S3E17 - The Contest (No Nut November)

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Kayla: I hereby declare that on this day, October 30, 2006, the first official, off topic master of your domain, Iron man competition shall commence.

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Chris: Oh, my God. Master of your. Damn.

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Kayla: This whole thing is a Seinfeld reference.

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Chris: I didn't even think about that. This whole episode.

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Kayla: We gotta do it. Fuck it. We'll do it live.

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Chris: Fuck it. Do it live.

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Kayla: If the third to last episode of Culture just weird of this season sounds different than the other ones, so be it.

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Chris: We may have to let the podcast God in. I don't know if you guys heard that. We are actually recording in our brand new pod palace. Kayla and I just moved, and we're in a little bit of a temp set up here, so apologies if the sound quality is somewhat below our usual standards. It's quite possible that you won't notice a difference at all. But being that we are anal retentive, nitpicky Divas, both of us, we're gonna make this disclaimer because it bothers us.

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Kayla: But if you happen to be one of our Patreon subscribers, you will absolutely notice a difference, because we will not just be constantly talking about the slew of cars driving through our apartment and our outtakes. We'll actually have good quality outtakes from now on because it won't just be car.

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Chris: Game on. Oh, but, Kayla, you don't have to subscribe to us to hear our outtakes on Patreon. You can just go.

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Kayla: That's true.

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Chris: You can just go to our Patreon and hear the outtakes for free.

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Kayla: The bloopers are free to the public because we want you to know what fools. We want everyone to know what fools we are.

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Chris: Yeah, it's really important, that part. But you do have to pay if you want to get the bonus episodes.

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Kayla: And the bonus episode's pretty top notch. Not gonna lie.

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Chris: They're the best thing that anybody has ever recorded.

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Kayla: I mean, true. Yeah.

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Chris: All right, this is culture just weird. I'm Chris. I am a data scientist and game designer.

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Kayla: I'm Kayla. I am a tv writer and owner of some very annoying cats.

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Chris: All right, I'm letting him inside. All right, podcast got in the room. He might still be annoying, but at least he won't be screaming at us from outside of the pod palace.

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Kayla: Instead, he'll scream at us from inside.

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Chris: Oh, God.

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Kayla: So do you. Before we get into the episode, do you have any business? Do we have anybody to shout out? Do we have anything to do?

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Chris: I don't know. I haven't thought about business, actually. We moved.

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Kayla: Yeah, we've been in the business of moving.

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Chris: We only have this episode and then three more for the end of season three of culture. Just weird. How does that feel, Kayla?

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Kayla: It feels good. It feels like. I don't know. This episode, this season has felt very momentous, has felt monumentous. Monumentous. It's felt full. It's felt dynamic and varied and culty. Weird and culty. So how does it feel for you?

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Chris: Yeah.

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Kayla: I mean, not even that far from the end. And we're like, oh, no, I know.

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Chris: We should probably save this for our final episode, but since we're being contemplative. Yeah. I don't know. I never would have guessed that we would have had three seasons of this. I didn't even know were going to do this.

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Kayla: Yeah.

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Chris: Now we're like, let's reminisce after season three. Holy shit.

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Kayla: One day ambushed you, and I was like, we're gonna talk about this thing.

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Chris: Go, yeah. Well, you said, like, let's do a podcast. And I was like, what? And you're like, oh, remember? Actually, wait, no. How did that go down?

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Kayla: I don't know. We've talked about it so many times. We'll save it for the present.

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Chris: We knew that we had, like, a cult or just weird thing when. When went to best friends. But I don't know. I don't know when that thing turned into, oh, it's a podcast. That's what I'm not sure about.

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Kayla: I think because we talked about it, as we've said this story before, we've talked about it as an idea for a tv show, like a Natgeo style, like taboo or tv show.

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Chris: Okay, well, Natgeo, if you're listening to this, I mean, that's still on the table.

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Kayla: Buy us out. Okay, are we ready to get into this episode, then?

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Chris: Yes. I have absolutely no idea what you're gonna talk about.

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Kayla: I have no idea if this is gonna be long or short. I'm not sure. It could go by quickly. We could get into the weeds. I don't know.

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Chris: Do you know how long your script is? That's usually a pretty good guide.

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Kayla: It's not a good guide for me. Cause I think I talk really fast. Oh, so it's November. It's the holiday season. Thanksgiving's around the corner. Christmas and the winter holidays are close behind.

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Chris: I love that you do like seasonal themed episodes. Like, remember when you did spirit Halloween first season?

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Kayla: This one is very timely.

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Chris: That was a stretch of.

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Kayla: November has also become a month where various groups and organizations become active or set goals. Maybe you've heard of Nano Remo or what?

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Chris: No.

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Kayla: Nano Remo. You've never heard of Nano Remo?

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Chris: No. What's nanowrimo?

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Kayla: National Novel Writing Month. It's a 501 that puts on a yearly creative writing event in which writers set out to write 50,000 words towards a novel during November.

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Chris: Okay.

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Kayla: Or yourself have participated in something called Movember.

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Chris: Yeah. With the mustache. I forget to. What the. Isn't that like a charity or something associated with.

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Kayla: It's. So Movember is mustache, in which people. Yeah. Grow mustaches to raise awareness on men's health issues, particularly male focused cancers like prostate, in testicular cancer, and male suicide.

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Chris: Oh, I didn't even know I was doing that. When I participated. It was like everyone in the office did it. That one year.

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Kayla: You just wanted to look like Ron.

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Chris: Swanson, which I did. You did pretty successfully. And I ate all the bacon and eggs that they had.

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Kayla: And you did.

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Chris: Just so you know, I have presently figured out what this episode is about.

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Kayla: I was wondering. So, in the spirit of the season, we're gonna be talking about a similar and yet very different annual November event.

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Chris: What could it be, Kayla?

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Kayla: Today we're gonna be talking about no nut November.

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Chris: Can we. Can we title this episode, like, guaranteed to make you lose? No, not November culture. You like the clickbait?

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Kayla: Before we dive in, though, I do have a PSA.

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Chris: Okay.

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Kayla: If you are one of our mothers, or if you are a friend of one of our mothers, or if you are a maternal figure in any capacity.

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Chris: Or just anyone that we would be.

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Kayla: If you familiarly embarrassed.

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Chris: Yeah.

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Kayla: Please, please turn off the podcast now. Right now. Please do not listen any further. I am literally, you know, that's.

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Chris: Just gonna make them all to listen more.

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Kayla: Please. We are.

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Chris: This will not work.

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Kayla: We're gonna be engaging in a deep dive discussion about male masturbation and everything that goes along with that. And I would like to still be able to look you all in the eye across the Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner tables. So please.

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Chris: Wait, you said no nut. I thought this is about, like, peanuts and walnuts.

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Kayla: Yeah, it's about allergies.

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Chris: Let's just pretend before they all tune out, before all of our mothers and mothers friends tune out, let's just say it's about. Yeah. Peanut allergies. Awareness of peanut allergies.

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Kayla: Awareness of peanut allergies.

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Chris: So nobody eats peanuts.

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Kayla: That's all you need the whole month. You can turn it off.

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Chris: Yeah, turn off the podcast. Bye bye.

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Kayla: Are you still listening?

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Chris: They're definitely still listening.

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Kayla: I'm serious. Stop it right now.

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Chris: This is like nuclear semiotics.

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Kayla: Don't care.

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Chris: This is like, the more you warn someone, the more you're like, nothing honorable is here. They're gonna wanna listen.

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Kayla: The moms are gone, so let's get into it.

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Chris: Okay, I'll just. That's head cannon. Moms are stopped listening.

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Kayla: Chances are many of our listeners have already encountered November, and you may even be very familiar with it, maybe even.

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Chris: Have participated in no nut November.

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Kayla: The more online you are, the more this is something that you've just absorbed via osmosis. So in case you don't know, no nut November is an Internet challenge that originated in the 2010s, exploding in popularity over the last exploding four or five years or so.

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Chris: Wait, wait. 2010 did not. Oh, 2010s.

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Kayla: We'll get into the history.

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Chris: I had no idea when it started.

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Kayla: Oh, yeah. The goal is to abstain from masturbation and orgasm during the entire month of November, and it's primarily centered on cis male people. Oh, and on the very off chance that you don't know nut. Nut means orgasm, basically.

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Chris: Oh, yeah.

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Kayla: So nut is to come.

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Chris: Since. Since the moms are gone, we could admit that it's not actually about peanuts and walnuts. No, it's about the act of male orgasm that creates the.

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Kayla: Yeah, but ladies can nut, too.

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Chris: Oh, yeah, I guess that's true.

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Kayla: It's just. It's definitely a fallow centric term. And there's nothing wrong with that.

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Chris: Right? Is that, like, ladies with penises can nut, or is that, like. We also refer to the female orgasm as nutting? Like, would you say.

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Kayla: I don't think there's anything wrong with saying. With. With referring to anyone with any kind of genitalia as nutting.

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Chris: So it's a blanket term that originated with the. More of the cis male.

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Kayla: Cis male penis.

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Chris: Okay.

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Kayla: The official rules of no nut November are, one, don't nut.

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Chris: That's in the name. I think we knew that one.

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Kayla: All forms of nutting are considered to be a disqualification if you go through a physical sensation of an orgasm, you are disqualified from no nut November. You can still, like, masturbate, you can edge, you can. You just can't nut.

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Chris: Okay, so edging must be pretty popular for no nutters.

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Kayla: Well, I think that edging generally is viewed as it's going to lead to your downfall much quicker.

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Chris: Oh, so it's like a danger. I mean, edging is dangerous anyway. It's called edging.

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Kayla: Very dangerous.

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Chris: Living on the edge. What should I call members of this cult. Is it no nutters? Is it.

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Kayla: I don't know. Is it non nnners? I don't know.

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Chris: Nnn. Non. The non nuts. Nuts.

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Kayla: I don't know.

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Chris: I also have a question.

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Kayla: Yes?

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Chris: If I sneeze ten times, does that disqualify me? Because they say that a sneeze is one 10th of an ordinary.

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Kayla: As long as it is not in the pee, you're good.

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Chris: As long as I don't sneeze out of my pee hole.

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Kayla: Yeah. Yes, you're good.

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Chris: Okay, I think I'm good then.

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Kayla: Involuntary wet dreams are an exception to this rule.

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Chris: Okay, good. See, that's good. I would have been upset.

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Kayla: There is some conversation about it. It's very controversial. I know that there's some people that are like, oh, one wet dream, you're out. There's some people that are like, if you can have one, and that's it. There's also in the official rules, if you. If you can lucid dream and you have a wet, like, you make.

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Chris: I was gonna ask. Yeah.

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Kayla: Disqualification.

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Chris: I also kind of feel like there's this gray area of, like, bad faith where you know, like, what if you, like, look at a bunch of porn just before you go to sleep, and then you, like, listen to some track that's like, have a, you know, sexy.

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Kayla: Dream audio, willingly trying to get yourself to come, you are disqualified.

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Chris: Yeah, that's.

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Kayla: You can watch porn, you can masturbate, you can have sex. You just cannot nut by climax.

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Chris: Okay. Okay.

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Kayla: Number two, no coupons.

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Chris: Coupons.

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Kayla: Any form of nut coupons, including birthday sex or any other one time freebie coupons.

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Chris: Yeah, of course.

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Kayla: Instantly disqualifies you from this challenge.

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Chris: Yeah, it doesn't say no nut, with exception. It's just, it's no nut November if.

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Kayla: Those who spread these and anything NSFW are called nut dissenters. So it's like, it's also banned from the communities to, like, try and tempt or disqualify other people by, like, posting porn. Like, you can't post suggestive images, but.

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Chris: People must do that anyway.

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Kayla: We'll get to the culture on the Reddit.

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Chris: We'll get to that.

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Kayla: If you're looking for loopholes, then you've already lost. There are no three strikes either.

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Chris: Of course not.

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Kayla: Number three, uncontrolled nuts. No nut November is about making the conscious decision to not orgasm and to fight against sex or pornography addiction. Because wet dreams are a natural body response that participants are unable to control, wet dreams do not disqualify them from no nut November. However, if the said dream is a lucid one, then the participant is automatically disqualified. So number three is further clarifying the rules of number one, don't nut.

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Chris: Mm. Okay. Does that apply to other states of consciousness, other than dreaming, where I may have an involuntary nutting?

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Kayla: Like what? Hypnosis?

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Chris: Like, what if I'm.

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Kayla: If you go seek a hypnotist to make you nut?

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Chris: No. Yeah, that's what it's called. Clearly, if the intent. Clearly the intent matters here. Right? So. But I'm saying, like, it feels like if that if unintentional nutting during my sleep doesn't disqualify me, then, like, unintentional nutting during, like, I don't know, if somebody gives me anesthesia or something.

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Kayla: That should also not count while you're under.

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Chris: You can't.

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Kayla: I don't think so.

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Chris: Well, I mean, we already talked about Seinfeld in this episode, so why not talk about it again? What about the dentist episode where he thinks that they're doing.

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Kayla: Where he thinks that he was raped?

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Chris: Yeah. While under.

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Kayla: I don't think that rape falls under the rules of no nut November.

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Chris: Okay.

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Kayla: And I'm shocked, actually.

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Chris: Yeah, that's a good question too.

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Kayla: This is not funny.

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Chris: All right. I'm just trying to figure out the rules and the parameters here.

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Kayla: That's not even part of it. Number four, moving right along from you and your filth. All may participate. Participation is allowed by all. There are no restrictions as to who may participate.

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Chris: So egalitarian.

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Kayla: Number five, begin and finish. No, not November. In your time zone. You must begin this challenge during November 1 in your local time zone and end when it is reached December 1 at midnight.

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Chris: Okay. I.

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Kayla: Moving to other time zones is possible.

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Chris: Oh, that was gonna be. My next question is, like, can I reduce the. The time for my. No, not November. By traveling time zones on the last.

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Kayla: I don't think traveling. But if you have to move, they're not gonna disqualify you if you have to move.

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Chris: Okay, so. So again, it's more of, like, an intent thing.

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Kayla: Yeah.

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Chris: Okay. I like that. I like the amount of thought and detail that has been put into this. Like, it's. That's really important. You gotta cover all the edge cases.

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Kayla: It's pretty simple, pretty straightforward, pretty clear, pretty concise, right?

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Chris: I think so.

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Kayla: It probably originally started as a joke. And don't worry. Like I said, we're gonna dig into the beginnings, but it has since grown into something much bigger, and it beautifully occupies that troll. Not a troll space that we often talk about.

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Chris: Right.

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Kayla: And has also taken on just an entire life of its own. There are many people that apparently take the supposed health benefits of abstaining from male masturbation very seriously and promote those benefits. And it is just. It's just a strange bit of Internet ephemera. And because it's November, we are here to peek under the hood. So let's go. Let's start at the beginning. Let's put it that way. Why not? What's wrong with that? It's cars.

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Chris: Wait, you said. You said the supposed health benefits of abstaining from masturbation. So are we going to dovetail into NoFaP here? Is that.

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Kayla: Oh, baby.

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Chris: All right.

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Kayla: You better believe it.

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Chris: We'll get to that. All right.

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Kayla: No nut. November 1 appeared on the Internet as an entry to Urban Dictionary on November 3, 2011. Urban. Nick. Sorry. Urban Dictionary.

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Chris: God bless Urban Dictionary.

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Kayla: I don't know if I can say this. The best name of all time. Urban Dictionary user bic Boy 696-969-6969 I can't say that with a straight face. Bic Boy 696-969-6969 defined it as a.

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Chris: Challenge, a scholar, a true scholar of.

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Kayla: Our times, in which, quote, an individual must not masturbate for the month of November. And then it just kind of existed in that fringe space on the Internet for, you know, six years or so. So I'm pretty sure that I saw references to november in the time after 2011, but before 2017, when it really took off.

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Chris: I didn't know that's when it, like.

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Kayla: Yeah, it took off in 2017.

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Chris: That's probably when I started hearing about it.

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Kayla: Yeah. I can't find the original entry on urban dictionary. I think it's since been removed. But there are other more recent entries, and several other entries have popped up that actually include the youth. Like, they reference bic boy 696-969-6969.

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Chris: Yeah.

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Kayla: As they first posted about this.

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Chris: Right. I mean, he did the original research on this.

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Kayla: So know your meme, the wonderful treasure trove of the Internet, of course, does a wonderful timeline of events, and that largely helped me put together the timeline that I'm gonna share with you now.

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Chris: Okay.

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Kayla: On November 1, 2017, someone going by the username. I hate thoughts on Twitter.

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Chris: Me too.

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Kayla: I h eight t h o t s. I hate thoughts. Not thoughts in your head, but thoughts as in loose women.

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Chris: Oh, I'm more pro thought.

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Kayla: Same. This is also a shit posting account. So again, troll, not a troll don't take anything seriously. But they posted the following tweet, quote, not even a day into no nut November, and I've already beat my meat like it owes me money.

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Chris: That's a pro shit poster right there.

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Kayla: From what I can tell, the tweet itself didn't exactly do numbers on Twitter. As of right now, in 2021, it has 94 retweets, seven quote tweets, and 158 likes. So, I mean, respectable. I've never gotten a tweet that went that far. No, but not exactly viral. Right. And if you look at I hate thoughts Twitter, again, it's mostly other memes and shitposts and stuff like this, but it looks like they haven't really tweeted since 2019, so I don't know where they went.

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Chris: Maybe they like thoughts now.

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Kayla: Maybe they like thoughts now. And they had to. They switched over to I heart thoughts.

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Chris: Yeah.

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Kayla: So again, while this tweet itself didn't exactly blow up on Twitter, it did make its way to popular subreddit r black people Twitter as a screenshot. So r black people Twitter is generally, I mean, it's got, I think, several million, maybe a million or more subscribers. And it often screenshots funny tweets from black people or just find some funny tweets that might relate to black people in some way or might tickle black people in some way, and they post.

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Chris: Them there and, like, black culture, black Twitter.

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Kayla: Yeah.

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Chris: Okay.

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Kayla: It was submitted by user dabble America. They titled the screenshot quote, can any man survive no nut November? Over the following week, that post generated over 33,000 upvotes and 1200 comments. The same day, a youtuber known as three IO t h r e e I o posted a video titled welcome to no nut November. We'll post a link to it. It's basically just a very, like a half minute video where the youtuber is playing with the idea of, like, don't eat, don't touch those nuts. And just showing, like, bowls of nuts. Don't touch those hands off those nuts this November.

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Chris: So it is about not touching the nuts.

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Kayla: This youtuber has 534 subscribers, and that video currently has 80,186 views.

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Chris: Holy shit.

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Kayla: They posted another no nut November video in 2018, which was longer, and they're acknowledging, I'm just trying to ride the wave of my previous success. That video only has 316 views, still high, in my opinion, not viral. The rest of their videos also appear to be steamed in meme culture shitposting, bordering on Edgelord type stuff, offensive for offensiveness sake, anime, that kind of thing. That kind of like Internet culture. They haven't uploaded in a year. On November 3, 2017, anonymous four Chan poster posited a challenge to the poll board that reads as follows, so.

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Chris: Paul is politics the political board, and that's where. Is that where Q first posted or no?

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Kayla: I think so. And that's also where Cicada originated.

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Chris: Yeah, there's, like, a lot of weird slash bad shit, whatever that originates on that part of four chan. Yeah.

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Kayla: So this post went as I challenge Paul to no nut November. Can you abstain from beating your meat for one month? Do you want Chad? Confidence. Do you want to become a pheromone phenomenon attracting women from all four corners of the city?

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Chris: Oh, man, he's pulling a lot of stuff in here that we got to explain.

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Kayla: Do you want to have a rock hard libido and enough testosterone to fuel a football team? Do you want mental clarity and reach nirvana? Well, start here by proving to yourself in the world that you have the smidgen of discipline required to not touch your front, tail front. And then there was a YouTube link underneath all of this. Hold on. There was a YouTube link that went underneath all of this that went to a video about the Nofap lifestyle that Chris already mentioned. And I will say right now, we will get to that a little bit more. A little bit later. We'll get to that.

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Chris: So pheromones are. There's. It's not proven that humans have pheromones.

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Kayla: But pheromones smells that might emit off your body. Animals have them.

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Chris: Animals have pheromones. They're all. It's. It's. It's not specifically sexy smells. It's just sort of, like, colloquialized that way. But, like, ants use pheromones to, like, tell other. It's just, it's just chemical. Chemical communication is what it is. Yeah. And then what was the other thing?

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Kayla: Chad.

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Chris: Chad. Oh, right, Chad. You mentioned Chad.

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Kayla: Yes, I always mention Chad.

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Chris: We should always be mentioning Chad. Chad has just become shorthand on the Internet for, like, awesome, virile alpha male sex God came from. Originally. It came from the incel community as sort of like, the antithesis to the incel was the chad.

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Kayla: That same day, Twitter user Bill Ratchett tweeted, quote, day two of no nut November, when going pee, I have refrained from even touching my penile region. I just pull my pants down and look away. This tweet got a little more traction than I hate thoughts this one has 1585 retweets, 36 quote tweets, and 7745 likes. And Bill Ratchett has 465,000 followers.

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Chris: Wow.

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Kayla: The next day, November 4, 2017, Reddit user Chris 2015 asked on r out of the loop, which is this is not me, this is not you. A different Chris, this is Krys. So, r outoftheloop is a subreddit where folks can go to ask questions about things they're uninformed on, particularly current events. And this post said, what is with no nut November? The post generated 88 upvotes and 60 comments and has since been removed. Then a few days later, a now suspended Twitter accountued emergency posted an image stating, no nut November participants have three strikes before they're considered to have failed the challenge, which you will notice.

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Chris: Yeah, that is bullshit.

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Kayla: Was referenced in the official rules. There is no three strikes. Over the next day, this tweet generated 1900 likes and 670 retweets.

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Chris: Did I ask, did you say where the official rules came from?

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Kayla: Well, in the meantime, a dedicated subreddit was born. That is where the official rules come from.

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Chris: I see.

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Kayla: On November 3, 2017, r no NutNovember went up, created by a user named yeval y e e v a lhide. They have, since. They're still a member of the community, but they have since stepped aside, and there are other moderators that are shepherding the community.

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Chris: I'm glad people have stepped up for the leadership roles that we all need.

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Kayla: There are, yes. By 2018, the subreddit had 16,500 members. By 2019, 52,000.

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Chris: Oh my God.

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Kayla: 2020 saw 85,000 members, and it currently has 115,000 self identified nut comrades.

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Chris: Nice.

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Kayla: The subreddit launched an off Reddit website in November 2018. No, not November.org.

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Chris: Oh my God.

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Kayla: And I highly recommend that you check it out because it has a lot of that, like, pre web 2.0 charm that we're constantly, like, railing on about. Like, it's basically just a website embodiment of the, like, idea of shitposting and meme posting. There's like lots of colors and graphics and poorly placed text and hyperlinks, opportunities for vandalism. Meme after meme. Just like really good stuff. And, like, it's blue.

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Chris: It sounds wonderful.

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Kayla: It's great. There's an official subreddit affiliated Twitter with 450 followers, an Instagram with 162 followers, a YouTube with 483 subscribers, and a video of the no nut November anthem. Not today. With over 17,000 views anthem. There's a Facebook page with a couple dozen followers. A Minecraft server.

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Chris: Wow.

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Kayla: A Minecraft server.

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Chris: A discord, I'm sure.

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Kayla: A discord server with 2500 members. I did look at it, but discord overloads my brain very quickly.

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Chris: Yeah, I like how they've, you know, done the thing. Yeah, they got to cover all your social media bases these days.

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Kayla: There is also a very professional press kit that they have put together. Press kit that helped me with my research. Yes.

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Chris: As a member of the press investigating no nut November, how useful was the press kit to be?

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Kayla: Extremely useful.

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Chris: That is.

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Kayla: Helped me immensely.

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Chris: Wonderful. I am not gonna visit the Instagram, if that's okay.

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Kayla: Oh, we already follow them, my friend.

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Chris: Oh, God, no. Whatever is there, I don't want to see it.

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Kayla: Yes, you do. It's a nice place. There's also a wiki. Not a wiki. I mean, there is a wikipedia page, but there's a dedicated wiki that. I also got a lot of my.

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Chris: Research from a no nut November wiki.

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Kayla: Yes.

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Chris: Great.

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Kayla: So between 2017 and 2019, no nut November steadily spread across the Internet with more and more folks hopping on board. And by folks, I do primarily mean cis men, presumably straight cis men. Again, that's not everyone. They've made it very clear in recent years that, like, this is for everyone. But there is a general community at play here.

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Chris: Gotcha.

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Kayla: In 2019, the movement gained even more attention when Twitter user made a now deleted post stating, quote, take the pledge that if you jack off during no nut November, you have to change your avatar to the coomer. Reply with, I take the pledge.

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Chris: What's the coomer?

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Kayla: Give me a second. Even though the original post is now deleted, replies of people saying I take the pledge are still up. This tweet got 815 retweets and 2000 likes just over the next three days.

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Chris: Not bad.

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Kayla: To answer your question again, let me just get through the description and then you can ask your questions. The coomer is a wojack style meme representing. Hold your questions. The coomer is a wojack style meme representing also. What the fuck? You don't know what wojack is? You need to get on the Internet more.

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Chris: I don't think that is a good piece of advice.

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Kayla: The coomer is a wojack style meme representing a person with a chronic masturbation addiction to a grotesque degree. A wojack is a meme style in which crude like Ms paint line drawings of people are made. And it started with the feels guy. So like, the feels bad man. You know what I'm talking about.

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Chris: Yeah, yeah.

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Kayla: There's that blonde one. There's the one smoking a cigarette. There's the lady, like, the crying one. Yeah, the enraged face.

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Chris: Right, right.

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Kayla: They have since spun out from there. And the coomer, just one of them, he is bald with a beard, red eyes, a very creepy smile, and of course, one arm much larger than the other. So then this pledge went viral.

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Chris: Oh, Internet.

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Kayla: Ifunny, it got reposted on ifunny, it got reposted on Instagram, meme accounts across various platforms. Probably a hundred thousand likes or more were generated for this pledge. One Instagrammeravid hasselhoff even posted an image on November 1, 2019, imagining what it would look like if then President Donald Trump took the coomer pledge and failed. And so again, we'll post this picture, but there's somebody screenshotted when Donald Trump had a Twitter and it says, you know, Donald J. Trump. Donald. Donald J. Trump with the. With the check mark at real Donald Trump, 45th president of the United States of America. And the profile picture is changed to an image of the coomer, which would be if he failed November.

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Chris: Right? I mean, that would be the honorable thing to do.

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Kayla: Very funny. As mentioned, since 2019, the popularity of no nut November has only steadily grown. In fact, its popularity has made the jump from Internet spheres to mainstream news. Really, articles about no nut November have been written in the New Statesman, in the NZ Herald, men's health, Vice, and even Rolling Stone. And that's just.

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Chris: Even cult are just weird.

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Kayla: And now cult are just weird. Even Burger King tweeted about it in 2018, which I'm just like, Burger King?

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Chris: No Burger King. Bad Burger King.

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Kayla: Just silence brand. Honestly, for the most part, the no nut November community seems like a fun place to be. It's pretty funny. It pretty much started out as satire. Like, it was just somebody being like, urban dictionary. It's also become a place for primarily cis Mendez. But really, anyone who wants to be involved, to be in community and like to support each other. And yes, they're supporting each other through a self imposed, like, quote unquote challenge involving masturbation, but it's become something more than that. An article that Phoebe Loomis wrote for NZ Herald in 2018 really drives home this point. So she keys in on the support group aspect as well as the language that's used. So men share stories with each other, vent about challenges, encourage and support. Support one another, offer advice, offer sympathy.

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Kayla: As you can imagine, a lot of folks who take up the challenge find themselves unable to make it through the month.

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Chris: How does that happen exactly, Kayla?

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Kayla: They break and they jerk off to the point of orgasm. Oh, that's how it happens.

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Chris: Thank you. Thank you. I wasn't clear on that.

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Kayla: It can get quite emotional for some of these people. Oh, no, thank each other. Thank, you. Know, thank their brothers in arms for being on this journey together. One Redditor in 2018 wrote, quote, personally, this helped me a lot with dealing with my addiction, and I don't think I could have done that without the support of this community.

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Chris: Wow, that's nice.

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Kayla: Other Redditors encouraged those struggling to make memes or take on other creative activities to take their minds off their urges.

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Chris: Y'all like freudian ids? No, not id. What did he call it? That was, like, the sexual energy or actually, he was the one that came up with libido. Right. What I think.

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Kayla: So what's libido?

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Chris: Libido is sexual energy. And if you don't put libido into sex, you put it into other things. And that's why men make, like, buildings and civilizations.

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Kayla: Oh, right. Because women don't do that. I forgot.

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Chris: I'm pretty sure that came from Freud, which is, like.

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Kayla: Which means it's wrong.

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Chris: Well, a, which means it's wrong. And b, which means that there's, like, a historical contextual underpinning to some of this stuff, particularly when we get to NoFap.

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Kayla: Well, I saw one Redditor post pictures of kittens he adopted this November to take his mind off nighthouse.

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Chris: Awesome.

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Kayla: Many of these guys do find themselves focusing on other things. So, like, creative activities, self improvement activities, acts of service, hobbies, in order to make it through those 30 days, which is kind of cool.

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Chris: I like that. That is cool. Acts of service, they volunteer to hold up towels while supermodels shower off.

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Kayla: You would. You are a nut. Dissenter.

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Chris: Stop. Oh, sorry.

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Kayla: Also, again, I will remind everyone, we are in the middle of no nut November, so respect your brothers in arms.

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Chris: Right, okay. So that. I agree with that. But also, like, Kayla, what if I want to participate now? I'm gonna wait till next year. Yeah, or the middle of November.

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Kayla: We'll get to that.

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Chris: Okay.

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Kayla: Also, because it's a super active Reddit, there are a lot of posts in a day. Most are memes, most are funny as hell. Like, honestly, again, like the website, I encourage our listeners to go take a stroll through the community because you will absolutely find yourself entertained. It's just. It's funny people. Funny, funny people. Another fun quirk of the subreddit and the community at large is the style of language that's often used. So no nut Novemberers have adopted military style language, heightening it, stylizing it, humorizing it. So, like, the word comrades or comrades is thrown around, enemies are closing in, are often spoken of, and that's like a metaphor for the urge to masturbate, becoming stronger and stronger. There's fallen soldiers, there's commands from leaders bringing home victory. Speaking of war, it's all in there.

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Chris: It's very, like, masculine, sort of like fantasy oriented. I dig it. Like, you know what else?

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Kayla: Repurposing it towards something that's not shitty and toxic. And it's like bringing guys together, like, absolutely. Chat and have fun. I love it.

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Chris: Yeah, I smell ritual.

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Kayla: Oh, ritual abounds, my guy. Like, I don't know. I love it when communities like this spring up and then just take on whole lives of their own and become this, like, microcosm of a mini culture.

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Chris: It's just those moments when I actually like the Internet.

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Kayla: Yeah. Oh, yeah. No, not November. Makes me love the Internet. This episode made me happy. And the whole troll, not too happy.

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Chris: Though, because you want to lose.

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Kayla: Don't worry, there will be a bucket of cold water in a little bit. The whole troll, not a troll thing that we've talked about so often, it's just, it is no better exemplified in this community, I think, because, okay, again, it started as a joke making its way through meme culture sites like Urban Dictionary, four Chan, and Reddit. Some guys set out to do note November because it's funny. And others actually viewed as a way to curb an addictive relationship with porn, a masturbation habit they want to change or an opportunity to emerge from self imposed abstinence, a different person.

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Chris: Interesting.

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Kayla: The group's description says some do it just for the memes, while others do it for actual self improvement. So it is literally simultaneously a troll and not a troll.

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Chris: Not a troll at the same time. Intentionally.

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Kayla: Yes. I love it.

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Chris: Chef's kiss. That is Internet.

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Kayla: Yes. So we've talked about the troll. Let's talk about not a troll. There are little literal beliefs about self improvement and other benefits that can be gleaned from undertaking. No, not November. Zachary Zane dove into this in a 2019 men's health article. At one point, he talks about a Redditor who boasted about going two months without jerking off and then made these claims. Quote, I'm a different man. I'm far more confident. I'm kinder, smarter, and stronger in every aspect. This thing, it's given me a clarity in my life. When shit needs to be done, I do it. I'm working out. I'm studying. I've massively increased my social circle. I went from a loser who couldn't get a date to actively going on dates. Why? Because I've learned to say no to myself and others.

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Kayla: I've learned to decide, not just think about what I want and what I'll stand for. So there's a sense that for some guys, taking a break from these base urges, like you said, redirects energy and focus to other areas of life that could maybe use some improvement. There are also guys that truly feel that they have an unhealthy relationship with porn or with masturbation. And no nut November is kind of like a. Like a cold turkey jumpstart to changing that relationship or that habit. There's even a very lengthy section on the no nut November website dedicated to helping someone struggling with porn addiction. And it goes into weight, into the ways that porn might be affecting users brains or affecting the ways that users think or feel about women, or affecting the ways that users treat their bodies.

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Kayla: I say that there's scientific backing to those things, but it's, you know, the belief in that is present.

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Chris: Right. I mean, I kind of get that. Like, there does feel like. And again, this is just feel to me. Not like you said, science, but it does feel like there's some potentially useful aspect of, you know. Yeah. Having some sort of, like, external trigger to cold turkey, something that you are, you know, feel like you have an addictive relationship with or a dependency on. And it also does feel like there's, you know, training your. Your brain to abstain from things. Right. Like, training your brain to, like, I feel like that is maybe working the, like, intentionality muscle. And that might be why, like, people like this. This gentleman that you just told me about, you know, feels like they can do things like they have. Like, why would their social circle expand like that? You know, that's.

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Chris: We say it's energy redirection, but it might just be that aspect of, like, now that I have trained my brain to, like, abstain from this thing that I find, like, base pleasurable, maybe that also gives my brain muscle more, you know, more wherewithal to do some other things that require, like, you know, some discipline.

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Kayla: Right, right. Yeah. So that's the, like, the brain piece of it. There are also some folks who worry that their excessive masturbation habit has left them with something called death grip syndrome.

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Chris: Is that real?

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Kayla: It's a slang term. It was probably originated by sex advice columnist and semi problematic podcaster, who I love reading his advice columns. But say what you will, Dan Savage. And the term refers to the effects of excessive or too intense masturbation. The idea is that someone, that some people with penises become too accustomed to the sensations of like, a strong grip during masturbation and that desensitizes their penis, and then they then have difficulty achieving orgasm in other ways or with a partner. And this is referred to as dead vagina syndrome in women.

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Chris: I feel like I've read this in like a nofap or in a no nut November thing of like, yeah. Oh, you'll start finding like, partner sex more pleasurable because you won't be so accustomed to, like, the solo act.

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Kayla: I mean, this condition is not recognized by any mainstream medical institutions or authorities, and difficulty ejaculating is generally thought to be related to medical conditions like diabetes or various medications, or low testosterone or other hormonal differences or mental health issues like anxiety and depression. But I don't want to take away anyone's lived experience. Like, if folks undertaking, not November have felt that it ultimately improves their sex lives or changes distressing habits, then more power to them. Like, all in all, this seems to be a pretty fun, pretty harmless community of folks undertaking annual challenge of will, and I personally hope it continues.

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Chris: Yeah, yeah. It sounds more or less positive to.

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Kayla: Me, as per usual on this show.

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Chris: All right, lay it on me.

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Kayla: Rarely is anything that presents as sunshine and roses. Ever just that.

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Chris: Could it be just sunshine or just roses?

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Kayla: No. We would be remiss if were to do an episode on no Nut November and not dive into the more extreme but relative community of NoFaP.

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Chris: What does relative mean?

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Kayla: Like relative. It's a relative of no nut November related sister community. Yeah, but I was trying to be gender neutral.

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Chris: Oh, good for you.

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Kayla: Yeah, big person over here. So first, a little history. And again, we're pulling from our great minds over at know your meme, as well as Wikipedia and a handful of articles. So let's start with some precursors. In March 2003, three chinese university researchers published the following paper, a research of the relationship between ejaculation and serum testosterone level in Mendez. After engaging in a study with 28 volunteers, the researchers concluded that after seven days of abstinence, testosterone levels reached 145.7% of the baseline. Three years later, on October 30, 2006. It gets weird here, you guys, and I love it.

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Chris: It was already pretty weird.

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Kayla: No. A user going by asinine posted on the north american Subaru Impreza.

350
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Chris: Did you just have a stroke?

351
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Kayla: No. A user going by the name asinine posted on the north american Subaru Impreza Owners Club forums. Owners club. Sorry. Owners club forums.

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Chris: What the fuck?

353
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Kayla: Yes, that's a real thing.

354
00:39:34,822 --> 00:39:35,326
Chris: No.

355
00:39:35,438 --> 00:39:39,268
Kayla: Yes. North american Subaru Impreza owners club forums.

356
00:39:39,414 --> 00:39:42,296
Chris: Okay, about. Just tell me.

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Kayla: Asinine's post reads as follows. It was obviously in the off topic section.

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Chris: Well, at least he had that much sense.

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Kayla: I hereby declare that on this day, October 30, 2006, the first official off topic master of your domain, Iron man competition shall commence.

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Chris: Oh, my God. Master of your domain?

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Kayla: This whole thing is a Seinfeld reference.

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Chris: I didn't even think about that. This whole episode.

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Kayla: The whole thing, literally, there was an article. I forget which article it was that I read, but all of the pictures in it were just screenshots from the contest episode of Seinfeld, in which the four main characters enter into a no masturbation contest.

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Chris: Right.

365
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Kayla: Beautiful.

366
00:40:18,762 --> 00:40:20,146
Chris: And Kramer comes out. I'm out.

367
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Kayla: Yeah, he was out very quickly. Whereby we see who can go the longest without pornography or self abuse of any sort. That means no naked girly pics or nothing. Sports Illustrated swimsuit, et cetera, are fine starting at noon today. I.

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Chris: That's very gray area.

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Kayla: Now, persons in sexually active relationships, monogamous or otherwise married persons, and persons who engage in sexual activity get one point for every 6 hours. They go without porn or fapFap.

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Chris: And again, just to be clear, this.

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Kayla: Is on the north american subaru Impreza owners club forums.

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Chris: Okay, just. I don't. I don't have anything. I don't even know what to say.

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Kayla: Continuing the quote, persons who abstain entirely from any sort of sexual activity get two points for every 6 hours. In short, sex with another person is. Okay.

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Chris: That's nice.

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Kayla: Only self abuse in the viewing of pornography is forbidden. That is why people in sexually active relationships get fewer points for holding out. Only persons aged 18 plus may participate.

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Chris: That's a good.

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Kayla: This next sentence makes me uncomfortable just now. I'm gonna read it. It makes me very uncomfortable. I don't. I'm not really sure what it means.

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Chris: Oh, God.

379
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Kayla: It makes me very uncomfortable.

380
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Chris: Should we say it? What is it?

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Kayla: The timing may be dangerous, what with all the little kids running door tomorrow night, but I'm not sure what that means. I don't know if it's like a. A pedophile reference.

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Chris: I don't know.

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Kayla: I just. That's. I'm just quoting guys, I hereby throw my hat in the ring. Who else is going to play along? And then there was a list of signups.

384
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Chris: A list of signups from other, presumably.

385
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Kayla: North american Subaru owners. Subaru Impreza owners.

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Chris: Impress. Excuse me? Subaru Impreza owners. Okay. All right. It's rumored that, like, if we ever get a used car, let's make sure that it's not a subaru impreza.

387
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Kayla: Why? It would be free of jism.

388
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Chris: I don't think that it would.

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Kayla: It could be.

390
00:42:21,456 --> 00:42:24,060
Chris: I think it would be very sticky inside, and I don't.

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Kayla: It's rumored that three years later, in August of 2009, a challenge was made to the B board on four chan. B is like the random board. That's where Cicada started, I think. Or no, cicada might have started in.

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Chris: You said it was in pole earlier this episode.

393
00:42:37,360 --> 00:42:38,904
Kayla: I was, like, talking about four chan in general.

394
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Chris: Oh, that's where Cicada started.

395
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Kayla: I don't remember if it started in the supernatural, if it started in X or Bdez. Whatever. B is the random board. It's the most. It's one of the worst. So supposedly a challenge was made, inviting prospective contestants to join together to see who could forego masturbation for the month of September. This may also be where no nut November had its origins. But, like, there are slight differences between no FaP September, which is its own thing, kind of, at this point.

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Chris: Oh, really?

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Kayla: No fap September and no nut November. So fap. Fap means masturbate. So no Fap September equals no masturbation. But partnered sex is cool. No nut November means no orgasms at all.

398
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Chris: Okay.

399
00:43:20,644 --> 00:43:41,230
Kayla: And this shared origin is kind of where these two, like, communities diverge and only kind of meet again. We'll get to that. No original thread dating from August 2009 has been found archived on four chan, but there have been a NoFap September posts since.

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Chris: I didn't know that NoFap had its own month, I just thought it was like a community in general.

401
00:43:46,314 --> 00:43:49,074
Kayla: It is. This is part of.

402
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Chris: Part of their thing.

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00:43:49,890 --> 00:43:50,282
Kayla: Origins.

404
00:43:50,346 --> 00:43:54,530
Chris: Yeah, it's like one of their religion's holidays, basically. It's a holiday month for NoFaP.

405
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Kayla: No, I don't wanna say that. NoFap September is necessarily part and parcel to the NoFap lifestyle.

406
00:44:00,978 --> 00:44:04,602
Chris: Oh, okay, so it's not like a masturbatory advent.

407
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Kayla: This is a challenge, and NoFap is a lifestyle. That makes sense.

408
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Chris: I see. Okay.

409
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Kayla: I'm not saying they're unrelated, but they're not the same thing. Okay, this idea of NoFap September took hold elsewhere on the Internet. On August 28, 2009, a member posted the challenge on something called cheat engine.

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Chris: Forums that feels somehow more appropriate than.

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Kayla: I don't know what it is. The next day, a youtuber called Almighty Devin posted an instructional video on how to participate in the challenge on his channel.

412
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Chris: Why do you need instructions for that?

413
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Kayla: Because you need rules. Two days later, on Club RSX forum, a user posted about the challenge, inviting others to join.

414
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Chris: What's club RSX?

415
00:44:47,642 --> 00:44:54,858
Kayla: Don't know. Then a user on Mustang world forums did the same over there. And man, am I nostalgic for the old Internet right now.

416
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Chris: Yeah.

417
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Kayla: Oh man, forums I know.

418
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Chris: And Mustang is that Mustang owners is like cars. What the hell?

419
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Kayla: I don't know. On September 1, 2009, an urban dictionary definition for NoFap September was submitted by user stoofubuddy.

420
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Chris: So, okay, that predates. No, not November.

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Kayla: It does. The next year, NoFap September made the rounds again on some of these forums, this time including the fucking Holy Grail, our Lord and Savior, the bodybuilding forum, the true treasure of the Internet God blessed. A user named squeaks posted about the event's arrival and said, quote, who's doing it? Only two days in and I'm horny as fuck, hopping everything I lay on two days. Yeah, he was very horny. And then less than a year later, on June 2011, a user created r Nofap on Reddit. And, man, things kind of went downhill.

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Chris: The world has never been the same.

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Kayla: The subreddit was created by Alexander Rhoades, a Pittsburgh based web developer who read that 2003 chinese study we cited earlier and was potentially influenced by the prevalence of NoFap challenges across the Internet, the.

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Chris: Subreddits about see an impreza owner?

425
00:46:11,750 --> 00:46:39,356
Kayla: I don't think so. I don't. I'm not sure, though. I can't. I can't say. The subreddits about forum reads, quote, a porn addiction and compulsive sexual behavior recovery peer support forum we host rebooting challenges in which participants, fapstronauts, or femstronauts, if you're a woman, abstain from pornography and masturbation for a period of time. So that's where it's like, no fap September is part of it, but they're not necessarily the same thing.

426
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Chris: Gotcha.

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Kayla: Whether your goal is casual participation in a monthly challenge as a test of self control, or whether excessive masturbation or pornography has become a problem in your life and you want to quit for a longer period of time, you will find a supportive community and plenty of resources here. Rhodes also created an off Reddit website, nofap.com, to support the quickly growing community. So the subreddit, their population tripled in. I wrote down three years, but I want to say it was two.

428
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Chris: Holy shit.

429
00:47:05,818 --> 00:47:06,690
Kayla: I think it was two years.

430
00:47:06,730 --> 00:47:08,098
Chris: What's their current population?

431
00:47:08,274 --> 00:47:15,698
Kayla: So as of right now, there are 899,000 redditors on r Nofap. I don't know how many users the website has.

432
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Chris: That's a lot.

433
00:47:16,794 --> 00:47:35,628
Kayla: But, yeah, the website was there because Rhodes is like, oh, there's clearly an audience for this. Let's serve them better, right? Like, not November. The community is largely cis men looking to emotionally support and encourage each other through self imposed abstinence. But NOFAP is focused on an extended or lifelong commitment to forgoing porn and masturbation.

434
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Chris: Interesting.

435
00:47:36,804 --> 00:47:40,292
Kayla: And they also generally are not abstaining from sex.

436
00:47:40,356 --> 00:47:42,916
Chris: I was gonna ask. Okay, so partnered sex is fine.

437
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Kayla: No fat. Members refer to their unwanted behaviors as addictions or compulsions and share tips and tricks for how to move through life in this new way. How to get back on the horse and you fall off, how to celebrate wins, or the various ways in which, you know, your life has improved since. Since going nofap. Some members may also go nOFaP for religious reasons, self improvement reasons, or against supposed physical health reasons, which we'll get a little bit more into later.

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Chris: Yeah, I've been. I've been served nofap. Like, YouTube videos, for example. Yeah. And it's like, actually, I remember looking. The title didn't even really give it away. It was just like, here's a thing you can do to, like, make your life infinitely better. And like a moron, I clicked on the clickbait.

439
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Kayla: I will say now that it ended.

440
00:48:26,278 --> 00:48:27,510
Chris: Up being no fap.

441
00:48:27,630 --> 00:48:33,250
Kayla: That's the YouTube algorithm pushing you towards the alt right.

442
00:48:34,070 --> 00:48:37,518
Chris: Yeah. Well, that's what is there. Yeah, that's what it does.

443
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Kayla: Yeah. And it's like, why is NoFap alt right? I will tell you. On May 16, 2012, a TED talk was shared on TEd Talk YouTube of a lecture from a man named Gary Wilson. The talk is called the great Porn experiment. As you can imagine, the talk highlights alleged dangers of porn, particularly for male users, and R NoFap is explicitly referenced. The video currently has over 14 million views. Gary Wilson has also written a book titled your brain on Pornhood.

444
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Chris: This is why you can't trust every TED. This is why Ted talks are a real mixed bag.

445
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Kayla: I like how you are assuming that Gary Wilson is a bad faith actor or underinformed, because I haven't said anything.

446
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Chris: That would say that picked up on it. Listen, Caleb, remember when were talking about the, like, predict the future red flag ability that we all have now?

447
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Kayla: Yeah. Yeah. So Gary Wilson wrote that book. His website is also called your brain on porn. He has been described as anti porn activist or anti porn blogger. Apparently. He was once an adjunct professor at Southern Oregon University that taught, like, anatomy or physiology and has participated in at least one, like, research paper that got published. Otherwise, his credentials are pretty iffy. Like, he does not as far as I can tell. Please correct me if I'm wrong. He does not hold any sort of, like, official credentials, academic or otherwise, that indicate his authority on the subject of porn and its effects. So this is kind of coming from, I guess, his hands on, quote, unquote, participation or understanding. It's not necessarily scientifically based. The Nofap community, however, is very largely influenced by his teachings. He doesn't hold a college degree, so he's.

448
00:50:25,530 --> 00:50:26,990
Chris: Is he the charismatic leader?

449
00:50:27,740 --> 00:50:36,116
Kayla: Not for. No. November. Oh, maybe for NOFAP, but I'm not doing an episode on them because they make me upset. We're just talking about.

450
00:50:36,148 --> 00:50:38,240
Chris: We're just talking about them on the episode.

451
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Kayla: The paper, one of the papers, I think, is the only one that I could find, but he might have written more scientific papers. That paper underwent retractions and corrections. And there's also a whole world here where Gary Wilson is in heated conflicts with pro sex or just sex researchers and educators. And, like, it gets weird and personal and, like, I think the Wikipedia says that, like, noFAp and Gary Wilson have had a chilling effect on free speech because they tend to, like, get really vocal and, like, harassy of academics and researchers that, like, come out against their stance. So it's like a weird whole thing. I can't get into it. Stop it. Just know that there's. There's more to this iceberg.

452
00:51:29,038 --> 00:51:30,310
Chris: Yeah, there always is.

453
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Kayla: I can't. I was gonna try to move on, but I've got to say one more thing. I do need you to know that Gary Wilson has been accused of peddling pseudoscience. Like, has that accusation has been levied against him and.

454
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Chris: Yeah, that he reeks of that.

455
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Kayla: This is not an accusation. This is real. He and his wife were instructors of a sexual technique known as coitus reservatus, in which the goal is to avoid ejaculation during sex.

456
00:51:53,918 --> 00:51:54,798
Chris: Isn't that just edging?

457
00:51:54,854 --> 00:52:09,142
Kayla: And the two were known to strongly dislike the idea of orgasm on principle, claiming that orgasms can harm romantic relationships. What, so he's not somebody that I'm necessarily going to base thoughts, feelings, beliefs, opinions?

458
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Chris: No, he's squarely outside my trust network. He didn't even peek inside.

459
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Kayla: Back to nofap. An internal survey on the subreddit in 2014 found that 99% of NoFAP followers were male. Yes. The survey also found that members held spiritual beliefs ranging from atheism, like the founder Alex Rhodes, to fundamental Christianity, and actually does have a marginal presence of female participants or other so diverse. The group has solicited and received funding from religious groups, presumably due to the alignment on the belief that masturbation is unhealthy.

460
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Chris: Right. Right. That does feel like a very, like, when you say alt, right, I mean, it doesn't like the purity, like the bodily purity religious aspect of it makes it that seem totally plausible, but anyway.

461
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Kayla: But it's like, packaged in this, like, male testosterone.

462
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Chris: Right? It's like repackaged culture.

463
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Kayla: We're like, you know, there's been purity culture surrounding women for so long, like, right. Being pure and like a flower, and it's like delicate and dainty. And this is purity culture that's packaged in like.

464
00:53:08,372 --> 00:53:20,858
Chris: But testosterone. It is packaged in testosterone. But I mean, there's been. Purity culture from religious aspect has existed for men too. Like, you know, the catholic church doesn't want you to, quote unquote, spill your seed, like you're not supposed to masturbate.

465
00:53:20,914 --> 00:53:21,634
Kayla: Don't say that.

466
00:53:21,722 --> 00:53:23,350
Chris: So, I mean, that's gross.

467
00:53:23,770 --> 00:53:25,546
Kayla: We'll talk about the catholic church in a minute.

468
00:53:25,658 --> 00:53:26,170
Chris: Oh, goody.

469
00:53:26,210 --> 00:53:45,840
Kayla: Actually, in a little bit. Unfortunately, while users generally claim to be science based, the science does not support their claims. We will get to the physical claims in a bit, but for now, let's just focus on what research and I think some of our spidey sense says about the health and safety of participating in R NOFAP.

470
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Chris: Okay.

471
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Kayla: A study published in the archive of Sexual behavior in 2021 titled Exploring the ideological pathways of problematic pornography use in NOFAP porn free rebooting communities. A critical narrative analysis of Internet forum data.

472
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Chris: Very technical.

473
00:54:03,180 --> 00:54:10,640
Kayla: So this study found that the view of porn and the goal of total abstinence from it may actually be harmful.

474
00:54:11,060 --> 00:54:12,600
Chris: Okay, in what way?

475
00:54:13,140 --> 00:54:33,842
Kayla: Commitment to abstinence, framed by the notions of recovery and relapse, was found to be a major factor for maintaining distress. So folks who are feeling distressed by their relationship to porn and masturbation may actually become more distressed by engaging in this kind, in this community, in the.

476
00:54:33,866 --> 00:54:36,754
Chris: Narrative that it's an addiction, in this.

477
00:54:36,802 --> 00:54:41,138
Kayla: Particular approach to it as an addiction.

478
00:54:41,234 --> 00:54:53,266
Chris: Okay. Because then I was gonna ask, like, is porn addiction not a real phenomenon, or is it just the way that the NOFAP community engages with it that makes it the latter more distressing?

479
00:54:53,298 --> 00:54:53,602
Kayla: The latter.

480
00:54:53,626 --> 00:54:55,676
Chris: Okay, so there is such thing as porn addiction.

481
00:54:55,778 --> 00:55:39,240
Kayla: I don't want to. I'm not an authority. I can't say, yes, porn addiction is a real thing. No, it's not. I think from my very layperson understanding of it, I think there is still some. I think there's still some conversation around that. As somebody who is marginally informed on addiction issues, I believe that somebody can develop an addictive relationship with almost anything, and that addiction is more a process in the brain. That does mean that there is some differences in, like, what addiction means, because there are some people that are like, no, addiction is a substance. Is a relationship with a substance that creates a chemical process in the brain versus, like, I'm addicted to yogurt. I don't know.

482
00:55:40,020 --> 00:55:46,200
Chris: I hope don't get addicted to yogurt. Actually, there probably are people who are addicted to yogurt. Call them yogurt halls.

483
00:55:47,020 --> 00:55:48,240
Kayla: Get out of here.

484
00:55:48,840 --> 00:55:49,968
Chris: Wait, no.

485
00:55:50,104 --> 00:55:52,304
Kayla: Yogurt. Holics. Yogurt. Olix.

486
00:55:52,352 --> 00:55:53,480
Chris: Yogurtolics.

487
00:55:53,640 --> 00:56:02,088
Kayla: I do love yogurt. A different study published in 2021 called the battle for myths, masculinity, and the meaning of masturbation.

488
00:56:02,144 --> 00:56:04,720
Chris: Abstention stated, love that alliteration, baby.

489
00:56:04,760 --> 00:56:15,162
Kayla: I know. Quote, the mythical articulations that emerge from contestations over concepts like NOFAP have the potential to galvanize young men into horrific real world violence.

490
00:56:15,266 --> 00:56:15,994
Chris: Whoa.

491
00:56:16,162 --> 00:56:33,290
Kayla: What? And basically lead some men to feel like victims that, in turn embrace misogyny and racism. There is a very clear funnel, and we're gonna talk about it. There is a very clear funnel from noFap into extreme beliefs and ideologies.

492
00:56:33,330 --> 00:56:33,970
Chris: What the hell?

493
00:56:34,050 --> 00:56:56,144
Kayla: I know. A 2020 study called abstinence for masturbation and hypersexuality found that folks subscribing to NOFAP ideology reported lower trust in science and often termed to the forum as a primary source of medical information, potentially discouraging users from seeking real medical intervention and building a distrusting relationship with medical authority.

494
00:56:56,232 --> 00:56:58,448
Chris: So is NOFAP also novacs?

495
00:56:58,504 --> 00:57:04,616
Kayla: I don't know, but I wouldn't be surprised if there are people who are novacs because of their relationship to NoFap, right?

496
00:57:04,648 --> 00:57:12,460
Chris: Of the sort of, like, anti or lack of rigorous science and also the proclivity towards, like, bodily purity.

497
00:57:12,560 --> 00:57:33,772
Kayla: And that's just speculation. I don't actually know. Other researchers have posited that nOFAP reinforces destructive ideas about masculinity and femininity in the relationship between genders. So it kind of goes back to this very rigid idea of men are dominant seekers of pleasure and women are natural suppliers of said pleasure.

498
00:57:33,876 --> 00:57:34,260
Chris: Right?

499
00:57:34,340 --> 00:58:09,264
Kayla: And these kind of like chinks in the armor, quote, unquote, these, like, areas that might be weaknesses in the community have actually led the group to be targeted by the far right. So far right has gone, ooh, look, we can get in here, right? And so extreme far right ideology and toxic like men's rights. Red pilled groups have gotten embedded and mixed up in the NoFap community. And unfortunately, it has become a hotbed for things like antisemitism, the belief that porn has been unleashed by Jews as a purposefully addictive thing for white Mendez.

500
00:58:09,342 --> 00:58:10,060
Chris: Holy shit.

501
00:58:10,140 --> 00:58:12,220
Kayla: But that's like, I had no idea that was.

502
00:58:12,300 --> 00:58:13,876
Chris: I didn't either, obviously.

503
00:58:13,908 --> 00:58:22,860
Kayla: Antisemitism is insidious and sneaks in many ways, but I had no idea that there were groups of people that were like, the Jews are responsible for porn, for addictive porn.

504
00:58:23,020 --> 00:58:26,240
Chris: Wow. They really will blame the Jews for just about anything.

505
00:58:27,300 --> 00:58:59,532
Kayla: The community has also become a hotbed for sexism, so NOFAP supporters will often viciously target female researchers who do not support their conclusions and ideology. NOFAP supporters often fall into similar rhetoric that figures such as Gavin McInnes and the Proud Boys espouse. So masturbation emasculates or demasculinizes men, and men should avoid it and only seek out partnered sex with women. Abstaining from masturbation will ultimately make a man more successful in dating because he will focus on getting girls again. Women are thus objects to be acquired. Women who are sexually provocative are an enemy, et cetera.

506
00:58:59,636 --> 00:59:00,292
Chris: Right, right.

507
00:59:00,356 --> 00:59:13,696
Kayla: It also, of course, will. It dips its toes into homophobia and the like and things like, you know, don't be a bitch, that kind of thing. I don't know, a less chill, fun atmosphere than what we've seen on, like. No, no.

508
00:59:13,728 --> 00:59:14,800
Chris: November, right?

509
00:59:14,880 --> 00:59:23,544
Kayla: A little more hardcore and a little more like, funneled towards very rigid views about what it means to be a masculine man and what it means to be a woman.

510
00:59:23,672 --> 00:59:31,960
Chris: Right. Versus. No, not November seems more just like a supportive community doing, like a troll. Not a troll. Funny thing.

511
00:59:32,040 --> 00:59:58,308
Kayla: That is time delimited journalist Sarah Manovis wrote for the New Statesman in 2018, quote, the NoFap community has become linked to wider sexism and misogyny, reducing women to sexual objects to be attained or abstained from, and shaming sexually active women. Further studies found that NOFAP Redditors were also likely to be members of the Red Pill, which is a, also has become a far right affiliated emblem of toxic masculinity on Reddit.

512
00:59:58,404 --> 00:59:58,756
Chris: Right.

513
00:59:58,828 --> 01:00:14,720
Kayla: They were also more likely to be supporters of Donald Trump and Der Spiegel, a german magazine connected some NOFAP members to groups that have been involved in hate crimes and terrorist murders. So that's where we talk about like the Proud Boys and rise against movement and those other things, just in case.

514
01:00:14,800 --> 01:01:03,286
Chris: I know long time listeners probably will be familiar with a lot of these terms, but proud boys you just mentioned, was it rise above? Excuse me? Rise, rise against. Those are both far right groups that, you know, sort of like, have like a fascist bent. And then you mentioned red pilling. Again, long time listeners probably know what that means, but for those of you that don't, red pilling is just sort of like this blanket term that has unfortunately come to mean this blanket term of getting somebody radicalized. It basically means radicalizing somebody into this world of alt right, which has like a bunch of different things at the buffet table that you can pick and choose from, as tends to be the case with these things.

515
01:01:03,358 --> 01:01:03,638
Kayla: Right.

516
01:01:03,694 --> 01:01:28,834
Chris: So, you know, maybe a little bit of anti semitism over here and some anti vax over here and. But, but being red pilled is the, like, is the entryway into that. It's the like, hey, don't. This is fine. This is just like a little bit of healthy, you know, abstinence that we're doing over here. And that's so red pilling is like that sort of like onboarding process that then turns into anti vaxx and anti semitism and all that stuff.

517
01:01:28,922 --> 01:01:33,910
Kayla: Correct. So it gets no, it's no bueno.

518
01:01:35,330 --> 01:01:40,870
Chris: I should have known that we would eventually find our way into antisemitism because that's always how it happens.

519
01:01:41,490 --> 01:02:12,294
Kayla: Rolling Stone and vice also wrote about these alright connections and posited that the ethos infecting NOFAP has also begun to seep over into the no nut November. No, I'll link both of those articles. Rolling Stone said that far right figures were embracing and publicizing the challenge. So I think, like, Paul Joseph Watson was talking about it, he's an alt right provocateur. And vice claimed that followers were engaging in nofap influence tactics of online harassment by sending threats to porn site Xhamster.

520
01:02:12,422 --> 01:02:16,570
Chris: These voices, they're sending threats to a porn website.

521
01:02:18,030 --> 01:03:00,736
Kayla: These voices dissenting against nOfap, basically state that ideas, rhetoric, norms, memes, talking points, et cetera, coming from the manosphere. More on that in a second. Can be harmful to the men who adopt them and the people around them. The manosphere is a term. It's an unofficial label for a number of blogs, sites, forums, and figures that strongly oppose feminism and promote a form of masculinity that is synonymous with misogyny. So we're talking incels, pickup artists, MgTO, which is men going their own way, which are men that, quote unquote, voluntarily step away from having any sort of relationships, romantic or otherwise, with women, and more. I will link to the Wikipedia about it, because, again, it is too much to go into here, but it gets.

522
01:03:00,768 --> 01:03:03,032
Chris: Bad and nary a chad in sight.

523
01:03:03,176 --> 01:03:29,182
Kayla: Lest anyone think we on the podcast don't believe men deserve rights, I don't even know why I'm saying this, but, like, that could not be further from the truth. We firmly support men's rights issues on this show, but not the issues that alt rights extremists want people to believe are tearing our country, apartheid. So we support the rights of men to be in community with each other, to have access to proper mental health care, the rights of men to express emotions.

524
01:03:29,366 --> 01:03:34,798
Chris: We believe that the patriarchy hurts men just as much as it hurts women. Sometimes it hurts everyone.

525
01:03:34,894 --> 01:03:51,272
Kayla: We support every effort to reduce the high suicide rate among men, the higher rates of violent crime towards men, the social rights of gay, queer, and trans men to live liberated lives, and of course, the rights of chilbros to talk about not jerking off during November in a chill, safe and sane way. That is the stance of this podcast.

526
01:03:51,416 --> 01:03:55,408
Chris: Yeah, I feel like we should put that as our twitter profile now, the.

527
01:03:55,424 --> 01:03:56,504
Kayla: No nut November community.

528
01:03:56,592 --> 01:04:22,284
Chris: Well, I just want to say. Sorry, I just want to say, before we move on, that it's good to clarify that, because men's rights activists, which, if you talk about that as like a capital letters group, their beliefs are not those beliefs. There's probably some overlap there. The problem with men's rights activists is that they have a lot of, like, alt right stuff going on, a lot of misogyny.

529
01:04:22,372 --> 01:04:22,852
Kayla: It's a reality.

530
01:04:22,876 --> 01:04:26,148
Chris: A lot of, like, toxic masculinity. That is not what were just saying.

531
01:04:26,204 --> 01:04:26,708
Kayla: Right.

532
01:04:26,844 --> 01:04:34,156
Chris: So that's why we felt like we had to clarify there, because, like, you know, they sort of took that name right. That sounds nice, but isn't.

533
01:04:34,228 --> 01:05:07,542
Kayla: It's a reaction to the rise of feminism and the rise of minority and marginalized groups that have threatened the status quo and make people who are straight, cis white men feel like they are being oppressed, when really it's that others are achieving some semblance of liberation. And yeah, unfortunately, men's rights activist groups, like you said, aren't focusing necessarily on the ways that will materially improve men's lives and liberate men, but instead are.

534
01:05:07,646 --> 01:05:11,648
Chris: Falling into these, like, preserving the status quo. That is changing.

535
01:05:11,784 --> 01:05:45,484
Kayla: Yeah, the not November community actually responded to the tide of extremism rolling in and adjusted to make it clear that kind of rhetoric was unwelcome in the community. So the phrase brothers in arms was removed from their banner, making it clear that all people were welcome in the challenge. And in the community, new rules were imposed making it clear that any Redditor engaging in discriminatory or offensive behavior would be banned from the sub. A rule book was published this year with the goal of preventing people from feeling forced or coerced to engage in the challenge or like they have to in order to be like, you know, a real man. And in recent years break all these rules.

536
01:05:45,572 --> 01:05:58,160
Kayla: In recent years, the community has even used no nut November as an opportunity to fundraise for charities such as for prostate cancer prevention, prostate cancer treatment and awareness. And I think this year it's for like, preservation of our oceans.

537
01:05:58,500 --> 01:06:01,840
Chris: That's good, because where's, I mean, at the end of. No, not November.

538
01:06:02,380 --> 01:06:04,080
Kayla: It's destroy dick December.

539
01:06:04,460 --> 01:06:07,132
Chris: Is that what it's called? Why did you just make that up?

540
01:06:07,156 --> 01:06:08,836
Kayla: No, that's a real thing.

541
01:06:09,028 --> 01:06:14,552
Chris: Okay, I was gonna say that we need somewhere for all that jism to go, so you better protect the oceans.

542
01:06:14,736 --> 01:06:31,936
Kayla: From their press kit. Quote. While the community has mostly revolved around the yearly Internet challenge, it has recently branched out to serve as a support subreddit to help members with their lives and personal issues while continuing to remain centered around no nut November. So while the alt right tries to ruin everything it touches, it seems like they couldn't really get their hooks in here.

543
01:06:32,008 --> 01:06:34,200
Chris: So. Haha, good, fuck them.

544
01:06:34,280 --> 01:06:42,640
Kayla: Fuck em. Okay, we are nearing the end here and you may be wondering, okay, but like, does it work?

545
01:06:43,020 --> 01:06:53,620
Chris: Well, I'm wondering that. I'm wondering that and I'm also wondering, I don't know if you have any stats for me, but like, is there a percentage completion rate out there anywhere?

546
01:06:53,660 --> 01:06:54,996
Kayla: Like, oh, I don't have those numbers.

547
01:06:55,028 --> 01:06:58,828
Chris: 15% of all people who start no nut November, complete it.

548
01:06:58,924 --> 01:07:04,278
Kayla: I don't have those numbers, but it seems like it's a pretty Severe drop off rate.

549
01:07:04,414 --> 01:07:15,366
Chris: Okay. All right. I just, I searched here off podcasts for a few minutes, and I went pretty deep in the Google Search results.

550
01:07:15,478 --> 01:07:18,374
Kayla: And you're not supposed to go deep during no nut November.

551
01:07:18,422 --> 01:07:48,540
Chris: Well, I went very deep, and I was actually unable to come to a conclusion, a climax, if you will, of data. There doesn't seem to be a. At least as deep as I went, man. And if anybody out there can go deeper, you know, please do and please share your findings, because I couldn't find a success rate. I couldn't find a, like 30% of all people who attempt. No, not November. Get to the end of November. I have no idea.

552
01:07:48,580 --> 01:08:20,720
Kayla: Okay. No, not November. We need these stats from you ASAP. Anyone from the Reddit is listening, but okay, back to the. Does it work? Does abstaining from masturbation or ejaculation from a period of time improve your health or life? Well, all signs point to not really, or at least to. We don't think so, but we don't know. So far, our best science tells us that regular masturbation for men may actually help protect against prostate cancer, and it also increases fertility.

553
01:08:20,890 --> 01:08:27,756
Chris: Oh, good. I mean, are neutral. All right, that's maybe, or maybe not good.

554
01:08:27,868 --> 01:09:07,068
Kayla: There's not actual scientific evidence that death grip syndrome exists or that you can masturbate too much outside of, you know, extreme edge cases. Extreme cases in which masturbation causes physical trauma, like, you know, raw skin or interferes with your daily life. Obviously, that is a very real issue for some people. Folks like Gary Wilson and his followers promote pseudoscience with their anti porn and masturbation claims. Men's health quoted a doctor named Christopher Karuba as saying, quote, today, there has been no research that I could find documenting any psychological benefit to semen retention. As such, any reported benefits are purely anecdotal and could also be the result of a placebo effect.

555
01:09:07,203 --> 01:09:31,848
Chris: Yeah, I feel like that's why I mentioned before, like, it doesn't feel like there's anything physical that could be going on here, but, like, maybe there's some sort of, like, maybe there's some sort of, like, you know, like I said, mental discipline training of, like. Yeah, if I've exercised my brain's ability to, like, refrain from doing something enjoyable, pleasurable, then maybe that will benefit me and doing some sort of, like, discipline.

556
01:09:31,904 --> 01:10:05,025
Kayla: Oriented thing somewhere else, I think that can get, you know, the intent behind that is very important because it's like any other thing. If you approach, like, if you say, I'm gonna give up eating chocolate, I love chocolate, I'm gonna give it up for 30 days, if you say, I get. I'm gonna get up for 30 days because I want to see if I can do it, and I want to, like, exercise that willpower and train that muscle, I don't think there's anything wrong with that. But if you go like, I'm gonna not do it for 30 days because I want to lose weight or I shouldn't eat it or it's sinful. Yeah, if you come at it with that approach.

557
01:10:05,137 --> 01:10:07,825
Chris: So, basically, as long as you don't say it in that voice, it's fine.

558
01:10:07,857 --> 01:10:09,185
Kayla: As long as you don't whine like.

559
01:10:09,217 --> 01:10:11,793
Chris: Me like this, then you should be.

560
01:10:11,841 --> 01:10:48,820
Kayla: Then you're a known sex educator and neuroscientist, one who often butts heads with the no Fap community. And Gary Wilson, named Nicole Prowse, has said, quote, I think, not November is largely anti science and that there is zero random assignment clinical trials supporting abstinence as part of a treatment for compulsive sexual behaviors. She also says that ejaculation may improve memory, support your sleep, and support other health markers. So, and again, when she says anti science, that doesn't necessarily mean, like, it's bad or wrong. It's just there is not scientific evidence backing this up that we have.

561
01:10:48,900 --> 01:10:49,212
Chris: Right.

562
01:10:49,276 --> 01:11:01,212
Kayla: So, yeah, sorry, our no nut November friends scientific backing, as far as I have found, is not necessarily on your side. But again, that doesn't necessarily mean that you shouldn't do it. So, from that men's health article, Doctor.

563
01:11:01,236 --> 01:11:03,852
Chris: Karuba said, when we say do it, we mean don't do it.

564
01:11:03,876 --> 01:11:26,002
Kayla: Don't do it, at least not in November. Doctor Kruba says there are really no significant risks associated with semen retention. As such, my stance would be that if you think there's a benefit, then have at it. And I'm inclined to agree. If you feel like you are getting something from it and it's not coming from a negative place, and it's not making you feel bad, it's only making you feel good or increasing your sense of community or increasing your sense of.

565
01:11:26,026 --> 01:11:29,802
Chris: Pride or whatever, keeping an eye out for alt right recruiters at your doorstep.

566
01:11:29,826 --> 01:11:31,950
Kayla: Avoiding that, swerving them whenever you can.

567
01:11:32,280 --> 01:11:40,660
Chris: Wait. So there's no. So in other words, like, if I do note November, I'm not gonna, like, be at risk for, like, my balls getting super huge and exploding.

568
01:11:41,240 --> 01:11:43,100
Kayla: That happened. Be pretty cool.

569
01:11:45,000 --> 01:11:46,416
Chris: Well, you just said the science doesn't.

570
01:11:46,448 --> 01:12:18,860
Kayla: Support that, as far as I'm aware. So the benefits to masturbation that we talked about protecting you from, potentially protecting you from prostate cancer, potentially increasing or supporting your fertility, but in turn, the negative effects, like the semen retention effects on those, a month of that's not going to affect those things. It's like, you know, a year or longer if you never do it, or if you retain too long, but that might affect your fertility, that might affect your prostate cancer, and your balls might explode.

571
01:12:19,280 --> 01:12:22,344
Chris: I can't believe I'm, like, putting this out there. And I can't believe that's why.

572
01:12:22,352 --> 01:12:23,728
Kayla: I told our moms to not listen.

573
01:12:23,824 --> 01:12:37,194
Chris: I know, but I don't even, like, want our audience to listen to. I feel I'm so embarrassed. It's like these random people on the Internet are gonna be listening to me talk about exploding balls and jizz. Living the dream, I guess.

574
01:12:37,282 --> 01:12:51,922
Kayla: Podcast. You know, if people, especially men, gain a sense of community accomplishment, have fun, improve their relationship with themselves and others, and feel better about their habits, like, do it. I can't say not to do it. Rah, rah.

575
01:12:51,946 --> 01:12:52,306
Chris: Go mad.

576
01:12:52,338 --> 01:12:59,840
Kayla: I think let the no nut Novemberers do what they will. They are not hurting anyone, including themselves. And the memes are really good.

577
01:13:00,000 --> 01:13:08,060
Chris: And I would. Dude, I would participate, you know, for the podcast, for the lulz next year. Yeah, I guess I'll have to do it next year now, but we can do a contest.

578
01:13:09,000 --> 01:13:22,944
Kayla: Okay, one more thing. Let's look at the see also section on the no nut November Wikipedia page. And it goes, masturbation. Masturbate a thon, Movember. Oh, national Masturbation Day.

579
01:13:22,992 --> 01:13:24,338
Chris: Wait, why is Movember on there?

580
01:13:24,424 --> 01:13:28,062
Kayla: Because it's another male oriented November challenge.

581
01:13:28,126 --> 01:13:34,022
Chris: It's just people with those mustaches are just, like, way too sexy, and you can't look at them if you're doing. Yeah.

582
01:13:34,126 --> 01:13:36,950
Kayla: Wank week with a contest.

583
01:13:37,070 --> 01:13:37,958
Chris: Yeah. Okay.

584
01:13:38,054 --> 01:13:40,450
Kayla: And then Lent and Ramadan.

585
01:13:41,270 --> 01:13:42,222
Chris: Yeah, naturally.

586
01:13:42,366 --> 01:14:21,354
Kayla: Ramadan. Like, those are pages Wikipedia editors think share some similarities to Nona November. They do. They're not wrong. Like semen retention or coitus reservatus, as we mentioned earlier, has actually been around as an idea and a religious practice for much longer than nofap. Or no nut has taoist sexual practices included semen retention and male control of ejaculation from as far back as, like, the Han dynasty. So we're talking like 200 BC to 200 CE. It was believed that vital life force, or qi, was heavily present in bodily fluids, particularly semen, and that ejaculation could lead to loss of that chi.

587
01:14:21,522 --> 01:14:31,026
Chris: I mean, they're much more. I forgive them a lot more for the anti science because they didn't know about how, like, the human body worked, and so they had, like, that humors sort of theory going on.

588
01:14:31,058 --> 01:14:42,578
Kayla: Well, we're also talking. I don't know what modern day taoist belief is on this, so I'm talking in past tense. I don't want to say that taoist don't currently exist. Belief is on sexual practices and semen retention.

589
01:14:42,674 --> 01:14:53,102
Chris: And my knowledge about, like, humor's theory is very western oriented. I'm actually not sure what eastern, like, chinese and adjacent civilizations. I'm not sure what their medical beliefs were at the time.

590
01:14:53,166 --> 01:15:05,950
Kayla: Well, this we can talk about because it's literally they thought, oh, the qi is in your bodily fluids. The chi is in your. And it's largely in your semen. So your life force is in your bodily fluids. You want to retain the bodily fluids.

591
01:15:06,070 --> 01:15:06,494
Chris: That makes sense.

592
01:15:06,502 --> 01:15:08,062
Kayla: The semen, especially, you want to retain.

593
01:15:08,166 --> 01:15:09,766
Chris: Right. Because you can make a whole new person with it.

594
01:15:09,798 --> 01:15:30,018
Kayla: Yeah. Some Taoists believed in total abstinence from ejaculation. Some believed in a limited amount. Again, we're talking past tense because I don't know what modern day beliefs existed. Men were encouraged to disrupt sex when nearing ejaculation. So cunnilingus was treated as an ideal sexual activity between male and female partners to prevent the loss of bodily liquids.

595
01:15:30,074 --> 01:15:34,562
Chris: Yeah, good job. Very, very modern, you know, gender equality there.

596
01:15:34,586 --> 01:15:42,226
Kayla: I like it. Those beliefs were heavily espoused by the way of the five pecks of rice or the way of the celestial masters, a chinese taoist movement founded in 142.

597
01:15:42,258 --> 01:15:46,620
Chris: Cell masters, were they masters of the domain?

598
01:15:47,720 --> 01:16:14,924
Kayla: Tantric sex. The hindu and buddhist spiritual practices of sexual activity also includes the practice of semen retention. And tantra dates back to, like, at least the first millennium ce. Coitus reservatis has also been endorsed in some special circumstances by the Catholic Church throughout history as a form of go Catholics. It's also been supported as a form of birth control and method to support equality and intimacy in marriages by a famous ob Gyn in the 18 hundreds named Alice Stockham.

599
01:16:15,052 --> 01:16:24,036
Chris: Look, if there's something that's pleasurable that involves, you know, especially that involves, like, sex, the Catholic Church, you can count on them. They will come out against it.

600
01:16:24,228 --> 01:16:39,062
Kayla: And sex magic practitioners also have sex magic. Yeah, we. Too much for this episode. Sex magic practitioners have included semen retention in their practices, you know, from the 18 hundreds on today.

601
01:16:39,246 --> 01:16:42,718
Chris: So is that, like, I can. If I have sex, I can, like, cast a fireball from that?

602
01:16:42,774 --> 01:16:49,134
Kayla: Yes. No. Oh, no. Sex magic is just utilizing your sex energy to create various kinds of magic.

603
01:16:49,262 --> 01:16:49,822
Chris: Gotcha.

604
01:16:49,886 --> 01:16:58,246
Kayla: So there is deep history here, and if we are going to compare no nut November to something like lent, which, again, is. I'm giving up something.

605
01:16:58,358 --> 01:16:58,838
Chris: Yeah.

606
01:16:58,934 --> 01:17:00,662
Kayla: In order to feel different way.

607
01:17:00,726 --> 01:17:10,420
Chris: Or like, it's a self denial, like, discipline sort of oriented thing, which is. I mean, that's not even just lent, as you mentioned. It's Ramadan. It's like other kind of.

608
01:17:13,400 --> 01:17:44,890
Kayla: Or, like the symbolism of taoist belief and that, like, oh, denying my body of these things is preserving my energy. Maybe we can say that the practice of no nut November does have some benefit. Like, it's had spiritual benefit for large groups of people for many years. So, like, anecdotal or no, the placebo effect is still in effect, and if undertaken with good intent, sounds like abstinence challenges can be fun, can be fulfilling. I am down with Nona in November, and I wish a swift rest of the month for anyone who might be participating.

609
01:17:45,310 --> 01:18:06,686
Chris: Well, I mean, given what you said about that historical context, it definitely feels like this is, you know, I can't comment on the science of it, but it certainly feels like this is just the modern incarnation, like the Internet incarnation of a innate human. I don't want to say desire, because it's kind of the opposite of that.

610
01:18:06,718 --> 01:18:08,630
Kayla: But, like, the desire for.

611
01:18:08,670 --> 01:18:23,078
Chris: The desire to self deny. Yeah, it's. Yeah, there's like this. This common thread of abstinence across cultures, across religions, across different, you know, across time. And this just seems like it's the. Hey, this is like the Internet version.

612
01:18:23,174 --> 01:18:23,982
Kayla: Right. Right.

613
01:18:24,086 --> 01:18:25,948
Chris: Which is really. That's really interesting.

614
01:18:26,014 --> 01:18:27,200
Kayla: It is really interesting.

615
01:18:27,360 --> 01:18:30,136
Chris: Well, thank you for. For taking me on that journey, Caleb.

616
01:18:30,168 --> 01:18:31,904
Kayla: You're welcome. Are we ready to judge?

617
01:18:32,072 --> 01:18:37,544
Chris: Yeah, let's. Let's hurry up because I gotta go improve my memory after this.

618
01:18:37,672 --> 01:18:39,460
Kayla: So charismatic leader.

619
01:18:40,120 --> 01:18:45,872
Chris: I think there's definitely charismatic leader for nofap. For. No, not November, though. I don't know.

620
01:18:45,896 --> 01:18:47,848
Kayla: Like, I mean, there's the guy who created the subreddit.

621
01:18:47,944 --> 01:19:16,026
Chris: Yeah, there's the moderators. But, I mean, if we're. If our criteria is cares, usually when we talk about charismatic leader criteria, it's got to be like, either one or a few people that are very involved with the creation of the group and. Or the ongoing. Like, it would be easy to name them. And they. We can point to instances where, like, you know, they've kept the thing together and they have. So I'd say low.

622
01:19:16,098 --> 01:19:18,802
Kayla: Yeah. This feels emergent as opposed to, like, constructed.

623
01:19:18,866 --> 01:19:29,098
Chris: Yeah. That's a good way of putting it. It's emergent, not top down, expected harm. I mean, it's. You said that the balls don't explode. So low.

624
01:19:29,274 --> 01:19:43,034
Kayla: I think it's medium to low because I think that currently, in. In the climate of our country, I do think, or even in our world, I do think there's still potential for no nut November to funnel people to others.

625
01:19:43,082 --> 01:19:44,482
Chris: The red pill adjacent stream.

626
01:19:44,546 --> 01:19:54,916
Kayla: Yeah, yeah. Rhetoric which is damaging to people who adopt that belief and the people around them. So I think expected harm is low because.

627
01:19:54,948 --> 01:20:11,920
Chris: Yeah, it's like, low. Unless you find yourself slipping down that slope, in which case high. So it's kind of like, conditionally low. Like, as long as you're. As long as you stay away from the, like, jews are in control of porn stuff, then you should be okay.

628
01:20:12,260 --> 01:20:15,212
Kayla: Presence of ritual. Oh, yeah, baby.

629
01:20:15,276 --> 01:20:16,084
Chris: The whole thing is.

630
01:20:16,172 --> 01:20:19,080
Kayla: You got the meaning. You got the. Yeah. The community.

631
01:20:19,380 --> 01:20:19,948
Chris: Yeah.

632
01:20:20,044 --> 01:20:20,760
Kayla: Ritual.

633
01:20:21,140 --> 01:20:26,540
Chris: Just connotations, Internet masturbatory. Lent is the most ritualistic thing I've ever heard of.

634
01:20:26,620 --> 01:20:27,920
Kayla: Niche within society.

635
01:20:29,660 --> 01:20:32,332
Chris: I would say it still is pretty niche.

636
01:20:32,356 --> 01:20:41,216
Kayla: I'm gonna say. Even with the articles, even with the hundred thousand people, I think it's still. It's still relatively niche. Like, if. If we go talk to our moms about this, they're not.

637
01:20:41,288 --> 01:20:43,016
Chris: We can't. They'll be like, we turned off the.

638
01:20:43,048 --> 01:20:45,056
Kayla: Episode when you instructed.

639
01:20:45,248 --> 01:20:57,080
Chris: Yeah, yeah, no, I think, yeah. If we did, like, random person on the street, I don't know how many people would be like, oh, yeah. I think it's like, if you're very online, it probably seems not very niche.

640
01:20:57,120 --> 01:20:57,560
Kayla: Right.

641
01:20:57,680 --> 01:21:00,280
Chris: But, you know, that's not everyone.

642
01:21:00,360 --> 01:21:04,340
Kayla: That's a small percentage of people. Antifactuality.

643
01:21:05,330 --> 01:21:14,338
Chris: There definitely seems like there's some of that going on. Yeah, it's maybe not high, but there definitely seems like there's some, like, you know, pseudo science, like, wellness stuff, right.

644
01:21:14,394 --> 01:21:16,938
Kayla: About you. Don't jerk off. It'll make your testosterone high.

645
01:21:17,034 --> 01:21:23,706
Chris: Right. Purity. If you keep your body pure, then your libido energy will give your. The life you've always wanted.

646
01:21:23,778 --> 01:21:36,478
Kayla: Right. Percentage of life consumed. Seems like during November 1 12th. Yeah, it's kind of like cicada or like some of these other, like, very intense but short lived groups.

647
01:21:36,614 --> 01:21:37,158
Chris: Yeah.

648
01:21:37,254 --> 01:21:41,130
Kayla: So I feel like I don't. I still not really sure how to grade those.

649
01:21:41,910 --> 01:21:43,166
Chris: It's low, but it's there.

650
01:21:43,278 --> 01:21:43,646
Kayla: Right?

651
01:21:43,718 --> 01:21:47,078
Chris: I mean, it does feel like in November, but also your whole life might.

652
01:21:47,094 --> 01:22:05,420
Kayla: Be consumed if you're trying, if you have. You're coming at it from, like, I. Shut up. I rely heavily on this habit or this activity. Abstaining from that, and not really necessarily, like, coming at it from a place of, like, I'm gonna replace it with something. Stop it. I'm just abstaining. That feels like it might consume a lot of your life.

653
01:22:05,460 --> 01:22:15,956
Chris: Yeah. To me, it feels less about how much you rely on the habit, you know, the other eleven months of the year, and more about, like, how much does it affect you when you abstain? Right.

654
01:22:15,988 --> 01:22:16,468
Kayla: Like.

655
01:22:16,604 --> 01:22:23,612
Chris: Like, if it really does, you know, affect you if, like, you're. If it's all you can think about after day three is like, is boobs or whatever.

656
01:22:23,756 --> 01:22:24,836
Kayla: That's me all the time.

657
01:22:24,948 --> 01:22:36,982
Chris: Yeah, that's. Okay, bad example. If all you can think about is. If all you can do is be distracted by, you know, libidinous thoughts after day three, then that does seem like it's maybe gonna affect your life.

658
01:22:37,046 --> 01:22:41,142
Kayla: One guy was like, I'm two days in, and I'm humping everything I lay on.

659
01:22:41,286 --> 01:22:59,240
Chris: Yeah. If you're humping everything around you, then that's potentially life consuming. But it seems like it also may just be one month. And if it's just, like, the type of thing where you're like, I didn't drag off today. I'm gonna go post a funny meme on Reddit, then maybe it's low anyway. I don't know. Low ish, depending.

660
01:23:00,300 --> 01:23:02,240
Kayla: How about dogmatic beliefs?

661
01:23:03,740 --> 01:23:21,884
Chris: I would if were talking no fap. It feels high based on what I've seen of NOFAP personally, but for. No, not November. I don't know. Yeah, they're like, come one, come all. And that doesn't feel like they're saying.

662
01:23:22,012 --> 01:23:24,612
Kayla: They're declaring difference of opinion is allowed.

663
01:23:24,676 --> 01:23:26,320
Chris: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

664
01:23:26,460 --> 01:23:29,816
Kayla: Chain of victims feels low as hell to me.

665
01:23:29,928 --> 01:23:31,008
Chris: Yeah, I don't know.

666
01:23:31,064 --> 01:23:32,456
Kayla: I don't think there's a chain of victims.

667
01:23:32,528 --> 01:23:34,792
Chris: Right. You can't even have a daisy chain. Really?

668
01:23:34,976 --> 01:23:41,100
Kayla: I'm gonna kill you. Oh, my God. So what do you think? Is it a cult or is it just weird?

669
01:23:41,640 --> 01:23:53,496
Chris: This feels like a. Just weird based on all of those lows and highs. Like, ritual was high, right? But most other things I get, I guess, depending on what we're talking about. The interfactuality can get high.

670
01:23:53,568 --> 01:23:54,064
Kayla: Right?

671
01:23:54,192 --> 01:23:56,680
Chris: But nothing else feels particularly culty on the list.

672
01:23:56,760 --> 01:23:57,232
Kayla: Agreed.

673
01:23:57,296 --> 01:23:58,024
Chris: So just.

674
01:23:58,072 --> 01:23:58,800
Kayla: Just weird.

675
01:23:58,840 --> 01:23:59,288
Chris: Weird.

676
01:23:59,384 --> 01:24:01,864
Kayla: Just one month of the year. Y'all are weird.

677
01:24:01,912 --> 01:24:08,904
Chris: But that is not to say we've said this in the program before. Weird is not bad. We are not here to sex shame.

678
01:24:08,992 --> 01:24:09,504
Kayla: No.

679
01:24:09,632 --> 01:24:11,136
Chris: To self pleasure shame.

680
01:24:11,208 --> 01:24:16,032
Kayla: Absolutely not. Or the shame. No shaming.

681
01:24:16,176 --> 01:24:18,680
Chris: I heart thoughts, too. There's no shaming on culture. Just weird.

682
01:24:18,720 --> 01:24:21,680
Kayla: Come one, come all. Not in November, though.

683
01:24:22,140 --> 01:24:24,084
Chris: Kayla, I have a question for you, though.

684
01:24:24,172 --> 01:24:24,756
Kayla: What.

685
01:24:24,908 --> 01:24:29,980
Chris: What teaser art are we gonna make for this? Okay, like, what is part of the.

686
01:24:30,020 --> 01:24:33,316
Kayla: Press kit is actually their subreddit logo.

687
01:24:33,428 --> 01:24:33,964
Chris: Oh, really?

688
01:24:34,012 --> 01:24:34,892
Kayla: I think that means you can use.

689
01:24:34,916 --> 01:24:35,884
Chris: Oh, hell yeah.

690
01:24:35,972 --> 01:24:38,284
Kayla: And it's a little peanut with a.

691
01:24:38,292 --> 01:24:38,860
Chris: Like a peanut.

692
01:24:38,900 --> 01:24:42,356
Kayla: A little peanut with, like, a ghostbusters. Like, no sign around it.

693
01:24:42,468 --> 01:24:44,468
Chris: Oh, I've seen that. I'm pretty sure I've seen that logo.

694
01:24:44,524 --> 01:24:45,050
Kayla: Yeah.

695
01:24:45,180 --> 01:24:46,350
Chris: Oh, so I can just steal that?

696
01:24:46,390 --> 01:24:46,758
Kayla: I think so.

697
01:24:46,774 --> 01:24:48,638
Chris: I can just jack that logo.

698
01:24:48,774 --> 01:24:55,950
Kayla: So jack it right off. That's it. Thank you for listening to my journey into no nut November.

699
01:24:56,070 --> 01:24:58,502
Chris: If you decide to participate, good luck.

700
01:24:58,606 --> 01:24:59,326
Kayla: Godspeed.

701
01:24:59,398 --> 01:25:04,890
Chris: Godspeed. And, yeah, I. Thanks, Kayla. I guess.

702
01:25:07,110 --> 01:25:07,942
Kayla: I'm Kayla.

703
01:25:08,006 --> 01:25:08,646
Chris: And I'm Chris.

704
01:25:08,718 --> 01:25:11,062
Kayla: And this has been cult or.

705
01:25:11,126 --> 01:25:12,906
Chris: No, no, it's colter.

706
01:25:12,938 --> 01:25:42,270
Kayla: Just weird. I.

707
01:25:43,160 --> 01:25:43,900
Chris: Our.

708
01:25:45,600 --> 01:25:45,840
Kayla: Channel.