Orgasms are a memetic hazard

[brin_bellway]

[cw: what it says on the tin]


After a couple instances of serendipity, I have finally found a method of vanilla masturbation that works for me.

It's...actually a pretty disturbing feeling. It reminds me a lot of looking at cute babies? Like, I can *feel* it trying to shape me into what I'm ~supposed~ to be, as if my creator is trying to bring me into alignment by patching me after the fact.

Fuck off, evolution. You had your chance to make this a self-replicating organism, you failed, now move on. Take the long way around: get rid of me by having others outbreed me.

---

I was surprised by how *different* it was. An entirely new form of pleasure, not like anything I'd experienced before. It doesn't feel like an extension or aspect or synergy of the sexuality I'm accustomed to, but something separate. *My* sexuality is over *there*, still--to my relief, given the first section (*knocks on wood*)--entirely intact; this is something *else*, something foreign.

---

I appreciate the chance to satisfy my curiosity and all, and I'm glad the people for whom this fits are having fun, but I think I'll probably aim to avoid it from now on. I am *not* an infohazard fetishist, and there seems little point in playing with fire when there are perfectly ego-syntonic masturbation methods available. I'm not twenty and desperate anymore: I have *options*.

Comments

[lunartulip]

Huh. This is interesting in the degree to which it resembles some of my own past self's experiences except with the order of discovery reversed.

For me, the memetically-hazardous trying-to-hijack-my-brain-for-purposes-I-didn't-value version of sexuality was the one I found first, all the way back when puberty first happened to me, and I found it obnoxious and unpleasant to the point where it took several years before I realized that most people actually liked having a libido. Then later on I discovered various forms of kink stuff which were actually genuinely pleasant to think about and desirable to pursue, and it felt so much unlike sexuality-as-I'd-previously-experienced-it that it took me a while to realize that there was any connection there at all. They remain very much distinct as lumps of my psychology, with only a few points of direct relation between the two.

(In retrospect, my issues with my sexuality seem to have been largely dysphoria-driven and have significantly reduced as I've transitioned, such that at this point my sexuality is actually a net positive influence on my life; but prior to that shift my experience of it was a lot like what you described here, albeit focused on libido-in-general rather than masturbation-in-specific.)

[brin_bellway]

Thank you. It's good to know I'm not alone in this.

I've been paraphilic since my earliest memories, and while I didn't realise on my own that my fascination might be sexual, when I learned (by stumbling across on TV Tropes, about a decade ago) that hypno-fetishism was a thing I immediately went "well that explains a lot".

(Although even then it took me another couple of years to notice "hey, those physical reactions probably qualify as sexual arousal" and "those fantasies aren't just sexual, they're actually *affected by hormone levels*, with a peak at ovulation".)

((I clearly *had* a pre-menarche libido, but I don't know much about it because I didn't think to keep track.))

[thedarlingone]

...I feel like I don't understand enough about the concept of infohazards to have a meaningful opinion on this post. I feel like there would be an opinion or discussion that I could have if I understood it, but right now "trying to shape me into what I'm ~supposed~ to be" feels intensely familiar but not in a way that matches with any of the rest of the post.

(I think... I'm having several thoughts that might turn out to be relevant? One is "the influences trying to make me what I was/am ~supposed~ to be have been a lot more explicit about their intentions in my life than in yours", and one is "I tend to be a lot more of a risk-taker than you do", and one is "there's probably something meta about wanting more information about what infohazards are", and one is "my experiences with sexuality and kink and libido and relationships are still shaking out into a recognizable form". Hm. I wonder if what's feeling familiar as far as the concept of having something less than authoritarian try to reshape me after the fact is tied to my interactions with romance as opposed to sexuality. I mean, of course I also had direct authority trying to force me into an alloromantic mold, because it's me and really have I ever had a segment of human experience where direct authoritarian conditioning didn't get involved, but... hm. I'm recently running into a recurring thing with how my brain handles incest taboos, which I don't think I've ever talked about at length, and somehow this train of thought has wandered off into whether that connects to my strong romance squick; I think it may, actually. That's gonna be a fun post... ;P)

[brin_bellway]

>>"trying to shape me into what I'm ~supposed~ to be" feels intensely familiar but not in a way that matches with any of the rest of the post.<<

It occurs to me that you speak little to no Rationalist, so perhaps I should clarify: I'm using "alignment" here in the AI-research-jargon sense, where it means something like "doing as your creator would want you to do", in a metaphor depicting me as an AI and evolution as my programmer. "Gains agency before all the kinks (so to speak) are worked out, becomes attached to catastrophically-buggy version of desire programming, actively fights against attempts to fix it" is one of the possible failure modes in future stages of AI development that researchers need to prepare for.

When I say "supposed to", I don't mean it in a societal sense (though they do often line up), but in an evolutionary one of propagating one's genes.

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>>...I feel like I don't understand enough about the concept of infohazards to have a meaningful opinion on this post.<<

Basically, an infohazard is a(n) [idea, piece of information, sensory perception] where even possessing it harms you. The more severe ones are fictional--"the sight of a basilisk's eyes" is a sufficiently central example that infohazards (especially fatal ones) are sometimes referred to as "basilisks"--but they are not entirely absent from the real world.

A possibility that never occurred to you before, but now that you've heard about it it's hard to stop worrying about it? A song that triggers you, and you try desperately not to learn how it goes in order to limit its ability to get stuck in your head (and even if you succeed, there's still the problem of when you're actively hearing it)? A baby you don't even like, but when you're around it you keep getting intrusive thoughts about wanting to take care of it? Infohazards.

(yes, I'm drawing these from personal experience)

(I mentioned in my reply to the previous commenter that I learned hypno-fetishism was a thing from TV Tropes. I don't remember what the exact context was, but come to think of it, there is a distinct chance that it was on the page for The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You, and was discussing infohazard-fetishist porn. There's a lot of overlap there, so one does have to be careful with hypno-fetish porn: like with infohazards in general, the more severe ones are fictional, but some of the milder ones actually work.)

((...it occurs to me that you've actually *read* the thing I was vagueblogging about in this thread†, and almost certainly did not have the right mental security systems installed to recognise what she was trying to do to you. *shudders*

Well, you did talk a while back about how you're so accustomed to being manipulated that Bob-Ross-type stuff comes across as mostly just "oh hey, I'm actually being manipulated to feel something *positive* for a change", so I suppose there's that mitigating factor.))

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>>a recurring thing with how my brain handles incest taboos, which I don't think I've ever talked about at length<<

Yeah, I've dealt with some incest-taboo issues of my own.

(in hindsight, it makes sense that I would be so uncomfortable about my parents singing me lullabies...)

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>>*That's* gonna be a fun post...<<

Good luck.

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†it was the massage scene in "Touching Moments", part of the Love is for Children series

[thedarlingone]

>>When I say "supposed to", I don't mean it in a societal sense (though they do often line up), but in an evolutionary one of propagating one's genes.<<

Yeah, evolution failed with me by passing along the gene (or whatever) for my horrendous period cramps. I mean, it does fairly regularly try to beat me over the head with an inexplicable urge to nurse a baby, but I've been dealing with that since I was twelve. (And of course, the explicit directive to produce grandchildren lines up with the evolutionary thing. Like I said. Authoritarianism always turns up in my backstory.)

I mean, call me an '80s kid, but I tend to think of self-replicating AI as a terrible idea. But I'm not up to date enough on AI research to know the current attitudes, either.

>>Basically, an infohazard is a(n) [idea, piece of information, sensory perception] where even possessing it harms you.<<

Hm. I feel like I should be able to think of examples of infohazards I have encountered, but I'm drawing a blank. Either I've successfully blocked out the memory of them, or I'm fairly resilient against them, or they're very subtle and I don't notice they're harming me. You'd think I'd at least have something related to the Curu/JT switch, because that was definitely information-related and wound up destroying my whole damn worldview, but I'm not coming up with anything that was information in itself rather than me having thinky thoughts and digging myself deeper. Although given your baby example, I may be interpreting the definition too narrowly.

>>you've actually *read* the thing I was vagueblogging about in this thread†, and almost certainly did not have the right mental security systems installed to recognise what she was trying to do to you<<

Oh! I think I did actually realize that - the "imagine you're somewhere peaceful" was the giveaway for me, that only ever seems to come up that particular way in hypno-stuff. That particular story doesn't actually work very well on me, though, or not in the way she intended, because what stuck with me the most was how damn annoying it is when that particular tendon gets knotted up and I can't reach in under my shoulderblade to get at it. Also I have a... is there something between a squick and a trigger in severity? I have bad associations with that particular armlock. So that story is uncomfortable for me but in very different ways than it is for you.

(I have consciously used various "Love is for Children" stories to manipulate my own mood, though. I think, yeah, I just don't have the strong aversion to emotional manipulation that you do.)