Ah, college: A time to expand your educational horizons! To get out into the world and see what it’s really like! To…stop your friends from masturbating? According to a video from the Brigham Young University-Idaho Housing and Student Living Office, this last point is of the utmost importance to getting the most out of your university experience. Or something. Because friends don’t let friends masturbate.
The video begins with the dulcet tones of BYU-Idaho president Kim B. Clark warning about the temptations of “The Great War.” After we watch a young man wander home through a heavily filtered urban landscape, he opens his laptop and stares at the screen, stone-faced, while a concerned roommate hovers in his bedroom’s open doorway. (What? You don’t leave the door open when you watch porn?) Then suddenly we’re on a World War I battlefield — y’know, the trenches in which the actual Great War took place — with said roommate rescuing his buddy from heavy fire.
So… what? The struggle for No-Fap Friday is as epic as a war responsible for the deaths of an entire generation of men? Forgive me if I fail to see the resemblance.
As the Religion News Service points out, technically the video isn’t anti-masturbation; it’s anti-porn addiction. But let’s face it: No one watches porn for the excellence of the filmmaking or the fascinating stories. Besides, even if it is more about the addiction, defining “porn addiction” as “any dude has ever watched porn ever” doesn’t do those actually suffering from addiction any favors.
Although the video presents the issue as a plea to BYU students to be a good friend by getting their pals help, it comes across more as a Big Brother kind of scenario, reporting those who don’t abide by the rules. The language employed even sounds like the sort that’s often used to describe terrorism, which makes it even scarier. Oh, and forget about any acknowledgement of gender equality; according to the video, masturbation is strictly a male “problem.”
Naturally a parody has already popped up, and I’m sure many more are soon to come. Watch the original video below:
