When someone shares nudes of a person against that person’s will or without their knowledge, it often happens in the context of revenge. In the 42 states that have laws prohibiting this behavior, this is typically referred to as “revenge porn.” The exact motivations behind why someone would do such a thing are unclear, but often, it’s to humiliate the subject of the photo, or to extort attention or money from them.
Things work a bit differently in the Reddit community r/Cuckik. Here, the point is to humiliate the photo’s original recipient, or the one distributing the photos. In fact, for its 152,000 members, sharing their partner’s nudes is a means of “cucking” themselves by giving another man sexual gratification from her. The problem is, this is often done without her knowledge or consent.
Kyle, 25, is an active cuck in the community. He describes r/cuckik as a group “consisting entirely of cucks who get off on showing nude pictures of their girlfriend to other men.” Sometimes, they even get off on having their girlfriend’s nudes “critiqued” or “rated.” The name includes the word “kik” as a reference to the messaging app Kik, where much of the interactions take place. Most commonly, a cuck will post a photo of a woman, stating that he’s looking for another man who wants to view more (usually nude) pictures of her on Kik.
Whereas most heterosexual cuckold relationships have three consenting participants (at minimum) — the cuckold male partner, the female “hotwife” and the male “bull” who has sex with the wife — r/cuckik is a digital means of circumventing both the consent and participation of the female party. While it appears that there are many women involved in the subreddit who have agreed to have their nudes shared, there also seem to be several posts suggesting that nudes will be shared without her knowledge, and the majority of the posts state that a woman’s cuck wanted her photos posted, rather than the woman herself. “Cuck wanted his girl Penelope exposed,” a post from last week reads. “Nudes follow if she gets enough attention.”
“Cuck wants to show off the women in his life,” reads another. “Whoever gets the most attention gets shown off more.” Only on a few occasions is it stated that the woman in the photo has consented. Girlfriends and sexual partners are common fodder for the sub, but other female figures in men’s lives like bosses and cousins are discussed, too.
“It’s a sexual kink with two sides — the cuck and the bull — and thousands of people participate on a daily basis,” says Kyle. Mostly, he associates his own relationship with cuckoldry as being inside the world of self-identified “beta” males. In addition to r/Cuckik, he’s active in r/censoredforbetas, a subreddit featuring pixelated, blurred selfies and nudes of women under the premise that beta men are undeserving of seeing the original images. Though there are many women who actively post in the subreddit and share their own censored photos, many of the dynamics present on r/censoredforbetas are imagined. For example, one beta will censor photos of a porn star for the rest of the community to “enjoy,” accompanied by a caption about how none of them have earned the alpha-male privilege of viewing uncensored porn.
“At some point, censored beta porn turned into having my own girlfriend’s nudes looked at by other men,” Kyle explains. “It seemed like a natural progression. I didn’t deserve to see women naked, I don’t deserve to keep my naked girlfriend to myself. By showing them her nudes, they ‘own’ her and not me. And the actual human interaction made it real, as opposed to silly porn captions that feel very impersonal.”
Thus, rather than relying solely on the fantasy of being cucked, r/Cuckik allows Kyle to indulge in actual cuckoldry without even having his girlfriend be involved. Of course, there are serious ethical and legal implications to this, depending on where exactly Kyle lives (he declined to say). Some of his previous partners didn’t know he was sharing their photos, and he’s been blackmailed and exposed by bulls in the subreddit as a result.
Technically, r/Cuckik requires that all parties involved are consenting. Posts cannot mention any words that would suggest otherwise, such as “unaware” or “ex” — and the sub abides by Reddit’s “involuntary pornography” rules — but there aren’t exactly safeguards in place to stop leaks from happening. In another post, a cuck boasts his “stepmom” fell asleep watching videos on her phone, and then he “went ahead and grabbed as much off it” as he could. For 75 upvotes, he offered to post stolen pictures of her and his dad. Even if it’s entirely fantasy, there’s no clear indication of that being the case.
As Asia Eaton, an associate professor of psychology and director of the Power, Women and Relationships Lab at Florida International University told the National Association of Science Writers in 2020, nonconsensual porn has risen amid the pandemic, having already skyrocketed in the decade prior. Per Eaton’s research, eight percent of adults have been victims of nonconsensual porn, while five percent of people have perpetrated it. Women are twice as likely to be victims, and men are twice as likely to be perpetrators.
“The motive can be for profit, for humor, for sexual gratification or to prove masculinity to other people,” she explained. “It’s not just for revenge.” What’s particularly unique about r/Cuckik, then, is that it’s a case of nonconsensual porn for sexual gratification, but for the purpose of disproving one’s masculinity to other people. At the core of their interest in sharing their girlfriends’ photos seems to be the desire to be emasculated, and to be told that they do not “own” or deserve their partner’s sexuality. Via r/Cuckik, cucks can find bulls willing to indulge them without their partners even knowing.
There are many cucks who entirely oppose this dynamic, however. “There are majorly ignored consent issues with a lot of the posts on r/Cuckik,” says Tom, a 30-year-old cuck. “Beyond general problems of catfishing with pics and content from various online sources, the premise of a shocking amount of the posts revolves around unclear (at best) knowledge of the partner in their photos being wagered or shared. I follow a ton of cuckolding subreddits, and every time their posts appear in searches or reposts, it just seems problematic as fuck.”
Tom notes that the subreddit seems to have exploded in popularity, having only been created two years ago, and that moderators either can’t or won’t enforce the consent rules without killing the subreddit entirely. “For a lot of the guys, it seems the non-consent is the draw,” he says. “Guys want to ‘win’ something like it’s an object they can take. It’s the closest thing some of them can get to revenge porn. Those types of posts and subreddits get shut down, but under the guise of ‘cuckolding,’ this subreddit lets people ignore the idea of proving consent and sending pictures of another person.”
Micah, a 33-year-old cuck, agrees. “It’s just cucks who wish they had actual girlfriends or wives to post photos of,” he says of the subreddit. “Most of them are faking it so they can be emasculated by alpha men.”
Again, there are many posts from consenting women in the subreddit, and numerous other subreddits like r/cuckold are devoted entirely to cuckoldry done right. But as Tom suggests, it’s possible that many of the people involved in r/Cuckik aren’t interested in being cucked or cucking a man in the classic sense. Instead, Kyle and his peers might get off on the thinly veiled form of revenge porn that the subreddit provides. There’s a chance that all of it is entirely fictional, that all the photos were found on the internet or that each woman involved has fully agreed to participate. Regardless, a lack of consent is much of the fantasy being sold on r/Cuckik, and so long as it’s allowed to continue, that fantasy will only flourish.
Magdalene Taylor
Magdalene Taylor is a staff writer at MEL. She covers internet culture, sex and the online adult industry. She lives in Brooklyn but is from God's Country, Western Massachusetts.
