People in the nofap community claim that abstaining from masturbation gives them "super powers".
From Google, a cult is "a system of religious veneration and devotion directed toward a particular figure or object."
They venerate non-masturbation as if it were a deity able to grant them divine powers if they worship it enough. Or at least that's how it sounds like when you hear them talk about it.
That's not at all the impression I got. Never masturbating ever might be seen as good by some there, but for most it's a temporary means to an end than the end goal. Helping get past porn addictions (by stopping cold turkey for a while), improving the relationship with your partner (by reducing or stopping to masturbate and see how that affects it), and being supportive of whatever people's goals are is what the community seemed like to me (but that's admittedly going off years-old memories). Hence I'm quite confused by all the outright hate here.
Hate to weird niche communities is pretty much like hate to Linkedin: because it full of cringe, poor quality marketing and just pure BS. Even if you registered on there you won't be using it 99% of time until you need to find a new job. Or unless Linkedin is part of your actual job because you're HR / sales person.
It's great that it might help someone, but it doesn't mean we all should accept everything this community produce is something good and normal.
They only believe it gives them “super powers” in the same way getting free from a heroin addiction would feel like gaining super powers. Normal health feels super when you previously lacked it.
> in the same way getting free from a heroin addiction would feel like gaining super powers
As someone who has done exactly that and is involved heavily in recovery communities, no one would describe sobriety as "gaining super powers", and I'm sick of people conflating porn addiction and heroin addiction as if they have anything in common. They really do not, and anyone who does has obviously never experienced opioid dependence. "But but but dopamine pathways" -- if you don't understand the difference in orders of magnitude between exogenous chemicals that directly operate on those pathways, and that which your body and brain can create on their own, I don't know what to tell you.
You're correct, but that doesn't take anything away from the fact that porn addiction can be serious enough to cause massive damage to a persons well being, causing them to lose jobs, relationships, or even kill themselves. Porn addiction can be incredibly powerful, it fully hijacks our strongest instinctual drive.
If someone was shot in the head with a 22 would you dismiss this as insignificant, because some people get their heads blown off with rocket launchers? That seems like the same logic you're applying here.
From Google, a cult is "a system of religious veneration and devotion directed toward a particular figure or object."
They venerate non-masturbation as if it were a deity able to grant them divine powers if they worship it enough. Or at least that's how it sounds like when you hear them talk about it.