One last thing before I get to the infohazard proper:

Looking back a lot of the distinctively ‘90s sexual imaginary was basically aestheticized caricatures.

The whole ‘80s S&M thing, Mapplethorpe and Madonna, left us with a strong image of the dominatrix, in black leather/latex wasp-waisted corset and whip. (The outfits in the Matrix were intended for an audience with that figure in mind) The “teen” in cheerleader outfit and pigtails and a lollipop, the bleach-blonde bimbo with breast implants and inch-long painted nails. Even if you did that last one well - Pamela Anderson - it was still over-the-top. They didn’t try to have porn stars act anymore but gonzo hadn’t come in yet so you’d have a movie that was like, the woodsmen in firefighter gear doing it on a firetruck. (With women, I should specify.)

And that stuff was so abstracted from any real referent as to be weightless, cotton-candy fantasy.

You heard a lot about “asian fetishes” and I’m sure part of that came from the kids of the ‘70s immigrant wave coming of age but part of that was that Japanese porn was making the American market, and you had hentai with its own over-the-topness but also the live-action stuff hadn’t lost the knack of “here’s the prettiest girl you saw on the street today, undressed, in a tableau that sets up accessible fantasies”.

And it’s striking how the defining fantasy figures of our current moment seem to be running a lot closer to bare metal, and a lot more hostile.

Maybe “step-“ family members who molest you, “daddy” as a figure who when not your actual father is fetishized as an older and more powerful, controlling man grooming you for his use. Cuckold/bull, “the guy who steals your girl”. The crazy stalker girl you literally have to fight off (or fail) because she’s trying to get pregnant by you to own you.

Like, these fantasies are all based off the actual dynamics of real people who will ruin your fucking life, and that’s something.

An interesting thing is how softer, more abstracted versions now seem to use a vocabulary borrowed from the Japanese - monster girl stuff tends Fdom as loving GFE,
“stuck in wall” as a weightless rape scenario, ahegao and public use toilet stuff so over the top as to be completely removed from everyday experience.

Some of that’s the “re-enchanting heterosexuality with power dynamics” trend. Like, in an open parking lot, who outranks who, the firefighters or the party girl? That’s… not even an axis, really.

But a lot of it really seems female-led. Maybe it’s not even so much the girls are into Fsub as they are into eroticizing social power dynamics. God knows that’s the traditional charge of romance novels, from bodice-rippers to whatever the fuck Wuthering Heights was, the value went totally over my head at least at the time.

Maybe I don’t even appreciate how much of that is topping from the bottom. Like when I had been saying “so much Fsub” part of it I had noticed some crossover from ASMR and therapy culture like “reassurance” or “appreciation”. “Small dick appreciation”. Reassuring an anxious guy, a shy virgin. And from my perspective I took that as loving Fsub, but now that I think of it, “appealing to someone’s vulnerabilities, inferior social position and/or mental illness to recruit a sexual bond with them” is kinda ambiguous, isn’t it?