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Can you gain super powers by not masturbating? Some people seem to think so, and that does not just include members of obscure qigong cults that lift weights with their testicles. The NoFap (fap means masturbation) Reddit forum reportedly has almost half a million members, and includes a woman whose video espousing the health benefits of not engaging in sexual activity has been viewed over a million times. If you were to take this article at face value and base your understanding on the headline alone, you would be left with the impression that there is a movement gaining ground of people, including a large and growing contingent of women, forgoing self-pleasure in order to derive some sort of physical and psychological advantage. However, this is not the case at all if you read between the lines and examine the details. Half a million people in a Reddit group – a platform notorious for attracting both awkward teenagers and bored web-users – does not signify much at all, especially considering there is no way of proving that anyone in any online forum actually follows or even supports the movement they claim to subscribe to. The headline is blatant clickbait, designed to suck in readers to a story that the writer has concocted by sensationalising an insignificant yet bizarre forum topic. Likewise, the seemingly high numbers of viewers of a YouTuber’s video is deceptive because 1.5 million views is nothing considering there are hundreds of videos of cats, each with tens of millions of views – numbers that do not tell you anything of scientific or social value. The author seemingly recognises how lacking in substance their “story” is, so they throw in a quote from a “specialist”, in this case in the form of a sex therapist, in an attempt to give the article some degree of legitimacy by adding outside support to what would otherwise be something dismissed as a meaningless internet meme. It must have been a slow news day at the Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/sep/09/whats-causing-women-to-join-the-nofap-movement |
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