I hope we all know this and are just doing it as a bit, but sometimes I do see shit on this website that makes me go “Oh y’all are genuinely just weird prudes”
The “gooner epidemic” is not real, gooning is an incredibly niche kink that very few people engage in.
“Porn addiction” is basically non existent and affects such a small portion of the population as to not be relevant. The idea that most people have in their heads about porn addiction is propaganda made up by evangelicals.
We do not live in an overly-sexually-liberated time. There is not an excess of sexual content or exposure to it.
Most of the time when people talk about “the gooner problem” what they’re actually talking about is a mix of two unrelated things, people living normal sexually liberated lives, and undersocialized young men that don’t know how to interact with people.
Sex is good. We should be having more of it. We should encourage healthy, safe sex featuring whatever kinks you and your partner(s) consent to. Don’t fall for puritan propaganda comrades.
I don’t know what a gooner is but i have to disagree with the “porn addiction is not real” statement. It’s a very real thing, and like other addictions, people simply refuse to admit they have a problem.
As a male i’ve had to endure porn talks throughout my life, from my high school circle, to my college circle, to my coworker circle, to catching my uncles watching porn, to every single random countryside worker. Literally every conversation with men ends up about porn or homophobia.
No kidding but at some point i had to watch porn as “research” just in case i had to talk about it in a drinking game or something, because “name porn genres” is something that always comes up in drinking games. How is this not real?
i have to disagree with the “porn addiction is not real” statement
You disagree with experts on the topic then. “Porn addiction is not real” is the opinion of the WHO and APA among many other groups. This is the academic consensus.
As a male i’ve had to endure porn talks throughout my life, from my high school circle, to my college circle, to my coworker circle, to catching my uncles watching porn, to every single random countryside worker. Literally every conversation with men ends up about porn or homophobia.
People talking about porn is not evidence of addiction, nor is being caught watching porn. Would you say people are addicted to Star Wars because every conversation lately ends up about Andor? The fact that people are uncomfortable talking about porn is itself evidence of us living in a puritanical culture.
Also as a generally male-presenting non-binary person this is not my experience talking to men, porn really does not come up that often at all.
i had to watch porn as “research” just in case i had to talk about it in a drinking game or something, because “name porn genres” is something that always comes up in drinking games
Again I don’t see how this is evidence of anything. “I had to experience a thing people talk about during drinking games in order to answer those questions” yeah? I had to watch Friends because it comes up during bar trivia all the time. That is not evidence of widespread Friends addiction.
undersocialized young men that don’t know how to interact with people
as an undersocialized enby I feel erased and unappreciated
Gooning is endemic now because the government ended goon lockdowns too early
Volcel vanguard has nothing to with gooning. It came about because redditors are mostly porn-brained males that can’t stop making spaces on reddit uncomfortable for women at literally every single opportunity. Volcel vanguard spawned as a meme to shame people and counter that on the CTH subreddit.
It is useful and it is good and people absolutely do need to be told to shut the fuck up about it or else you end up with spaces that are made entirely uncomfortable for everyone else.
yah it’s always funny whenever i see someone complain about this because it serves a really useful purpose.
I’m ace and while I do look at horny images from time to time, full-on pornography or sexually explicit talk still grosses me out, I sometimes feel prudish or childish about that as a result.
I feel in a weird place when all this talk is made about normalising sex while being sex-negative, I don’t want to push my preferences on all of society, y’know?
Whenever I personally referenced the “volcel poIice” meme it was intended to be lighthearted, a friendly reminder that it got weird in a way that could give a chuckle.
Whenever I personally referenced the “volcel poIice” meme it was intended to be lighthearted, a friendly reminder that it got weird in a way that could give a chuckle.
I’m also asexual, and I think I always saw it that way?
I think it’s helpful to frame it in terms of a cultural context.
For instance, Japan has a squeezable tanuki testicle toy for kids, whereas that probably wouldn’t fly in the US (admittedly, the US doesn’t have very many tanuki either) because the culture sexualizes just the mere existence of genitals, so people start acting weird if you bring it up that things like that exist in other countries.
I would guess “normalizing sex” is probably more about the euphemisms and weird ways to talk about it while pretending to dance around it. As much as we should fight against compulsory sexuality that not everyone needs to have sex all the time, I think it’s counterproductive to take the Texas “abstinence only STD roulette wheel” sex ed approach that isn’t really helping anyone.
In any case, I think that the meme’s intended function of filtering out creeps is probably a good thing if it works, but I’m probably least qualified to speak on that.
Ok that article sent me on a journey into Japanese toy culture
Japan is probably not a good example to use for a healthy liberated sexual culture
Yes. I didn’t intend to claim that but I’m leaving the comment up so the other ones make sense. I only used these specific examples because I already knew about them.
Do you know of any actually good examples of cultures as a whole that are?
I would say East Germany before the collapse of the USSR off the top of my head
I’ve often heard the notion that Japan is more lax on sexual content or less puritanical more broadly. I would be fine with that if pop culture wasn’t infested with fan service and stuff like designing young female characters with intentionally tintillating combination of ultra-short skirts and thigh highs. Too many times where I get curious about an anime and find out it’s horny for no good reason. It’s often in a very immature way too, it has the vibe of naughty teenage boys.
I can’t shake off the idea that a lot of it is just cultural reinforcement of the patriarchy, asserting male authority over women by inherently sexualising every aspect of them.
I think consent is very important in this discussion, so much stuff happens involuntarily. I don’t want to immediately look at a woman’s butt or boobs when seeing one, it feels gross and insulting to her and I can’t imagine how women especially have to navigate such a landscape.
I wasn’t trying to make a broader claim about Japan, just on that one thing specifically, and there are surely plenty of other examples like that Denmark children’s TV show that apply equally well to make the point I meant to make.
I see your point about the patriarchy. There are definitely concerning things which I would prefer not to learn more about if possible.
I think consent is very important in this discussion, so much stuff happens involuntarily.
This. Consent goes both ways…
I wasn’t trying to make a broader claim about Japan, just on that one thing specifically
I just wanted to vent about it, because it has made me hypervigilant about any pervy shit in Japanese media.
I had heard before about that Danish tv show. Part of what frustrates me with current discourse is how the female body in particular gets… mysticised I guess. Like there’s all the teasing about showing as much as possible but not those areas, then you see a woman actually bare-chest and it’s: “oh, I guess her nipples are bigger”. On the other end, I personally get discomforted by a visible… uh… “penile bulge”. I don’t really like to think about the stuff that goes on down there…
I still wrestle with how much I should write that off as childish sensibilities.
I get that, and the feeling childish about it, but I don’t think it’s a bad thing. Like the other thread mentions, it’s a bit acephobic that it feels unacceptable to not want to have anything to do with it personally.
That’s an interesting point to consider… I wonder why it is like that
[I didn’t actually say much of anything here but I think I was being kinda combative for no reason at all, immediately regretted after hitting post.]
I understand where you were coming from and it’s a complex topic. I struggle with the topic myself and how to read my aversion to sex stuff (I think the main reasons are that as a cis male sexual arousal makes me afraid of hurting others, plus I get creeped out by many parts of human biology, I could never perform surgeries)
Yep. There’s other spaces where folks can be horny and cringe. Here though, it’s about dialectical materialism.
Just look at many DSA chapters lol
Thank you for the straightforward explanation
Sex is not bad, nor is being sexually liberated.
However sex and sexuality as it it treated under our current society is highly misogynistic and exploitative.
“Oh stop being a prude” is definitely a phrase uttered to many young women in the entertainment industry to shame her into exploiting her body for capital.
“sex and sexuality as it it treated under our current society is highly misogynistic and exploitative.” Repeat this again. I cannot say I know how women feel but from what those close to me say its a catch 22 for em in a lot of social situations in and out of the entertainment industry.
Relatively new account.
Calls out hexbear site culture in a backhanded way, implying this is a problem that can be “fixed”.
Makes very bold statements, the only source being a random tiktok video.
Conflates leftist ideas about women not being overly sexualised with right wing puritanical beliefs.
Makes very basic feel-good statements that don’t commit to a strong position, AKA the “liberal politician” approach.
Acts as if they are just “helpfully reminding” hexbear to “be more normal” and “not fall for propaganda” while basically telling us to not worry and support status quo ideas.
Not sure if I should go “
” or “
” either way, this is some lame ass bait. Not everyone obsesses over how much people get laid as you do dude, get over it.That video also uses the “female prostitution is the oldest profession” line too, which is not true and also clearly the exact kind of right-wing propaganda as “gooning is an epidemic” is.
Yeah, I don’t know how anyone can watch these sorts of
umm acktually… kind of smug pseudo intellectual tiktok videos. Even if I agree with a video, the sheer smugness and self-righteousness of this sort of content is so offputting. Tiktok is an awful place.To be clear, the creator in question is a PhD candidate talking about the topic of his research. It’s not a “pseudo intellectual” it’s a literal academic.
I meant the tiktok format in general. Some of my favourite creators (like Milo Rossi) do the same thing with their tiktok videos, it just feels smug, arrogant, unpleasant and pseudointellectually smug, and unpleasant to watch as a result. I just don’t think it is a good format for sharing information with people.
Ah yeah gotcha, that’s a difference of taste I guess, I find they can do a good job of conveying like, a medium amount of information, more than an image post but requires less dedication than like, an extended video or article.
First off, I’ve been here since the sub was banned and the lifeboat Discord, I’ve changed accounts a few times for opsec.
To be quite honest I didn’t expect this to become such a struggle session. This wasn’t even supposed to be particularly a callout post of this site, it was more a comment on US culture broadly and the comment about the volcel police was supposed to be a site relevant joke.
I shouldn’t have said the thing about “weird prudes,” that was rude, my point was just that this idea that these ideas have even crop up in leftist, pro-sw, pro-lgbt spaces like Hexbear.
I certainly see how it comes off as backhanded attack on the site’s culture, and I’m sorry, that was not my intention.
- “Oh shit, they’re onto us! Quick do some damage control! Say you’ve been a part of the site for years to give you credibility!” “Make sure you claim no responsibility while still pushing the right buttons to ensure they stay divisive!” “Quick, quick, pull out the phrasebook, give a non-commital apology!”
“whew! Nailed it. No one will suspect us now.”
I’m only joking (or am I?), I just feel like being a bit mean. But this weird liberal politician way of speaking is not healthy. You can commit to a point and stick to your guns, it’s ok. Though I am wondering why you thought this wouldn’t cause a struggle session if you’ve been here for years. I’ve only been here for a couple of years, and your post’s inflammatory nature is really obvious. It’s clearly designed to treat your position on this as the “passive, neutral, correct” version of things, while accusing anyone who disagrees with you of believing in right wing conspiracies (poisoning the well against them). It seems obvious to me that this would cause a lot of discussion and argument, so I’m wondering what result you expected to get from this?
For the record, I do believe them that they are a user who used a different name. I do remember another user who had a very similar name, spoke in a similar manner, and had similar opinions, to the point I actually wondered “Wait, is this just them speaking under an alt” before they even said that.
Or maybe you’re just another fed trying to throw me off the trail! Maybe everyone on this site is a fed except me!
I think you’re right, their post was suspicious, but they’ve since clarified their intentions. I don’t actually think people are feds. I should probably put this as my tagline on my account or something, but:
While I do joke about feds a lot, I don’t think there are any real active fed accounts here, there’s probably a couple that exist to keep tabs on the website, but I don’t think they would bother to actively infiltrate hexbear, the site doesn’t really have any ability to organise direct action, and unlike somewhere like reddit, there’s not admins that will take the site down for “inciting violence” or whatever. It would be a waste of resources for them to do so.
I should probably reign in this behaviour, even jokingly fedjacketing people can still lead to a culture of suspicion, and there are other ways to call someone out if I disagree with them than calling them a fed.
I should probably reign in this behaviour, even jokingly fedjacketing people can still lead to a culture of suspicion, and there are other ways to call someone out if I disagree with them than calling them a fed.
Good call. The amount of fedjacketing I see in online leftist spaces is really messed up IMO, gives off deranged conspiracy theorist vibes and it also shows a lot of unwarranted self importance, the feds most likely aren’t making up elaborate personas to rile up terminally online visitors of very niche online communities.
gives off deranged conspiracy theorist vibes and it also shows a lot of unwarranted self importance, the feds most likely aren’t making up elaborate personas to rile up terminally online visitors of very niche online communities.
That’s why I do it, because I think it’s funny and absurd to think that some FBI agent is tasked with organising this week’s hexbear struggle session, but it may not always come across that I think it is absurd and silly, and ironic paranoia can easily seem like genuine paranoia.
I suspect feds, at most, track when people use this website as maybe suspicious?
But I also think they care more about, say, the PSL or the SRA.
Yeah, it would just be a note on someone’s file. Which is why it’s important to practice good OPSEC and not openly talk about any works we do IRL that could trace us.
Sure I’m currently high enough I’ll try to explain my thoughts through all of that, although most of it is “I’m kinda dumb”
Why I speak like that, I’m not really sure and it’s not something I love about myself but usually how the posts come out here is how the thoughts are going inside, I mask more in other places, here I tend to write how I think.
Why I thought it wouldn’t cause a struggle session, I think I vastly overestimated the degree to which volcel police was a bit, I thought it was just something we were doing because weirdo right wingers were “incels” and someone someday decided that “volcel” was funny.
I don’t generally think of Hexbear as more puritanical than the rest of the Anglo world I think it’s on the more sexually liberated end of things, which is why when in the past I’ve seen things that go against that I go “Oh wait this exists here too.”
So aside from what I thought was a small minority of users I kinda thought I was gonna be preaching to the choir?
I thought discussion of these ideas as right wingers propaganda by a PhD student researching that topic was something people here might appreciate, and then as I was writing the post I got in a weird mode and let the annoying argumentative side out I guess?
I still stand by most of what I’ve said although I could’ve been less of an asshole about some of it. As far as poisoning the well, the point of the video was that these beliefs come from right wing propaganda, so that’s a problem inherent to talking about this, that’s not just me being an asshole in the comments.
In retrospect should I have known this would’ve caused an argument though? 100%
I think it overall would’ve been fine if you had phrased the post more as “this is what this phd student says about this topic” rather than the way you phrased it originally, which did come across as more confrontational than you probably intended. That way, it would’ve just been people arguing about tiktok instead of a full on struggle session.
And fair enough on the “I’m kinda dumb” thing, that’s why I only make dumb comments, not posts. I would probably end up causing a struggle session over the dumbest shit possible if I did.
And the volcel thing is overdone, but I would much rather be on a site that actively mocks guys creeping on women and gets them to not do that, rather than a site that tolerates or even encourages that behaviour. Though others have already talked about that at length here.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, good luck with your infiltration of hexbear!
Genuinely I appreciate the advice, as an autistic person (and federal agent of course) it’s not often enough I get to actually have clear feedback on how I could have done an interaction better
Glad I could help! And I’m glad you’re taking my jokes with good humour, I wouldn’t blame you if you just got mad and hurled insults back at me. I’m very happy we could end up having an actually productive discussion instead of that.
The VOLCEL POLICE are on the scene! PLEASE KEEP YOUR VITAL ESSENCES TO YOURSELVES AT ALL TIMES.
نحن شرطة VolCel.بناءا على تعليمات الهيئة لترويج لألعاب الفيديو و النهي عن الجنس نرجوا الإبتعاد عن أي أفكار جنسية و الحفاظ على حيواناتكم المنويَّة حتى يوم الحساب. اتقوا الله، إنك لا تراه لكنه يراك.
The VOLCEL POLICE are on the scene! PLEASE KEEP YOUR VITAL ESSENCES TO YOURSELVES AT ALL TIMES.
نحن شرطة VolCel.بناءا على تعليمات الهيئة لترويج لألعاب الفيديو و النهي عن الجنس نرجوا الإبتعاد عن أي أفكار جنسية و الحفاظ على حيواناتكم المنويَّة حتى يوم الحساب. اتقوا الله، إنك لا تراه لكنه يراك.
Still upset at the kids for sexualizing the word Goon.
I can no longer call me and my possee the Goon squad
Here it still means cheap wine
l don’t think porn is categorically problematic. I think the content of the porn and the worldview that it espouses can absolutely be harmful, though.
I’d compare it to saying stand-up comedy is good or bad. It’s neither. Stand-up comedy is a genre, and within it are smart folks doing great work AND chuds spewing hate.
My problem with porn is that it often objectifies women and primes men to view women as sex objects.
I think many men don’t have actual friends that are women, and primarily engage with women romantically or sexually (and tbh, I don’t think most men are self-aware enough to distinguish between the two).
The media we consume (porn included) influences our worldview. If men watch porn (or stand-up) that has misogynist undertones and don’t have friends that are women as a counterbalance, I think they will trend towards a misogynist worldview.
Is gooning even an actual thing? It sounds more like a comedy bit that got taken too seriously and became something “everyone knows” than something that actually happens. Like “kids eat Tide Pods” or “furries are using litter boxes at schools.”
Technically yes, but it’s a very niche kink that not that many people actually engage in. Like imagine if vore was blown up in media until everyone was worried about the vore epidemic. Thats about the same level.
Sex is good. Porn is often not.
Other than a lot of porn being exploitative in it’s production, overconsumption of porn is very common, and often contributes to people having weird attitudes to over sexualising women.
It fucks with your reward system. You can absolutely become addicted. It’s not a particularly healthy habit. You can desensitise yourself to real sex and change the way you’re able to enjoy it.
In these times, where you get served up porn content on your explore page for no good reason, I think porn consumption can easily become unhealthily pushed upon you.
The volcel police meme is a bit tired now, but I do think it’s good that we keep this site mostly non sexual.
fair point, especially about being served up sexual content in spaces otherwise not meant for it (like instagram). again, capitalism preys on humanity’s basest desires and floods our markets with sexual content.
and as an old, i just want to say that the “sex positivity” era of the early 2010s ran cover for throngs of abusers to get easy access to people who were exploring their sexual liberation and caused lots of harm to lots of good people, so it really leaves a bad taste in my mouth now.
The free love movement during the 70s-80s included a lot of adults getting to sexual acess to teenagers, at least in europe it did. Thats why there are so much older media with straight up illegal age gaps. And of course french cinema where half of the stuff is about a 15 year old having a forbidden romance with her 40+ married poetry teacher.
The fact that this happened is bad obviously, but is your point that “the free love movement was bad, actually”?
No. Its to support the point already stated above me.
Yep, really sad. Just because the algorithm can detect I’m a young man, my explore page gets flooded with sexual content. I never search for that on Instagram, and I only ever open them to select the option ‘stop showing me content like this’ - and yet, just because my interests are otherwise very male, I will never stop being shown a steady stream of onlyfans girls.
And yep, same as the free love generation in the 60s and 70s. Lot of pedos there. Lot of pedos in the hippy scene in general, even to this day.
The people’s VOLCEL VANGUARD are on the scene! PLEASE RESERVE YOUR PRECIOUS BODILY FLUIDS FOR STRATEGIC ACTS OF MASS REVOLUTIONARY CUMMING!!!
This is my new favorite volcel vanguard post.
overconsumption of porn is very commo
i would consume way less porn if anyone within a 200 mile radius would wear a fucking mask
Oh shit new bear thread with more comments than votes fuck yeah gotta pull this up on my middle goon cave monitor for some background reading
For real though fuck this site for teaching me what a gooner is you can all go to hell for that one
pull this up on my middle goon cave monitor for some background reading
so there I was, gooning to my hexbear threads when
People online be like “I just saw a tiktok, new opinion downloaded” and go from there.
It straight up contributed to the end of a relationship for me. Speech patterns/humor/knowledge all became tiktoked. It sucked.
and that’s why he’s the goat 🐐
volcel vanguard is just to keep people from being weird when nobody asked, I don’t see a problem with it and honestly never would have even associated with with gooner shit if you hadn’t mentioned it
For anyone reading this who needs to hear it, it’s very possible to become addicted to anything that causes you to experience a dopamine high. That’s kinda the point of dopamine as I understand it: it makes you want to do something again. If your relationship with that activity becomes dysfunctional, you could very easily find that your desire to engage with it has become a need to engage with it without you even noticing the shift until you try to stop. The chuddy framing of a “gooner epidemic” where the blame for it is shifted to sex workers and sexual liberation is wrong. From my perspective, there seems to be an epidemic of untreated addiction in general where I am driven by the slow collapse of civil society in the imperial core. So please don’t avoid facing and seeking help if you need it for harmful addictions just because the subject of your addiction is usually perfectly healthy in moderation.
Edit: for some topical comic relief
For the damn bot: https://yewtu.be/watch?v=5mhk252Zqm8
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
