Thanks for being vulnerable and sharing your experience. The loneliness of modern life, mixed with a patriarchal societys obsession with womens bodies and entitlement to them, plus the dehumanizing ideas around “femininity” and “masculinity” all add up to a toxic societal stew which is unsafe for all humanity.
Embodying what it means to be a decent human is needed. As well as addressing how societys messages keep women and men from living their life fully, safely, joyfully, and cooperatively.
Loneliness and disconnection, I think is at the top. Plus justified anger due to powerlessness. But the anger is directed at women instead of those at the top of society.
Men are taught to devalue "femininity" in themselves, because those traits are associated with "women''s work," which is exploited by capitalism to function. Plus the rich and powerful point at feminist women, trans people, immigrants, etc., as being the problem rather than themselves or the system that benefits them.
Although sometimes it’s hard to read, I really appreciate your honesty about your experiences that many men go through! It’s so important you are creating space to talk about these things. Thank you!!!!!
I think there’s not enough recognition oh how eager to serve that content social media (esp. Meta and Facebook) are; to some extent TikTok too.
It is also not entirely on the algos, either, because behind the scenes management firms of many of these content creators are paying for advertising or placement.
In the creator marketplace— your views are money, and thirst traps are meant to generate paying customers for content creators on paid platforms. It is not as though many OF models are paying to have their content pushed to women, but there is a LOT of money trying to appeal to men of different demographics.
Old porn would be spammy in the way of pop-up ads and obnoxious behavior of other sorts. New creator driven porn wants to build a parasocial relationship with you, right down to the porn itself, where you have ‘conversations’ with the models (likely someone paid to chat for the model) and they give you ‘custom’ content.
The whole goal from start to finish is to convert male viewers into paying subscribers. I don’t think women really have an equivalent experience with this, where men would be paying to be in their social feeds to try to convert them into paying porn subscribers.
This was a thought-provoking article. In addition to issues like the often mindless nature of scrolling (why is my Facebook video feed filled with attractive women?) and the dopamine hit when a creator “likes” your comment, I believe an underlying craving for deeper connection is behind men’s thirsty behavior online. Not necessarily connection with a romantic partner, but the type of connection women have with friends. And we end up seeking this with women rather than men because they are already experienced at these types of relationships with each other. And when it happens (or we think it happens), sometimes we get so excited that we cross a line we didn’t mean to cross. Men need to get better at finding these connections with other men, so we don’t overburden women with the type of attention that can come across as thirsty. Which is not to suggest that we shouldn’t have women friends, or interact with women on social media. We just need to carry the weight more for each other.
A big part of why it's so acceptable and comfortable for a lot of men is that we're culturally raised to lean on parasocial relationships to feel intimacy they don't have access to otherwise. And when men are also taught that sex is the primary way to feel and express that intimacy, it's no surprise that's how we seek it out.
We're used to the guys taking out a newly 18 or 21 yo friend to a strip club. I had 2 different friends who had dads that paid for sex work services for them them they turned 18.
I think it's common for men to use strip clubs, only fans, porn, web cam services, and even those naked coffee houses to build parasocial relationships because so many men don't have the tools to build intimate relationships in our own lives.
Which is a trap, because those parasocial relationships aren't reciprocal or real. They only fill us up in the way that Taco Bell does, it's pretty close to food but it doesn't actually have the nutrition we need. And if we can't cook beans like you do, we risk the constant Taco Bell diarrhea because an empty stomach hurts worse.
Thanks for being vulnerable and sharing your experience. The loneliness of modern life, mixed with a patriarchal societys obsession with womens bodies and entitlement to them, plus the dehumanizing ideas around “femininity” and “masculinity” all add up to a toxic societal stew which is unsafe for all humanity.
Embodying what it means to be a decent human is needed. As well as addressing how societys messages keep women and men from living their life fully, safely, joyfully, and cooperatively.
This was very intimate, thank you for sharing. What do you think is the impulse the drives a lot of men to interact with these strange online women?
Loneliness and disconnection, I think is at the top. Plus justified anger due to powerlessness. But the anger is directed at women instead of those at the top of society.
Why do you think women are automatically blamed? What rationalization goes through a man’s head to come to that conclusion?
Men are taught to devalue "femininity" in themselves, because those traits are associated with "women''s work," which is exploited by capitalism to function. Plus the rich and powerful point at feminist women, trans people, immigrants, etc., as being the problem rather than themselves or the system that benefits them.
Although sometimes it’s hard to read, I really appreciate your honesty about your experiences that many men go through! It’s so important you are creating space to talk about these things. Thank you!!!!!
Thanks, Hannah!!
I think there’s not enough recognition oh how eager to serve that content social media (esp. Meta and Facebook) are; to some extent TikTok too.
It is also not entirely on the algos, either, because behind the scenes management firms of many of these content creators are paying for advertising or placement.
In the creator marketplace— your views are money, and thirst traps are meant to generate paying customers for content creators on paid platforms. It is not as though many OF models are paying to have their content pushed to women, but there is a LOT of money trying to appeal to men of different demographics.
Old porn would be spammy in the way of pop-up ads and obnoxious behavior of other sorts. New creator driven porn wants to build a parasocial relationship with you, right down to the porn itself, where you have ‘conversations’ with the models (likely someone paid to chat for the model) and they give you ‘custom’ content.
The whole goal from start to finish is to convert male viewers into paying subscribers. I don’t think women really have an equivalent experience with this, where men would be paying to be in their social feeds to try to convert them into paying porn subscribers.
This was a thought-provoking article. In addition to issues like the often mindless nature of scrolling (why is my Facebook video feed filled with attractive women?) and the dopamine hit when a creator “likes” your comment, I believe an underlying craving for deeper connection is behind men’s thirsty behavior online. Not necessarily connection with a romantic partner, but the type of connection women have with friends. And we end up seeking this with women rather than men because they are already experienced at these types of relationships with each other. And when it happens (or we think it happens), sometimes we get so excited that we cross a line we didn’t mean to cross. Men need to get better at finding these connections with other men, so we don’t overburden women with the type of attention that can come across as thirsty. Which is not to suggest that we shouldn’t have women friends, or interact with women on social media. We just need to carry the weight more for each other.
A big part of why it's so acceptable and comfortable for a lot of men is that we're culturally raised to lean on parasocial relationships to feel intimacy they don't have access to otherwise. And when men are also taught that sex is the primary way to feel and express that intimacy, it's no surprise that's how we seek it out.
We're used to the guys taking out a newly 18 or 21 yo friend to a strip club. I had 2 different friends who had dads that paid for sex work services for them them they turned 18.
I think it's common for men to use strip clubs, only fans, porn, web cam services, and even those naked coffee houses to build parasocial relationships because so many men don't have the tools to build intimate relationships in our own lives.
Which is a trap, because those parasocial relationships aren't reciprocal or real. They only fill us up in the way that Taco Bell does, it's pretty close to food but it doesn't actually have the nutrition we need. And if we can't cook beans like you do, we risk the constant Taco Bell diarrhea because an empty stomach hurts worse.