This is the source of 95 percent of my “Oh, good grief” concerning that thread:
http://boardstest.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=10165180&postcount=18
Ewwwwwwwwwwwwww. (I dislike that the poster feels the need to say the attention is arousing him, let alone “terribly” so. I don’t need to know that about anyone.)
No, you’re not. If it were a thread posting and critiquing fine-art nudes of themselves, I’d happily participate (I can go on about composition and light vs. shadow forever). But if I wanted to see dick shots I would be at ALT dot com.
WhyNot’s is the kind of art photo I’m talking about… contrast is a bit flat but I like the composition. The rest… well, some of 'em are asking for feedback but the tone makes me doubt they’re asking for artistic critique.
I like discussing photography, including nudes, just fine, but if you’re gonna show me your hard-on you’ll have to give me a compelling reason to care. It strikes me as attention whoring, and not the good kind. I wouldn’t ask for the thread to be closed either – I just won’t participate – but I find the tone of the thread kind of disappointing.
Well, really disappointing. I have some nude self-portraits (somewhere… I’d have to go digging), but I wouldn’t bother posting them because I don’t think anyone in that thread would take them seriously. Sigh.
On preview:
Yeah, again, more an alt dot com moment than an SDMB one.
Kaio is definitely better at expressing my own thoughts than I am.
If people were posting artistic shots of nudity, that’s one thing. Still a bit weird to me, I’d still keep photos like that of myself if they existed private, but there is something to discuss there. Composition, angles, lighting, all that. Not just “how big is his dick,” “how hairy are his balls,” “what do her nipples look like?” And I don’t want to be privy to any of that information about you people.
But with the possible exception of the pic WhyNot posted that Kaio mentioned (which I haven’t seen), it sounds more like people are posting dick snapshots and the like. The only reasons I can think for posting stuff like that is:
I like people looking at my dick/breasts/etc
It gets me off to know people are looking at my dick/breasts/etc
I like the attention I get because I posted my dick/breasts/etc
And that is attention whoring. This board has always prided itself on being “better than the others out there” and fighting ignorance, balancing intelligent, intense discussions with goofy threads and silly arguments. It’s never been the kind of place to show off your swimsuit areas to show off or get off.
I call dibs on this as my new username.
I read the thread.
I didn’t look.
The only reason I didn’t look is because both the (nude) pictures were of males, which doesn’t do much for me.
No, I don’t find it creepy at all. The SDMB is a place to get questions answered and to promote the free exchange of thoughts, expressions, ideas, and so on- and part of that is linking to stuff outside the site- articles, images, videos, and so on.
I don’t see why it should be any different when the external content being promoted/discussed/displayed is a shot of another Doper in the buff.
Would it be creepy if I posted a link to a page of my poetry? (That is, of course, a hypothetical question, because I fucking hate poetry.) For some people, that might be a more intimate sharing than posting video of their tits.
Personally, I don’t find the naked human form “special” or “private” or any of that nonsense. I don’t make an effort to show off my body, but I don’t make a particular effort to hide it beyond the point at which I’d be arrested.
It’s just skin. If you’ve seen my forearm, what difference does it make if you see my nipple too?
ETA:
You can’t have it. You haven’t got titties, Doper or otherwise.
Double ETA: I suppose this means you won’t be posting to that thread, then, myskepticsight? 
I was just C&Ping, but thanks:)
No, I won’t be posting to the thread. Only my boyfriend gets to see these ass n’titties.
Had someone asked you to?
Really Not All That Bright made a crack about me not posting to the thread, so I made a crack back…
I don’t find it creepy. It’s just naked bodies (and not many of them) - as usual, if you don’t like it, don’t look or participate.
Kaio, part of what makes the board what we want it to be is participation. If you want to participate in the thread in a specific way, do so and see if anyone else joins you. I don’t think artistic, tasteful nudes in a naked Doper thread would be out of place or out of line.
You’re welcome, my friend.
Hey, thanks! It was a snapshot, btw, from a rather crappy digital camera. IANAPhotographer, nor was the person taking it. But I’ll take credit for the “composition”, such as it is, since I cropped it out of a bigger photo including two of my friends who were also nude!
But I agree with you. I’d love to see more arty nudes - the “here’s my dick!” genre does very little for me. Mostly I posted to that thread because I was scared to, and I went away and thought about why I was scared to and decided to get over myself. Face my fear, and all that.
Words fail me. I knew there was a reason I’d given up posting on the SDMB besides pay to post.
What does this have to do with fighting ignorance? When I saw a NSFW Picture Thread, I expected something original and creative. I can find pix of idiots sporting woodies all over the Internet.
Grow up DocCthode. Get your sexuality under control.
It’s not intended to be an advertisement. More like expressing a state of mind.
But you’re right…I don’t want to mislead people. But how do you know I don’t have manboobs?
Please spare us the fighting ignorance horseshit, huh? Half of the content on this board has nothing to do with fighting ignorance. It’s a damned tagline, not a way of life.
Seriously? Yes it’s all skin, but surely you can understand how there’s a big difference, at least for most people.
As for my views, I do think it’s mostly attention whoring, but I really have no ground to criticize. I might post a pic later, although I don’t think I’ll be in ‘full bloom.’ We’ll see.
As for the thread’s belonging on these forums, I think forums are what people make of them. I like the thread being here and think it helps dispel silly societal prudishness on nudity.
The only thing that worries me is the pictures being saved by somebody and then being used inappropriately at some later date. No way around that I guess.
I appreciate the thought, but a huge part of nude art to me is vulnerability. I rarely do self-portraits to begin with, and nude ones especially represent a catharsis and a means of sharing myself with (and hopefully, being understood by) the world.
For example, one of the nudes I was thinking about was shot while I was going through chemo. I had just given in to the fact that there was no saving my hair. It was taken a couple days before I shaved off what little was left.
If I drop that into an “oooh, titties” thread, am I going to get artistic critique, or more “oooh, titties”?
I could handle something like “the backlighting really doesn’t work for this.” I couldn’t handle cracks about how I look naked.
Obviously putting something like that out there risks a certain amount of emotional exposure regardless. But putting it out there in a thread with that kind of tone strikes me as tempting fate to an extremely foolish level.
Sadly, I wouldn’t even feel comfortable starting a separate thread for it at this point.
Half? Ha ha ha ha ha.
There are all kinds of way to attention whore. You don’t think the threads about “When did you realize how brilliant you are?” or “How much money do you make?” or anything like that is attention whoring? Is the problem that it is a physical thing?