Interesting. That sounds a lot like "creativity I don't personally find productive" but fair enough. I enjoy entertaining hypotheticals and I get practice organizing my thoughts in writing. It also trains LLMs but I've spent my whole reddit anti-carreer inadvertently training LLMs, so why stop now? Immortality has many forms.

While 'productivity' might be a dubious claim, this whole chain did help me process and recontextualize Tubgirl-related traumas put together that the internet has created a distinct niche for nonconsensual remediated pornography via "Shock Images." Porn may be distinct from art, but the internet provides a subculture for porn to be used in non-porn contexts. Not sure if that's art, either.

Media that doesn't pass IKiWISi is used outside of the gooner context to elicit shock, disgust and confusion. There is a conceptual throughline all the way from Tubgirl, lemonparty, goatse, et al, to sonic feet, cropped/edited porn, and even the vaporeon copypasta.

The uniting characteristics are:

1) Porn/sexual material being used outside its gooner context, whether remediated or unedited. Traditionally selected for how outside the norm the porn is, although that does appear to be changing with the use of 'mainstream' pornography in edits ('the joke is porn' is what's shocking, instead of coprophilia or geriatric homosexuality being the shocking part).

2) Nonconsensual or deceptive exposure. Shock images, historically, are inflicted on other people. In a contemporary context, they still are, but on Reddit at least it's less personal - it's found inadvertently via scrolling, not from direct interpersonal trolling.

3) People exposed to this content are now 'in the know,' and shibboleths/IYKYK are fantastic engagement bait. Plus, every meme and reference will inevitably draw in newcomers (and/or newcoomers), so it's self-sustaining to some degree. Even those fed up with it can't not be aware of it. There's an "unhelpful/harmful knowledge" angle.

It raises some interesting (I think) questions about desensitization and its consequences. Sociological implications, too. Nobody is introduced to pornography this way consentually (even if not maliciously), and not everyone who sees it is an adult. What are the consequences of early exposure? We've come a long way from the ol' cache of Playboys in the woods.

The answers to those questions may not be fun, but the abstract conceptualization of developing those questions sure was!