Don't Be A Creeper Archives - Paging Dr. NerdLove

So Your Friend Is Making Porn: A Guide to Not Making It Weird

May 11, 2020 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

The COVID-19 pandemic and resulting lockdown has had a number of surprising side-effects. One of them has been an explosion of social-distancing influenced horniness. This in and of itself isn’t that unexpected; Thanatos and Eros go hand in hand, after all. Many people respond to stress and the threat of death by wanting to reaffirm life — and there’re few ways that make us all feel more alive than some good ol’ bangin’.

The problem is: social distancing, a lack of testing and no vaccines means that hooking up with people is a no-go. La petite mort has an entirely too high of a risk of bring la grande mort along with it. As a result: there are scads of horny people with nowhere to go and nowhere to blow.

Not that this doesn’t stop folks from trying anyway.
(via straightwhiteboystexting)

Of course, where there’s a demand, the market will rush to match the supply. So it shouldn’t be surprising that there has been a veritable explosion of people turning to making porn while they’re in lockdown. In fact, the influx of self-produced porn has become so ubiquitous that even Queen Bay herself dropped a reference to the subscription site OnlyFans in Megan Thee Stallion’s “Savage”, giving the platform both an awareness boost and a dose of social cachet. People who’ve turned to various forms of sex work, including lewd cosplay photos, camming, and video work, run the gamut. There are folks trying to make the ends meet, experienced sex-workers changing mediums, people who’ve always had an exhibitionist streak, and folks trying to stay in the spotlight.

But regardless of why folks have turned to amateur porn, one thing remains true: discovering someone you know is naked on the Internet can make things awkward in ways you might never have expected.

When it’s your ex, it goes from “awkward” to “this all ends in fire.”

This leads to a host of questions that many people never expected to have to find answers for: what do you do when you find out that your friend, your co-worker, your friend’s sister, or your kid’s babysitter is making porn? Do you mention that you know or that you’ve seen it? And is there any way of consuming their content that isn’t inherently creepy?

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How Do I Know When I’ve Been A Creeper?

March 16, 2020 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Dear Doc,

I am really new in the world of relationships. I had a problem during these days because some friends believed that my conduct to a lady was inappropriate.

One month ago I saw the WhatsApp story of a lovely girl, who put two pictures on it. The first one was a rock band, and the second one was had the label “Let’s make love”. I am really attracted to her, so I thought that the moment was appropriate to tell her to have sex with me. After talking to her for a while, I decided to tell her my intentions. So, I said to her “lets have sex”. Unfortunately, my proposal was taken as an offense, and she blocked me from WhatsApp.

Two days ago I found her on Instagram, and I decided to apologize to her, but also to ask her if she had decided to have sex with me or not. I think I am a reasonably open minded person. I was blocked again.

This Friday a friend called me, and he said to me that I was harassing her. I think my intentions were misunderstood because I asked her both times if she agrees or disagrees. I was going to accept her response if she said no because I believe that her body is hers, and she has the final decision on whether she wants to make it out with a person or not.

Do you think that my attitude was inappropriate at all?

Best

Unsure And Unready

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Why Can’t He Stop Worrying About Being A Creeper?

March 9, 2020 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Hey Doc,

Whenever I see women I’m attracted to, I often get in my head. Like, I start to think about how I could talk to her, but often, there’s some reason I shouldn’t, like she’s talking to someone else. And that gets me in my head to the point that even if something happens to make talking to her more ideal, I’m too in my head to talk to her.

The dominant cultural narrative seems to be “Just because she doesn’t say no, doesn’t mean she doesn’t mean it, because women are socialized to not say no, and because they don’t know how you’ll react to their rejection. Also, your intentions don’t matter, if she feels uncomfortable, it’s all your fault, and you are in the wrong, so you can’t determine specific actions that are wrong, it just depends on how she feels about it. Also, because you as a man have never lived in a woman’s shoes for a lifetime, you will never truly understand what it’s like, so the approach must also take into account this thing you can’t understand. Despite all of this, men are STILL expected to initiate and escalate.” When people talk about men being creepy or women being bombarded with approaches, there seems to be zero distinction between irritating and harmful given. And all of that scares me so much.

So, what do I do? I know women want to date and have sex, but all of this just puts me so much into my head.

Creepers Anonymous

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I Paid My Friends For Nude Photos. Does That Make Me Creepy?

January 3, 2020 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

What’s up, doc?

I’m a regular reader of your column, and while we may not agree on everything, I value the genuine empathy you have for your audience and thank you for taking my message.

I’m a 26 year old virgin for a number of reasons: a conservative upbringing, delayed interest in the opposite sex, body image issues to name a few. Despite my issues with women, I have strong relationships with my family, several close friends, and a fascinating job on Wall Street where I feel highly valued by my superiors and colleagues.

While I initially started college far from home and generally had the “traditional college experience” my freshman year, after a year, complications relating to homesickness, an ill (but long since recovered) relative and some financial concerns resulted in me transferring to a state university where I commuted from home and worked about 30 hours a week on top of that. I didn’t get socially involved at my new school, aside from a couple networking clubs relating to my major/career path.

Since graduating college, I’ve dealt with the same increased isolation typical of most people my age. Work keeps me fairly busy (typically 50-60 hours per week in addition to my commute back home) and my friends have largely scattered across the country and around the world. I’m by no means unique in this regard.

About two years ago, I met a young woman (let’s call her Peach) through a video game discussion forum and we initially formed a casual virtual friendship through Twitter and Snapchat. Our chats were platonic at first, about common interests including gaming, music and politics; over time, she virtually introduced me to one of her close IRL friends (let’s call her Zelda) and I started talking to both of them. While I find both of them attractive and intelligent, I know they live on the other side of the country, so nothing would realistically happen with either. Not to mention, both are about 4 years younger than me.

A little over a year ago, I was home alone late on a Friday night when I messaged Zelda randomly. In our conversation, she complained about the struggle of being a broke college student during the holiday season, when I got the nefarious idea that maybe I could help her out. I don’t think she expected me to proposition her that way, but I offered her money to sext and trade pictures with me and she agreed. I figured that word would get out to Peach sooner rather than later, so I ended up making her the same offer.

Since then, in addition to our regular conversations, I typically sext with both of them (individually) about once a month, and while it’s surely not money I can’t afford to lose, I’ve spent several hundred dollars on this over the past year.

I’m not under any delusions that anything would come out of this other than me blowing off steam. Both of them ask me for advice about guys, and I know that they’re both actively dating and hooking up (albeit with some social awkwardness) at their respective colleges. They’ve been up front with me that they’re in this primarily for the financial incentive. They’ve told me there would be no hard feelings if I was to stop, although I would probably begin to break contact with them in order to move forward.

I know within my heart that I need to stop this, that it goes against the values I wish to have, and I feel guilty as hell for even starting. I feel entitled and exploitative; moreover, I’m afraid that if I should ever find myself become an A-list name for any reason, even with my current track record, I’m on the fast track to being #MeTooed. Further, since we all know one another’s names and whatever details we share via Twitter, it’s possible that either of them (if they were so inclined) could hold this over my head.

At the same time, I attribute my inexperience as a contributing factor to this. While I know I shouldn’t feel this way and that it’s antiquated, like most adult virgins, I realize I subconsciously feel like less of a man until I prove that I can attract a woman. Although I don’t generally feel lonely in my regular life – I keep myself busy with work, friends, the gym, movies, volunteering and the like – I couldn’t shake the late night romantic loneliness and horniness, so I kept going back to the well in order to somewhat try and fill the void.

It’s recently dawned on me that Peach and Zelda probably think I’m pathetic or laugh at me behind my back, and I’m quickly finding myself able to divorce the fantasies from the reality of my situation. More importantly, I’m afraid that they only agreed to do this because I made them nervous, uncomfortable, etc and somehow creep them out. I would rather not make any woman scared in my presence going forward.

This finally brings me to my question: assuming I’m able to break this habit and not relapse or try it again with another woman, how do I move forward? Can I really just move on with my life and pretend this never happened with women I meet in the future? If I confess this to someone I date in the future, I assume she’d take off running, that I’d be branded a pathetic creep, or worse yet, predatory. I’m afraid to even bring this up with friends or parents, let alone someone I know less intimately.

When I brought this up with Peach and Zelda, they suggested I forgive myself and just learn from it which doesn’t help me much from a tangible standpoint. I’ve considered volunteering with a women’s shelter or the like in the future, but I feel people would assume I’m there for the wrong reasons.

I realize I’m rambling here, but my ultimate question is how do I repent? Do I even deserve another shot at dating? If so, how long should I wait?

Thanks for all you do,
New Decade, New Me

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Ask Dr. NerdLove: How Do I Apologize For Being A Creeper?

November 25, 2019 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Hello Doc,

Owing to my reflection on some recent events in my own life within the last week or so, it occurred to me that I may have accidentally creeped someone out a bit over time, and now may be facing some social consequences for it, to say nothing of feeling like an idiot.

For background information, the someone is a young lady who I have had an off and on fancy for, whom I happen to have shared a musical ensemble with for about a year and a half or so. She seems fairly shy and fairly hard to read, which has proven a bad combination with my social ignorance: she has shown interest off and on, e.g., randomly bothering me or asking what I am doing, even fairly recently, but I have not acted on her signals in a timely way. Consequently, our relationship has mostly consisted of occasional brief chats and awkward eye contact across the room, other than the occasional outings with the other ensemble members.

In the past month or two, though, I felt stronger feelings for her and, in what I now rather feel was a mistake, attempted to hang around with her more around campus as a puppy might. On top of that, in what I now know and believe to have been a terribly stupid way to try to signal my interest, I took to seeking more eye contact with her. I think this fawning may have backfired rather badly. I was more or less politely signaled to piss off with a round of “I don’t know where we’re goings” to what seemed to be a group meeting a few weeks ago. While there may have been other reasons, I now suspect that it was probably not unrelated to making her or others uncomfortable by my nonverbal social stupidity.

Fast forward to this week, more or less. Things seemed a bit better, and I was tired of my not making my intentions relatively clear, so I asked her by text to coffee with a firm option of Wednesday or Friday. After a notable delay, she said she was very busy and was not sure that she could manage anything. Given everything else, and my understanding that she had just quit her job, I figured she was just letting me down gently. However, things have been appreciably more awkward since, as may be expected. The main differences I have noticed with her is that she is now often blushing when I am around, but she also seems more averse to contact in general, though she does not present with obviously defensive body language or anything like that, and does seem to glance at me every now and then. I can’t help but wonder if she is actually trying to get my eye contact or is trying to check if I am looking at her. Feeling like I cannot win, I have tried to ignore her and give her space since that exchange, out of my fear of having creeped her out, but I find it hard to completely ignore her as she still confuses me. Now I worry that she was just trying to spare my feelings, and my reaction to that is sending the wrong message of my being angry with or otherwise insulted by her: this is on top of my concerns that I have become the “weird guy” in the group for the time being, which makes it difficult to assess how involved I should be with anyone for the moment.

So the rub of it is this: I would like for things to at least be cordial, if not amicable, between us and her social circle, as a lot of them are my fellow musicians. I believe I accidentally did some socially stupid things and may now be viewed with some suspicion or other form of disdain. I am tempted to apologize to her for having creeped her out over the last few weeks, but I am not even completely sure if I have offended her, and am worried that apologizing for what could be nothing could make me appear to be an insecure and paranoid person, which I admittedly am to a degree. Asking her if I have bothered her seems like an even worse idea. However, I also rather naturally would prefer to not be a pariah in the group on account of all of this, and would like to correct things as smoothly as possible.

Any and all advice would be appreciated.

Did I Err?

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