Masturbation abstinence practices have returned to the USA in the form of semen retention communities. Followers on one of these male, anti-masturbation forums, “NoFap,” on Reddit (denoted “r/NoFap”), have engaged in homicidal behaviors that appear to be linked to these sexual beliefs and practices. This study uses a systematic search on r/NoFap and two control forums (r/pornfree, and r/stopdrinking) to define a corpus of violent content. The study's goals were to describe the nature of threats on r/NoFap and suggest whether the violence might be attributable to sexual deprivation or false beliefs that non-sexual targets caused their violent urges. Of the 421 violent posts identified from September 2011 to September 2022, r/NoFap contained the majority (94.3%). Violent threats on r/NoFap mostly targeted pornographers, women, scientists, specific persons, or any person (i.e. homicidal “rage”). Violent threats against r/NoFap’s own followers were growing most quickly. Violent posts were well-supported with upvotes by other followers in r/NoFap. These data are important because NoFap may represent a growing threat for real-world violence.

  • Tommasi [she/her]
    ·
    8 months ago

    The nofap "movement" tell depressed, alienated guys that cutting out porn and masturbation is the key to turning their life around. This is how you can gain back your confidence and self-respect, become the person you want to be and stop being so alienated to everything around you.

    Since the real world doesn't actually work like that, I'm not surprised it can lead to insane amounts of anger and frustration in some followers.

    • DamarcusArt@lemmygrad.ml
      ·
      8 months ago

      Not just turning their life around, they believe it will basically make them superhuman. They think that if they deny their body's natural urges it will someone give them magical powers needed to become a bigshot billionaire or something.

      And like any good internet cult, they constantly tear each other down and are told that it is their fault, not "the program's" if they fail to achieve their absurd and unrealistic goals.

      • bigboopballs [he/him]
        ·
        8 months ago

        All cutting back does is make your busts more pleasurable when you do.

        I think it's a stupid idea, except for this one point lea-smug

  • LaGG_3 [he/him, comrade/them]
    ·
    8 months ago

    Show

    This shit's so bleak, especially when you consider the r/chapo ban for "violent threats against slaveowners" or whatever.

    • RyanGosling [none/use name]
      ·
      8 months ago

      Lol. Reminds me of incel forums (I mean, same shit) that encourage their own users to kill themselves or become demoralized. Seems like a great ideology and community compare to the woke left

      • manuallybreathing [comrade/them]
        ·
        edit-2
        8 months ago

        the paper references a study from earlier this year

        Finally, NoFap followers also report becoming suicidal due to the “relapse” component of NoFap treatments (Prause and Binnie Citation2023). Two persons are reported to have died by suicide from NoFap, including one NoFap moderator and a NoFap collaborator (Rhodes Citation2015a; Stebbins Citation2022).

        volcel police jokes aside, please look after your mental health comrades, talk to your friends and family, seek out professional mental health care if you can, and for the love of god please masturbate

    • aaaaaaadjsf [he/him, comrade/them]
      ·
      edit-2
      8 months ago

      That "porn industry" spike during COVID, combined with a decrease in threats against a specific person, which is then followed by a massive increase in theatening other users of the nofap subreddit post 2020, is very telling. Quarantine broke them. Probably went back to watching porn during quarantine and got gulit tripped by fellow nofap crazies afterwards.

  • Awoo [she/her]
    ·
    edit-2
    8 months ago

    This is part of why history search of comments and posts on reddit had to die via shutting down the api.

    Reddit could not allow too much research like this to expose the underbelly of the site.

    Once the site IPOs it introduces a financial incentive for shorts to find things on the site that can be turned into drama that damages its value, so research like this would find potential finance motivated backers and massively increase in quantity.

    • GinAndJuche
      ·
      8 months ago

      Thoughts on the wisdom of betting against reddit once it goes public? It sounds like free money, especially now that the VC money faucet is turned off.

      • Awoo [she/her]
        ·
        edit-2
        8 months ago

        Personally think it's going to be a rollercoaster of ups and downs. Depending on the starting price r/WSB hype might pump it to begin with. There's no real telling what happens if that fuckhead Elon involves himself too.

        In the longterm I predict there's way too much cancer on the site for it to survive with the financial incentive people will have to use that cancer to tank the value. But again it depends on how much they clean up before IPO and whether that clean up avoids a drama collapse in and of itself.

        • GinAndJuche
          ·
          8 months ago

          Long term shorting below the open seems wise in that case. They still don’t have an income stream that covers costs right?

          • Awoo [she/her]
            ·
            8 months ago

            I think Spez said a while ago that they were in the black. So I'm not really sure. Various financials will have to be made public too though I think? There's no way that's going without incredible scrutiny.

            • VILenin [he/him]M
              ·
              8 months ago

              I will make Reddit die through the power of ascending to godhood

            • GinAndJuche
              ·
              edit-2
              8 months ago

              If it makes sense, Palantir proved that being a favorite of the deep state doesn’t reflect stock price. I eagerly await the opening of the books

      • Juice [none/use name]
        ·
        8 months ago

        I'm convinced that the company is being propped up by CIA money, which means they could keep the lights on for decades. They've done it before, dumped money in businesses to keep them afloat because they were part of an intelligence operation, like that company that sold encryption machines to foreign governments that all had secret backdoors built into them. Reddit has never made money and it probably never will. Idk as much as I'd like to bet against that hell site I think the thumb is on the scales

      • Owl [he/him]
        ·
        8 months ago

        The people planning the IPO are going to try really hard to time/hype/price it so that the stock goes up for a while. They might not succeed, but they'll keep stalling until they think they can. So give it a few weeks or months before you start betting against it.

        Also use puts instead of actual shorts.

        • MerryChristmas [any]
          ·
          8 months ago

          Also use puts instead of actual shorts.

          Listen to the Owl on this one.

    • Omniraptor [they/them]
      ·
      edit-2
      8 months ago

      Iirc reddit automatically gives you access to pushshift if you're the mod of even a small subreddit, or manually if you send an email explaining you're a researcher. It's not completely dead

  • the_kid
    ·
    8 months ago

    turns out the power not masturbating gives you is the power to commit mass murder

      • mushroom [he/him]
        ·
        8 months ago

        we were all wondering why they didn't simply have their soldiers jack off into cups before they died and i guess this explains it

        • LeopardShepherd [none/use name]
          ·
          8 months ago

          Maybe if we tell the NoFap guys that using Israeli anal probes is ok they won't be so sexually frustrated

      • VOLCEL_POLICE [it/its]B
        ·
        8 months ago

        Show

        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.

        volcel-police

  • Deadend [he/him]
    ·
    8 months ago

    I’m completely not shocked that no-fap is just another right wing misogyny pool.

  • adultswim_antifa [he/him]
    ·
    8 months ago

    Isn't no fap alt right? It basically seems like a honeypot for depressed young men.

    • Ram_The_Manparts [he/him]
      ·
      8 months ago

      Isn't no fap alt right?

      It feels pretty safe to assume that a subreddit with that name is filled with "trad cath" freaks, so yeah

    • drhead [he/him]
      ·
      8 months ago

      Religious people have been doing shit like this for centuries, this is just the same thing in a shiny new package, just like the whole "Fight The New Drug" campaign.

      • duderium [he/him]
        ·
        8 months ago

        religious people

        capitalist society

        exploitative society

        patriarchal society which subordinates sexual desires to private property

        Wilhelm Reich / Bronislaw Malinowski.jpg

        • daedramachine [he/him, they/them]
          ·
          8 months ago

          Reich's Psychology of Fascism held up pretty well to today despite being limited to Freudian analysis and the English edition having a serious case of radlib brainworms, I'd recommend a look if you're familar with psychology, otherwise this is the gist

          • duderium [he/him]
            ·
            8 months ago

            I love Reich (and The Mass Psychology of Fascism) and mention him whenever I can on hexbear because I don't see him mentioned here nearly enough.

  • Brutticus@lemm.ee
    ·
    8 months ago

    So I have some real insight here. Around 2017 I decided to try Nofap. I joined their forums at nofap.com. I downloaded their countdown app. Honestly, I thought that porn had taken over my life. I abstained from six months. I kept up with the people on the forum. So I really immersed myself in it and their culture. My findings:

    The claims of the effects of Nofap may have a grain of truth. Im not sure if it is because of my libido being focused out like they claimed, or if was other factors (I stated regular excersize and I went back to college around that time) but I was more interested in sexual matters and more sexually successful.

    The people on the forums are completely and utterly insane. Evangelical men being forced to abstain by wives who considered porn cheating. Incels who thought that this was the secret code. Semen retentionists. It felt like I was the only one who wanted to be free of porn just because I wanted to.

    Lastly, I wanted to point out that they are misreading, as they always seem to. the problem is not porn, but Capitalism.

    • el_eh_chase@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      ·
      edit-2
      8 months ago

      I've had a similar experience. I've been trying to quit porn off and on for a while now. At one time I considered myself as practicing NoFap. I consumed all the introductory content you first come across, abstained from masterbating for varying stretches of time, and visited the subreddit fairly regularly.

      I would say overusing porn can for sure have downsides, and abstaining from masterbating for a short time could help with getting out of the habit of using porn. The community just gets so much more weird and cringe from there, not to mention the violence that is fostered there which I wasn't aware of. Maybe the forum was more hardline.

      That video looks interesting too, thanks for sharing!

    • 420blazeit69 [he/him]
      ·
      edit-2
      8 months ago

      or if was other factors (I stated regular excersize and I went back to college around that time) but I was more interested in sexual matters and more sexually successful.

      It was this.

      How is this in doubt? No one knows if you're jacking it or not; people do notice if you're exercising. Being around single people in a social setting (college) gives you more opportunities to meet people, which is a real thing, unlike semen magic.

  • Snackuleata [any]
    ·
    8 months ago

    So wonderful we can casually have what other nations consider national tragedies because some guy convinced himself that not touching himself would make him a genius or whatever.

  • SorosFootSoldier [he/him, they/them]
    ·
    8 months ago

    Man men are NOT okay, and here I thought cutting out porn and getting fapping down to only a few times a week was a noble goal. Turns out it turns you homicidal.

    • GinAndJuche
      ·
      8 months ago

      Bit Idea: ummm actually sweaty I need to goon daily for the sake of reducing violence. I have stats to back it up.

    • jonne@infosec.pub
      ·
      edit-2
      8 months ago

      That's generally a good idea, but the r/nofap people take it further, they say you shouldn't masturbate at all. Then that gets paired with some misogyny and the promise that women will just throw themselves at you for doing this, and you end up with some very frustrated boys that should've knocked one out periodically to relieve their stress.

      • GalaxyBrain [they/them]
        ·
        8 months ago

        The masculine urge to turn everything into its most unreasonable, unhealthy and violent form

    • DayOfDoom [any, any]
      ·
      8 months ago

      I want the young users of this site to know this user means "got off of Reddit".

    • RyanGosling [none/use name]
      ·
      8 months ago

      Porn has more damaging effects and a terrible industry, yet these people conflate jacking off with porn lol. Like bro just use your imagination if you don’t want it to influence your brain

  • Cascadia_ [they/them]
    ·
    8 months ago

    Blue Balls Terrorism

    michael-laugh

    In all seriousness though, this is sad and concerning stuff.