No Offense, But I Prefer Regular Porn Over Gore Porn Even If the Regular Porn Has Minotaurs or Whatever In It
thought digest, 01.27.2026
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It’s been awhile since I’ve sent a proper “thought digest.” If you’re new here, a thought digest is exactly what it sounds like: a loosely curated set of observations, more like a list of shower thoughts than a fully fleshed-out essay.
GORE PORN … I MEAN “SPLATTERPUNK”
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People talk a lot of shit about the spread of TikTok erotica, but I think a parallel genre has escaped similar scrutiny: what’s often called “extreme horror” or “gore,” sometimes grouped under the older label “splatterpunk.” After seeing a torrent of TikToks about “the most disturbing books ever,” I decided to read some of the titles most frequently recommended.
These books circulate primarily through “BookTok,” the corner of TikTok where users recommend novels to one another. In this ecosystem, a book’s success is often measured less by its themes or craft than by the intensity of the reader’s reaction. The promise is not enjoyment, exactly, but damage: that a book will “traumatize,” “ruin,” or permanently alter the person who reads it. The more extreme the reaction video, the more the algorithm rewards it. This creates a strong incentive to seek out and promote material that is maximally upsetting, regardless of whether it is coherent, meaningful, or even readable.
The two biggest offenders were Playground (2022) and Distorted Metamorphosis (2025). For a long time, I had been mentally comparing books like these to Lucifer Valentine films without having actually read them. (Valentine is a shock-horror filmmaker best known for titles like Slaughtered Vomit Dolls, work that exists almost entirely to provoke revulsion.)
The goal is not narrative, atmosphere, or even fear so much as endurance. But after reading these novels, that comparison no longer feels quite right. That’s who these authors want to be – sure – that’s not who they are.
Whereas Lucifer Valentine appears to be — and I don’t say this casually — a genuinely disturbed individual, as I suspect many creators in that cinematic niche are, there is something notably bloodless about these books. They feel less like expressions of obsession or compulsion and more like products assembled to satisfy an algorithm.
I’m not going to pretend the imagery itself isn’t disturbing. It is. But the books have a strange quality: they don’t dramatize violence so much as point at it. Nothing really happens. They function less as novels than as catalogs. They’re strangely indexical. In other words, they’re lists of horrible things, not stories about horrible things.
It reminds me of a kind of niche phenomenon that I’m pretty sure only I’m annoyed by. There are all these podcast descriptions that promise deep engagement with a long list of fascinating and obscure subjects but when you actually watch or listen to them, the episode itself is a meandering interview in which those topics are mentioned briefly and then dropped. Yes, technically, certain acts are depicted on the page of a TikTok-famous splatterpunk novel. But that doesn’t mean the book is about them. Typically, it isn’t about anything!
I can’t even describe this as transgression for its own sake. They lack even the commitment of edgelordism, which at least implies a point of view. What remains is a sequence of images, assembled without even a lick of interiority. I mean, to what end? Are they fun to write? They’re not in any way fun to read. These books aren’t scary in the way successful horror — or more specifically, gore — should be. Ditto to romantasy, frankly: I doubt they’re actually erotic if your imagination isn’t doing a lot of work.
More broadly, we talk a great deal about the escalation of pornography, but far less about the escalation of violence. I increasingly suspect the latter poses the deeper cultural problem. Gun to my head, I’d rather live in a world oversaturated with porn than gore.
You see it everywhere. Several years ago, I noticed that I was encountering more and more news stories about horrific crimes committed against infants, specifically. I remember wondering whether this kind of violence was actually increasing, or whether we were simply consuming it differently. I can remember when a case like that of Peter Scully — an Australian man convicted of operating a pay-per-view child abuse ring, widely considered one of the most extreme criminals in modern history — was treated not only as exceptional but genuinely disturbing. The story always came wrapped in content warnings and a profound sense of evil. Now, you can scroll past dozens of headlines in a single day that may not reach that same extremity, but aren’t exactly benign either.
THE RETURN OF STORYTELLING AND THE LEVIATHAN
In the category of “we’re returning to a more medieval state of mind” (or “retrieving the medieval,” if you’re a McLuhanite) news — a framing I’m somewhat skeptical of, if only because its sudden ubiquity suggests the shift itself likely occurred years, if not decades, ago — I’ve noticed an uptick in two related phenomena. One I’ve written about before; the other I haven’t.
The first is a return of storytelling.
I don’t mean “storytelling” in the sense that #TechTwitter uses it. I’m not talking about brand narratives or strategic authenticity. I mean this literally. People are telling each other stories again, in the old-fashioned sense.
It began with YouTube “storytimes,” videos where people recount dramatic personal experiences, often while performing some parallel activity like doing their makeup. It continued with channels dedicated to reading Reddit posts from subreddits like /r/LetsNotMeet or Am I the Asshole? out loud. But even more recently, I’ve noticed a surge of people telling campfire-style ghost stories across platforms. These are real stories: that is, with beginnings, middles, and ends.
What makes this trend especially striking to me is that it’s coinciding with a visible decline in narrative craft in media forms that once excelled at it, like film and television. Amateurs are becoming more adept at narrative structure; professionals are becoming less so. Movies are short-form video stitched together and native short-form videos are campfires.
The second trend is the return of the cryptid, or maybe more accurately, of physically-manifesting paranormal entities.
Cryptids — creatures like Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster — never fully disappeared. But they now appear to have entered the mainstream, just like conspiracy theories did several years ago.
It’s not really rare or niche to see people speaking quite seriously about mimics, skinwalkers, wendigos, or, more recently, “the Leviathan,” a massive sea creature that became the subject of renewed online interest in the wake of the Great Arctic Blast.
Another interesting data point here: this resurgence also is happening alongside with a growing fatigue around UAPs/UFOs. It took me a while to realize this, but I don’t think this necessarily signals disbelief. I think UFOs have just been absorbed into the background assumptions of reality. What reads as apathy is often just a shrug: of course aliens are real. We been knew!
CEO OF THE POST-RIGHT
I said this in the last newsletter, but I’m gonna say it again. We’re in the era of the “post-right” and the “right-coded.” These are two online political subcultures that are distinct from, and increasingly displacing, the Dissident Right.
Some context is useful here, again, for the folks who aren’t quite as in the weeds as I am. In the mid-2010s, we saw the mainstreaming of the alt-right — a loose coalition of white nationalists, nihilistic trolls, and anti-establishment provocateurs. As the label became politically toxic, two things happened: members rebranded as the Dissident Right and there was a “changing of the guard” (new popular figures emerged). Unlike the alt-right, it was a more essay-driven, “intellectual” movement that retained many of the racial politics while shedding overt irony. That cohort still exists. They skew older, remain loyal to Donald Trump and MAGA, and continue to post.
But they are aging out of the media ecosystem.
Enter: the “post-right.” These are figures who came up through far-right online spaces but have since migrated toward progressive or heterodox positions. They remain in dialogue with the fringes of the online right even as they reject many of its beliefs (or at least, its presentation and people). I would put Richard Hanania, Richard Spencer, Radfem Hitler, Academic Agent, Pedro Gonzalez, and on occasion, Nick Fuentes in this category.1 The Dissident Right will refer to them as “leftists” or “progressives,” but they aren’t really — and I think it would take a lot of social work/networking for someone like, say, Nate Silver, to count them among their ranks. (That being said, many of them have been successful at the re-brand.) Their progressive beliefs originate primarily in dialogue with the right; kind of like right-wingers who are only right-wing if in dialogue with the left.
The second faction is what I’d describe as the “right-coded.” These are people who are not especially interested in politics but are perceived as non-left by virtue of their aesthetics, audience, or disdain for progressive cultural institutions. They are read as conservative without necessarily identifying as such. Clavicular is a paradigmatic example. It may also help partially explain the “white nationalist of color” phenomenon.
Both groups are competing with, and increasingly overtaking, the old-guard Dissident Right, a movement that favored long posts, blogs, and textual argument over video. The “Anons” that now reign supreme at outlets like The Blaze and are followed by the Vice President.
They are not native to the current media environment, and they are —- at least insofar as the media is concerned, because this is, ultimately a post about, about media — going out of fashion.
Again, I know I keep saying this but it really is something to bookmark!
FRICTION-MAXXING?
Are we “friction-maxxing,” or are people simply emerging from a Covid slump? (The latter.)
“Friction-maxxing” is a recently fashionable term for deliberately reintroducing inconvenience into one’s life. This might mean deleting apps, buying a dumbphone/Brick, or making socializing more effortful — e.g. a dinner party — in the hope that it will feel more meaningful. The premise is that effort restores value.
I hate to belabor the point — or belabor another point, since this whole newsletter has been me rehashing myself LOL — but I think people have genuinely forgotten how much we socialized before lockdowns. I’ve always been relatively antisocial — like, the older I get the more I realize I low key hate seeing people who aren’t my family — and YET! Until March 2020 I was going to bars, clubs, shows, dance classes, art openings, strange goth events, pagan pride festivals, pretty much every day. I ate at restaurants. I went to the movies.
We all had friends even if we lacked community.
Covid created a kind of social ice age. What we’re experiencing now is the thaw. I keep returning to this because I’m deeply opposed to the cottage industry that has sprung up around it. Getting off your phone is fine. What’s less admirable is the way fear and panic (and surveillance) are smuggled in under the banner of self-improvement. People will tell you to “touch grass,” but what they are actually selling you is anxiety or maybe a reason to convert to Christianity.
To return to the earlier bit about post-literacy: I attended a competitive private school in the 2000s, and there were students who could barely write their own names. This isn’t new. It’s a problem, sure, but it’s not new. Much of this conversation exists to feed the take economy and limit your rights.2
Stay woke.
THE CALL-IN SHOW
Has the call-in show ever done an episode on liminal spaces? I’m not sure whether we’ve covered it, but I’d like to do an episode on the topic. Or revisit it, if we already have.
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And yes, I know I started my career as part of the problem. I’m sorry. I’m SORRY. I was YOUNG. I was like 25. And I was WRONG!!!!!
I recognize that this isn't exactly a 1:1 fit for the genre of book you describe but I feel like Lapvona by Ottessa Moshfegh fits adjacent to the category just because it feels like Mossfeigh was more preoccupied by medieval peasants doing gross stuff than having a point
Very thoughtful as ever, thank you DF. I'm saving this post to my Zotero because I think you are really onto something with the gore-books as 'catalogs' rather than actual plots.
How do you think this compares, if at all, to the torture-porn boom in cinema in the 00s? I'm thinking stuff like the Saw franchise or Hostel, but also the more thoughtful, kind of artsy end of things like Martyrs. It feels different to me (never having really watched these films, lol) because it leaves open the space for a story, or at least the space for meditation on ideas of artistic merit, but the way you describe these books, that space seems closed off. It bears more resemblance to Randy's thoughts on 'synthetic autism' and the importance of categorisation as a fundamental feature of the internet as a medium. As with Pornhub, so with AO3 and its parallel developments in 'real' publishing. See here for ref: https://eggreport.substack.com/p/identity-politics-and-synthetic-autism
Anyway, just some thoughts.