I experience Lemmy as a reflection of many of the problems in the world; there seems to be little effort to understand and respect different viewpoints. Instead of being curious about opinions one disagrees with, the community often feels almost aggressive. People end up in their own trenches. What about trying to be more open and curious about our differences instead?
Apparently we believe in freedom of speech—so long as the speech is something we agree with…
No-fap and anti-fap communities have historically been breeding grounds (irony unintended) for right-wing ideology. That’s where a lot of the distaste for that kind of talk comes from; when someone starts moralizing about “porn addiction” it is so frequently followed by blatant misogyny and incel rhetoric that people have learned to immediately respond with derision.
But who’s moralizing about it here? The mere mention of struggling with compulsive porn use - or even just noting that others do - gets immediately met with vicious hostility and completely baseless accusations. It’s totally unreasonable to dump that massive pile of imagined baggage onto someone and then treat them as if it all applies to them.
You literally cannot get some people to acknowledge that there are tens of millions of (mostly) young men who genuinely struggle with this. It’s not about thinking porn or masturbation is bad. It’s about having taken it to such an extreme that it’s actively harming their life - and many of them seek help online. Unfortunately, these toxic communities are among the very few places available for advice and peer support.
It’s all guilt by association.
You can’t talk about anything here without some significant number of crackpots telling you how you are evil for acknowledging it’s existence, and how we must destroy anyone who says anything they find uncomfortable to acknowledge.