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By David Futrelle
The weirdly popular NoFap anti-masturbation movement promises men that they can have more energy, achieve greater mental clarity and even think more creatively if they can just manage to keep their hands off of their equipment for an extended period of time.
But I just spent a few hours looking through dozens and dozens of anti-fapping memes on NoFap.com, the NoFap subreddit, and elsewhere on the internet and I have to say that evidence of this alleged new creativity is nowhere to be found.
I’ve certainly looked at more than my share of terrible memes over the years from MRAs and MGTOWs and even incels, but I’ve never seen memes quite so relentlessly uninspired, and painfully earnest, as the memes the NoFappers pound out. The meme formats are tired, the cultural references are decades out of date; the jokes are nonexistent; they’re the meme world equivalent of Christian Rock.
I mean, seriously, look at this shit.
Apparently none of these dudes have gotten the memo that memes are supposed to be funny. Do they think that meme templates are themselves so inherently hilarious that you can just type out pretty much anything you want on them and it will automatically converted into humor if it makes some vague reference to the source of the meme?
It doesn’t help when NoFappers work their own weird acronym-heavy lingo into the memes, rendering them incomprehensible to anyone outside their little internet circle-no-jerk.
In case you’re wondering, PMO stands for “porn/masturbation/orgasm,” and PIED stands for “Porn Induced Erectile Dysfunction.” And, yes, NoFappers actually do call themselves “Fapstronauts.”
Some NoFap memes are barely memes at all.
Still, there are a handful of NoFap memes that verge on funny, intentionally or possibly unintentionally.
That second one could be a joke, though.
This meme gets a point for having a funny picture of a cute animal in it, but loses two points for whining about porn like a fundamentalist.
Parody NoFap memes are about a hundred times as funny as the real ones.
Let’s just take a second to fully appreciate the level of failure in these memes — except that last one, and maybe the one about hands full of penis.
I mean, how unfunny and uninspired do you have to be to fuck up a masturbation joke? Masturbation is awkward, embarrassing, and almost always undignified, and yet it’s something that the vast majority of us have done (if we’re not actively doing it right this very moment); it’s pretty much the definition of funny.
It’s almost as though that whole NoFap thing about greater creativity and mental acuity is a bunch of complete bullshit.
Seriously, I’m starting to think that they’re just jerking us around.
I’m fairly certain that my cats do indeed know how much I touch myself…. They are cats and they get everywhere
What if I told you…
…that the movie you terrible assholes are constantly ripping off was created by two trans women
(I’m assuming the No Fap “movement” is as full as trans-hating jerks as any other MRA-adjacent one)
I never see the point of no fap stuff. Why make yourself miserable for pretty much no benefit?
Like, if it’s actually getting in the way of your life stuff, that’s one thing, but otherwise, what’s the point?
If it’s actually getting in the way of your life stuff, it’s not the problem even then. Something else is. Outside of actually addictive substances, I expect that most things some people do to excess are escapes of some sort. Which means, the people in question are procrastinating in some manner. And what you do when you’re procrastinating, be it fapping or knitting or Bejeweled, is not the problem and is uninformative about what is the problem. But there is something the person is avoiding, a responsibility perhaps that they feel to be beyond them, or a confrontation they dread having. The object of their fear could be anything from a failing grade in school or a bully there, to an abuser in the workplace, to impostor syndrome making them sure they’re not measuring up and any day now will be the day they get “caught” and fired … and of course if they get canned for being late for work excessively often it will just confirm those fears.
Which means, if anyone is finding that a (non-chemically-addictive) thing is taking up enough of their time to get in the way of life goals, they should probably discuss their situation with a professional psychiatrist. Only they would be qualified to diagnose the underlying phobia (or whatever-it-is) and treat it.
*giggle-snort*
@Surplus to Requirements –
The people at Urban Dictionary have a portmanteau word for procrastination + masturbation: procrasturbation (because why not). 😛
On a more serious note, I think you’re right to say that obsessive behaviour can be a result of procrastination or other problems. E.g. I often waste time online if I have a deadline; I think ADHD + anxiety is the problem, but my dad seems to think that the Internet is more of a problem.
We’ve had arguments about this. I don’t think either of us is right, really. Maybe I’m putting too much focus on my (fairly minor) problems and letting them affect me too much. Maybe he’s putting too much blame on a technology that he distrusts.
…
…Also, why does “fapping” require porn? Can’t people imagine their imaginary characters having sex, or is that just a writer thing? Maybe it’s just a writer thing. 🙂
…And they have to be my imaginary characters. I would feel awkward imagining real people OR other people’s imaginary characters having sex.
People are weird. 😛
Jeebus, David, are you ok? Commitment to your craft is all very well, but come on.
Ah, I see that you are definitely ok. Nice work!
I vote for “hands full of penis” for best meme. It’s awesome.
I know we’ve seen that type of meme before, but I still don’t understand why Chad’s legs are backwards.
Ironic how they claim not to fap, and yet still manage to be the biggest wankers on the Internet.
I want to laugh at the ridiculousness of vowing not to masturbate… but then I remember that this is one of the rules of the Proud Boys, and I wonder how many of these nonwankers are basically nazis.
@Tov01:
It’s not that Chad’s legs are backwards. That bizarre bulge is supposed to be his tremendous testicles.
This is such a weird thing to get self-righteous about. Not masturbating isn’t an accomplishment.
I think these guys….the “leaders”, anyway….want to have their movement be a self-perpetuating thing and keep the “crab bucket” going.
They introduce all these weird ideas then pooh-pooh the things that could act as a release (like therapy, self-improvement and self-pleasuring) thus keeping everyone a pile of sexually-frustrated fail and become more dependent upon the “leader’s” garbage (giving them money, attention, boost their egos, etc).
It could also be some weird perversion of the Tantric-inspired “male continence” type stuff as well.
Likely a combo of both.
I dunno.
Hello, everyone. Long time WHTM reader, first time commenter. I think this blog is my favorite community on the internet; everyone is just so friendly and woke. ?
Doomcup: Oh my gosh, you poor, unenlightened, hapless, helpless, hopeless fapper. The benefits of NoFap are IMMEDIATE! You will be able to read minds after a month; just try it!
To those of you on here who think that fapstronauts are another breed of Nazi-adjacent manospherians, I beg to differ. I have known about Nofap for years, frequently visit the subreddit, and have even lightly trolled them. (I have never tried Nofap and think it sounds like bullshit and pseudoscience, but still find it funny and interesting). On the Nofap subreddit I can’t recall ever seeing any manosphere language or topics and women are genuinely welcome (Nofap is for them too, and they are strongly encouraged to try it, because fapstronauts are fricking evangelists about this shit). I also never see any racism or alt-right propaganda. Nofap is apparently about self-improvement, and many members do acknowledge that simply quitting fapping will not get you to achieve your goals. Like in politics, there are moderates and extremists, so you will see posts fearmongering about ejaculation or talking about girls looking them in the eye for two seconds longer than when they were fapping. Fapstronauts really seem to take Nofap extremely seriously, but no, if any of them hold alt-right or manospherian beliefs, they don’t express it on the subreddit.
Eh, if these dudes or anyone else decide not to masturbate, that’s none of my business. What people decide to do or not do with their own bodies is their choice.
That said, this movement seems a lot like the MTGOWs, where the base idea is relatively unobjectionable- deciding not to date, sure, whatever, valid choice. But basing your entire identity around it and assigning external blame to the rest of the world (specifically women, who have been dehumanized into the role of interchangeable tempting sex-things) is really objectionable.
In Canada PMO is shorthand for Prime Minister’s Office. Not something we associate with wanking. Question Period in the House of Commons on the other hand….
“You will never climb to heaven with your hands full of penis?” Probably a joke given that more than a few people have found heaven with a penis in their hands.
I love that grey cat’s expression. “What are you doing? You should be spending all your time doing my bidding, not playing with that thing.”
Tim,
PMO means exactly the same thing down here in Australia, and I think most of us would say that many of its occupants have been complete wankers.
Is this the same Chad in that meme ad ther one the incels obsess over? If so, it stands to reason that he doesn’t spank the monkey. The bloke apparently gets so much sex he wouldn’t be capable of rubbing one out…
The thing that keeps coming to mind when I read stuff like this is the word “Puritan.” Seriously, think about it. Sex for any reason other than procreation is evil. If a man masterbates, God cries and the poor horny dude is locked out of heaven.
All of this, of course, makes women the ultimate evil. Not only do we tempt men away from God and steal his sacred seed, money and children, but we then leave the silly sap broken and bleeding in some impoverished earthly hell.
Pleasure itself is suspect in these guys minds, especially sexual pleasure. The very existence of women is a reminder of the danger men are in and a constant flaunting of the lovely, but sinful, flesh. All over the world we see the same things – women must be covered up, excluded from public life, denied basic liberties and education, rendered economically dependent on men…the list goes on. All of this is to protect the penised ones from the ravages of female lust and evil, which leads to eternal damnation of one sort or another.
These are the newest iterations of the Inquisition, the Salem witch hunts, the rape, pillage and plunder of the wars men make to rid themselves of female filth and find the purity they seek but can never find. It does not exist.
The most pathetic aspect of all of this, for me, is that you cannot reach these guys through logic, intelligent discourse or science. They cannot and will not listen. They are governed by fear. Their sad brains are swimming in a toxic soup made up of rage, fear, loss and a bunch of other painful things. Make no mistake, though, the combination of misogyny, male supremacy, greed, vanity and racism is a deadly mix. Just look around at the state of the world.
Frankly, we would all be better off if these guys spent more time having great sex and less time worrying about their purity.
If you have a low sex drive or don’t like that kind of thing, for example some (not all) ace people or demisexual people, then it is easy to not masturbate. The healthiest thing is to be true to your sex drive. It actually makes people *more* stressed if they have a high sex drive and they don’t masturbate. It’s important. Just respect your sex drive, and don’t force your body to do things which harm you, just because society wants you to feel ashamed about natural things.
I know that some people have addictions/problems with too much masturbation but like surplus and some others also said, there are usually other reasons for this, and the chronic masturbation is a symptom.
From these examples, they’re FAR worse than Xian “rock.”
They’re as limp and uninspired and misdirected and clueless as the Platonic Ideal of these things: Xian stand-up “comedy.”
Chad’s knees and elbows are pointing in four different directions. He looks like he’s wearing a dance belt over a candlepin bowling ball, which might explain his awkward rubbery, flailing gait.
Anyway. Masturbation itself isn’t the problem so much as the inability to separate porn and sexual fantasies from everyday life. There’s so much rage and disappointment from them about the fact that women don’t behave the way they do in porn. The real world never successfully lives up to their fantasies, which makes it tempting to disengage and withdraw further into their heads, where the rules are clearer and people act in scripted, predictable ways. I suspect that’s what’s really holding them back.
As an aside, “Hands Full of Penis” sounds like a bad Clint Eastwood sequel. (A sweaty Western.)
It’s particularly strange that Christian puritans blame women for their lustful thoughts, given that Jesus lays all the blame for people being lustful on, you know, the people who are being lustful.
It’s “If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away.”, not “if your right eye causes you to sin, make everyone you can see with that eye cover up their skin”.
“But Jesus, I just can’t help myself! The women are too tempting!”
“Then cut out your own eye, that should fix the problem.” Jesus was savage.
No fap?
No thanks!
I’m sure these guys would be much better company if they could wank without feeling guilty about it.
Hi E.! Welcome and thanks for the perspective! It’s all too easy to assume the worst (since so many out there seem to prove they are awful), so it’s nice to see a group that may be more amusing than anything else.
I can see a small point about porn as I have heard often from men about how it can mess with expectations, aspecially for young boys whose only exposure to sexuality was through watching it (yet another reason for proper sex ed Ford you jerkwad). But as has also been mentioned upthread, there are often other factors at play and porn alone isn’t usually the problem.
In the end, dudes, you do you… or don’t do you 😉