Guitar Porn: share (Safe For Work) pictures of your Electric Ladies
Guitar Porn: share (Safe For Work) pictures of your Electric Ladies
Another SFW community: !guitarporn@sfw.community . Whether you have a large collection or just that one special piece of gear that you love, this is the place for you to show it off.
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Is it too late to avoid perpetuating the Reddit culture of adding “Porn” to titles of Fediverse communities?
As you can see in your title and description for this post, you have to stop and reiterate every time that your community is safe for work. It’s just bad branding.
Why not:
sublimeguitars
stunningguitars
pureguitars
guitar-awe
Woah, imagine niche communities of incredible photography that all use -awe, as a suffix. And then there’s an accompanying sister community with -aww as a suffix.
Could have everything cute that features a guitar and a puppy or whatever in guitaraww. And stunning guitar gear and photography in guitarawe.
I am not a fan of that naming scheme, but it definitely predates Reddit. I remember the old Saw films being described as "torture porn".
isnt reddit older than Saw?
Maybe, but it was the marketing industry that beat that dead horse first. They killed that horse back in the 90’s & it was already pretty lumpy by the time Reddit got ahold of it in ‘05.
Doesn’t make the Reddit use any more palpable, just saying it’s been around for a bit…
that was the beginning of the change, when it was still meant pegoratively and implied the watcher was getting some sort of perverse thrill out of it. later things like 'earth porn', 'food porn', 'guitar porn' are just stupid and rely on the really unpleasant trend of using "porn" to mean anything mildly interesting
The "implied perverse thrill" seems a bit of projection on your part, and the idea of "visually appealing/stimulating images that have no context and at best provide a simulacrum of interest in the object or activity" is a very good definition of porn.
The “implied perverse thrill” seems a bit of projection on your part
You can read the critical reception of the film yourself here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saw_(film)#Critical_response
A sample of adjectives: "nasty", "nihilistic", "mean", "insinuatingly creepy", "derivative", "loathsome", and, yes, "perverse"
“visually appealing/stimulating images that have no context and at best provide a simulacrum of interest in the object or activity”
what a silly self serving definition. "porn" has a particular meaning which you can look up in the OED, Cambridge, Websters etc. Definition 3 is how it was used - with negtive connotation - for "torture porn" and (the example in MW) "the pornography of violence".
The extension of that to mudane everyday things (food, cars, guitars) and especially when the material shared typically falls well short of "sensational" is just a lazy habit that reddit picked up (and other online spaces too) that I, and clearly others in this thread, think Lemmy wouldbe better without. etto...
Yeah, it's a bit self-serving. Thing is, I could not think of other term to convey this idea as succinctly. Maybe "Fetish" would be better, but it would still carry sexual connotations.
Why does everything have to be sexualised and sensationalised? That's encouraged on Reddit, and any other profit driven social media, because they're bending over backwards to bleed you dry of engagement. It's thoroughly unpleasant.
Lemmy has a chance to be something different. BestGuitarPics is what you're actually curating. Or AwesomeGuitarPics if you want a little something extra. Jamming "Porn" on to everything just to try and stir a sense of interest is just sad.
"Best Guitar Pics" is dull and completely unimaginative. It's the "Microsoft Approach of Naming Products (TM)"; which does not allow itself to take any risks and ends up being soulless, corporate, empty. Or to use a more contemporary reference: it's the type of slop that ChatGPT would produce if someone asked "suggest a name for a community for people to share pictures of guitars".
"Best Guitar Pics"
merely an example. Be sure to let BestOfLemmy etc know..
"dull and completely unimaginative"
and your solution is to tack "Porn" on the end? oh dear
You are choosing to ignore the rationale for the name:
- visually stimulating pictures
- lacking deeper meaning
- poor substitute or connection with the actual object/activity
"Best", "Awesome", "Aww" and any other suggestions that I've heard do not convey these ideas. And to me these ideas must be expressed. If you can come up with anything that can succinctly make these points across without resorting to porn/fetish analogies, then I will gladly consider them. But if you just want me to change it because it offends your sensibilities, then I am sorry but I will simply ignore you.
I've honestly never had that much of a problem with the terminology. They're communities for posting titillating and visually stimulating pictures on a theme. Pictures of desirable things - often out of reach for us average people - that provide pleasure just by looking at them. That's pretty close to porn, no?
Maybe I've just not grown up in an environment that stigmatised porn enough to get the objection?
I don't really have a dog in this fight (never followed any communities with this suffix pattern, here or on Reddit, not because of the suffix but just because all the ones I knew of weren't about something I'd want to see. Even if they were relevant to my interests… playing piano is fun for me, looking at pictures of pianos is pretty boring for me, and this is how I feel for a lot of things I'm interested in. I don't really get desire for new equipment once I have something functional and dear goodness do I not want to instill a desire for a material object I do not need via one of these communities) but I'd guess some people have no issue with porn itself, while also having to occupy an environment whose values they don't share. One where they might want to browse the community, and someone who does have an issue might see and pick a fight/assume unpleasant things/spread rumors, or some URL blocking scheme prevents viewing the site because it has "porn" in it and it gets reported to a higher-up or something as an attempt at viewing naughty stuff instead of just regular online procrastination.
And some people are also probably exasperated, assuming (not sure if this assumption is correct or not) the naming scheme was born of someone's immaturity and now they, just wanting to look at nice guitars, have to always see that assumed-13-year-old's influence on their nice picture place. These people might be more likely to have an issue with porn but I can still imagine someone who is a-okay with porn existing and people using it, while still being annoyed with the suffix.
Could also see people exasperated about what they see as an oversexualized world, with the idea that actual pornography is fine, it's a sexual thing in a sexual context! But putting sexually-charged images in things that are not supposed to be about sex is too much, and now this innocent guitar community too!?
Very possible to take issue with the suffix without being anti-pornography.
I personally fall into "hmm, it could come off as playful and the purpose is self-indulgently nice aesthetics which porn probably has, but it could also come off as 'did a 13-year-old who thinks they're so mature and edgy for referencing sex make this title', it's a bit annoying but ultimately not my problem."
Guitars are given names, have human characteristics (voice, curves, etc.) frequently described as sexy. I think guitars and cars deserve porn sites.
There is also !carporn@sfw.community, if you want to join.
I usually share the opinion that making sexual references to everything is silly, but in the case for the communities that are based on Reddit's "SFW Network", it seems appropriate.
If you think about it, all these communities are just sharing visually stimulating images and are intended to be consumed without significant context. This is pretty much the definition of porn.
If anything, I kind like the idea of having a name in the community that reminds you that of you shouldn't be spending too much time on...