Panic World - The no fap movement and why the boys aren't all right

Episode Date: September 17, 2025

If you’ve spent any amount of time online in November, unfortunately you’ve heard of “No Fap,” a movement started over a decade ago by a subsection of very aggressive men who’ve created a pseudo-religion around the concept that all problems can be solved if you simply stop masturbating. Jeff & Kitty of the Free Country USA podcast join us to talk about the thousands-year-old history of anti-masturbation efforts and why it’s found such prominence for a certain kind of guy on the internet. Our guests Jeff & Kitty Kimz host Free Country USA, a podcast you can find on YouTube @freecountrypod, Instagram @freecountrypodusa, and everywhere else you listen or watch pods. This episode is sponsored by Incogni. Use code panicworld at the link below to get an exclusive 60% off an annual Incogni plan: https://incogni.com/panicworld. Try it now with Incogni’s 30-day money-back guarantee. Want even more Panic World content? Like ad-free episodes, bonus episodes, and access to our Discord? For our one-year anniversary, you can a month of them for just $0.50 by using the code PANICYEAR at checkout: https://www.patreon.com/PanicWorld. And if you want to see this conversation on video, ⁠Panic World is now posting episodes to YouTube! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All right, to kick things off, I'd love to ask both you, you know, when was the last time you encountered like a really aggressive guy in real life or online, I suppose? Like personally encountered like a really aggressive guy. A couple weeks ago at the liquor store. What about you? Wait, what happened in the liquor store? I was like, okay, so I have like one of those like ridge wallets. So I was like at the liquor store and there's this guy behind me. I'm like pulling out the card from the wallet.

and I kind of hand it to him like this. And the guy behind me was like, why are you doing this, bro? Because it was like, you know, I was like handing the car to him in like a gay way. And he started like grabbing his dick and just being pretty aggressive towards me. Wow. Wow. That's really aggressive. Yeah, I was. But, you know, I just told him to fuck off and he listened.

So it's not so bad. That's crazy. Yeah. What about you? I don't think I've encountered an aggressive guy in real life since like high school. Obviously, I have aggressive men in my DMs giving me death threats every single day. Sure. In real life, like, I don't know.

That doesn't happen to me. The reason I ask is because we're going to be talking about a subsection of very aggressive men who have sort of created a pseudo-religion to hopefully deal with their aggression. And I want to do an disclaimer here for our listeners who are sick of us on this show talking about gooning. We're going to be talking about that and a whole bunch more connected to that world today. Because today we're going to be talking about no fap, the idea that men can cure all their problems if they just stop masturbating. We're going to talk about how it's spread, how it's weaponized, how its tentacles have wriggled their way into all kinds of different parts of society and our politics. I also want to apologize to Courier, our partner on this show.

You guys got to deal with this. So this is what you signed up for when you wanted to work with us. So here we go. So this is Panic World, a show about how the Internet warps our minds or culture and eventually reality. A note for our listeners. This episode obviously contains sexual themes and later briefly touches on suicide. Sounds like a real party. Joining me as always is Grant Irving, who will sometimes come out of his no-fat cage and be allowed to ask a question to our guests.

And our guests today are the host of the Free Country podcast. Hello, fellow patriots, Kitty and Jeff, welcome to the show. Thank you very much. Thank you. Appreciate it. It makes no much sense that you would have us on this particular episode. Totally get it. Yeah.

I'm really glad you said that because I wanted to clear the air and address the fact that you are related to each other. So I want to just get that one right of the way real quick. That is, I suppose, a little weird to have somethings on to talk about masturbating or not masturbating. But I take it this is not out of your guy's wheelhouse to talk about, to talk about. Yeah. You know, we, we have like a pretty like open and honest like dialogues between each other. So it's all good. Yeah. Can you can you update our listeners, you know, maybe with with a story about how how you guys got to this kind of relationship with each other. You know, what? There's like no easy to ask this. We don't fap with each other. I just, I need to, I need to just like, yeah, no one. Yeah. No one. And thank you for knowing that we're siblings because we get a lot of people being like,

when are they going to start dating? Like in the college. Adolescence, we started smoking weed together and kind of just formed. But weed brought us together. Yeah. Okay. Interesting. I've never smoked to be with my sister.

I wonder how that would affect our relationship. Do you have a good relationship with you? I highly recommend it. I mean, it's fine. It's functional. You know, like we get along when we're together. But like we're, you know, we're not close. But maybe if we were smoked weed together, we'd just hit the grab bong and tear down the threshold.

and maybe you'll be that's sick yeah yeah bringing the grab bong to the pool and like getting in trouble like by like pool security like that really helped that was a bonding are you turning the pool into a grab bomb is it like a two later it's cut in half and then you use the pool water for the grabbong yeah okay uh well today we're going to be talking about another way of uh elevating your consciousness which is uh giving up masturbating and we're going to be talking about it because it is this thing that has become weirdly politically politically politically powerful, particularly on the right. Do you guys, like, have any sense of the, the place that no-fab kind of has in the conservative movement in America right now? Like, have you come across, like, weird, right-wing, no-fab guys? Not at all, actually. Okay. Okay. Well, it hasn't always been a conservative thing. Human beings have always been really strange about masturbating. In fact, like, when we, we, like, try to make a timeline of, like, how things spread. And our timeline today starts in 1,100 BCE where

yeah, the Babylonians the Babylonians believed that if a guy finished in a woman it would lead to an early death, which I do think is true actually, because he was giving away his life force. And this actually is something that comes up in a lot of no-fap spaces, this idea. It's even like kind of quoted in like Dr. Strange Love.

The idea that like your essence, your life force is what you're giving out. So you have to give away some of your life force in order to have a child. It was like a. Exactly. Like how they viewed it. Exactly. Yeah.

Like equivalent exchange kind of thing. And this is like not that outlandish. I swear to connect these things because in the Los Angeles review of books, there's this great feature two years ago titled NoFAP, a cultural history of anti-masturbation. And they start all the way back with the Hebrew Bible, the story of Onan who spills his seed on the ground rather than impregnating somebody. God gets pissed and he kills him. And then all of masturbating is condemned for all. all the rest of us. Rousseau, a philosopher, you know, during the French Revolution, believe the masturbation was

mental rape and self-inslavement. Interesting. It just goes on and on. Here's a quote from the no-fab cultural history. Among the scandalous charges of treason and decadence brought against Marie Antoinette by the revolutionary tribunal was that she had sexually abused her son by teaching him to masturbate. Allegedly, through this type of incest, Antoinette had depleted his moral and physical health and revealed her truth as a perverse woman under all the pretty dresses and clones that

once hid the villainy from view. There's always been this kind of like radical, weird reactionary view of sexuality, but our, our timeline internet starts in 1992 with the Seinfeld episode, The Contest. We've guys seen this? No, I haven't seen that one. I actually, I brought up that we were doing this, uh, uh, topic with our dad. And he brought up that specific episode of time. Yeah.

Grant, we have to start getting older guests. I can't keep doing this. can't keep living like this. I binge watch Seinfeld. I was like, I kind of remember that episode and they would be like, they would be like, they would come to each other and be like not C-O-M-E and be like, yo, I'm master of my domain. Yeah, like they still got this shit on lock. Right.

I remember. And I would say that episode is like a good moment of like this idea entering the pop cultural consciousness. And then about 10 years later or so in 2009 in September is the launch of no FAP September. which is not no not November. It did not start as no, not November. It started as no FAP September. Grant, can you pull up the image, please?

This was the first calendar we could find of them trying to make this a contest. And just for our audio listeners, you can tell this was the mid-2000s because there's a bunch of really rough memes stacked on here. One of Jean-Luc Picard from Star Trek, like trying not to fap and. I suppose we should explain right away. Like, do you guys know that the origin of the word fap? Yeah, it's like the sound. It's an Anamonopoeia from like Japanese comic books from manga. Right.

So like this is where this is the primordial soup that this stuff comes from. And then finally in 2009, it starts to spread on message boards. There's one post we have here. They're announcing like the challenge. And there's a bunch of slurs in here that I'm not going to read out loud. But basically they're like, are you ready to feel the urge to surge? Winnings include self-pride, less urge to masturbate, learning more about girls slash boys, discipline, finding yourself more focused, a cookie, and last but not least, $5 via PayPal. And then one user wrote, who needs self-pride when you can fap?

So this is the world that this idea comes from, like really weird message board people. I mean, this is the tea that I was steeped in, dude. Like, I remember all this stuff vividly, like that guy holding his hand meme, the idea of, fapping, no fapping, like talking about November on 4chan and like what it meant to you, like spiritually. You know, I remember all this like vividly growing up. So, you know, I was on 4chan and Tumblr a lot and during those years. Sure, sure.

A perfect way to completely ruin your brain as a teenager, the two best websites. Yeah, the two best. The only two websites. Just a quick heads up to your listener. We're going to be thrown around. a lot of common misconceptions. So if you're getting all agitated at your posting station listening, just keep listening, okay?

Because we're going to knock down a lot of this stuff, but we want to lay it all out first. Back to the episode. By 2009, now it's also an Urban Dictionary listing, so I'll read this for you. Though many believe that there is no reward for completing this challenge, others have faith in its many rewards it can offer, especially for the ones who do not have a GF or girlfriend,

they will build up the courage to finally ask the pretty girl out. Another reward can be for the men that masturbate regularly. They can sometimes never climax when they do have sex with a woman. Others say that the only negative spinoff that comes from NoFAP September is that the chances of having wet dreams immensely increase. Best reward of all is not feeling nasty after you've just fapped. Anything here that sticks out to you guys? The feeling nasty afterwards, I have heard that that's like a hormonal thing that like that testosterone havers deal with like mentally.

Since going on estrogen, it's like different. Some people call it post nut clarity. Yeah, it seems like that after when girls come, they feel beautiful and when guys come, they kind of want to kill themselves. Yeah, no, that sounds right. Yeah, that sounds totally fine. Yeah. Huh, I wonder. I didn't realize that was a testosterone thing.

That's interesting. Yeah, because since transitioning, like, I don't really deal with that anymore. That's fascinating. Yeah. I also feel like this is very much based in this kind of very specific kind of 2000s gutter culture online where you're finally getting, like, people are finally getting access to internet pornography and they really don't know how to talk about it or deal with it or think about it. And like, especially these sort of more niche communities already had a self-loathing angle to them. And so by the 2000s, like, they really hate themselves. And it becomes like this real race to the bottom that eventually swallows the entire American political establishment.

But before that in 2011, we got a shift in branding once again. It goes from no fat September to NoFAP June, which is interesting. Yeah, it's like November's right there. I don't know. The all of it is right there. I agree. I couldn't get this in exactly perfectly. They're going to, they try this three times in 2011.

they finally land on No Nut November. Yeah, that's the one I remember growing up. Yeah. It's because they had enough mental clarity to use the alliteration. Right. Yeah, exactly. That's exactly it. So in 2011, we get NoFAP June, and it was popularized by the bodybuilding.com forum, if you guys are familiar.

Oh, no shit. Yeah. Oh, my God. This is like, you're putting together so many puzzle pieces for me right now. This is delightful. So there was like a connection between these spaces, which I do think is interesting. Like you have the muscle men on bodybuilding.com, but they are in some way communicating with the edge lords on 4chan and on Reddit and stuff. And so the bodybuilding.com forum has an FAQ about no fab June.

And it reads, why are we doing this to work on self-control? The sexual urge is one of the most primary instincts in humans. So if you can conquer this, you truly are master of your domain. To become more social and get a girlfriend is the next one. And then the last one, testosterone boost. I've read that when you don't fap, your testosterone levels rise slowly until day 10. When the levels peak and start to drop, this might just be bro science, which is quite a-cath. Are there any studies to back that up, like whatsoever?

I have not, I mean, I would assume like Catholic priests are like the strongest men on earth at that point. I didn't include it. There's a lot of disproven studies. But like, there's also just a lot of, and like, I grew up with this. with like MMA people and like and lifters. It's very close to eating disorder culture where they get like, they're like, I would edge and then I'd go to the gym. Am I and I would be able to PR?

Lots of anecdotal research where they're like, it was miserable. I learned nothing. I didn't gain anything from this. But it's like was always spreading in these sort of broie Joe, like we'll all be Joe Rook. I don't think it can be overstated how much modern internet culture has been influenced by bodybuilders and race.

femboys from 4chan like 15 years ago. I would say like 100% of it almost. And like what I think is like also important to point out here is like it's really hard, I think to get a sense of age demographics online. But based on what we can see like the internet was full of a lot of teenage boys in America in the 2000s. And I do think that there's like a certain kind of logic, a lazy logic to teenage boys. Or they're like this thing that I can't stop doing and I feel really bad about.

Like if I just stop it, I'll fix all my problems. And then you just see how each community like analyzes that like through their own prism. So the bodybuilders are like, I'm going to get really strong and masculine. They're like self-loathing nerds unfortunate. Or like I'm finally going to be able to leave my room. It's, it's a lot of that. There's something to be said about like when if if you have like a bad relationship with masturbation pornography and you're able to like get a handle on it like that is probably going to boost your confidence to like a certain extent. I think it's like the similar to like any form of addiction.

Like if it's something like. like you can't stop doing it or doing it all the time. It's like all you're thinking about like, yeah, you should probably like try to not do it as much or like maybe like try to like chill on it. But I feel like I don't know. It just comes across like any other addiction. Something I was addicted to for a while personally when I was addicted to Adderall like this the the, the, the, the enthphetamine induced hypersexual psychosis. That's just real. Sure.

It's just real as fuck. Stim fapping. Gooning nonstop. What was it crazy? What was it? I've heard it called stim fapping. Stim-faping. I have not heard that one.

That's a good one. Yeah. I'm an avid reader of the R-Meth subreddit, which I highly recommend for people. And the guys on there who... Yeah, go ahead. Sorry. The guys on there are really into stim fapping. It's like a whole...

I think there's also a stim fapping spin-off subreddit. Dirty little secret of all the meth users out there that they're not telling you. What do you think they're doing? Like when they're a load smoking meth. Like... They're masturbating for like 20 to 40s. 40 hours straight. That's exactly.

Literally. No, yeah, Adderall is not that much different. I would have hundreds of porn tabs open, gooning for like three days straight and then I would like have a seizure and blackout after. Like it was, it was nuts. Hell yeah. Like any other. Yeah, except some addictions are cooler than others for sure.

And that one's pretty damn cool. But this one, like, but I do think this gets us into kind of the more self-loathing aspects of this. Right. And you can see this really quickly move out of these needs communities and start to get processed into more mainstream spaces. And so the same month of the bodybuilders discover NoFab June, as they're calling it at this point,

it gets shared over to the self-help subreddit get motivated. And the user there writes, since my early teens, I was an avid masturbator. Like most guys, I used it as a stress reliever. I always had the feeling that behind me not having the motivation to do anything with my life, sitting in front of the PCL day playing Xbox with some deeper psychological issue,

childhood parents trouble with school traumatizing events you name it so one day i decided to stop all this i went four months without masturbation and it was the best fucking time of my life i was horny all day and all night ready to conquer the world in a second let me tell you something having sex with a girl masturbation is something completely different so well the first thing is good for you and generally has no effect on your level of motivation masturbation just wears you out and makes you a lazy fuck. And this is really important here because I we've, this has come up like in a lot of different episodes we've done about communities like this. And it's something that I try to warn our listeners about if like if you see it online, there are communities and particularly now like

influencers and grifters that love to say that whatever's wrong with you can be totally solved internally. And if you ever find yourself in a space where you're like, hey, you can harness the power that's already within you to fix all your. problems. You don't have to go to therapy. You don't have to get any sort of like medical operation. You just have to pay me to teach you the secret that's already inside of you. And like once you see that kind of language, you've got to back out as fast as possible. Because like you're you're watching like a cult spin up online. And it's almost always the same thing.

Yes. Way to spoil the episode. So if you want to pay us five dollars on Patreon, I can teach you the secrets of how to know that. But you can masturbate as much as you want. And you can masturbate as much as you want. As long as you're not listening to this show while you're doing it. Going back and, you know, thinking about this time period, like, is you guys as teenagers online, you know, in the T you're Steepton, as you said, like, could you imagine, like, could you imagine, like, could you imagine, like, could you imagine, like, could you imagine? Yeah, we talk about it. talk about it. I was on, I was on Reddit on the no fat page posting on it. I'm dead.

Whoa. What? Yeah. You, wait, we've been recording for for 20 minutes and this just came up. Dude, have you got the Witcher dude? It's like, don't reveal the information. So wait, okay, wait, so talk to me about it. Like, like, like, what made you do that? I remember at the time, I was working very, very hard. I was working like hard labor, basically, like 70, 8 the hour weeks. I did a vegan diet and I felt like I had like more energy and focus if I didn't masturbate and I wanted like support for that. So I would post on the forums being like talking about what I was going through. People were supportive about it. And I did feel like it like helped in a way.

Sure. Like like, you know, it was distracting like, you know, it's like if I got to get up and like work like 16 hours, like I want to be like dialed. And if I like smoked weed and jerked off and watch porn in the morning. I think that part of it too is like it's just like my own negative relationship like with like that thing. Like maybe it's like some guilt stuff that I haven't like worked through. Yeah, I wonder how much of these no fat people are like were raised Christian like us. Like I thought I was going to hell. We're going to get there.

We're going to get there. I've talked about this before in the show. But like I when I was a teenager, I was like playing in punk bands in New England and sort of like doing DIY music. And I remember like every once a while like encountering like straight edge people. Yeah. who, you know, were in the Boston area, like, so militant that, like, there's, like, a straight-edge youth crew that's on the FBI watch list because, like, they were, like, doing crimes. Yeah. I was always very aware of, like, this weird, masculine, like, monastic kind of idea where it's, like, if you cut out drugs and you cut out alcohol and if you go vegan straight-age to, and, like, there are these, like, tough guys that always wanted to sort of, like, sell that idea, which I feel like was very prevalent in the 2000s.

Have you ever gone, like, seven, 14 days without masturbating or watching born? brother i can't do it without i can't even do it six hours you know like i i'm kramer and that's like i kind like it does feel pretty good like i you know what what what made you start what when were you like when did you have the moment where you're like i got an idea start no fat the exact same way you guys described it's just people online like convincing me that it was a good idea and i was like yeah fuck it i'll give it a shot my life sucks dude i'll do anything we were in such different circles online Like, we were raised on the internet, which is completely different areas. Like the bit of circles you were like, you should jerk off as much as possible.

Yeah. No, I was getting like groomed by furries on Facebook. Sure. I mean, that is the two sides of the coin. There's either one or the other. It's incredible that you're not a fascist, Jeff. Yeah. I mean, incredible.

I don't know about that. You're doing a great job holding off on your fascist instincts. But in terms of a better way to it. Yeah. You're fighting them every day like the venom symbiate. I appreciate. Yeah, that's more apt. I appreciate that.

But speaking of like the people who were into this, because like this question has come up like, what kind of person is into this? So nofap.com is launched around this time. And it was started by a man named Alexander Rhodes. It was a spinoff of the nofap subreddit. and it has evolved into like a proper movement with like even like as seen on the atlantic.com and cosmopolitan and this is a 20 this is from a 2016 profile in the new york times for of roads and so they

describe him as emerging as a spokesman against the disease quote unquote that hasn't been officially recognized by the medical establishment he was careful with every word and asked to go off the record more than a government official and so yeah they're incredul about it, but they do, kind of, as the New York Times loves to do, legitimize it by covering it. They quote, Rhodes is having accidentally clicked a banner at 11, which led him to a website that depicted rape, and it bothered him so much that after a few years,

he quit Google, where he was working as a young adult, to work on NOFAP full time. So he said to the Times, it's one thing to look back and regret what happened in terms of growing up, being addicted to internet porn. You might look back be like, oh man, I was a loser. And if I had never watched it, my life would be so much better.

And maybe that's true. But at the same time, the fact that I was addicted to internet porn, the fact that I was so mediocre makes me uniquely qualified to help humanity, which is exactly what I pitched Grant when we came up with this show. I'm so mediocre that I have to help humanity. But this quote also, I mean, as you guys can see here, is full of self-loving. It is like, it is like, it is like, it is like, it actually made me really sad to listen to.

It was a bummer. Yeah, it is a bummer. And I wish I could say I've never seen that website before, but I've been there. Yeah, that's a bummer. That sucks. If you had to guess what big institution picks up on this next, it's early 2010's. YouTube is now like big business. There's all kinds of places that would love to sort of find freaks from the internet and give them a stage.

Can you guess like where this heads next? 2012. 2012 YouTube. Who's putting on the freaks? I'm blanking. Let me... Ted X, baby. Ted fucking X, baby.

Ted talk early. Ted talk. Ted Talks aren't as evil. This is perfect for a TED talk. And it turns into a TEDx talk by Gary Wilson. And it's about porn addiction. And it basically picks up the no-fap idea, legitimizes it. Here's a clip of Gary.

Wilson being very, very responsible in sharing a testimonial about the powers of NOFAP, which are very real, apparently. I've been the psychologist and psychiatrist for the last eight years, have been diagnosed with depression, severe social anxiety, severe memory impairment, and a few others. Have tried a FXer, Rital, I've been a hardcore porn addict since age 14. For the last two years, I've been experimenting and finally realized that porn was an issue. I stopped it completely two months ago. I've since quit my remaining medication. My anxiety is non-existent. My memory and focus are sharper than they've ever been.

I feel like a huge chick magnet and my ED is gone too. I seriously think I had a rebirth, a second chance at life. The idea of quitting medication is another, I think, red flag if you find yourself never the doctor you talk to the doctor well not the what do you it's not even what do you think what do you think uh this okay so this guy's name is gary wilson what do you think his credentials are i mean maybe he had like five hundred dollars at one point like doesn't like tedx like isn't tedx just like a paid thing like you just buy it and you can kind of do whatever that's how sam hyde did it he's a massage therapist

he has no credentials uh and in fact like ted had to put a disclaimer on that video being like this guy doesn't know what the fuck's talking about but of course the video exists they didn't take the video down why would they um and uh you do that rack up over a million 10 million five million let's see i mean i've watched it several million times to help me it's got 17 million it's got 17 million views of a guy saying stop taking your medication i'm a massage therapist just stop jerking off yeah if you stop watching porn you won't need any of that shit and it's the riseless guy yeah he's like i'm weird and no one's a weird sad guy and here's a bunch of graphs about how fucking weird i am um

That's the problem. It's the porn, yeah. This also gets it on the radar of another very famous crank, a deeply discredited psychologist, Dr. Philip Zimbardo, who's behind the Stanford prison experiment. And he picks up the video, he picks up no fap, and actual psychologists are really unhappy about this. because like all of these ideas that like pornography is like this like evil force in your life there's not a lot of evidence that that's actually true i mean we're gonna get deeper into that but a oh the statistically experiment was real i thought that was like a creepy pasta it's real just like it's it's deeply discredited like it's not like it's not yeah it's a it's a study that happened

the way they went about the study is not all like all looking to it after I'll educate my favorite fact about this was that they were like this prisoner experienced so much distress we had to release him from the study earlier and they found the guy years later he was like yeah to test this study for i was fucking bored because they're holding me in a room so i acted crazy so i could go do something okay yeah i'll have to look more into this i'm uneducated on the topic yeah well it's okay um but uh after after After a break, we're going to be talking about how bad journalism, bad media leads to more bad online men. But first, a word from our sponsors, who I personally have to apologize to.

But your ads running here and there's nothing you can do about it. It's mine now. 2010's conservative media. You guys, what do you remember about kind of like the right wing echo chamber, you know, like pre-Trump 2016? You remember Bright Bar? I remember arguing with my like high school graduating class on Facebook a lot. Was a thing. And I remember it's like probably one of my biggest L's was deleting my Facebook after Trump won.

Like I got. Really? Yeah, I felt like I got owned because I was like in my community just yelling at people on Facebook. Do you remember kind of that era of my life? No. I don't even know where you were. You were somewhere else. I was just addicted to drugs on free Facebook.

Yeah, we were just kind of in a fog during. that time. What was furry Facebook like? Oh, God. Terrible. Horrible time. Our family got invited to go on Dr. Phil because of it. We didn't.

That's kind of off topic. Maybe a story for another day. I don't think that's that off topic. Hold on. Give us a quick spark note to this, please. It didn't end up happening, but they wanted us on Dr. Phil. It didn't end up happening because of you. I chose not to do it.

Yeah. She showed, which was so wise, which was. Yeah. because it was just like gotcha to like make furries look bad. Sure. Okay. So you were a big poster if they were like Dr. Phil wants you. Yeah, I was like, I was what they call pop you fur.

Oh, okay. On furry Facebook, but I was like what, like 14, 15 at the time. And so I was just getting groomed by like adult furries. And not to say that the like, you know, every, every fandom is full of groomers. Like they just, they're out there. 100%. Not to say that's exclusive to the furry phantom. I'm a huge, I'm a huge, like, the furry fandom's a very wholesome place.

They just, like, they exist out there. Just want to make that clear. But, um, no, the furries I were involved, was involved with were fucked up. I begged, I begged cats be like, please let us go on Dr. Phil to be so funny. Because I was like a senior high school. I thought it would be just like the funniest shit ever. And, uh, I'm so grateful to this day that she had the, what do you call the foresight to, uh, realize that would be a bad idea.

It would have been cool if you could have convinced your entire family to come out in fur suits and just be like, this is normal for us. Really supportive. We did not have that kind of money. Yeah. First suits are expensive. That's true. Fur suits are really expensive. This is our answer for what conservative media was less.

Well, the reason I ask it is it is not super far off basis because like in the early 2010s, there were a bunch of right wing publishers that were trying to figure out the internet. Obviously, Breitbart's the biggest one, but you also have the daily wire, you have gateway pundit. And one of the things that they were spending a lot of time on was going into weird internet spaces to find, you know, internet focused content that they could use to radicalize people and like pull it out of those echo chambers. So Gamergate is the most successful one. They go into 4chan. They see Gamergate. They turn it into a right wing news cycle. But they're doing this with a lot of different things.

I would like to note that the worst furries I encountered were often conservative. Yeah, they're all like cops and. and soldiers and stuff. Yeah. A lot of cops are furries, in my experience. A lot of EMTs and cops and soldiers for some reason. Yeah. Yeah.

That's like the right wing section of the furry fandom. And it's pretty separate. And you were getting groomed by mostly those guys, you would say? Yeah, it was the conservative furries that are like the worst of them. Quite a coincidence that, uh, that the right wing furries were grooming you. Um, so that in this time period, like as right wing media is trying to figure out how to crack the internet and like find parts of the internet to turn into right wing narratives. No FAP starts to change as well.

And New York Mag writes about this in 2013. And they point out that like even the idea behind it is starting to mutate. And the piece reads, the most notable shift within the forum is how nofppers have begun to characterize their short term challenges as now long term lifestyle choices. One discussion is literally titled, No FAP isn't a challenge. It's a way of life. And then the quote that they keep saying over and over on these boards is, I feel like a man again. So now you're also seeing like a bunch of the different tendrils of this idea connect back together.

So now it is like this pro-masculine, like very like monastic kind of long-term thing that all of these men are claiming they're doing. And then a couple years later in 2015, there's a subreddit spin-off called NoFAP War, which creates like a game version of this. So the recruitment drive page reads, let's get one thing straight. If you're thinking about giving a half-hearted effort in abstaining from PMO or porn masturbation orgasm. Yeah. Weird men online love acronyms. Then you are not cut out for the war. Though the war is a supportive, positive community, it is not a place for second chances and do-overs.

Get the picture of soldier. The war cannot be won without a firm resolve. You will be pushed. You will be tested. You will find yourself on the verge of relapse, but you must not fail. For countless soldiers, this conflict is the added accountability. They've been lacking to truly break their cycle of relapse. And like, this is such an interesting snapshot of like how weird men talk to other weird men.

Oh, like, I mean, I'm going to assume everyone involved here is between the ages like 11 and 23. Yeah. What I'm gathering here is that these are men who like had no control over their lives. And this is just like the most common like overwhelming urge to have. And so they feel like tackling that is like the biggest obstacle they can they can come across. And like that's really just what it is is like that's the only way they can feel some kind of control over their lives. The way they adopt like recovery language like using the word. Yes.

Using the word relapse for masturbating is really crazy. There's so many. There's like there's so many examples of this over the last 15 years. of like men being vulnerable online and then finding men who like want to talk about it. And then those men like effectively grooming them or radicalizing them. Like it is the same language in all these different places. And in fact, this is true. A bunch of studies were done in the mid-2010s of like the overlap between different Reddit communities.

And there was massive, massive, massive overlap between NOFAP and the Donald, which was the pro-Trump. Wow, it's like, dude, this insecurity, the, the, the victimization of the insecurity of the fascist, bro. Exactly. It is, it is. And now I see the thread that you're, okay. I don't think it's always the case that these communities become fascist, but I do think vulnerable communities are easy to radicalize in the same way that like, they're not all weird pervert, fascist furries. But it's like, if you find a subculture and you can speak that language, you can invade that

subculture really easily and take it over. And there's a lot of examples of that, I feel like. And I feel like also feeling like you're addicted to pornography and masturbation. And I think at the end of the day, it's like probably people are more upset about being addicted to pornography than they are being addicted to masturbating. And they kind of go hand it. It probably feels incredibly emasculating if you have certain tendencies. Yeah, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that I'm going to guess that most of these

no fat people blame porn for existing for like being like the way that they are. instead of having some goddamn accountability, some personal accountability. Like, am I, am I right? You are right. I mean, like, this, just think about the inherent silliness of, like, having a serious social movement like this based around the Anamonopoeia for masturbating from hentai. Like, this is like, like, how serious can you take into this, right? Jesus Christ.

No, yeah, that's like, that's like blaming bars for existing for being an alcoholic. At the same time, though, at the same time, as someone who has someone who has, has gone multiple weeks without watching porn and masturbating. Hey, that's great. There is a magic. I want to say that's great to hear. There's a magic to it. There is a little something there.

You believe in no fat magic? Like, you can move stuff with your mind after like, I do. I do think that you do get a little bit of superpowers when you do it. I think that it's, but are you familiar with the turn of pink cloud? Have you ever heard that before? I am not.

And I'm terrified. I know what that means. It's another recovery, recovery saying it's like when you quit. like drinking or like quit doing heroin like for the first like few weeks, you feel really, really good. Oh, okay. Yes.

I have heard of this phenomenon. Yeah. And then the reality like starts to set in of what you're doing. And then the pink cloud fades and they, a lot of times they say the pink cloud is like the most dangerous. The most dangerous thing. I think that when you, if you feel like helpless to your addiction to masturbating pornography and then you remove something from your life, I think it can be similar to like maybe if you are addicted to a drug that you feel like is destroying your life, the few people

maybe first few weeks, first few months can feel like really magical, powerful and empowering. And then that can kind of be like intoxicating like in its own way. So real. So it's like I think like people are really feeling like a physiological self-confidence like boost from this like garbage, I guess, being peddled to them. And that's like kind of creates like maybe like a feedback loop. Am I making sense? You are. And and you're touching on something that like I do think is.

important to lay out, which is like the scientific studies about like addiction to masturbation, addiction to pornography, you know, they're complex and like we'll get more into that later. But we do know that there is clearly a connection between like self-worth and how media is consumed, right? Like we just did an episode about like eating disorders. And like the, if you look at eating disorder content online, it can absolutely trigger an disorder like those things go hand in hand body dysmorphia and the media it's it's all it is connected and i do think yeah there is a thing there where like if you are someone who's watching hours and hours of pornography all

day like you probably don't feel good like you like i i don't think you feel good about yourself you don't feel good about the way you look how attractive you are absolutely word yeah you're consuming like a fiction and and you know you're believing that this is something you're missing out on whatever it is And the guys who give up, give it up, I do think feel immediately better for a little bit, at least. So, yeah, I think you're right. But the popularity of the no fat movement around 2018 finally breaks through into the mainstream, and it becomes no net November. That is so popular that Burger King's official Twitter account is posting about it.

What? Burger King talked about no fat, bro. Yeah. So Burger King tweeted. him, it's only a month, and then it says Wifu, which is like an anime manga term for wife. It's like a cry emoji. So fucking stupid. And as Nofap, as No, November is going mainstream, the new state's been checks in on it.

And this is a British paper, so this will explain some terminology I'm about to read here. The anti-wanking community is an excellent recruitment tool for the far right. young men who feel ashamed of themselves are encouraged to put themselves through, let's face it, a very difficult physical test, all while reaching out to other frustrated men on the internet, many of whom are misogynist and racist. I remember when these pieces were coming out, and I don't think nofap is inherently misogynist or racist, but it is vulnerable men who are very easily radicalized. And I think that is the process here. And in a research paper done by Penn State titled the Battle for Nofap, they kind of zero in. on this dynamic. It reads, user gave up porn reports on the financiers of pornographic companies and the servers

on which the content is hosted. Fishbean, Slifkin, Rosenblatt, all Jewish surnames. The porn industry is owned and run by Jews. This is a fact, so don't shame us. This is in 2018. They posted this and then they posted again. When NOFAP is accused of being anti-Semitic, one user claims this is an admission that porn is a Jewish plot, which is.

way, way, way, way, more extreme than anything we saw in the 2000s. Right. Yeah, that's, um, yeah. Who was saying that? Yeah, why? A user named gave up porn who likes to track the Jewish connections of the porn industry. Right. So these guys are feeling helpless and they're feeling addicted to porn and then they

come to the conclusion that it's like a Jewish weapon being used against them to turn him into servile. I have something to admit. Okay. Israel's been funding and backing my only fans. Okay, well, that's totally fine. I think it's really important here to show how when you get these kinds of communities and they start to radicalize, they have to find an enemy, an answer. They have to find an other to blame. It's why almost every weird internet community from the 2000s eventually spins out into neo-Nazi stuff because they've just been fermenting in it for years without.

a solution and like it's really easy to just be like yeah like born as a Jewish plot and now it's it's you see it in in all of these communities I think these cave drawings are a fucking Jewish plot right now to get me for keep me from hunting mammoths exactly exactly Jesus have you ever listened to healthy you know who healthy gamer Gigi is I do yeah yeah he has like his take on it is so cool He's like, look, you can get addicted to pornography for sure. He's like, if you try to not do it forever, you're almost invariably going to relapse and then your brain is going to become better at being addicted to it. He's like, just do windows.

Just like give yourself. Oh, I thought you meant like switch from Mac to windows. Oh, you're saying like a porn window. Yeah. If you feel like you're addicted to the porn, just do it. He says what he does with his clients is just gives them like times of day to do. do it and then that way you feel like you're not taking over your life. A little porn siesta.

Yeah. This seems like a reasonable compromise. Moderation. Yeah. And we're going to talk more about Healthy Gamer in the third act here. Oh, yeah. Don't worry. We're getting there.

But I do want to say before, uh, like before we go to the next act is that like, as this stuff is spinning around the right wing echo chambers being picked up by right wing media, by 2018 is when we get the kind of like self-helpification of. right-wing content so you get like Jordan Peterson you've guys familiar to Jordan Peterson of course oh yeah we love Jordan Peterson he helped me go viral yeah yeah yeah cat

one of cats biggest videos is in Jordan Peterson uh like sorry did he share it or was he was he mad about I just used his audio for okay it's like when she got bottom surgery it's like the clip of him being like you can learn you could learn to take the ultimate load yeah

Jordan Peterson obviously is like perfect for this world of no fab. You know, this is where you get like the intellectual dark web who they're clearly like trying to figure out what to do with all the weird fucking guys that are now conservatives. And so they're they're selling them like self-help books and they're trying to like help them clean their rooms. This is also around the same time that like Logan Paul does no nut November, which is great.

Good for him. Yeah. And then of course. finally in 2018 you get Joe Rogan Rogan did it that's so right picking up on nofap it has 7 million views here let's play a little a little section of this just so you guys can get a taste of Joe's opinions on nofap you know Ari studied the Talmud

and did it for like 12 hours a day when he was a young young man he told me there was one passage where in one of the the ancient texts where it was talking about battling a dragon. And he's like, this doesn't make sense because everything in here is supposed to be a story that actually happened. Like, what is this dragon? Oh, the dragon is a metaphor for masturbation. They tell him.

So the dragon that takes away young boys, this is, it is a metaphor for masturbation. So, yeah, the dragon is a metaphor for masturbation. Are you guys, either of you guys Jewish? I'm not Jewish. Are you, I'm Josh. Okay. Is that a thing? I mean, maybe somewhere, but I'm sure that Joe has it wrong.

I think we can, I think we can count on Joe having it wrong. Yeah. Yeah, it does sound wrong. Once Joe Rogan picks it up, it's now everywhere. Nofap is like a part of how you have to join the proud boys. Fun fact. Like you can't. Oh, no shit.

Really? Wait. You can't masturbate at all if you're proud boy. It's, uh, you're jerking it too. I did not know that. You basically, uh, you have to, um, name five cereal brands and you have to promise not to masturbate anymore. It's one of it.

It's like, there's a couple other things you got to do, but. So all, all of this is to say by the time we hit like 2020, no fab is everywhere. It's mutated in a million different directions. It's a big right wing talking point. And. We're going to talk about how we have not really recovered from it taking hold of particularly conservative politics. After a word from our sponsors, the first ever courier men's retreat. Career News is doing a retreat just for men.

You can hear about that in the ad break. COVID happens. We all go crazy. The media shifts its focus from NOFAP to, you know, a possible civil war. We kind of forget about it. But it is still there. And you see bits and pieces of it all over the internet now. It's sort of just become accepted that like this is real.

It is a thing. And you, you know, you should do it. You know, you see Christians about, there's like Christians on TikTok that make music about like their porn obsession. You haven't seen it. Hold on. Grant, pull up one of these videos because this is pretty good. I would love this. Yeah, this is awesome.

It's worth the price of mission right to you. I'm, thank you so much. this is this is earnestly like maybe one of my favorite things on the internet like i i think the song i'm just dope for this is using your pornography addiction to ruin your relationships why is it sound like of mice and men dude i yeah it's because christians discovered stomp hey indy like four or five years ago and they love it now i would say that's better than any of my some men song uh i i just they're with you buddy i just wish the lumen When Niers wrote songs about not masturbating.

When you guys have recently encountered like no fat language online, like how are you seeing it like currently in modern day internet here? I mean, I don't see it as much online. It's like I know people in my personal life who are like, I stop masturbating and I feel really good. And when I do it, I feel bad. So I don't, I don't see that like. You're probably not introduced that language whatsoever. Yeah.

It goes like, you know, sex worker. like I'm very much like seeing the opposite. Yeah, it's like this is bad. It's bad for business, dude. They don't want people talking about that shit around you. Yeah, this is like not the circles I run in. Yeah, I guess I don't see it online as much unless I'm specifically saying, you know, I actually, to be honest, I started trying to do it again after you told me what the, um, wow. The topic of the episode was.

What, you started to, you started to do no FAP again. Yeah. Okay. Cool. Thanks for prepping for the show. That's great. Yeah. I'm on a little streak right now, but I think like after this episode, I'm kind of realizing that the whole thing is fucking stupid.

It's my own shit. I think I think that's the good takeaway. That's the takeaway here. This might actually help a lot of people what you're doing. I mean, the thing is like after 15 years of what is effectively an internet mean bouncing around, it's sort of been accepted as true. And you brought up Dr. K with the Healthy Gamer Gigi. YouTube channel. It's got 2 million YouTube subscribers and he's giving advice to people like a 27 year old virgin who posts in the no fab separate that he needs to quit porn addiction.

And now he's trying find Dom, which is like when you pay women to do. Yeah, Fendom. Yeah, fin Dom. Yeah. Find Dom. Yeah. And he's paid, he paid one woman over $3,000 and he can't seem to quit masturbating. And like, that's so bad. It's bad. It's bad. And specifically what he says in the video is that the no-fab subreddit can be a great place to get support. And we're going to actually get to eventually the doctors who disagree with this guy. And I kind of trust them a bit more because these doctors are not trying to become content creators. He's not radicalized.

He says you should be nicer to women. But he does refer to masturbation as a disease. And he takes money on his streams in exchange for the advice. Really, he does, Sam. I always liked this video. Like, I watch his videos all the time. I didn't know he was weird like that. I mean, I would hesitate to say he's weird, but I don't love the fact that, I mean, I don't know.

Being a creator's tough, man. But, like, he's clearly, like, trying to, like, lean into what people already believe is out there and sort of, like, you know, helping them through it. But, and he's on the nicer end of the spectrum, he is. But it's part of a larger ecosystem, an ecosystem that takes money from these guys and supposedly teaches them how to be better men. Here's just one example of the kind of guys in this not so nice space. What's up, guys? In this video, we're going to be talking about the dangerous downward spiral. How OnlyFans drains men's sexual marketplace value and slowly thwarts their dreams of a fulfilling life.

You see, while I was conducting research for this video series, I experienced something that I didn't expect. It all started very innocently enough. I had dated or was dating several women who were OnlyFans models. my curiosity led me to create an anonymous account to see what they were publishing if they were telling me the truth and how far they were willing to go to increase their earnings. But what I never anticipated was how I would fall victim to the pool of the platform myself. So that is Andrew Farby for Knowledge for Men.com. He has no real qualifications in therapy or psychology. He's a jiu-jitsu guy who, used to work in a frat and did sales work at apple and his advice for guys looking for ways to

quit masturbating to born are things like masturbating to another male having sex puts you in the beta male position where you are the spectator and another man's pleasure that's right um and this is far from the only guy in fact grant put together a very brief montage of what this world sounds like today i'm going to talk about how no fap saved my life and i know i know what you're thinking you're like, oh my God, this is the cringiest video. No, FAPTA, my mind. It was like not even women. It was the world at large was not interested in me.

I was invisible to the world. And so I found semen retention. It's as if I became attractive finally. Even my Hollywood agent, he's like, there's something special about you. It has never been harder to win than right now. Why? Because every single day, You are frying your brain.

You are killing your attention span and you are killing your focus. You're killing your testosterone. And because of all of that, you are killing your success. Oh, yeah, that's when it gets to a point of it's just like, shut up. That's like saying bars are like the reason. Like, alcoholics exist.

Like, have some personal accountability. I, like, I'm not going to say, like, masturbation addiction isn't a problem. Like, there's definitely guys spending ways. too much money on me. But I like blaming other people for your own inability to like stop doing something is just like not the move I think. And that's not a healthy mindset. Well, I mean, also like with the rise of the word simp, you know, among Gen Z in particular,

like it's a specific word to go after you feeling inferior because you have a parasycial relationship with a woman online. And like they're going after only fans models, I think largely connected to how much money those women are making. Like it's this idea like, oh, wait a minute. Like the women and the porn that I'm watching are becoming powerful and, you know, financially like successful. And like that's threatening and off putting.

Like there's there, there is a gendered like twist to this thing. Because they're all making so much money. We're all making. Yeah. So much. Kat is just. Well, oh, I'm rolling. I'm breaking it in.

I make a good amount. I'm in this, like, I'm in the top 1% on only fans. Like, Hey, congratulations. I make a decent wage,

but like, it's a, like, for a lot of the time, it's a front. Like, you want to seem like you're making more money than you are. It's not like all the only fans.

The rage engagement. Yeah, it's not like all the only fans girls are like making a ton of money. And that, well, the rage engagement is exactly it, right? Like,

it's like, oh, how dare you like make money off of my self-loathing and suffering, you know. So I think it's finally time to talk about the science behind all of this. So I love that you've spent this whole show talking about your no-fab journey. So it's time to see what's actually happening inside your brain. That's, yeah, probably a good idea.

So Slate did a piece in 2003 titled, We Know No-FAP is misleading men about masturbation. it might be more dangerous than that. And they quote Nicole Proust, who co-wrote a study on NOFAP, and she is not a massage therapist, but a neuroscientist. And she said that the shame that comes with the relapse is actually the most dangerous thing about NOFAP, and that what it's actually doing is radicalizing men further by creating a system that feels like they can fail it. So this is an important quote here.

I'm going to read this in no uncertain terms, okay? There is no objective basis for pornography addiction, an opinion supported by numerous peer-reviewed studies and experts in the field. Instead, they write, we've seen three real-life suicides among no-fap users, though there is no way of telling if these were due to their membership in the community. In 2015, a prominent no-fat moderator believed she was a lesbian. She posted about coming out to her husband as a lesbian,

and then 24 hours later, she died by suicide. According to Proust, the data show that most of the people who seek treatment for pornography addiction overwhelmingly end up diagnosed with depression around 90% according to data from one inpatient facility. I actually saw a study this morning that shows that religious upbringing is actually the biggest correlation to self-reported internet pornography addiction. It is almost like always a symptom of someone who grew up in an extremely religious household. and it's processing that. And it is not so much that you are addicted to pornography. It's that the pornography addiction, quote unquote, is an expression of you dealing with that, let's call it, religious trauma.

That is almost always what is happening here. And I think that's why people report like having it even myself, like when I would do it be like having like quote unquote like superpowers is probably just because you're like manufacturing this sort of fake, unsustainable system where you can go out, go like a certain period of time without feeling like intense, bouts of shame, but that's really like a deeper problem that needs to be addressed of like why you feel like ashamed of like engaging in sexual behavior.

I genuinely thought I was going to hell every time I masturbate and like growing up. I would open the Bible afterwards and be like. So here's another little twist, little callback. So you talked about cat after you transitioned, you didn't feel that way anymore. It is not the testosterone. It is, uh, according to this, uh, most of the, the people who have sex negative feelings after masturbating are people that have anxiety or depression. So it's probably more likely that you feel less depressed and less anxious after transitioning

and thus no longer have as many sex negative feelings. You are definitely less interesting. Every podcast episode just brings me closer to the realization I'm gay and also trans. That's right. If you're listening to this, dear listener, and you have sex negative feelings, try transitioning. See what happens. No, we can't force Femn the listeners. Now it's time for our Sissy Hypnosis section.

We're going to just turn you all. On the Patreon wall, though. Into Femboys, yeah, exactly, right. And then we had talked about the window theory. And I, you know, Dr. K is a little uncomfortable for me. I don't totally love his whole deal. But the window theory isn't far off from what does neurosurgeon suggest. So she said, so the slight piece reads,

Proust also recommends what is called acceptance and commitment therapy or ACT. This approach, which was developed in the 1980s by clinical psychologist Stephen C. Hayes, teaches the client to accept and manage emotions rather than avoiding denying or struggling with them. This includes acknowledging that negative feelings could be an appropriate response to situations. So basically, yeah, if you want to give yourself some time, some space to like do the thing that you feel weird about and they kind of sit with those weird feelings, that is actually probably the best thing you can do. It's definitely better, though, than what Dr. K does recommend, which is going into communities that might create structures where you can, like, fail.

And that's the problem, because you don't want to send people into more vulnerable positions because that's exactly how they start blaming the Jews for inventing pornography and being radicalized into neo-Nazi. It's like a classic fascist pipeline. So you create the structure in which you can fail at recovery, and then that shame leads you into deep. and darker waters. How would you compare the idea of failure in the no-fab community to AA?

I mean, it's like a chronic relapser. Like, I guess I have like some like so I don't know, man. It's like, you know, the AA community, which I've been ended out of. Yeah, not to out. Not to fucking out. Oh, yeah. So the second A stands for anonymous. So like, yeah.

You know, I brought it up like, I brought it up in a, way where you could just be like you know about it but like yeah i mean i mean i don't know it's like as educated that i feel about this episode i feel like i'm more i'm i'm sympathetic to people who feel like their lives are getting out of control and they're like trying to gain like the control over it but i also think that like like what you're saying cad about like personal accountability and responsibility is but also it's like i don't think a is like trying to make people like vote for Trump or whatever. No, but it's just free, it's like free therapy for people who are down bad.

And I appreciate that about them. But there absolutely is, there absolutely are examples of like cults or like fascists or sort of extremists going into recovery settings and and recruiting people. I had a sponsor. You said one of my favorite things anyone said about AA who said, uh, A.A. is not a cult, but there are cults in A.A. And you should watch out for them. A hundred percent.

And maybe in the gap, you can almost kind of say a. similar thing, even though it's a little different. I'm not in AA, but I do know, like, the first step of AA is accepting powerlessness. And I believe that that is an attempt at sort of getting around the, like, relapse failure, feeling that like no FAP, especially the really extreme ones like to ingrain in people. So, like, AI, AA does seem to sort of think about how to make sure that people can fail and still feel okay with failure, which is the major danger here. Like, it's that, it's like, how do you create a system?

where people don't like stop seeking out help and try to get actual help. And and the problem is that like after this became a meme and has become just like known in popular culture as a real thing, you're, you know, you're gonna see like all kinds of crazy stuff online about this to this day. You know, you have got no-fap influencers

that have millions of views on YouTube. You've got like weird backlash against only fans models and very gendered sort of like attacks. You also have the Daily Wire writing about the dangers of hypnoporn turning people trans. Wait, there's a daily.

There's daily why articles about sissy hypnoporn? Of course, it is a, it is a video from two years ago with Michael Knowles. I got a check. Oh, with Knowles, dude. Yeah. I know what I'm doing after this.

It's titled, Hypno porn, Dangerous New Trend Turns Men Trans. He's such a fucking monster. Holy say. It's really silly, but like it ties into even the ideas of like gooning, rewiring your brain or

they're this popular notion that like your dopamine receptors could be affected by the internet, which like there isn't a lot of evidence for. Like, we like this stuff. We look at media that we enjoy. Based on literally the study I was looking at this morning before coming on the show, like brain rot isn't real. Like, like, yeah, I kind of fail to see how scrolling reels is really any different

from flicking channels on a TV station from 20 years. It's the same thing. It's a fun. I mean, and we do it with every technology. If you guys want to see a great movie about how VCR's your evil, go check out video drone by David Cronberg, a video. VCR is so evil, it takes over James Woods' stomach. And then he cuts Debbie Harry's nipples off.

It's a great movie. But we do this with all new forms of media. We get scared about them. We claim that they're dangerous. And so there's this really popular notion right now that no fat slots directly into, which is like the internet is rewiring the dopamine receptors of your brain. It's like, I don't know, man. Like, I'm just like watching videos on my phone.

Like I don't think it's that deep. But I do think if you're depressed, if you're anxious, if you feel shame, you know, you can drift towards more, you know, harmful material to look at. One thing going through this timeline, just seeing the rise of the influencer who wants your $200

to teach you how to quit NOFAP and become a real man. It starts off at TED and just like, this is kind of interesting for article world. And then like everyone, like no matter where they fall on the like gentle to extremist, spectrum.

You know, like Dr. Kay is like very, is, is, is on the gentle spectrum. And then you have the like, you need to be an alpha. Like, but it's all the same business model of like, you need to give me money that you could be giving an only fan star for and enjoy an orgasm. And instead, they're selling a fantasy too. They're selling them. Oh, shit. I love you.

Oh, my God. Whoa. That was it. There's something advantage where they can be alpha. Yeah. Where they can be alpha. Yeah. You got to do that.

Yeah. Oh, shit. Damn. This has been a fucking, dude, this is helpful. You're welcome. Ryan, do you have any thoughts about the, about rapid increase in like in little tate, in little tates that like we haven't heard of, but have like two million followers and you know, are 19 year olds making their money trying to about like teaching guys how to approach

women. I mean, it's just like it's it's like there's so many more pickup artists adjacent things that you can now directly pay. Little Tate's like little Andrew Tates. Yeah, little Tates. I think like most of them like aren't real. Like I feel like a lot of it like I feel like a lot of, they're actually AI. No, like there's a lot of YouTube that is just like racking up millions of views and like no one knows who these people are. You've never heard of them. It's like background music. It's not obviously good. It's not a good sign that this stuff is popular. It's also probably like a lot of people who just like type in like how to stop master. Like people forget that YouTube is a search engine and like it's directly connected to Google. So it's like if you're like, you know, 14 years old

and you type in like, how do I stop masturbating? Because you're like weird fucking kid. And then you find these videos, you watch them and then like you move on with your life. So I wouldn't say that like they're totally indicative of like a massive industry around this stuff. But like I think it's more an example of like how this idea has not died this idea that like pornography is rewiring your brain is like a thing that everyone believes now because like 20 years ago the new york times like did an interview with this weird reddeter who couldn't stop masturbating and now everyone believes it's real like like that's how i sort of think about it yeah yeah it's really the near times his fault so i i guess just to like ended on like i mean how do you guys like what do you guys think is like the best way to kind of

like pull people out of this stuff or like make it feel less important politically like because I feel like it's one of these things that is just like stuck around and we kind of just accept it as real but it's like it's not I mean you know most of the times I interact with someone who's like totally just like transphobic conservative I can vibe with them at some level and like they realize that I'm just like a normal person and they just don't interact with people like me ever and so they've been fed these ideas of people like me um yeah no a really conservative guy who started watching the show he's a friend of mine and he's like yeah you know man i don't know man i saw berni on joe rogan the other day shit starting to make a lot of sense like i feel like you know it's just like i

kind of like my instinct just like like take people by the collar of their shirts and shake them and just be like be normal but i don't think that's like very effective so that's like i don't think it's far off though like i i don't think it's that crazy to just be like hey like be fucking normal like that's kind of like why i started or like why we started this podcast like i kind of wanted to appeal to like the cis man like general like type of podcast that like like we're kind trying to give the vibe of like an average like cis head dude podcast but i'm just like trans but that's not like the main part of it i kind of just want to expose people to me being trans but like I'll not make it like a whole thing.

Yeah. I'm trying to be palatable to the cishead men. Yeah, and like some people take issue with that, but I see where you're coming. How did you guys find those, by the way? You know what you guys are? What are we doing here? Grant was showing me your clips like a couple of months ago and I was watching a bunch of it. It was great.

It's great stuff. The clip of you both playing Edward 40 Hands and the, would you rather explain the rules of football or explain the rules of football to a group of trans women. I was like, they're on the podcast. No one gave a shit about us until we take the 40s. No one gave a pocket. I used to, in college, I once did Edward 40 hands,

but it was with two Colt 45s. But the Colt 45s, we had turned into space monkeys, which is a brass monkey, but instead of orange juice, it was for Loco. Oh. So you drink the Colt 45s to the bell, then fill it with four loco flip them upside down so it mixes then you tape them to your hands and then you play it that you play it that way damn that's great maybe like for one year anniversary

that was like back when that was like back when four locoes were like more insane caffeinated yeah yeah for context i went to school on long island so like this was just normal behavior that you would do on a Friday damn i think those saw off flammers go ahead go ahead please no i'm just thinking about four loco and how that was probably the fall of western civilization. I think we got it all wrong. It's when they took away our caffeine alcohol. I have an original. I have an original with me.

I keep it in my house. Breaking cases from emergency. It literally has a sign on it that says breaking case of emergency. Yeah. I want to thank you guys for coming on the show. This was the most delightful. Yeah. Thank you so much for having us on.

Can we do shoutouts? If people want to follow you on the internet, where can they do that and do some shoutouts? Go for it. Free country. USA pod on Instagram with the USA. The other one got banned. Don't follow that one. Free country USA.

You can follow both. It doesn't really matter. YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, not free. YouTube, Instagram, Patreon. That's the one you really probably want to look at is the Patreon. And you can find us wherever you're listening or watching this. We're on YouTube at YouTube.com slash at PanicWorldPod. And anywhere else you're watching or listening to this.

And if you haven't already, please do give us a follow or a subscribe. And why not give us a nice little rating or review while you're at it? And it's an even better time to join the normal because our Patreon has a super special deal happening until the end of the month. 50 cents for the first month. That's a lot of content for 50 cents. Wow. Just use code Panic Year. P-A-N-I-C-Y-E-A-R.

And a little checkout thing. And YouTube, Instagram. Shout out Comambolo. Shout out Shoshitos. Shout out Spencer and Logan. Cosmos Apparel. Thank you for everything you've done for the show. Y'all want a shirt.

We got you on a shirt. Yeah, we got you on a shirt if you guys want a shirt. I'll take a shirt. To you guys. We're not selling these right now, but we have one for you if you want them. We'll mail them to you. And shout out Panic World.

Thanks for having us on. We really appreciate it. Thanks, guys. Panic World is a production of Courier. It is written and produced by Grant Irving and hosted by me, Ryan Broderick. Josh Fielstead is our production coordinator and our amazing researcher is Adam Bumas.

From Courier is Shane Verkest, who edits our video episodes, along with our producer, Devin Barone, and National Managing Director and Executive Producer Kevin Dreyfus. R.C. DeMezzo is their VP of Brand and Social. Charlotte Robinson is their Deputy Director of Brand and Social. Marianne Couga is their Director of Marketing, YouTube, and Podcast Growth Marketer, Samantha Hollos. And Tracy Kaplan is the Senior Vice President of Sales and Distribution. If you want to sponsor the show or give us products to sell, she's the one to talk to.

You can email her at Tracy at courier newsroom.com. Be sure to check out the Panicworld YouTube channel, which you can find at YouTube.com slash at PanicworldPod. And please give us some nice ratings on podcast apps and leave a funny review. Lastly, here's my advice for you. Chill out and touch grass while you still can. Just to insert at the top of the episode where we talk about why it's not weird to have a brother and sister on for our episode about Novap.

Can you relay for our listeners the story you told about your friend wearing a shock collar while playing a video game that you shared on your podcast? Yeah, my friend has like this long distance shock collar and like you can like activate it from like an app. Oh, yeah. Why do you want to read? Yeah, wait. How does this make us look normal?

I think we got we introduced in Friday. Also, I have a shot caller on Grant. Like, I use it all the time. We're just trying to relate, you know. It's not on a part of his body you can see right now, but it's on him. We have a normal relationship. We're brother and sister. We both have jobs on the internet.

They're slightly different, but not really. And it's fine. Like, don't worry about it.