11 Comments
User's avatar
Anonymous Dude's avatar

Neckbeard from the other question. I am posting here because I think it may help answer the question (and support your thesis).

Yeah, I can confirm. I had a bunch of friends who were, and existed at the periphery of a few kink scenes for a while. Lots of Xennial geeks into polyamory, BDSM, and other stuff. It gets to the point there's actually jokes about it in those scenes--I think I've seen 'polyamory is when you get your boyfriends together to play D&D' somewhere on Twitter. I think there's a bunch of things:

1. All the rules in kink and polyamory help with people who aren't great at reading facial expressions and body language.

2. They're more likely to learn about this stuff from reading a book, and those will list all possibilities.

3. It's just another role-playing game, after all. Is it that big a leap from 'fighter' and 'cleric' to 'master and servant'?

4. After a while all these subcultures play into each other and you have Star Wars geeks learning about sex from their kinkster friends and so on. There's even a paper you can find somewhere with someone trying to do a principal component analysis on which type of geeks cluster together.

5. This sounds meanspirited, but I'll say it as it may be a useful avenue of investigation: if your partner isn't that attractive, kink etc. may be a useful way to put them 'over the top' enough to find them attractive. I.E. if you're both attractive, you might not need the additional stimulus of kink to make sex possible, but if you're both nerds, well...

Expand full comment
CJ's avatar

I had a similar trajectory in that I had sex in high school, but was more of a nerd at heart and could dip in and out of my normie (but not hot or popular) friend groups and my nerdy friend groups. In college, I hung out with a nerdy friend group and over the course of 4 years I went from being like one of 3 people who had sex in high school to one of 3 people who didn't talk about kink or bdsm stuff on the reg. Same thing with drinking too.

Expand full comment
Lirpa Strike's avatar

Right after the end of my 11th grade year, I went with a bunch of friends to this hidden beach where teenagers and other hippie-esque people would go to have bonfires and drink and smoke weed and all that typical stuff. We went there to burn old school work (a tradition at the time) and that's when I very suddenly learned it was also an unofficial nude beach. And there were all these nerds from high school just sitting naked af around the fire, totally comfortably, next to the popular kids, who were mostly not at all naked.

Anyway! This tracks 100% with my observation and experience, lol

Expand full comment
Boyd Ellison's avatar

I’ve been to a fairly regular number of dungeon parties over the past year or so, and I’d also add that most of the fun experiences have been with people who are just as nerdy/geeky about kink as they are about their other special interests. You just end up in deep discussions about the best rope ties for [activity/pose/goal] instead of comic books, or people doing show & tell circles for all their fun impact toys instead of their fandom figurines. Sometimes one even turns into the other! I think the special-interest-knowledge level of excitement is there for a lot of people besides stereotypically “geeky” folks, we just don’t think about it the same way when it’s about gym lifts/fashion houses/sports stats/etc.

Expand full comment
E2's avatar

It's not just/so much a matter of late blooming followed by release. There's matters of creativity and taste, of being interested and willing to explore what you really like, without so much regard for whether others think it strange.

Expand full comment
lg campbell's avatar

I remember as a young teenager often being courted for threesomes or bdsm relationships by nerds or need couples from 17-35... I do not think nerds are having the best sex, merely the sex which is most postable to reddit.

Expand full comment
Meaty_Chud's avatar

The nerds must find each other first though, that is the challenge!

Expand full comment
Crimson's avatar

The pornification of the nerds is a tragedy for them, and us. Why does video game and anime culture have the dark, sexist edge they do? They were the nicest kids! Now they creep me out. OMG I am so grateful I grew up on board games in the 80s. I remember the og nerds man. I dunno about this new breed.

Expand full comment
Gortin Shyver's avatar

The nerd-eGirl-camgirl-pornstar pipeline.

Expand full comment
John Lawrence's avatar

Dear God, please, let that poor cat get the help it must surely need after that horrific experience!

Expand full comment