Before we begin a warning, this episode will discuss intimate sexual behavior.

It turns out on the internet, a lot of people are talking about masturbation, more specifically about

abstaining from masturbation.

According to a study done by urologists in 2022, it's one of the most popular men's

health-related topics on social media.

They found the topic had a billion impressions on Tik-talk, over a million Instagram posts.

But the thing is, none of the posts the researchers found came from actual doctors.

And if you go searching for more information, you can very quickly find yourself in communities

that are rife with medical misinformation, misogynistic posts.

Communities that some researchers worry

could be recruiting grounds for extremists.

Today, I consider this, NPR's Lisa Hagen

is digging into this subculture, where it came from, what everyone should know about it.

She talks to NPR's Aisha Roscoe about what she learned about the phenomenon known as

no fat. Hey Lisa, so first for our listeners who may not be on these corners of the internet and I didn't know about this.

What is no fap?

So the word fap is an onomatopoeia spawned on the internet and it refers to the act of male masturbation.

So in general, no fap means no masturbating.

But it's complicated. There's a company called NoFAP, a Reddit forum called NoFAP.

More generally, it can refer to a whole cluster of online self-help communities

where the purpose is to abstain from masturbation and pornography.

This world also includes influencers and coaches, many of whom are charging money to help men

...