So there I was, minding my own fucking business in a freezing NC home, when I dared to get on Twitter. I know, off to a bad start already. But Twitter, as a content creator and an American, is part of my morning routine. Coffee can’t compare to the “have we started WW3 yet?” roulette. Plus, given my absolutely ridiculous morning wood? Twitter is the fastest way to solve several needs.
So I’m on twitter. Dick on hard. And would you believe what I saw?
Fucking
Hand
Holding.
I know, right? Can you believe they just LET that shit appear online? Infuriated and engorged, I did what only came natural. Meaning I grumbled, swung my feet over the bed and went to get coffee. But the horrendous sight of that absolute gods-damned degeneracy, it stuck with me. Ghostly images of conjoined hands flickered behind my lids like lovers. And god, you just know they cared about one another. Ew. I bet they even look each other in the eyes when they fuck.
Today, I’d like to discuss turning intimacy into a meme-and how that’s actually a beautiful thing. Let’s begin.
The Science of Symbols
When you really think about it, symbols are inherently meaningless.
No really. Like we discussed in our masculinity article, symbols by themselves have zero power. The sign on the bathroom can no more command you than your bladder allows. A tag that says “for her” doesn’t mean shit if your hips look great in it. Symbols hold only the authority that we let them-which is what makes memes so incredible in the communication field.
Memes-be they an image, words or something else-have an immediate psychological effect. You get the joke right away because they’re a low-barrier, normally language agnostic way to convey a concept. Memes can also be nuanced and “high tier” memes which last literal decades, or as disposable as the in-culture that created them. As such, memes are brilliant litmus tests for the society that makes them. Consumed en masse or by degrees, it’s an excellent way to slow-roll yourself into something new.
I’m not surprised at all that porn and kink have memes. It would completely fly in the face of absolutely all known communication science if we didn’t have them. What’s more surprising, to an outsider at least, is the way in which intimacy seems to be played as a distant, alien and foreign concept. We play love and affection for depressive jokes about degeneracy. To anyone in, it’s hilarious. But to those out, it’s curious. Not startling or odd-but curious. Intriguing in the sense that intimacy is a vital part of human sexuality for the majority.
What then does the litmus test say for kink?
Big Tiddy Goth Mom Hand Holding
If we play intimacy for a joke, does that mean kink culture thinks of it as such?
Absolutely fucking not.
I know that, you know that. Kink might have it’s problems, but to assume even for a second that memes are a true reflection of community opinion on something like human as empathy is dumb. However, it does shed some light not just on community opinion-but species wide opinion.
Why play caring and love for a joke at all?
There’s thousands of essays, poems, stage plays, sagas, sonnets, songs and games that contemplate that answer. I don’t think a single one of them is 100% right-love is too ubiquitous and slippery a concept. That’s something beyond the scope of this entry. If we keep our focus centered on kink-culture memes specifically, I believe it’s dissonance and medium disparity caused by simple assumed escalation. It’s a big god-damn giant ball of misunderstanding.
Kink, when experienced in a healthy fashion, is already “intimate” space for people, often in a totally unexpected way. Regardless of if you’re into diapers, bimboism/himboism, BDSM or more-you’re usually here because someone you trusted wanted to share with you. Someone took the time to open themselves to you, and you they. You might not have expected to find love with a 12 inch horse cock dildo in your ass-but that doesn’t make the kiss your partner gives you any less such. Just as elsewhere in love and intimacy, finding “the next step” is a constant. As your relationship grows, so too does what you’re willing to try.
The irony here is, kink and intimacy follow the same circular pattern. Acceleration and escalation lead to trying new things before ultimately returning to a baseline. Sometimes people wonder if this is a sign that the relationship is doing well-and it absolutely is. While it’s important to be open and receptive to wants and needs, it’s that baseline that is ultimately a determination of health. You can fuck your partner raw with their moans echoing in the room-but if your best moments are spent together snuggled up? That’s a good thing.
Which brings us back to memes in kink, and the joking nature in which we discuss the small, intimate moments of human warmth. If memes are a litmus test for a species, how does the macro apply to the micro?
Quite seriously, with something I myself have experienced firsthand here and elsewhere.
The Deep Dark, Hidden In The Back Of The Sock Drawer Under Lock And Key Secret of Kink
Over the past four years, I have performed literal days worth of audio. I’ve wrote thousands of pages of stories, articles and twitter threads. I came for a lot of people on camera. But above all else?
Kink brought me closer to people. It made me friends, lovers and gave me a community that I didn’t have before.
I often tell people Splathouse started as a joke (and it did). But Splathouse also started during a major depressive period in my life. A relationship I’d been in was starting to fall apart. I hadn’t spoken to any of my IRL friends in years. Socializing in meat space was out of the question, as I work ridiculous hours. This coupled with my social anxiety made being around people extremely difficult for me. It’s still something I’m coming to terms with, even now. So, being a kinky fucker, I started Splathouse. To give me something to do, to focus on.
I’m here now with a support network that had the empathy to empower me to be a better person. I’ve people-often patrons, customers of mine-who reached out to me with a warmth and love that they didn’t have to give. And that meme, about hand holding and “hugging your homies”? There’s a grain of truth to it. The real secret of kink, the one nobody realizes until we’re here, is that those small isolated things are the biggest nuts of all. I want to hug you. I want to hold your hand, and tell you I love you. I want to tell you all the ways you’ve touched my life and meant something to me. In being perverts, we found a path to allow ourselves-on our terms-to experience something we may otherwise never have got.
That’s why hand holding, hugging, snuggling and more are such colossal memes in the community.
It’s the one kink we all share:
Love.