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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, and statistics bear this out. OnlyFans brings in enormous amount of revenue, even after an expensive, failed attempt to be not-just-a-porn-site. Hypersexualized gacha games are pulling in tens of millions of dollars per month, and not just for men; the women-targeted Love and Deepspace had over $50 million in revenue in October. Marvel Rivals, criticized in some circles (such as the social circles of those in the article) for being an oversexualized "gooner game" has remained in the top 10 games played on Steam since its release a year ago. And nothing drives it home more than stumbling across the shady side of YouTube and finding videos in the "woman with large breasts not wearing a bra does something mundane" genre with multiple millions of views.
> I choose these examples from my personal life because they express sentiments that were once the kind of stuff I encountered only in the messy battlegrounds of Twitter, amid discussions about whether Sabrina Carpenter is being oversexualized, whether kinks are akin to a sexual orientation, whether a woman can truly consent in an age-gap relationship, and whether exposure to sex scenes in movies violates viewer consent.
Ultimately, these are the kind of things discussed only by a small, vocal, very online (some might say terminally online) minority. To think that they represent more than a tiny fraction of the world is, again, reflective of how easy it is to get trapped into online echo chambers.
Anecdata: even if they're wearing bras and not dressed in a revealing way and it's a still photo... the views will pour in.videos in the "woman with large breasts not wearing a bra does something mundane" genre with multiple millions of views.I've had a Flickr account for about 20 years. I used to run a community and I took a lot of pictures at our gatherings, which were primarily 20-somethings. Some photos had 100-1000x the views of other pictures and it took me a while to figure out why.
The photos with surprising view counts had women with large chests.
I know how obvious that sounds but many of these photos were so lowkey that... trust me, it was not obvious. For some of these photos, we're talking about something that would not be out of place as a yearbook photo or hanging on a church's bulletin board. It would just be a group photo of people hanging out, nothing sexy or revealing, and rando woman #7 in the photo might be apparently chesty. And it would have 100x the views of other photos from that event.
Interesting and amusing.
There are a number of ways you could think about it. Some views might be attributable to people who can't access explicit content due to parental controls or local laws but I have a hunch some people actually prefer this sort of thing to explicit content.
(I also wonder if there's a slight voyeuristic/nonconsensual appeal to these photos. Which ties back in to the opening paragraph of the linked article...)
It also underscored for me how women, especially women with certain bodies, can't escape being sexualized no matter what they do or wear.
Go to any photography subreddit that's not already focused on nudity or sex. Any photo with naked women will get more upvotes than most other submissions. It can be an objectively bad photo, that doesn't really matter.
By elevatortrim 2025-11-2823:191 reply Does not need to be naked, just a pretty woman.
For e.g. there's a trend where painters post a painting of them while standing next to it. I do not subscribe to any subreddits but as some of these become popular, they pop into my homepage. 9 out of 10 of these are painted by a pretty woman.
By archi42 2025-11-2912:54 Wait until you learn that some people abuse this to funnel potential subscribers to their OF. And I don't mean the kind that's about the artwork they show off (which would usually be on Patreon these days, I guess?).
Most woman don't run an OF of course. And wether they do or don't, anyone should be free to socialize over their hobbies on the internet, and/or present their art work for other to appreciate (and get validation with hundreds or thousands of up votes). But those on the intersection that choose to run thinly disguised ads ruin it for me :(
By JohnBooty 2025-11-293:37 I feel as though my post didn't really connect. Let me give an example, sort of:
This stock image is roughly the level of thing I'm talking about, except even with women who are less obviously chesty:
https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/two-senior-black-fe...
It feels very UNsurprising to me that nudity, or revealing photos, would get more views. There's various ways we can feel about it. But "surprised" would, erm, certainly not be one of them for me!
However, I was still surprised that extremely tame photos of slightly curvy women would get relatively large numbers of views, in a world where most people can easily find all the lewd, nude, and explicit images and videos they want.
I can totally attest this.
I was an avid viewer of r/analog. I don't know if this was 'recent' or not, but every time someone post a naked picture, either good or not, it goes rapidly to Top posts.
Even though it used to had many comments like "This photo is not interesting other than the naked woman", the upvotes arrived anyway.
I think nowadays they mostly block the comments in those posts, but what used to be an inspiring subreddit that would pop from time to time in my feed, is not longer that interesting to me.
> “This photo is not interesting other than the naked woman”
My first instinct is to agree with this sentiment. There’s a lot of pretty mediocre photography that gets attention because “naked woman”.
At the same time, you could equally say “that landscape photo is not interesting if you take away the lake”. If you take away the interesting piece of a photo, yeah, it’s not interesting anymore. The fact is that people (but especially men) enjoy looking at naked and near-naked women. It’s a consistently compelling subject. It might be “easy” but it’s still compelling.
I guess if you take it literally, yeah.
But I've seen plenty of boring pics of lakes and none were on top posts, contrary to these cases.
It is of course subjective what makes a good photo or not, but sometimes it is pretty clear why a picture reached top posts.
By WalterBright 2025-11-292:401 reply My dad was an amateur photographer for a while, and even got one of his photos published in the newspaper.
He said nothing improves a landscape picture more than having a person in the picture. I didn't believe him.
Later, I went on a trip to Hawaii, and took maybe 300 landscape pictures of its beauty. Upon looking at them at home, I realized he was right. The ones with people in them, even random strangers, were always more interesting.
Amazing photographers can shoot landscapes that are deeply compelling in their own right. Good photographers really can’t. There aren’t a lot of Ansel Adamses out there.
By WalterBright 2025-11-294:342 reply Weeelll, I don't find Ansel Adams's work very interesting. I have several coffee table art books, some of which have old west landscape pictures, and it's the people in them that make it work.
Something I do with my friends is look at Annie Liebovitz portraits and try to recreate the ones we like.
By dpark 2025-11-295:37 That’s totally fair if Adams’s doesn’t do much for you. Regardless, I’m in agreement with you that most landscapes are not actually that interesting without people in them. Humans are naturally drawn to images of other humans.
By foobarchu 2025-11-2918:05 I would amend the idea to include artifacts that suggest people activity and wildlife that can easily be personified
By dpark 2025-11-294:20 It’s like throwing bacon into an otherwise average recipe. Is it a cheap way to make it good? Yeah. But is it good? Probably. And very plausibly it tastes better than the more difficult recipe that lacks the bacon.
By rafabulsing 2025-11-2820:12 I still find that one to be one of the better photography subreddits, but I do agree that that's been happening a bit too often lately.
(I'd also love recommendations of other good photography related subreddits, if you have any!)
By scotty79 2025-11-2911:08 > "This photo is not interesting other than the naked woman", the upvotes arrived anyway.
Art is judged on feelings it invokes. Naked women invoke strong feelings in a lot of people.
By mattbettinson 2025-11-2822:28 /r/analog used to be sooo good!
> how women, especially women with certain bodies, can't escape being sexualized
Give it a while, everyone falls off the attractiveness escalator eventually. For some the only thing worse than being objectified is being invisible.
By swed420 2025-11-2820:03 > For some the only thing worse than being objectified is being invisible.
"It's a Wonderful Chest" from Chappelle's Show was ahead of the curve(s) on this.
By emmelaich 2025-11-291:10 https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2008/apr/04/thelas...
> you builders, stop wolf-whistling, it's coarse. Except if you do it to me. Then I'd be really pleased ...
Attraction and romance is complicated.
And for others, finally being invisible and not subject to leering in public and online is a mercy.
If that's all you need, you can always wear an oversized t-shirt with a wolf howling at the moon. Or maybe that only works for men.
By brailsafe 2025-11-2822:53 Definitely definitely only works for men
By the-mitr 2025-11-291:14 And it will form it's own niche. Rule 34
By bananaflag 2025-11-2822:351 reply What do you mean by that? Asking honestly.
By climb_stealth 2025-11-309:551 reply I think the t-shirt with the wolf howling at the moon is a bit of a stereotype. If you have watched the Simpsons, something the comic book store owner would wear.
Overweight, unkempt, awkward around women, and guaranteed zero attention from women.
By bananaflag 2025-11-3012:45 Thanks! I expected that, but never associated it with the idea of a howling wolf.
I have a pet theory that the reason certain men are homophobic is because they're terrified that another man is looking at them the same way they look at women.
By imtringued 2025-11-309:22 No it has more to do with rigid gender roles. Women expect men to be strong, independent and (sexually) dominant. Being dominated by another man is a sign of weakness. A lot of women also do not leave any room for nuance. There is zero tolerance. Anything with a penis is bad, even transwomen. You could be bisexual with a strong preference for women, but you will still be put in the "100% gay exclusively for men" box.
Homophobia arises from seeing homosexuality as a threat to your heterosexuality. The LGBT people are coming after your coveted "straight" status and try to infect you with the "gay" virus which makes it harder to attract a woman.
Basically it's the male equivalent of being "deflowered".
By tonyhart7 2025-11-290:11 nah, that just projection
By Ferret7446 2025-11-290:193 reply Perhaps but I think it's just a normal ick response. People instinctively steer clear of "weird" or "perceived to be dirty" things even if it's illogical. (No matter how much some try to gaslight, homosexuality is abnormal. Note that abnormal != wrong. The former is a factual statement and the latter is a subjective/moral one, though for better or worse most of the globe does still treat it negatively and it's only in the social bubbles that we're in where it's accepted)
Abnormal isn't a good word to use here since it connotates an undesirable condition, implying a need for correction.
Atypical, non-standard, or unconventional are more neutral in tone, so given your desire for a non-subjective word I'd recommend these instead.
By kikokikokiko 2025-11-293:593 reply If something falls out of the center of the normal distribution, it's by definition abnormal. Once again, that doesn't make it bad per se. But trying to police perfectly good words just makes people become more antagonizing to the position you want to defend.
By stopping 2025-11-295:15 Very few people would agree that red hair is "abnormal". Why do you think that people in general are more likely to describe homosexuality as "abnormal" when the prevalence of homosexuality is roughly on par with that of red hair?
By BoiledCabbage 2025-11-294:111 reply > If something falls out of the center of the normal distribution, it's by definition abnormal. Once again, that doesn't make it bad per se. But trying to police perfectly good words just makes people become more antagonizing to the position you want to defend.
I mean why do people even post something like that? It takes 2 seconds to look up the definition of abnormal. It's it really not knowing, it's is it (what I believe) trying to sneak in their moral judgements behind a veneer of supposed "neutrality"?
> Abnormal - deviating from what is normal or usual, typically in a way that is undesirable or worrying.
By spankibalt 2025-11-296:33 > "[...] is it (what I believe) trying to sneak in their moral judgements behind a veneer of supposed 'neutrality'?"
Yes, that's precisely what it is. Moral judgements based on outdated ("conservative", especially clerical) understandings of the world, wrapped in some delusional sense of "objectivity". Only the scientifically and philosophically illiterate fall for it. In German, we call it Bauernfängerei (swizzling, duping; lit. "pawn catching").
What’s the normal distribution here? If attraction to men forms a normal distribution, it makes the argument weaker. If you are making things up, at least make them up well.
By kikokikokiko 2025-12-013:241 reply Yes, the analogy to the bell curve doesn't fit this use case very well, I didn't noticed it before. But the point still stands: non heterosexual behaviour is a tiny minority compared to the norm. So, abnormal is a perfectly good word to describe non-heterosexual behaviour. Once again, it doesn't make it bad per se. I just can't stand word police, which is just another facet of thought police.
"Abnormal" has a very specific meaning. It is not used for everything that is just uncommon. It is used for behaviours that are non-normative. If you have an idiosyncratic way you use this word, ok, but communication is supposed to require and assume a common understanding of a language. So there is no point to discuss if abnormal refers to frequency of a behaviour in a population or in a normativity-related judgement of it, because in common usage it refers to the latter, because either we do not speak a common language or I have to assume disingenuity here (and leaning towards the latter in this case).
If the topic is about whether homosexuality is non-normative and heterosexuality is normative (with the actual, common meanings of the words), we can have a philosophical discussion on that.
By kikokikokiko 2025-12-026:021 reply Abnormal = non normal / non normative. Words have meaning. If for you it causes a bad reaction to it, you are the one that needs to deal with it. That's excatly the problem, normal people are tired of being called bad for seeing the world through normal, reasonable lenses. When a behavior does not follow the norm, it's abnormal.
By freehorse 2025-12-049:44 What kicks a bad reaction in me is people engaging disingenuously in a discussion.
By LexiMax 2025-11-293:22 Meanwhile, my original comment was more intended as commentary on the pervasiveness of leering.
Of course, it's an unprovable conjecture - but it sure would explain a few things.
By spankibalt 2025-11-294:22 Abnormal is a completely unscientific and immoral word to use in the context of consentual sexual behaviors for it is factually wrong (see the distribution of homosexual or bisexual behaviors in mammal species including humans), and also invoking a moral presciptive by declaration "what should be normal" via telling other people what "is not normal".
You fall into the same trap ("non-standard", "atypical"); you just stepped on the euphemism treadmill.
By the_gipsy 2025-11-2920:43 It's not abnormal. Statistically, you don't call anything "abnormal". Neither biologically, nor "naturalistically", there are a million things we all do, that are not "normal" in that sense and we don't call it abnormal.
By fenomas 2025-11-294:11 > No matter how much some try to gaslight, homosexuality is abnormal
This is an abjectly silly thing to say, and people who push back on it are not gaslighting. Homosexuality occurs naturally and it's not even rare - it's far more common than red hair, for example.
Calling something like that "abnormal" isn't in the domain of fact, it's purely a side-effect of what you label "normal".
> I have a hunch some people actually prefer this sort of thing to explicit content.
By JohnBooty 2025-11-2917:11 I.... enjoyed looking at that!
The confusing ones in my account were sooooo much tamer though. The chests were not even remotely the focus of the photos. It was subtle enough that it took me a while to even figure out the trend.
The pragmatic takeaway is "making yourself more attractive will make people x100 more interested in seeing you."
So at least there's that.
By awesome_dude 2025-11-2820:19 Hrm, the takeaway is really (IMO) "Have a woman with a big chest in the same picture will get 100x more views"
By imtringued 2025-11-309:08 >It also underscored for me how women, especially women with certain bodies, can't escape being sexualized no matter what they do or wear.
You also can't escape being ugly and receiving the opposite reaction as a man.
There are so many things that you can't escape that it seems pretty suspect to focus on this one in particular. The most obvious aspect of being alive is that your body is mortal. You will never be able to escape that fact. You also cannot escape chronic diseases that negatively impact your life every single day.
The idea that men and women pair up to produce new life together is one of the more wholesome aspects of life. There are plenty of insects where one of the partners dies in the process and many species that don't care for the young.
thanks JohnBooty for sharing your insights about women with certain bodies
By hsjdndjdiendn 2025-11-2822:19 I think there is a remix that could be made with both of them.... Would sell.
>It also underscored for me how women, especially women with certain bodies, can't escape being sexualized no matter what they do or wear.
And how would you distinguish "being sexualized" from "men finding a woman attractive" ?
By scotty79 2025-11-2911:13 It's the same thing. You use one phrasing or the other depending on whether you want to villify of what's happening or not.
By JohnBooty 2025-11-2917:23 It's an interesting question and is, more or less, what the linked article is about. I enjoyed the read.
(While written by a woman, it comes down decisively on the side of "hey - you don't need anybody's permission to find things sexy")
By Dr_Incelheimer 2025-11-2821:35 I feel called out here :( I physically cannot resist on clicking on videos or photos with even mildly attractive women in the thumbnail. Same thing IRL. Which is strange because I don't even care about porn.
By scotty79 2025-11-2911:05 > women with certain bodies, can't escape being sexualized no matter what they do or wear
men with certain bodies, can't escape being tallized no matter what they do or wear
or you could just say they are tall
By ffuxlpff 2025-11-296:15 Real women are sexy. Especially the ones you know personally. The vulgar creatures posing in porn sites not so, but act as a substitute.
By anal_reactor 2025-11-2822:20 Naked woman is like endgame. Seems great, but it actually sucks (hehe). Attractive woman in a completely normal situation is like starting new game and knowing it's gonna be really good.
But how did only "chesty" photos get 100x views?
Is there an online forum like posting a URL to such photos?
By JohnBooty 2025-11-2917:18 Flickr doesn't break down views, so, for all I know it could have been bots doing image recognition or a single guy in his bedroom clicking on certain pictures 100x a day.
But yeah.... "links shared on forums" was always my leading theory.
In some cases, I'm sure the thumbnails enticed extra clicks. But some of the pictures just had a bustier than average woman in the background or something. It's not clear to me that the thumbnails were enticing.
(99% of these people were my IRL friends as well, so I wasn't really trying to take salacious pictures....)
By DiscourseFan 2025-11-295:15 Its just instinctual
By boredtofears 2025-11-2818:241 reply > 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.
By nuancebydefault 2025-11-2820:004 reply 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.
By nobody9999 2025-11-292:07 >30 years ago it was rather normal that a manager would touch the behind of a coworker, which is clearly a bad thing. Nowadays looking in their direction a bit too long seems to be labeled 'not done'.
I was in the workforce 30 years ago and, no, it was absolutely not normal.
It was what we called an "HR violation" and a "Career limiting move."
Not sure where you were 30 years ago, but except in bordellos and strip clubs that wasn't "normal." Not even close.
It was not normal in a semse normal managers would do it and everyone would aprove.
On 1995, which is 30 years ago, it was neither normal nor accepted. You was major asshole if you did it and lawsuits were already won.
By dboreham 2025-11-291:44 Perhaps in 1975. The earliest I remember a dude at the office getting fired for harassment was around 1988.
By WalterBright 2025-11-292:461 reply > 30 years ago it was rather normal that a manager would touch the behind of a coworker, which is clearly a bad thing. Nowadays looking in their direction a bit too long seems to be labeled 'not done'.
That was a huge no-no 30 years ago, at least in the US. In fact, it was a major no-no at my first job in 1979 and would get you fired.
By nuancebydefault 2025-11-2918:34 Maybe I'm a few years off but you got my drift.
By only-one1701 2025-11-2820:343 reply 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.
By nuancebydefault 2025-11-2820:541 reply Fear is a bad advisor! I take the risk because i know that most people around me know me and trust that i say such things in good faith, without patronizing or overly flirting with people of the opposite sex. If it should have any profesional consequences, then maybe i would have the wrong employer.
You seem to be to afraid to be friends with your coworkers because of potential consequences? If that is so, i'm sorry, you are missing out a great deal in life.
By boredtofears 2025-11-2821:131 reply I think this is right. Continue to connect with humans and try to evaluate their actions in good faith. Don’t be a creep but don’t skip life either.
Unfortunately if someone chooses to interpret your words or actions in an uncharitable way there’s not much you can do other than move on. It’s their burden to carry, not yours (except when there are real world consequences but I do think that’s a rare circumstance)
That sounds like a terrible advice that all the creeps are taking with predictable results.
By boredtofears 2025-11-2913:32 A creep is going to be a creep with or without this advice.
By fn-mote 2025-11-2820:41 I cannot tell if this is /s or not but yikes…
Yes! Good Working drone! You must keep on working, that’s your purpose after all!
Ah, Anglo-Saxon work culture, where one can't imagine not making friends at work because they have no social life outside of work.
Not making friends at work because you have fulfilled social life already, and not making friends at work to avoid any danger to your career are two very different things.
By scotty79 2025-12-017:29 Not making friends at work, because it's not a good place to make friends, might push you towards ensuring having fulfilled social life outside of work.
By only-one1701 2025-11-300:021 reply I say this without rancor: unless I miss my mark, you don't live or work in the United States. You don't understand the stakes. I envy your life brother; I hope you appreciate it.
By nuancebydefault 2025-11-3013:27 I live and work in Europe but I used to travel a lot for work to the US. Friendship or making friends indeed seems to work differently there, which was hard to grasp from my cultural pov. That said, I made a good friend there.
By johnnyanmac 2025-11-2818:332 reply I don't know if I'd compare an anime gacha game to "Friendship ended because I talked about two pretty girls at a hair salon". I feel this comment really symbolizes the entire point of this post.
>Ultimately, these are the kind of things discussed only by a small, vocal, very online minority.
They are discussed by a "minority" because we compartmentalized social media to some dozen websites. And they all have a financial incentive to suppress sexual content, be it visual, oral, or print. I think the the cause and effect is there.
"sexy" isn't "sexual". unless any pretty person you pass by is a sexual encounter.
> "sexy" isn't "sexual". unless any pretty person you pass by is a sexual encounter
And “pretty”, even “beautiful”, doesn’t mean “sexy”.
I definitely think comments here reflect the large portion of male HN readers.
Talking is good, but be aware there are many readers.
By johnnyanmac 2025-11-2821:00 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.
The author is referring to erotic connections and experiences between individuals, not sexualized media.
e.g. She mentions examples of having trouble being “in the moment” in new sexual encounters. Consuming pornography does nothing to help that. If anything it likely makes it worse.
The takeaway is the same though. "I went to my hairdresser and they were hot" only gets you ostracized in very specific social circles. For 99.9999% of the world, it's normal conversation to have among friends.
I’m not really sure about that. I think if I told most people in my social circles that, they would look at me like I’m very weird.
I’m not necessarily saying they are wrong either. It’s a tough zone. If I imagine people I know saying that to me, in my head most of them come off lecherous and creepy.
I feel like close friends could say that stuff to me or vice versa but most of the time it would come off weird at best. Choice of words is also a big factor though. “Beautiful”, “gorgeous”, “attractive” are all more reasonable sounding to me than “hot” even though they all basically mean the same thing.
> In my head most of them come off lecherous and creepy.
Wait really, just for thinking someone is hot and telling you, who's presumably their friend?
By dpark 2025-11-295:32 I’ve got friends that I’ve known for decades and would fly across the world if they needed. I’ve also got friends I see for drinks occasionally. Other people I might call friends that I don’t even have in my phone. It’s a big range and there are a lot of things my closest friends could reasonably say to me that more casual friends couldn’t.
To be clear, I’m also not saying anyone would ostracized for this, nor that anyone would ostracize me if I said this. But if one of my more casual friends randomly commented that their hairdresser is hot, I’d give them a bit of a sideways look, yeah.
This seems like it’s very prone to selection bias. I don’t think most acquaintances I have would be surprised or cut me off; and indeed, I’ve exchanged comments about passing women with people I’ve only met recently.
But that’s why I think it’s self selection:
- you mention that even from friends you would find it strange and seem to flock with similar perspectives;
- by contrast, I don’t and flock with people who don’t either.
And I don’t particularly see a problem with that — the world is a big place and not everyone needs to be to everyone else’s taste. But like many things, people seem to form cliques.
By dpark 2025-11-295:33 For sure. Selection bias is major here. But I don’t think someone having a negative reaction to this scenario is a 1 in a million chance.
By scotty79 2025-11-2911:18 > would look at me like I’m very weird.
Discussing sex in non-sexual contexts is weird. Author goes at length how it was a private, personal experience in her own body and mind. And if it stayed there instead of being babbled out to a friend she would still have that friend.
By Dusseldorf 2025-11-292:33 I think it's a product of the environment. I've lived some places (lower middle class suburban factory towns) where that sort of conversation wouldn't have been uncommon at all. I've lived other places (upper middle class university towns) where it definitely would've gotten you some strange looks or distancing. The 99.9999% number definitely doesn't ring true to me.
By ricardobeat 2025-11-292:09 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.
By advael 2025-11-296:37 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
By Der_Einzige 2025-11-2914:291 reply 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.
By zarzavat 2025-11-2918:22 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.
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.
By nuancebydefault 2025-11-2819:442 reply With this post on HN, her 'puritan echo chamber/bubble' meets this 'nerdy/intellectual echo chamber/bubble'.
By verisimi 2025-11-2818:26 You think watching someone - on your own - on Only Fans is an example of sexual intimacy?
> 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).
By Der_Einzige 2025-11-2914:35 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”.
By ramblerman 2025-11-2818:12 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
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?
By throwaway173738 2025-11-290:191 reply 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.
By Der_Einzige 2025-11-2914:41 The most economically productive places in the world, I.e San Francisco and especially Seattle are famously passive aggressive and avoid conflict. It’s so well known in Seattle they have a name for it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Freeze
Maybe having conflict isn’t healthy, and letting people grumble about things under the breath is the right way forward, unironically.
By Razengan 2025-11-2822:29 > 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.
> “Who are you defending yourself against?” To which he answered, to my astonishment: “I don’t know. The world.”
Indeed. Moving our every interaction in daily life plus our innermost thoughts to the internet has instilled a low-key fear in all of us that we'll be raked over the coals and villified as the world's worst villains. The digital tar and feathers are lurking always, a menacing psychological force. And it can even happen without our knowledge; some stranger can post a two second context-less clip or a snippet of a conversation and make us look our worst.
It's shocking how we can have so much outrage over unknown people but we're flush out of rage for the system that makes us so angry all the time.
> It's shocking how we can have so much outrage over unknown people but we're flush out of rage for the system that makes us so angry all the time.
I suspect the answer is to find out who benefits from our misdirected anger, and whether they are also involved in creating and fostering this misdirected anger.
It's old news now, but when I first heard about social media (Facebook specifically) and gaming companies hiring psychologists years ago, I knew it was pretty much over. Couple this with surveillance for the doom spiral.
This is what most don’t understand. The reality is, we’re all villains. And we’re all angels. And the only thing that determines how we’re perceived, is the disposition of those perceiving us.
This person is a villain, because you don’t like this kind of person. That person is an angel, because you have an affinity with that person.
There is no one benefiting, other than we ourselves. But don’t underestimate the power of the dopamine rush we all get by having our biases validated.
We have already met the enemy..
He is us.
By paulryanrogers 2025-11-2913:12 This seems like a false equivalence. We all have the capacity for great good and great evil. And most of us have probably done very good and occasionally very bad things, objectively speaking.
Framing matters and context too, but some things are just objectively bad in any light. Some are objectively good.
I think that truth (or at least belief in it) underlies why we collectively punish folks perceived as getting away with something that looks undeniably bad. Then add other phenomenon like the bandwagon effect and it can be crushing to the target.
By didibus 2025-11-2818:07 Not just that, but death treath, stalking, parasocial obsession, blackmail, scams, catfish, foreign propaganda, and so on, putting yourself out there on the internet brings so many risks nowadays.
By MangoToupe 2025-11-2818:302 reply > It's shocking how we can have so much outrage over unknown people but we're flush out of rage for the system that makes us so angry all the time.
Shocking? Hell this is half of the value social media provides capital: distracting the population with a hall of mirrors while offering precisely zero paths to a better future.
By wmeredith 2025-11-2823:26 It's the Mirror of Erised, one of the deeper concepts presented in the Harry Potter series. Good stuff: https://harrypotter.fandom.com/wiki/Mirror_of_Erised
It shows the viewer their deepest desires. And many have wasted their life away staring into what could be, but making no move away from the mirror to pursue any sense of happiness in reality.
By johnnyanmac 2025-11-2818:381 reply well, not zero. But yes, you need to find the small hidden paths to take back what we once had.
There's a reason I deleted my reddit and Facebook and never had a twitter. You're not going to have genuine conversations and experiences there if your goal is "socializing" these days. Or at least, the genuine ones are outflooded by engagement bait.
By MangoToupe 2025-11-2819:001 reply > you need to find the small hidden paths to take back what we once had.
This will certainly not be offered by capital, though.
By johnnyanmac 2025-11-2819:43 Of course not, that's why it's small and hidden.
As an example, you wouldn't even find a place like HN unless you are a particular kind of person or looking a a particular type of news. And I wouldn't even say HN is "hidden" per se. But it has kept its site counter to many other social media trends over the years. Those choices will build a different culture from Instagram or Tiktok.
By nuancebydefault 2025-11-2820:091 reply Who moved every interaction in daily life to the internet? Most conversations we have are private, even if they are digital. Most of my ms teams interactions are with a single person. I trust them to not make sceenshots to share those. I don't see much difference with oral conversations, where I also trust they do not gossip about them.
By sieabahlpark 2025-11-2823:29 [dead]
By resfirestar 2025-11-2818:424 reply The main part I object to in this essay is the ideological carveout. The author is seemingly willing to defend the #MeToo movement because it was in the service of a mission "to end a long-standing and long-permitted norm of sexual abuse within institutions", and "cancel culture" (I'm also putting it in quotes as I agree it's a very loaded term) because the backlash to it was helpful to the right and detrimental to the left. If you agree with the reasoning, then, all of the behavior being criticized is okay? In that case I don't see how or why anyone would ever change their behavior. The author's friend who wanted her to apologize to the hairdressers probably has a strong belief that being sexualized at work is a serious problem faced by women. From the right, many Christians strongly believe that criticizing behaviors like premarital sex is part of the social immune system that keeps family and community bonds strong.
I think there's a meaningful difference between being a genuine liberal who wants to change how American society thinks about sex, and being a partisan who wants to use puritan callouts as a cudgel on your enemies while ensuring that your own behavior is never subject to criticism. The essay displays an awareness of the tension, but decisively chooses the partisan path.
> "to end a long-standing and long-permitted norm of sexual abuse within institutions"
Sure, but it makes no sense to equate institutional abuse with genuine erotic connection among equals, which is what OP seems to ultimately be advocating for. The two are polar opposites. And the OP is not arguing that sexualizing people in the workplace is a good thing; her stance is that she never even sexualized the person to begin with. She's talking about her inner thoughts, not her overt behavior.
By resfirestar 2025-11-2819:372 reply I'd push back on drawing a sharp line between "institutional abuse" and "genuine erotic connection among equals". As the essay points out, the MeToo campaign did use call-outs against individuals in service of its goal. Some of those callouts were alleging criminal conduct, but on the other end of the spectrum you had much more dubious stuff, or completely unsubstantiated rumors that some person was "bad". I agree that stopping institutional abuse is a noble goal, but the MeToo practice of naming and shaming personal friends in anonymous spreadsheets is the type of thing that builds the internal panopticon: what if our personal circumstances changed so that there's a power imbalance, or someone misinterpreted them? If you accept that practice on political grounds because it's a useful weapon against the "enemies of liberation" (as the author put it), can you really claim to want people to change their attitudes about sex? It doesn't work nearly as well if we stop seeing sexual behavior as inherently scandalous.
I wasn't sure if I should mention this, but there aren't much articles that talks about the negative consequences that metoo campaign had. It had some real consequences beyond just some dubious stuff.
Here in Sweden there is the "Adam case". A couple went through a bad divorce in the later part of MeToo, and the mother of two boys accused the father of sexual assaulting the older boy that was then 7 year old. The court found no evidence of the event, and because of some other aspects, gave full custody to the father. The mother then in the appeal changed the story and claimed that the boy and the father together sexual assaulted the other child, a 3 year old boy. Again the court found no evidence and marked in their decision that the new claim was not believable.
Then social service decided that in contrast to the court that the boy was a danger to other children and put the child in a treatment facility and denied any association with his father or any other member of the family. The boy was also denied access to school and for the most part any contact with other children. This went on for 5 years.
At that point a new social service worker got the case as the previous worker went on parental leave. The new worker found that neither the boy, father or the claimed victim statements had been referenced in the decision and it was exclusive based on the mothers claims. Just like the court findings, there was no evidence to collaborate any of the events. The new social worker decided thus to revert the decision and let the boy return to his father. However this was quickly reverted by his superiors, and the new social worker got removed and put on other cases. At this point investigating journalists got the wind of the case and made a fairly large documentary about it. The media publicity triggered an internal review at that social worker office.
A year later the internal review found, like the court and the new social worker, that there was zero evidence of any sexual assault and that serious mishandling had occurred in this case, especially by only considering the claims of the mother. The boy was finally reunited with his father, by now 6 years later at which point he was 13. No one has been charged with any crime, although the social service office has officially apologized to the family.
CEO profession is a magnet for male psychopaths, and social worker for female ones.
I wouldn't go that far. The message from MeToo that echoed in Sweden at the time was to "believe all women", "men are guilty until proven innocent" and "the legal system has failed us so it is time to take matters in your own hands". People acted accordingly and years later we can se the results.
The social worker did have a position of power, but they also has a review board that approved the decisions. The review board are political selected in Sweden and exist to prevent social workers from abusing that position of power. The problem in the Adam case was the zeitgeist. We can also see this in the reaction the superiors had when the new social worker took on the case.
It's not so much that sexual behavior is inherently scandalous, the issue is with the broader context where a formalized hierarchy of power and a potential for intimidation are quite antithetical to any kind of genuine, consensual connection. The potential for borderline-abusive behavior in the workplace (not necessarily criminal, either) is orders of magnitude greater than any concern about "naming and shaming".
By rafabulsing 2025-11-2820:171 reply I think the author's (ex) friend believes the same about the hair salon thing. That there is a hierarchy of power and potential for intimidation in the context of a worker and a client. E.g. the guy at the restaurant being flirty with the waitress.
By fao_ 2025-11-2914:59 Sure, but they're conflating interior thoughts and experiences with exterior words and actions, which is partly the point of the piece.
By the__alchemist 2025-11-2819:14 I was struck by this too. I initially found it offputting, but then realized that it reinforced her point: We are all subject to social media (etc) bubbles, and it's tough to see the insides of them!
By including these, she demonstrated her point with a genuine, meta example of how even someone writing about these can be unwittingly part of them.
By scythe 2025-11-294:53 I think some definitively good things came out of "me too". Some people got caught for repeated cases of serious abuse. There were also cases where someone faced very public "accusations" that didn't amount to a hill of beans. I think it's fair for people to not want to condemn the whole movement when it seemed to actually do something about a real problem that was intransigent for so long. That doesn't mean they have to like everything about it.
At the same time the central failure of "me too" is that it created exactly zero reproducible structures or practices to control institutional sexual abuse going forward. Everyone is more "aware", but the fundamental process hasn't changed, although some new titles might have been created. This failure results in a mixture of hypervigilance (the author's friends) and fatalism (the author), because there is no clear definition of what, exactly, is the particular social procedure that represents "me too" even in the ideal scenario.
I did find it interesting that the entire post was such an eloquent description of a generalization of cancel culture, yet the author still went out of her way to virtue signal to readers who would reflexively dismiss any allusion to cancel culture as made up or partisan. Probably the right call, since those are some of the ones who most need to hear what she has to say, but still funny.
> I think there's a meaningful difference between being a genuine liberal who wants to change how American society thinks about sex, and being a partisan who wants to use puritan callouts as a cudgel on your enemies
I mean, those aren't just meaningfully different; they're entirely at odds with each other. You can't have a liberal attitude toward sex and a puritanical attitude toward sex at the same time.
> eloquent description of a generalization of cancel culture, yet the author still went out of her way to virtue signal to readers who would reflexively dismiss any allusion to cancel culture as made up or partisan
Probably because we all know "cancel culture" was an invented, highly partisan and ultimately fake concept.
The proof is as trivial as noticing the people who complained about being cancelled were doing so to audiences of literally millions of people and there's no viable way to reconcile the idea of someone's ideas being somehow hidden when they had some of the highest cultural recognition of anything at the time.
Also, for the last time, stating a fact is not what "virtue signalling" means and I wish people would bother to learn what words meant before they repeated them.
> Probably because we all know "cancel culture" was an invented, highly partisan and ultimately fake concept.
No, we don't all know that. There's a whole Wikipedia article on the subject: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancel_culture. Denying its existence is just a lazy rhetorical tactic to deflect criticism of antisocial behavior and censorship.
> stating a fact is not what "virtue signalling" means and I wish people would bother to learn what words meant before they repeated them
Non sequitur. The factuality of cancel culture's non-existence is immaterial here. If a piece of writing includes a tangent that serves no other purpose than to signal to a subset of the audience that the author is "one of them", that's virtue signaling.
> No, we don't all know that. There's a whole Wikipedia article on the subject: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancel_culture. Denying its existence is just a lazy rhetorical tactic to deflect criticism of antisocial behavior and censorship.
There's a wikipedia article about the earth being flat and moon landing hoaxes and so on and so forth. People wanting something to be true does not make it so.
You literally prove my point by saying censorship as if that was possibly related.
The people who talked about "being cancelled" were wealthy celebrities who could spread their message as far as they wanted. Equating being disinvited from a conference with censorship is incredibly disengenous.
So is referring to it as "antisocial behavior". There are, quite frankly, very things that are more deeply a part of human socializing than telling someone else that they're wrong and should shut up.
Cancel culture being a thing is one of those memes that people spread, and much like the meme of republicans being good for the federal government, it causes real problems when people start to believe it via repetition.
This is an odd response. Wikipedia does not in any way claim that the moon landing was faked or that flat Earth theory is legitimate.
The insinuation that I "want it to be true" is silly. Why would I want cancel culture to exist? I'd prefer that it not. I'd be thrilled if everyone were nice to each other, social media were a thriving hub of only productive good faith discourse, and reddit mods had no interest in censoring everyone and everything they personally disagree with.
It sounds like you find cancel culture inconvenient to acknowledge, for whatever reason, and want to project that cognitive dissonance onto others.
> The insinuation that I "want it to be true" is silly. Why would I want cancel culture to exist
People want cancel culture to be real in the same way they want jews to be spreading the black plague. It lets you take reactionary measures based on false premises.
Everytime people bring up "cancel culture" they're using it as a justification for silencing an opposing viewpoint. Thats why they want it to exist, so they can justify a reaction to it.
What happens is that someone says something, then someone else criticizes them, and they try to shutdown that criticism by invoking the concept of cancel culture.
That's the part I object to. Criticism is just as valid as the initial speech and we need to protect it, doubly so when so frequently the ideas people are trying to protect are so objectively abhorrent.
I don't find the "cancel culture inconvenient to acknowledge"; I find talking about it as if it's real gives cover and justification for other antisocial and otherwise negative actions.
I cannot stress enough that telling some asshole to get out of your house and stop saying racist slurs is a perfectly norma and good social interaction that's healthy for society.
By DirkH 2025-11-3018:01 I just want to point put there that your argument's exact same rhetorical structure could be (and has been) used to deny "rape culture":
E.g. - "Rape is illegal and prosecuted, so how can we have a 'rape culture'?" - "That's not rape culture, that's just individual bad actors" - "People criticizing women's clothing choices is normal social interaction" - "Rape culture is a partisan feminist concept like [insert dismissive comparison]"
The parallel is that both involve:
1. Demanding an impossibly narrow definition (complete silence vs. systematic legal tolerance) 2. Dismissing patterns as "just normal social behavior" 3. Focusing on whether the most extreme version exists rather than whether there's a meaningful phenomenon worth discussing 4. Using the term's political associations to avoid engaging with the substance
The irony is particularly sharp when you argue that "telling someone to shut up" is quintessentially social while simultaneously arguing that coordinated efforts to damage someone's reputation/livelihood for speech don't constitute a distinct social phenomenon worth naming.
Social media is full of politically motivated bullying, harassment, and censorship. That should be readily apparent to anyone who's ever used the internet. That's what cancel culture is, not a dispute with rude houseguests.
I'm not sure why you're so insistent on denying this that you'd compare Wikipedia — and everyone quoted on the subject therein, including presidents from both parties and the former pope — with antisemitic conspiracy theorists.
Who are you implying I intend to silence? I'm commenting on it because I oppose cancel culture, which is the opposite of wanting to silence opposing viewpoints.
People who use the term "cancel culture" are trying to silence their critics. If this isn't what you intend, you may wish to reexamine the words you use and how you use them. Because you keep bringing up wikipedia, lets actually quote from it:
> n October 2017, sexual assault allegations against film producer Harvey Weinstein led to the cancellation of his projects, his expulsion from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and legal consequences, including a conviction on charges of rape and sexual assault.
Is this the cancel culture you're so vehemently against? People disassociating from Harvey Weinstein because of his history of sexual abuse?
How about the next one:
> In November 2017, comedian Louis C.K. admitted to sexual misconduct allegations and, as a result, his shows were canceled, distribution deals were terminated, and he was dropped by his agency and management.
Is this more of that cancel culture you're trying to get rid of?
I'll pick an example I like from that page:
> According to Lisa Nakamura, University of Michigan professor of media studies, canceling someone is a form of "cultural boycott" and cancel culture is the "ultimate expression of agency", which is "born of a desire for control [as] people have limited power over what is presented to them on social media" and a need for "accountability which is not centralized".[3][42][43]
There's some abstract talk about "mob justice" and "disproportionate response" but that is so far from reality that attempting to use it as a guideline for what's actually happening is laughable.
In the actual, real world, cases, rich and powerful people with nearly infinite access to spreading their own speech are complaining about being disinvited from college speeches or even fired from their tv show.
Here's a follow up: in your definition of the word and your understanding of reality, do you claim the jk rowling was cancelled or experienced cancelled culture and if so was this a bad thing?
You're attacking a straw man. I didn't say I supported Harvey Weinstein, and I don't have any strong opinions on J.K. Rowling.
Why are you so focused on wealthy celebrities? They're a tiny minority of the population and inherently the ones least harmed by cancel culture. You can't really doxx a celebrity, and trying to have them censored or financially ruined is a much larger hurdle than for ordinary people.
I don't intend to silence anyone, critics or otherwise. I welcome all constructive criticism. You're just inventing a motive and arbitrarily assigning it to a phrase you don't like.
On a meta level, this whole subthread proves my original point. Whether or not you actually support cancel culture, what you're attacking right now is vocabulary. It sounds a lot like how certain people online react to the term "cisgender". Having a commonly understood term for a thing that exists isn't offensive; it's just how language works.
> Having a commonly understood term for a thing that exists isn't offensive; it's just how language works.
I repeat my claim that you're trying to wish this thing into existence by using words.
Words and language matter because they help shape how we think and what actions we take.
It's easy to notice that you refuse to actually engage with any attempt to meaningfully define the term "cancel culture" instead you just use it as a phase with no inherent meaning except the negative ones you need it to have at any given moment.
I'll repeat myself here: the idea that cancel culture actually exists is deliberately fomented by a small group of people and those people are doing this in order to attempt to protect certain ideas from criticism.
> I don't intend to silence anyone, critics or otherwise.
You say this but this is literally what the proponents of the idea of cancel culture are attempting to do. This is why they invented the term cancel culture, in order to silence people.
Yes, I get it, they're coopting terms that appear to mean the opposite of how they're using them. Shockingly, people lie a lot.
> Why are you so focused on wealthy celebrities? They're a tiny minority of the population and inherently the ones least harmed by cancel culture
Because they're literally the only example anyone can ever come up with of "cancel culture". If we're not talking about wealthy celebrities, what exactly are we talking about?
By buu700 2025-12-012:24 You're imagining an exchange that didn't happen. At no point have I declined to provide a definition upon request. In fact, I went out of my way to provide both a Wikipedia link and my own off-the-cuff paraphrasing.
That being said, here is my answer to your question: I would broadly define cancel culture as a culture of engaging in grassroots campaigns to materially punish, ostracize, and/or silence sources of speech which one finds disagreeable.
I'm not sure what you think celebrities being the most prominent (debatable) examples proves. That's practically a tautology. It's not difficult to find specific known impacted individuals who weren't celebrities, whom I'm hesitant to name out of respect. Having said that, here are two general examples off the top of my head:
1. Ostensibly non-political major subreddits setting automod to indiscriminately ban anyone with a past comment in /r/conservative. This quietly hits large numbers of nameless people on a daily basis, and manual moderation activity isn't much better (particularly on subreddits that are actually related to politics).
2. A recent campaign of targeted doxxing and harassment against authors of distasteful remarks regarding Charlie Kirk's assassination, including reports to employers with intent to cause financial harm. This is one current prominent example, but there are many others in relation to pretty much any controversial political issue.
I've given no indication of bad faith, so I'm not sure why you insist on accusing me of lying about my preference that cancel culture not exist. It's an anathema to free speech and privacy, and ultimately bad for everyone.
> The proof is as trivial as ...
That proof doesn't hold as an argument. You're arguing that if people got a message out then it isn't cancel culture, but if people didn't get a message out because they were cancelled then people just wouldn't talk about it. It is setting up a rhetorical position where taboos can't exist and we know that they do.
Cancel culture might not exist depending on what people think it mean. The term is a bit vague. But arguing that some people managed to push past the cancellation attempts doesn't mean that there isn't anything there. We'd expect cancel culture to have some cancellation attempts that ended in failure, the authoritarians are fallible humans too. And although they tend to be good at wielding government power the extreme authoritarians do tend to be ideologically isolated and so struggle to act when people pay attention to them.
By wredcoll 2025-11-3020:26 Look, "cancel culture" is almost as vague a term as "communism" and tends to be used in the same way: as a thought terminating pejorative description for anything someone doesn't like.
If we want to have an actual conversation about it we'd have to come up with some kind of working definition of the term that was actually useful enough to discuss existing examples with.
The wikipedia article on cancel culture uses an example of people disassociating from harvey weinstein and ultimately charging him with crimes related to sexual abuse. Is this cancel culture?
If a university employee invites a celebrity to come give a lecture one evening and then a bunch of students ask the university to cancel the invitation, is this cancel culture? Is it morally wrong?
Is the person who makes the original statement deserving of some kind of extra protection for this speech over the responding person who is trying to criticize this speech?
A cursory look at the real world, actual examples, of how people attempted to use the term "cancel culture" it was invariably part of an attempt to prevent criticism of (mostly) right wing ideas.
What actually happened was some number of right wingers tried to give speeches and got yelled at and then started complaining about cancel culture and trying to prevent future criticisms.
Like, at the level we're discussing we're talking about things like ethics/morality/social standards, right? What is good and virtuous for society to permit and encourage. Trying to "cancel" people who are "bad" by using speech to criticize or contradict or even ask people to stop associating with them is a good thing.
> You can't have a liberal attitude toward sex and a puritanical attitude toward sex at the same time.
Sure you can, they are both matters of degree and scope, but I do think going to the extent of weaponizing either is at odds with the other.
For example, I don't try to act against anyone's personal sexual or romantic inclinations, and don't think it's the place for government or anyone else, that's a freedom we all should have and defend, but that doesn't mean there aren't societal or personal limits. If any of my friends were polyamorous or in a thrupple or open relationship or anything like that, it's not necessarily my business unless it's presenting problems that visibly affect their life or mine. My acceptance of that is independent of the fact that I'm only interested in a long-term monogamous romantic and sexual relationship at the moment, which has in some cases seemed more conservative. If my romantic partner decided she wanted something else, she's of course welcome to explore that on her own terms by ending our romantic relationship.
I guess the nuance really comes down to where the aspect of "morality" comes in, where it's directed, and whether that's fundamentally at odds with a sense of true liberalism.
In one instance for example, I found myself prompted to defend monogamy in opposition to someone who would clearly think of themselves as a progressive, and might arguably be liberal in disposition, but was railing against monogamy because she'd had bad experiences with the people she ended up with in those relationships. She was making a grand moral argument, and I responded with a contrary argument, but I don't think that's incongruent with either of us being liberal.
Nothing about what you just described is puritanical or illiberal. You can have conservative personal behavior without attempting to exert undue control over the behavior of others.
I don't do drugs or want other people to do drugs, but still don't think it's my or the government's business if people do so. That's a textbook liberal position on the issue.
That's why I qualified puritanical and liberal with matters of degree, rather than being diametrically opposed. Having a large scope liberal attitude towards sex enables my inward facing, relatively puritan(ical) disposition to be a choice rather than mandatory and I don't care to demand that of others. I could very well be someone else with a different strict set of moral standards for me and my immediates with a slightly different scope and still be liberal. It seems to me that only when one weaponizes it does it become puritanical and illiberal; you want the same strict moral guidelines for everyone else that you impose on yourself.
By buu700 2025-11-292:14 But they are diametrically opposed. It's not puritanical that I don't do drugs or that you're monogamous. What's puritanical is trying to impose those personal choices upon others.
It would be equally illiberal to mandate that everyone do drugs or be polygamous. The illiberality is the imposition itself, not the quality of the imposition.
This ideal seems like it works, up until you see the actual actions and effects of conservative parties within politics. Then you realise that actually, only a minority have that position, the vast majority of conservative parties are authoritarian and LOVE sticking their hands in peoples' business.
By buu700 2025-11-300:27 Whether the ideal works and the extent to which it's commonly held are two different issues. My view is that both major parties in the US are somewhat illiberal, but average out to a moderately liberal status quo.
Despite many flaws, e.g. the Wars on Drugs and Prostitutes, the US is arguably still the world's greatest stronghold of liberalism (for the moment).
The War on Drugs is actually a perfect microcosm of how illiberal policy doesn't work. Instead of learning our lesson from the War on Alcohol, we doubled down and funneled untold billions of dollars into Mexican drug cartels via US markets — funding the very problem we wanted to solve. By contrast, our more liberal tobacco policy has been a huge success.
