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.
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”.
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 ™”; 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”.
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?
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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…
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 wish we could leave behind this stupid naming scheme.
@rgullis@communick.news I think something is wrong with your link in the OP. The period after “community” is included, which screws the redirect (at least on Sync).
Thank you! Fixed now.
“guitar porn”
can we not?
