The Out-of-Touch Adults’ Guide To Kid Culture: Anti-Masturbation Porn Conspiracies

The Out-of-Touch Adults’ Guide To Kid Culture: Anti-Masturbation Porn Conspiracies

It’s a potpourri of internet nonsense this week, with Superman and his crime-fighting friends in the Justice League getting a second chance, Justin Bieber returning to YouTube, and a growing online movement of young men building their identities around not watching internet porn.

This week in movies: Zack Snyder’s Justice League

The super-hero-movie-loving part of the Internet is freaking out this week over the release of Zack Snyder’s Justice League. The original, 2017 version of Justice League was beset with production problems — last-minute script re-writes, replacing director Snyder with Josh Whedon during postproduction, and more — leading to critical and financial disappointment. Since then, fans have been clamoring for Snyder to release his edit of the movie. Eventually, Warner Bros. gave the green light, and after some reshoots and ton of time in the editing room, Zack Snyder’s Justice League has hit a television near you (if you’re near HBO Max.)

So which movie is better? According to critics and fans, Zack Snyder comes out on top, but it’s not exactly a knockout. Critics laud Snyder’s version of Justice League for being less jokey and more adult, but points are taken off for the length: the damn thing is four hours long. The bottom line: Zack’s Justice League is rated 76 per cent “Fresh” on rotten tomatoes, where the original only scored 40 per cent favourable reviews. Take that, Josh Whedon.

Panic of the week: Netflix is cracking down on shared accounts

It’s finally happening: Netflix is shutting down communal accounts, at least sort of. According to market research firm Magid, a third of Netflix’s 200 million or so users have shared their passwords with friends, family, and strangers, so it’s not surprising that the company is looking for a way to end its longtime, “eh, who cares?” attitude toward account-sharing, as that’s a lot of subscription money for Netflix to leave on the table.

Many Netflix users have started seeing a popup message that reads, “if you don’t live with the owner of this account, you need your own account to keep watching” when they log on. From there, they’re asked to verify their account through text or email, and if they don’t, they are booted and asked to set up a new account with a free month of service, a consolation prize for corporate thievery.

[referenced id=”1050008″ url=”https://www.lifehacker.com.au/2021/03/the-out-of-touch-adults-guide-to-kid-culture-flirting-with-death-on-tiktok/” thumb=”https://www.gizmodo.com.au/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2021/03/09/slvziuwfnywt9dxsdcqr-300×169.jpg” title=”The Out-of-Touch Adults’ Guide To Kid Culture: Flirting With Death on TikTok” excerpt=”Maybe it’s a delayed reaction to the cancellation of Halloween five months ago, or maybe it’s just me, but for some reason the internet was even more unsettling than usual this past week. There were menacing stories in the news, a frightening viral video to enjoy, and the unique horror…”]

Online cult of the week: NoFap

“NoFap” is the last movement I would have predicted becoming popular among young men on the internet. The group’s raison d’etre is encouraging horny dudes to not masturbate to porn on the Internet. Talk about a lost cause! In spite of its quixotic goal, NoFap has been growing steadily since its birth on Reddit in 2011, with over 700,000 people currently subscribed to the r/nofap subreddit.

While the medical community doesn’t consider pornography addiction a mental disorder, no-fappers disagree. They say abstaining from internet-smut (and the masturbation it engenders) has a ton of benefits, like making real sex better, giving you more energy, added self-control, and more. The most zealous no-fappers even report gaining super powers. Maybe that’s how Spider-Man did it.

The cultural meaning of (mostly) young men imposing a puritanical standard on themselves is way too complex to unpack here, but NoFap is not without its critics. Some feel that the group’s philosophy leads to misogyny and slut-shaming. Some over-zealous no-fappers blame the women who star in porn for the negative effects they see stemming from it.

Then there’s the Nazis. While r/nofap and the NoFap website say they have no tolerance for hateful content of any kind, that hasn’t stopped alt-Nazi cranks from glomming onto the movement and using its ideas as a novel way of hating Jews. These geniuses of the Internet say porn is a Jewish plot designed to weaken white men and eventually destroy Western culture…like dudes need an elaborate Jewish conspiracy to look at porn.

Viral video of the week: Justin Bieber’s Tiny Desk (home) concert

Justin Bieber went from some-kid-on-YouTube to Michael Jackson-level renown while he was still a teenager. He remains can’t-walk-down-the-street famous, even though he hasn’t put out an album or toured in five years. Because his image was created in the funhouse mirror of tabloid coverage and the imaginations of a generation of teen fans, it’s hard to separate the pop culture icon BIEBER from the singer/dancer/musician named “Justin Bieber.”

In this week’s viral video, Bieber returns to his roots on YouTube and pulls an Elvis ’68 Comeback to remind the world what’s behind the façade. He debuts his sure-to-be-huge new song “Peaches” without hype, screaming fans, or overblown live-show theatrics. Instead, he performs a stripped-down mini show from his house for NPR’s Tiny Desk series.

Backed by a small band, Bieber reveals the simple truth: There’s a reason he got that famous. He’s really, really good at performing. Even if you hate this kind of music (and I usually do), it’s impossible to deny the guy’s talent. Dude can sing. Anyway, check it out and tell me what you think.

This week in video games: Everyone’s still playing Minecraft

I conducted a quick, one-question survey of four under-15 gamers this week, asking them “what are you playing lately?” One hundred per cent of respondents answered: “Minecraft.”

For the youngins, Minecraft is more than a video game, it’s an institution, and a sanity-saving refuge during this strange and terrible year. Minecraft’s pandemic-swelled-population — there were 131 million active monthly users in 2020 — contains millions of housebound kids. Mine is one of them. When they closed the skateparks and he and his friends couldn’t have sleepovers any more, they took it in stride and started hanging out in Minecraft instead.

Now they build complicated machinery and elaborately blinged-out mansions, talk shit about their Zoom teachers in headset mics, and live nearly full-time in a private world where there’s no Coronavirus and they can go wherever they want, build whatever they like, and be whomever they choose. The world we made for them is ugly and broken, but the one they created? It’s magic.


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