sadmanbarty

Well-known member
During the Dematerialisation thread music journalist and author Simon Reynolds kept insisting we bring the discussion back to masturbation (something he has since denied). Out of respect and sheer bewilderment we ignored it at the time, but is a rather fruitful topic of conversation.

The explosion of online pornography- and the presumably increasing levels of masturbation that it has ushered in- must surely have had some influence.
 

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
The evolution of NoFap has been interesting, I'd always assumed it was a "Master of your domain" thing about proving to yourself that you were stronger than your base sexual urges, with maybe an element of tantric semen-conservation mystic woo retrofitted to it. But the full redpill narrative hooks it into this pseudo-scientific story about gender and evolutionary psychology, with testosterone taking the place of Chi energy, and serving as the root of physical as well as spiritual vitality.

It's quite neo-Victorian in some ways - Victorian masturbation panics were all about sexuality vitiating the health of the race, turning healthy males into vampire-drained, intellectually enfeebled shadows of themselves (while making women permanently-flushed hysterical nymphomaniacs). Like anti-semitism, it's really weird to see all that nonsense come back into fashionability.

(and actually Jews in the anti-semitic imaginary are basically masturbators, what they do to the health of the polity just is what masturbation does to the health of the body - an unregulated sexuality that corrodes everything it touches. USURA, etc)

.
 

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
it's been noted that pornography is often embracing the technological vanguard; vhs, online streaming, corpse's virtual reality wank pits, etc.

i've spoken before about the 'tour of booty' series being the most potent artistic response to the war on terror in the last 2 decades.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
morally or stimulation wise?

Aesthetically as much as for any other reason, surely? Atrocious costumes, lighting, sets, interior decor...

All porn should be directed by Craner, and made to look like a cover shoot from his apparently extensive collection of Italian Vogue back issues from the late '80s/early '90s.
 

poetix

we murder to dissect
I've tended to find porn a predictably disappointing substitute for what I actually want when I go looking for porn, which is not (as it happens) sex, but rather fantasy. I don't know whether porn has damaged people's actual ability to have and enjoy sex with each other, but I think it's made a terrible mess of their fantasy lives, which may have a knock-on effect in the real domain.

I have a sort of meta-fantasy of being able to conjure a sort of memory-palace of infinite sexual variation, like a Star Trek holodeck (specifically, a DS9 holodeck) where you say "computer, give me twelve short-haired girls dressed as pageboys, one of those ornate chairs used for oral sex, and Molly Parker circa 2004" and everything is arranged and materialized to your precise requirements. But actually imagining in detail what one might choose to do in that environment is somehow less interesting than exploring the abstract space of possible parameters. Nina once told me a story about someone she knew who collected porn in great quantities, whose chief delight seemed to be arranging his downloads in an extremely detailed filing system, everything classified to the nth degree. There's a never-fulfilled epistemic hunger behind it, I think. It takes you further and further away from the erotic particularity of this person, this situation, here, now.
 
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sadmanbarty

Well-known member
Nina once told me a story about someone she knew who collected porn in great quantities, whose chief delight seemed to be arranging his downloads in an extremely detailed filing system, everything classified to the nth degree..

this thread was inspired tangentially by autecher, as 'masturbator' has become a cultural shorthand (excuse the pun) for some of the qualities i was getting at on that thread.

masturbation is an inherently introverted thing to do (it arrises from either being rejected by or rejecting others company). its a safe space. a space away from shame. there's ritualistic element about it with a lot of people. the level of cognitive obliteration you attain through masturbation is far more than that with a sexual partner as you're far less self-aware.

it has it's alt-right side to it. incels for example. online porn prying people away from social interaction, relationships, being productive.
 

poetix

we murder to dissect
Some of Autechre does seem to me like "exploring the abstract space of possible parameters", rather than making music as such. For me, the track Rae stands out for its actual prettiness, the sense of emotion at least hovering in the wings. But it stands out because those qualities are often very remote in the rest of their output.
 

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
wagner had a theory that nietzche's health problems were caused by excessive masturbation

nietzche is very alt-right. isolated and alone thinking you're enlightened and superior to everyone else. the appeals to the antiquated (thus spake zarathustra).

his righting is these sort of emotional outbursts that guise as intellectual positions which is a very alt right thing.
 

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
when the whole nina thing kicked off a somewhat notorious music journalist (don't worry, not simon) sent nina, luke and me (bear in mind me and nina had never even heard of one another at this stage) a group email in support of her in which he attached a drawing he'd done of loads of cocks. maybe even an inadvertent abstract self-portrait of him masturbating.

it was an incredible moment in my life. witnessing a man lose his mind.
 

poetix

we murder to dissect
A masturbator by choice, Genet prefers his own caresses since the enjoyment received coincides with the enjoyment given, the moment of passivity with that of the greatest activity; he is at one and the same time this consciousness that clots (caille) and this hand which churns in agitation. Being, existence; faith, worksl masochistic inertia and sadistic ferocity; petrification and liberty; at the moment of pleasure the two contradictory components of Genet coincide; he is the criminal who violates and the saint who lets himself be violated. The masturbator makes himself unreal – he brings his own realization; he is very near to discovering the magic formula that will open the sluice gates.

However, victim of execution, caresser or caressed, these phantasies in the end will have to be reabsorbed into Narcissus; Narcissus fears men, their judgments, and their real presence; he wishes only to experience an aura of love for himself, he asks only to be slightly distanced from his own body, only for there to be a light coating of otherness over his flesh and over his thoughts. His personae are melting sweets; this lack of consistency reassures him and serves his sacrilegious designs: it caricatures love. The masturbator is enchanted at never being able to feel himself sufficiently another, and at producing for himself alone the diabolic appearance of a couple that fades away when one touches it. The failure of pleasure is the acid of pleasure of failure. Masturbation as a pure demonic act sustains in the heart of consciousness an appearance of appearance: masturbation is the derealisation of the world and of the masturbator himself. But this man who is eaten up by his own dream knows surely enough that this dream is there only by virtue of his willing it; Divine (the other in some of Genet’s masturbation phantasies) ceaselessly absorbs Genet into herself, and Genet ceaselessly absords Divine. However, by a reversal which brings ecstasy to a point of overflowing, this clear negation (clair neant) will provoke real events in the true world; the cause of erection, the ejaculation, the damp stains on the bedclothes is – the imaginary. In a single movement the masturbator captures the world to dissolve it and insert the order of the unreal unreal into the universe; it is necessary that they be images, since they act; No, the masturbation of Narcissus is not, as some misguidedly think, the little gallantry that one performs towards the evening, the nice, boyish compensation for a day’s work: it wills itself a crime. Genet draws his pleasure from his nothingness: solitude, impotence, the unreal, evil, have producted, without recourse to being, an event in the real world.

(from Being and Nothingness, pp. 341-42.)
 

poetix

we murder to dissect
"...the nice, boyish compensation for a day's work" is very Houllebecq, somehow. Now there's a masturbator.
 
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