Since 2011, November has been a dark and damned month for many around the world—for those who are actually gullible enough to obey the laws of internet trends, that is. Let me cut to the chase a little bit here in order to spare you from painfully waiting around more than you have to. With the month of November also comes No Nut November, which means that there will be no nut nibbles for anybody, or at least for some—and no, it isn’t actually about avoiding the ‘pick and mix’ section.

No Nut November (NNN) is an internet challenge that came about from the #NoFap movement (a community for those who want or feel they should stop watching pornography or stop masturbating), which itself originated from the subreddit NoFap, and it involves guys and penis-havers to hold off from masturbating for the entire month of November.

Bro wrote a whole poem about #NoNutNovember and I’m weak af lmao pic.twitter.com/kYC579wAqB

— Supernova 👽🌶 (@_alikah) November 7, 2018

The drive for many participating in the challenge is to wean themselves off of their addiction to pornography, but others believe that ‘storing up’ their semen will make them more magnetic to women or more powerful. Whatever the incentive may be for ejaculation, or ‘busting a nut’ (hence the name) to not take place must be enough, because the annual event still takes place year after year, unfortunately.

The rules are simple: you musn’t have sex or masturbate. If you’ve got a hard-on, it’s tough luck chum. Surprisingly, watching porn is allowed, but why would you do that to yourself? You are allowed to have one wet dream (accidents happen), just one though. Overall, the challenge is aimed to test the limits of participants and their ability to withhold orgasming for 30 days. Is this really worth the cause, and is there no better way around it?

#NoNutNovember presents the risk (if not done so already) of branding sex and masturbation as disgracesful, which is arguably one of the roots to addiction in the firstplace. If someone feels like they must hide or become abstinent from a behaviour, shame will more likely than not be a side of it, and to live in shame is not sustainable or constructive. Thanks to social media platforms, shaming is not only present, but present publicly, especially when it comes to internet challenges that are rooted in insecurity, like NNN.

Y'all got 11 days. Give it all you got. Stand strong all throughout November soldiers. #NoNutNovember is on its way. The ones who stand still, get to #DestroyDicDecember and the rest get kissed by their dad. Choice is yours.

— Gajodhar Singh Cool (@gajodharsingh69) October 20, 2020

There are many different iterations of masturbation and orgasm abstinence, No Nut November and NoFap are just two of them, but the lines between them get blurry. Tenants of the two groups are different, aside from the basic rule that each of them follow. NoFap claims to be a sexual health platform with the goal of helping people who want to quit masturbation or avoid pornography for health reasons. NNN on the other hand focuses on a temporary challenge of not nutting (orgasming) instead of the health reasons included in NoFap.

Within online communities like NoFap and NNN, there have been connections between the far-right, racism, white nationalism, anti-semitism, and anti-masturbation or anti-porn beliefs. For example, the far-right organisation Proud Boys has a severe anti-masturbation stance. There also appears to be a large amount of involuntary celibates (incels), which is a community of men who resent women for denying them sex. They especially hate certain clothing that women wear that they consider to be part of a woman’s agenda to keep men in a perpetual state of horniness. Ridiculous and quite far fetched if you ask me.

At the end of the day, a challenge that requires celibacy from its participants is fundamentally different to Sober October or Movember, for example. One will leave you just the way you came into this world, not drunk, and the other will simply forbid you from doing exactly what brought you into this world, and will probably leave you a little sensitive (or a lot). The fact of the matter is, addictions of any kind should not be tempered with via endangering social challenges, especially those that are subject to threatening and shameful commentary.

Some people worry about #NoNutNovember while others get #nonutforever 😔

— Jvel Love (@LoveJvel) October 14, 2020

With the rise of technology and the many pornographic platforms that it brought with it, many people developed an interest in sex simulators, which are described as adult virtual and augmented reality interactive experiences or games where users can play with different characters in sexual ways. In simpler words, sex simulators are basically VR porn games—and people go crazy for them. But why is that and how big is the VR porn gaming market?

If you’ve never heard of VR porn games and other types of sex games before, it probably means you’ve never had a crush on a video game’s character. Never thought that Princess Zelda was extra cute in that white dress she wore for the first time in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild? Me neither, but as it turns out, many gamers did. To be clear here, I’m not kink-shaming, they can like whatever they want to as long as no one gets hurt.

In a way that is not so dissimilar to Virtual Mate, a virtual partner aimed at heterosexual male users that comes with a high tech fleshlight, VR porn games lets users discover a highly detailed gaming world through their Oculus Quest or another virtual reality headset and allows them to realise their own secret fantasies with whatever character they’re into.

The world of adult VR games is already wide and full of diverse options for potential players. From Femdomination, a simulation game where women are in control, to Mandy’s Room, a game where users can stay in the same room as the main character named Mandy while she plays, dances, and “gets naughty” or Besti, which is an interactive and very specific my little pony fetish VR game, it is safe to say that sex games enthusiasts can find whatever they’re looking for.

Waifu Sex Simulator is a VR porn game built-off a modified version of MocuMocuDance which lets users import and pose a wide variety of 3D models, whether to touch them or cast them into predefined animations. The game also supports custom model imports, which means players can simulate sex with any character, from Mario Kart’s Yoshi to The Legend of Zelda’s famous Princess Zelda.

Captain Hardcore is also well-known in the sex games industry. Developed by AntiZeroGames, the game tasks players with exploring the universe while also spending sexy time with the “hottest and most depraved space sluts” you can find out there. In other words, Captain Hardcore lets players customize female characters and play with them or use the “cyber-masturbatorium” to pose models in erotic scenes and watch.

While many of those sex simulators are still being worked on in order for them to be even more realistic, the industry of VR sex games is certainly one to watch. As more and more gamers feel like they can truly fulfil their sexual fantasies through their VR headsets, who knows? One day, we might all turn to sex simulators to search for new experiences too.