are at least twice that of men. More lethal, messier suicide methods are more popular among men, and in my opinion, it's because women are socialised to be more considerate of those who will find their body.
- AtlasBarfed 3y ago
  It will continue to be underdiscussed unless there is big money in it. Males are disposable genetically and evolutionarily.
- localplume 3y ago
  when making fun of a man's penis size for whatever reason becomes normalized, it isn't surprising body dysmorphia becomes more prevalent. double standards galore. mens issues just don't matter.
  - maxbond 3y ago
imwillofficial 3y ago
Only thing that actually works without horrifying side effects is a Bathmate. Even then, the results are quite limited, and very temporary. C’est la vie
- mumblemumble 3y ago
  Some good old-fashioned body positivity might work even better with even fewer side effects.
  - rhombocombus 3y ago
    Communication and creativity can do almost anything, but dysmorphia is a hell of a drug.
zug_zug 3y ago
tl; dr: Starts with some absolute horror stories (e.g. complete loss of function), continues to talk about the technology improving, but still includes horror stories. It's not clear if the average outcome is horrible, but it sounds like people are getting paid to advocate or sued for sharing horror stories, so it's hard to trust anything.
pengaru 3y ago
penumba! > Elist sat behind an imposing desk in a borrowed office and spoke about his > forthcoming book, a collection of parables for spiritually minded surgeons > titled "Operating with God." His ghostwriter had rendered his voice so > skillfully, he said, that he'd found himself moved to tears while reading > it. Beside a gilt statue of a jaguar in the corner of the room, someone had > propped a mirror with an image of Jesus etched at its center. As Elist > recounted passages from his book, his merry face, crowned by a hairnet, > hovered next to Christ's. The above reads like a Tales From the Crypt movie script, in the leadup to Elist slicing into yet another victim's Johnson.
29athrowaway 3y ago
From the article: > Some implants got infected or detached. Others buckled at the corners. Occasionally these protrusions broke through the skin, forming holes that would fester. The hole of the health-spa vice president was so tiny that he originally mistook its fermented odor for an STD. > Later, doctors unaffiliated with the Penuma would compare such penises to “a torpedo,” “a penguin,” “a pig in a blanket,” “a beer can with a mushroom sticking out on the top” and “the tipped-down nose of the Concorde.”
jncfhnb 3y ago
[flagged]
- flangola7 3y ago
  What is this small group of people you refer to?
  - jncfhnb 3y ago
    I mean I’m not tracking and classifying users by their neuroses. I get the sense it is mostly male Asian immigrants living in CA unable to get any dates in a competitive, underpopulated, mostly white female dating market.
    - whimsicalism 3y ago
      I agree that this is a thing and one that I have witnessed but not on HN. And yeah, there are studies indicating white women as having the largest (or maybe second, black women were up there) racial ingroup bias in dating [0] [0]: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/okcupid-race_n_5811840 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/okcupid-race_n_5811840
      - cubefox 3y ago
        This looks like men dislike black women, and women like men of their own race.
        whimsicalism 3y ago
        I agree, but the magnitude of the preference for men overall is smaller. Men appear to be mostly anti-black and otherwise agnostic, whereas women have strong in group preference.
    - giardini 3y ago
      If so, they need merely read johnnyworker's post at the top of this topic to find that there are "plenty of fish in the sea" (possibly 2/3 of them!) that would be satisfied with their physique.
Conscat 3y ago
[flagged]
- Tao3300 3y ago
  I'm so huge I've received complaints... ever since I switched to Lisp!
canadiantim 3y ago
Reads like a horror story
mc_woods 3y ago
From a technology point of view there is a lesson in how a company controls the media it's customers consume. How alternative sources of data get discredited and how untrusted the information found online is. The result, when you can't trust anyone, is to trust the source you want to believe. Many men want to believe they'll get a bigger penis.
johnnyworker 3y ago
IIRC the Kamasutra says there's 3 genital sizes for both men and women; big (horse/elephant), medium (bull/mare) and small (hare/deer). It says you can have great sex with up to 1 size difference, and although the woman being one size smaller is preferable to her being one size bigger, it calls equal unions the most perfect ones. And that's just refering to vaginal intercourse itself, of course there is so much more to sex. I don't know what my point is, other than: don't fret! If you find someone you like, and who likes you, a lot of silliness and unfounded fear will fade away.
- mumblemumble 3y ago
  I wonder what the kama sutra's model has to say about surveys indicating that women who have sex with women tend to have significantly more satisfying sex lives than women who have sex with men. Presumably, for the purposes of the model that its authors are getting at, the magnitude of "size mismatch" between two mares is infinitely greater than that of a mare and a horse or hare. Which might imply that the model is deeply, fundamentally broken. It seems to have a track record of breaking people, too.
  - reaperman 3y ago
    Strap-ons come in any size. It can be difficult to find ones which allow full control / subtleties but the harnesses from Aslan leather do a pretty impressive job of providing full control over the dildo.
  - johnnyworker 3y ago
    I didn't mean to cite it as an authority on everything, but the bit about genital sizes struck me as sensible, certainly more sensible than just obsessing about having a huge penis.
  - jncfhnb 3y ago
    I can’t say I have any insight into the sex lives of lesbians, but size seems unlikely to be the driver of that vs. things like empathy, more equal sex drives, and no pressure to get off before the other partner.
kraig911 3y ago
Reading this made me extremely uneasy. My impression - perhaps it's just being hopeful for a material solution for a psychosis of the mind. But when I think on that impression isn't a pill just about any fleeting vice the same as what these men have suffered. Maybe I'm not better. We need avenues to help each other. To talk with another. Maybe there's an opportunity to create something?
victorbjorklund 3y ago
Wow. That is so sad to read.
Tao3300 3y ago
> A year had passed since Mick’s explant, and he’d entered a serious depression. He’d barely noticed when pandemic restrictions were lifted, because he’s continued to stay in his bed. Originally six and a half inches erect, he had lost an inch of length. Dude was already above the average cited in the article before he went under the knife. That's some tragic dysmorphia.
- toyg 3y ago
  The saddest stat in the article is that the overwhelming majority of patients were already average or above. That alone should be considered a dereliction of the Hippocratic Oath to do no harm. This type of procedure should be banned for anyone already over 4 inches.
SillyUsername 3y ago
I didn't read past jellyfish. That's enough nightmare fodder for me
trowaway344988 3y ago
Most are scam , I think. Random stuff: - [big gun] :) , is exception, not rule. Exercises, luck, pillows? Stop working after 30s? Not much old movie performers? small is better than nothing no? I mean, some nice women are happy with their half centimeter! I guess some women have their own fun/thing. Cant compete with [dildo dragon] thing [dildo/dragon/glove] thing can be men's best friend. Helps to fill the void :). It is an art, though. not native sorry!

83 points by wiradikusuma 3y ago

Back when I was a regular listener to talk radio, the ads for PE snake oil were absolutely ubiquitous. They aired more than any other product I can remember (except maybe Bose Wave radio). I never knew how to feel for this target audience. It sucks people are vulnerable to obvious snake oil ads. It also sucks that PE is a thing that's important to people. Male body shaming is weird and oogy.

gjvc 3y ago
Bose Wave radio adverts on the radio. Damn.
- mbg721 3y ago
  My parents actually did buy, not a Bose Wave radio, but one of the South African wind-up ones they advertised heavily just before Y2K. (My parents were insomniac Art Bell fans.) It came in pretty handy for sporadic weather-related stuff.
  - WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
    > one of the South African wind-up ones they advertised heavily just before Y2K. (My parents were insomniac Art Bell fans.) That'd be C.Crane. Looks like he and Bell were into each other https://ccrane.com/art-bell-an-interview-with-a-legendary-talk-show-host/ https://ccrane.com/art-bell-an-interview-with-a-legendary-ta...
    - mbg721 3y ago
      Gushing affair or not, it's an impressive radio.
- WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
  I knew a few listeners who bought them, typically on credit. I inherited a couple but passed them on.
lotsofpulp 3y ago
One of the funniest things is Reddit “evolving” to lock threads or downvote comments about people’s appearances on popular threads, but simultaneously embracing comments that associate a man with perceived negative qualities as having a small penis. And it will almost always be the top comment.
- networkchad 3y ago
  [dead]
- Tao3300 3y ago
  The double standards are shocking. If a woman says "if he cheated on me like that, I'd (fill in horrid genital mutilation)" and everyone has a laugh about it or cheers her on. If a man responds in kind, people are mortified, too shocked to even speak condemnation. Likewise for prison rape. It seriously troubles me how many people celebrate the prospect of that happening to male convicts. If you suggested it as a fitting punishment for a female offender, you might not even exit the room you uttered the words in unharmed.
  - WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
    > The double standards are shocking. If a woman says "if he cheated on me like that, I'd (fill in horrid genital mutilation)" and everyone has a laugh about it or cheers her on. One of my earliest memories of mom: Her in traction for two broken vertebrae, thanks to dad and a bakelite phone. Of all the relatives and friends who've been physically assaulted by someone close, about 99% were female and about 99% of them were hit by a male. The exceptions were older sisters and that ended when the younger sibling got big enough. Because size matters. I did 25 years with a profoundly abusive spouse and know a bit about being abused by women. To believe I was at physical risk would be a sad delusion to have. In my experience, efforts to marginalize the risk that men pose to women don't come from a place of sound analysis and good faith.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
mbg721 3y ago
They're still on AM radio, along with the "buy gold" ones. It's weird.
Tao3300 3y ago
Radio and sports ads are the worst. This. Penny auctions. Crypto. Gambling. I tune out of things I might have otherwise listened to because it feels filthy.

SV_BubbleTime 3y ago

The summary actually does it’s job: > Kevin said that he had undergone five surgeries with Elist, including two upgrades, a revision and a removal, and his penis no longer functioned. Still, Kevin had always found the surgeon to be caring, if a little preoccupied. “He reminded me of Doctor Frankenstein — the intensity of him wanting this thing to come to life,” Kevin told me. It sounded strange, he acknowledged, but before each operation he’d been filled with excitement. “You just feel relieved that you’re fixing something,” he said. At an appointment earlier this year, Kevin said, Elist promised to fix him again with a sixth procedure, but one of the surgeon’s assistants discreetly advised against it. Kevin thought he could spot “the other experiments” in the clinic from their loose-fitting sweatpants and the awkward way they walked. There were so many men waiting to see the doctor that they spilled into the hallway. … I think I’m of the ideal height, with the ideal penis size… so there’s a requisite for this entire article that I just won’t understand. But that last paragraph would scare the hell out of me if this was something I was interested in.

Tao3300 3y ago
Is there anything left after 5 surgeries? After 6? There has to be a lot of scarring inside and out.

whimsicalism 3y ago

This is so sad. I think there is an underdiscussed crisis with some segments of men.

JKCalhoun 3y ago
It was hard to read. I'm here (wincing in imagined pain) shouting, "No! What if it is irreversible?! What if your dick gets screwed up?!" I confess that after reading it I began to feel that it is even unethical to be in the penis-enlargement field.
MildRant 3y ago
Men have a lot of problems that are under discussed and swept under the rug. Loneliness issues, confidence issues, perception issues, issues with men thinking their life doesn't matter to just name a few. The suicide rate among men is so high for a lot of reasons.
- Two4 3y ago
  Suicide rate is around 4 times higher for men in Western societies, but suicide attempts by women are at least twice that of men. More lethal, messier suicide methods are more popular among men, and in my opinion, it's because women are socialised to be more considerate of those who will find their body.
AtlasBarfed 3y ago
It will continue to be underdiscussed unless there is big money in it. Males are disposable genetically and evolutionarily.
localplume 3y ago
when making fun of a man's penis size for whatever reason becomes normalized, it isn't surprising body dysmorphia becomes more prevalent. double standards galore. mens issues just don't matter.
- maxbond 3y ago

imwillofficial 3y ago

Only thing that actually works without horrifying side effects is a Bathmate. Even then, the results are quite limited, and very temporary. C’est la vie

mumblemumble 3y ago
Some good old-fashioned body positivity might work even better with even fewer side effects.
- rhombocombus 3y ago
  Communication and creativity can do almost anything, but dysmorphia is a hell of a drug.

zug_zug 3y ago

tl; dr: Starts with some absolute horror stories (e.g. complete loss of function), continues to talk about the technology improving, but still includes horror stories. It's not clear if the average outcome is horrible, but it sounds like people are getting paid to advocate or sued for sharing horror stories, so it's hard to trust anything.

pengaru 3y ago

penumba! > Elist sat behind an imposing desk in a borrowed office and spoke about his > forthcoming book, a collection of parables for spiritually minded surgeons > titled "Operating with God." His ghostwriter had rendered his voice so > skillfully, he said, that he'd found himself moved to tears while reading > it. Beside a gilt statue of a jaguar in the corner of the room, someone had > propped a mirror with an image of Jesus etched at its center. As Elist > recounted passages from his book, his merry face, crowned by a hairnet, > hovered next to Christ's. The above reads like a Tales From the Crypt movie script, in the leadup to Elist slicing into yet another victim's Johnson.

29athrowaway 3y ago

From the article: > Some implants got infected or detached. Others buckled at the corners. Occasionally these protrusions broke through the skin, forming holes that would fester. The hole of the health-spa vice president was so tiny that he originally mistook its fermented odor for an STD. > Later, doctors unaffiliated with the Penuma would compare such penises to “a torpedo,” “a penguin,” “a pig in a blanket,” “a beer can with a mushroom sticking out on the top” and “the tipped-down nose of the Concorde.”

jncfhnb 3y ago

[flagged]

flangola7 3y ago
What is this small group of people you refer to?
- jncfhnb 3y ago
  I mean I’m not tracking and classifying users by their neuroses. I get the sense it is mostly male Asian immigrants living in CA unable to get any dates in a competitive, underpopulated, mostly white female dating market.
  - whimsicalism 3y ago
    I agree that this is a thing and one that I have witnessed but not on HN. And yeah, there are studies indicating white women as having the largest (or maybe second, black women were up there) racial ingroup bias in dating [0] [0]: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/okcupid-race_n_5811840 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/okcupid-race_n_5811840
    - cubefox 3y ago
      This looks like men dislike black women, and women like men of their own race.
      - whimsicalism 3y ago
        I agree, but the magnitude of the preference for men overall is smaller. Men appear to be mostly anti-black and otherwise agnostic, whereas women have strong in group preference.
  - giardini 3y ago
    If so, they need merely read johnnyworker's post at the top of this topic to find that there are "plenty of fish in the sea" (possibly 2/3 of them!) that would be satisfied with their physique.

Conscat 3y ago

[flagged]

Tao3300 3y ago
I'm so huge I've received complaints... ever since I switched to Lisp!

canadiantim 3y ago

Reads like a horror story

mc_woods 3y ago

From a technology point of view there is a lesson in how a company controls the media it's customers consume. How alternative sources of data get discredited and how untrusted the information found online is. The result, when you can't trust anyone, is to trust the source you want to believe. Many men want to believe they'll get a bigger penis.

johnnyworker 3y ago

IIRC the Kamasutra says there's 3 genital sizes for both men and women; big (horse/elephant), medium (bull/mare) and small (hare/deer). It says you can have great sex with up to 1 size difference, and although the woman being one size smaller is preferable to her being one size bigger, it calls equal unions the most perfect ones. And that's just refering to vaginal intercourse itself, of course there is so much more to sex. I don't know what my point is, other than: don't fret! If you find someone you like, and who likes you, a lot of silliness and unfounded fear will fade away.

mumblemumble 3y ago
I wonder what the kama sutra's model has to say about surveys indicating that women who have sex with women tend to have significantly more satisfying sex lives than women who have sex with men. Presumably, for the purposes of the model that its authors are getting at, the magnitude of "size mismatch" between two mares is infinitely greater than that of a mare and a horse or hare. Which might imply that the model is deeply, fundamentally broken. It seems to have a track record of breaking people, too.
- reaperman 3y ago
  Strap-ons come in any size. It can be difficult to find ones which allow full control / subtleties but the harnesses from Aslan leather do a pretty impressive job of providing full control over the dildo.
- johnnyworker 3y ago
  I didn't mean to cite it as an authority on everything, but the bit about genital sizes struck me as sensible, certainly more sensible than just obsessing about having a huge penis.
- jncfhnb 3y ago
  I can’t say I have any insight into the sex lives of lesbians, but size seems unlikely to be the driver of that vs. things like empathy, more equal sex drives, and no pressure to get off before the other partner.

kraig911 3y ago

Reading this made me extremely uneasy. My impression - perhaps it's just being hopeful for a material solution for a psychosis of the mind. But when I think on that impression isn't a pill just about any fleeting vice the same as what these men have suffered. Maybe I'm not better. We need avenues to help each other. To talk with another. Maybe there's an opportunity to create something?

victorbjorklund 3y ago

Wow. That is so sad to read.

Tao3300 3y ago

> A year had passed since Mick’s explant, and he’d entered a serious depression. He’d barely noticed when pandemic restrictions were lifted, because he’s continued to stay in his bed. Originally six and a half inches erect, he had lost an inch of length. Dude was already above the average cited in the article before he went under the knife. That's some tragic dysmorphia.

toyg 3y ago
The saddest stat in the article is that the overwhelming majority of patients were already average or above. That alone should be considered a dereliction of the Hippocratic Oath to do no harm. This type of procedure should be banned for anyone already over 4 inches.

SillyUsername 3y ago

I didn't read past jellyfish. That's enough nightmare fodder for me

trowaway344988 3y ago

Most are scam , I think. Random stuff: - [big gun] :) , is exception, not rule. Exercises, luck, pillows? Stop working after 30s? Not much old movie performers? small is better than nothing no? I mean, some nice women are happy with their half centimeter! I guess some women have their own fun/thing. Cant compete with [dildo dragon] thing [dildo/dragon/glove] thing can be men's best friend. Helps to fill the void :). It is an art, though. not native sorry!