More often than not, when people watch porn, they’re doing one thing: Masturbating. And yet, rarely does porn ever break the fourth wall and acknowledge that fact. Instead, it’s largely a voyeuristic experience in which the viewer either lusts over the visuals before them or imagines themselves in the actor’s place. But with increasing popularity, there is a porn genre that up-ends this dynamic entirely.
With porn “challenge” videos, the consumer is asked to interface with the content according to a set of demands, such as following a specific pace, imagining a certain scenario, or trying to stave off completion until a certain point. What makes it a challenge, of course, is that neither the body nor the brain is guaranteed to cooperate, and your willpower or biological urges may decide to fail you. Win or lose, however, you’re offered a sense of participation that traditional porn viewing doesn’t always provide.
While the various kinks and niches of “challenge” videos can encapsulate just about any sexual interest, the challenge itself is usually centered most simply on either orgasming or not. “Try not to cum” challenge videos are among the biggest in the field, in which the viewer is typically presented with a heavy dose of visual stimuli or encouraged to test their bodily limits. Conversely, videos in which the viewer is encouraged to orgasm quickly are prevalent, too.
“I’d say this content is also my favorite since it’s interactive in a way other pornography is not,” says Daniel, 30, a fan of porn that involves JOI, or jerk-off instructions, in which the creator specifically tells the viewer how they should masturbate. “You are an active participant in a way that passive viewing of traditional porn cannot achieve. Part of it is about giving up a bit of control. I like being confined to the rules of the challenge—only stroke in a certain way, or follow a sort of stop-and-go pattern.”
Much of this content is made by individual creators who make videos independently from their homes. As Daniel explains, part of the appeal is that it offers a sense of personal connection with the model, who provides the sense that she is telling you directly what she wants you to do. Even if it’s just a recorded video, there is still a stronger sense that she is interacting with you as a viewer.
For Daniel, his preference for JOI is tied to an interest in female domination. Part of what’s fun about these videos for him is that he is explicitly being told what to do by a woman, and then digitally “punished” for disobeying. One of his favorite creators in the genre is Eva de Vil, who sells clips on sites like ManyVids and Clips4Sale, where independent performers can distribute their content. Some of her videos include a financial domination cash game, in which she instructs viewers to send her money according to the denomination she pulls out of a stack of bills, JOI for “curing” premature ejaculation, and one that culminates in her instructing viewers to eat their own ejaculate mixed with hot sauce.
“I think challenges are particularly irresistible to viewers,” says de Vil. “Jerking off becomes a skill, not just a degenerate pass time, that can be measured, improved, and rewarded. The challenge is also a form of denial. It fetishizes and emphasizes the resistance or the urgency of the orgasm, which makes it more arousing than just cumming whenever you feel like it.”
This dynamic is exactly why fans like Daniel turn to creators like de Vil. “There’s a sort of thrill in winning the challenge as well and being ‘rewarded’ with a full orgasm,” says Daniel. “That said, failing the challenge and orgasming too early can also be a thrill, like the model is so arousing you just lose control. Often a model/domme will say if you fail the challenge you have to do some sort of task or extra payment, so losing the challenge despite [knowing] you ‘have to’ do something in exchange is a thrill in itself.”
Eva speculates that much of why people derive this thrill from porn challenges is similar to the sense of accomplishment many experience from BDSM as a whole. “On a subconscious level, I think it speaks to the voice in your head that says ‘Am I good enough?’ and presents a simple way to say ‘Yes, I am,’” she says. “I achieved something. I passed the test. The idea of a beautiful woman being impressed by how well you can jerk off is a gratifying male fantasy.”
Not all challenge viewers are in it to be dominated, however. Instead, what some viewers enjoy is porn that feels as though it’s been gamified. Cock Hero, a spin on the game Guitar Hero in name, is one popular rendition of this. Rather than being told when to press buttons on a guitar as in the original game, the viewer is told exactly when to stroke via animations on the screen beneath the porn. Sometimes, a metronome tick is incorporated to signal the pace the viewer should masturbate. Milovana, a website compiling thousands of user-made “games,” some of which offer varying degrees of difficulty, is among the most popular websites for porn of this format.
But even these can have an element of domination to them, too. As Richard, 39, tells me, he enjoys these “try not to cum” compilations put together by fellow viewers because he feels they give him a lack of control in a unique way. “Normally power exchange requires another person to exchange with, but this is maybe the rare example of control being exerted without another person present,” he says. “It definitely feels more collaborative in a weird way, because they have given me a goal and I’ve given them my participation in it.”
It’s possible to draw this sense of collaboration to broader porn-related challenges like “No Nut November,” too. In various subreddits, participating in No Nut November offers the opportunity to feel a sense of community and shared purpose. r/NoNutNovember has over 110,000 members, many of whom are active throughout the year for camaraderie over simply not masturbating for a specific month. As the description for the subreddit explains, some are just in it for the memes, while others do it with the goal of self-improvement in mind. Broadly, though, No Nut November is about shifting one’s relationship with how they masturbate.
With that in mind, this and similar abstinence challenges are ultimately not all too different from the porn genre. With both, one becomes not just a person who masturbates, but an active participant in their own habits and consumption. Even among those who enjoy the challenges for the domination they provide, there remains a degree of self-control and lack of passivity that contrasts with traditional porn. Rather than just watching porn, challenge videos offer the chance to actually interact with it—making it an experience unto itself.