The Sad Reality of the NoFap Community. Please Read.

Well I’m sure that helps justify it in their minds...But yeah seems to happen regardless.

 

Interesting indeed!

I was here before with another Nic and left because of immature people posting nonsense and even trying to encourage PMO.

But I've come back and have been back and am ignoring the idiots. I use what is helpful to me and I hope I can in someway be helpful to others.

You've brought out some good points and as the saying goes: "A word to the wise is sufficient".

Those that choose to ignore what you've said should be ignored by those of us that are here for legit reasons.

Thanks for your post.

 

I don't know man, this doesn't seem like information thats useful to the majority of us. I agree with the other commentators; there are guidelines for people to follow here in order to help them undergo a successful recovery (Chief among them is to not get chummy with female fapstronauts). If some people choose to remain ignorant of them, it shouldn't reflect poorly on the majority that does follow the rules. We're not here to conduct sting operations on fellow users, we're here to get better and encourage other people to get better but we can't do it for them. The best we can do is just point out something is bad for them.

Unseemly behavior is something all of us will see and judge on a case-by-case basis. If we see it going on, one would hope we'd report it to a moderator or some other staff member to check out.

 

None of this is shocking at all but maybe it is useful information for those who are very new and may not be aware that this can happen.
Also very few here are flawless in their recovery and will slip up and do things like you described. All have their weaknesses and that should be considered and used to help them if they do slip up in this way.

 

Like some people here, I don't see any need for that experiment. Its results shouldn't be of any surprise to us. Just come on...

Worrying about the "victims", it can have three effects (all can be stacked):
1) open their eyes wider to their problem, 2) trigger them to MO, 3) feel even worse about themselves (not everyone learns immediately or at all from their mistakes).
Someone called this experiment unethical. Looking at myself from the 100+ days earlier, yes, I agree. I could even fall for it back then. The heated discussion here is no surprise then.

 

I’m kind of confused by this thread. Did the OP naively believe this kind of thing wouldn’t happen here?

Predatory people exist everywhere. Yes, in a perfect world people wouldn’t be like this, however, we don’t live in a perfect world and no amount of “omnipresent motivation” (whatever that is) will solve this problem. This is why individuals, even online, need to be cautious of who they talk to and what information they share.

Welcome to reality, OP.

 

@IAmLegion, I think you are being naïve on two counts.

1. You’ve been here a while (your first post is from the end of November 2017, right?) so surely you have seen this happening.
2. 100 days: I think you are underestimating how long this journey takes.

But I prefer naivety to world weariness so keep it up!

I do have some more specific comments and questions …

Please do send the screenshots of the inappropriate messages to the mods. Don’t wait for them to ask as they are busy folk. That kind of thing needs dealing with.

Really? I see a lot of men (and women) here who would not have sent inappropriate messages to incoming female members and yet still struggle and relapse: you, for example.

One thing that troubles me is why you felt we needed this. Why did you feel that the women here who complain about their treatment wasn’t enough? Why would it take a man explaining women’s harassment before we’d listen? Why not just listen to the women themselves, not the men-pretending-to-be-women like you, but the actual women? This presumption seems sexist to me. Maybe it’s true but I wish the world was not that way.

Yes, but the more important question is what can we do about it? The things I have done are

• When it seems that new women here are being ganged up on reach out to them privately to make sure they know where the women only group is, and to make sure they feel welcomed and valued.
• If I see men treating the female members badly I wade in and put a more sensible and supportive view (I’m not as good at this as some men here, but I try).
• Use a selfie as my avatar. Women here get attacked for using photos of themselves as their avatar. Show solidarity with them by using one too.

I’m sure there are more but those are the ones that leap to mind.

Another ‘failing’ you point out is that posts by women receive far more attention than posts by men. I am guilty of this. There are lots of reasons for that.

• Unsurprisingly I am fascinated by female sexuality. Women’s posts here give me insight into that.
• Some of the men here have very set attitudes to women. They see women as very different. Women are different from men, but we share way more than we differ on. Reading women’s posts means you do not have to wade through loads of rubbish about women.
• It is great to get a different perspective. I’m a 52-year-old guy who has been with my partner since I was 17. One of the women I follow here is in her twenties and is trying to stop having casual disrespectful sex. Her life is opposite to mine but that makes it fascinating. She says things that get me thinking and I hope the reverse is true too.
• We never know whose journey will resonate with us or help us. When I first joined I befriended a guy who was doing NoFap because he had lots of friends who are porn stars and it was doing his head in hearing about how depressed they were and then masturbating to their videos! That is not my life, but we were able to support each other. There are several addicts here who have helped me resist when I was on the brink of relapsing, and some of those are women. Their journey may be different, but the support is a shared human experience.
• Reading the trials of the wives and girlfriends of porn addicts here motivates me. We all know how hard it is to give up porn, so I’ll take any motivation I can.

I’m sad about this. I wish there was a way for you to realize your goal without having to avoid females. That seems a mistake, especially in a world where some are fighting to make sure female voices are heard.

Be careful about this. Lots of the awful treatment I have witnessed has been from men assuming that the women they are talking to are fake. Don’t let this assumption lead to unkind behaviour.

Wow. This is terrible. Regardless of whether they are banned you need to pass this information on to the mods.

 

@IAmLegion your heart might be in the right place, but your words and actions aren't. A deadly combination, if I may say so. Please read what @Ridley has said again. And he's right, you're being extremely patronising to him.

NoFap is for addicts to recover and have a SAFE place. Trying to get the community, especially it's weakest members who I believe you targeted and probably even shamed, to "behave" when it's a struggle for them to merely go a day without PMO is very unfair and puts unnecessary burden on them. They don't need more to deal with. None of us do.

Also, please understand that trying to imagine the Nofap community as an utopia so that it becomes one is a futile attempt. We're addicts. ADDICTS. We're definitely not the best of people in the world. If you want to be better that's up to you. But you have no right to force expectations on people. If people misbehave, they will be dealt with. But this sort of misbehaviour WILL happen.

 

Please, try to understand that the "experiment" as such is completely irrelevant here. I realize it can be tricky to understand what you read, but please, try harder. To be fair, the original post could have been written somewhat differently, for not directing attention to less relevant things and single sentences.

https://www.nofap.com/forum/index.p...munity-please-read.187210/page-3#post-1601973

Some of the countering arguments here are kind of silly, too. If someone posts a thread about how "Cold showers have made a great difference in my nofap life", or how "Mindfulness meditation helps me deal with my pain", I can't see that people start whining "Why do have to post these things that everyone knows already?"

Getting someone to fuck is not going to fix your PMO (or any) issues. You can't expect that your problems will be solved as soon as you start having sex with another person.

If you truly understand that, then you might say this thread has no new value for you. The problem is, so many of us have a PMO mindset, secretly in the back of our minds. It's not nearly enough to be able to say that you understand how these things are harmful.

 

I said something like this in Draft 1 of my reply but I cut it out to make it shorter. You are totally correct, the different sub-forums here attract very different posts and some make very frustrating reads.

Ah, I’d missed that.

I wish I was the man you clearly think I am. No, I am ashamed and embarrassed and hiding behind a pseudonym.

I admire your intent but I wonder if one way to deal with the barrage of bad behaviour is to slowly report it, individual by individual.

I think we’ve got our wires crossed here. We probably agree. There’s just a danger that as men we feel compelled to explain women’s problems when they are perfectly able to explain those problems themselves. We’d do a better job by amplifying their explanations instead of attempting them ourselves. But this is a real minefield – at least you tried.

Phew.

I want people to treat everyone as if they were genuine, trust first and withdraw trust if it is proven wrong. For skeptics there is evidence in your posts that people are shamming accounts (you in your original post, and then the others you allude to in later posts in the thread). I don’t want that evidence to sway people away from warm-hearted welcome. We probably agree on this, again we may just have our wires crossed.

 

@IAmLegion , since you've resorted to total brevity with me, I'll just point out that you seem to have lots of time to reply and debate with people who agree with you, but don't seem to have the time to respond to people who disagree with you. I wish you good luck on your journey as well, and I hope you learn to take criticism better. Humility is a virtue.

 

Here's how I'm looking at the situation:

1. I criticized your experiment and asked how it was helping the struggling addicts involved.
2. You gave me a numbered list of reasons in response, and I criticized each item in detail, still claiming that you haven't demonstrated that your experiment helped the struggling addicts (in fact, I think I've shown that your experiment may have even put some addicts in a worse position than they were in before).
   
3. Rather than responding to my criticism, you made a mockery of my response, telling me that you stopped reading as soon as you saw me write "I don't think".
4. You told me "It's okay if you don't get it" (which is really patronizing) and told me to have a nice day.

Also, you're wrong about me not posing any new questions. My original question was "What did your experiment do to help struggling addicts?", and when I wasn't satisfied with your response, I asked a follow up question that was more pointed and specific: "isn't there an equally effective way you could have offered support, encouragement, compassion, and compliments to these struggling addicts without using deception and without shaming their behavior in a public thread?" You've avoided answering that question, and no amount of politeness, wishing me good luck with my recovery, or telling me to have a nice day is going to cover that up.