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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, a

by mjr00 11mo ago

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.

bbminner 11mo ago
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?
- throwaway173738 11mo ago
  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.
  - Der_Einzige 11mo ago
    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 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.
ramblerman 11mo ago
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
torben-friis 11mo ago
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 11mo ago
  With this post on HN, her 'puritan echo chamber/bubble' meets this 'nerdy/intellectual echo chamber/bubble'.
  - torben-friis 11mo ago
    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 11mo ago
    Good. Let the bubbles collide!
boredtofears 11mo ago
> 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 11mo ago
  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 11mo ago
    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.
verisimi 11mo ago
You think watching someone - on your own - on Only Fans is an example of sexual intimacy?
dpark 11mo ago
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 11mo ago
  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.
  - dpark 11mo ago
    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.
    - gbnwl 11mo ago
      > 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?
      - dpark 11mo ago
        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.
johnnyanmac 11mo ago
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.
- deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
- fn-mote 11mo ago
  > "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 11mo ago
    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 11mo ago
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 11mo ago
  > 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 11mo ago
    And for others, finally being invisible and not subject to leering in public and online is a mercy.
    - switchbak 11mo ago
      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.
deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]
Razengan 11mo ago
> 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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NBTZJi_grk
ricardobeat 11mo ago
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.
advael 11mo ago
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
pms 11mo ago
> 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).
- Der_Einzige 11mo ago
  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”.
Der_Einzige 11mo ago
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.
- zarzavat 11mo ago
  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.

by mjr00 11mo ago

bbminner 11mo ago

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?

throwaway173738 11mo ago
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.
- Der_Einzige 11mo ago
  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 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.

ramblerman 11mo ago

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

torben-friis 11mo ago

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 11mo ago
With this post on HN, her 'puritan echo chamber/bubble' meets this 'nerdy/intellectual echo chamber/bubble'.
- torben-friis 11mo ago
  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 11mo ago
  Good. Let the bubbles collide!

boredtofears 11mo ago

> 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 11mo ago
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 11mo ago
  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.

verisimi 11mo ago

You think watching someone - on your own - on Only Fans is an example of sexual intimacy?

dpark 11mo ago

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 11mo ago
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.
- dpark 11mo ago
  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.
  - gbnwl 11mo ago
    > 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?
    - dpark 11mo ago
      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.

johnnyanmac 11mo ago

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.

deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]
fn-mote 11mo ago
> "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 11mo ago
  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 11mo ago

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 11mo ago
> 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 11mo ago
  And for others, finally being invisible and not subject to leering in public and online is a mercy.
  - switchbak 11mo ago
    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.

deleted 11mo ago

[deleted]

Razengan 11mo ago

> 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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NBTZJi_grk

ricardobeat 11mo ago

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.

advael 11mo ago

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

pms 11mo ago

> 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).

Der_Einzige 11mo ago
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”.

Der_Einzige 11mo ago

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.

zarzavat 11mo ago
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.