Several years ago, the “when you nut but she keep suckin’” meme exploded in popularity. The concept was simple: Memelords would post a reaction image of a subject in a state of sensory overload — a discombobulated gremlin with rolling eyes, say, or a shrieking Total Recall-era Arnold Schwarzenegger — accompanied by some variation of the aforementioned text. The point was to portray the complex midpoint between pleasure and pain that occurs when a woman continues to fellate a man after he’s ejaculated. (Versions for people other than straight men followed, as they tend to during the late stages of a meme’s popularity cycle.) It was a comedic, low-stakes meme that remains the subject of a dedicated subreddit, /r/shestillsucking, where subscribers post variations to this day.
For a certain internet community, though, the meme represented more than just a funny and relatable passing thought. Post-orgasm play — and it’s more serious logical endpoint, post-orgasm torture — is a kink with a dedicated and growing fandom, some 46,000 of whom congregate on /r/postorgasm. The community details blurb makes a nod to the viral meme (“If /r/shestillsucking was a serious NSFW subreddit, this is what you’d find”), but r/postorgasm is earnestly dedicated to compiling a database of post-orgasm porn, not memes.
The subreddit is largely comprised of links to videos, images or GIFs of post-ejaculatory play combined with the occasional discussion about the kink, such as how one might get a husband or girlfriend to try it. Posts have titles like “Japanese Collection of Post Orgasm Torture (Laughing while the male is in pain)” and “She just keeps milking him,” and “whimpering” men are prized evidence of the almost-unbearable sensation that post-orgasm play induces.
Spruce Fap (not his government name) is the 23-year-old, Australia-based Master’s student who created and now moderates the /r/postorgasm subreddit. “It started four years ago, and it was pretty much just an idea I’d had in my head,” he writes over email. “I’d seen [post-orgasm play] in a few porn videos and wasn’t quite sure exactly what it was called, but I remember thinking it looked like the most mind-blowing orgasm of all time.” He started the subreddit and occasionally posted post-orgasm videos in the hope that other people would join in. “[The subreddit was] effectively feeding me the kind of content I wanted to see, because there was no easy way to find it apart from doing vague searches like ‘femdom handjob’ on Google or Pornhub and keeping your fingers crossed,” he continues. “So I got the subreddit to gain some traction by finding videos that had wider appeal, or making GIFs and cross-posting them to larger subreddits like /r/girlsfinishingthejob.” From there, the popularity of his subreddit grew exponentially.
The /r/postorgasm community doesn’t have many rules, save that users are asked to tag video posts with the time of the cumshot(s) in square brackets for courtesy’s sake — for example, [@20:10] — so that others don’t need to watch an entire porn video before getting to the part they’re most interested in, i.e., the post-cum content. Posts are also required to be on-topic, and when individuals post porn that doesn’t involve post-ejaculatory action, the community responds unfavorably (“How is this post-orgasm?”) and the offending posts can be reported and removed.
Moderating the subreddit is a balancing act for Spruce Fap, who tells me that it can be difficult to delineate between videos that merely continue past the point of ejaculation, and post-orgasm play proper. “Continuing to have contact with the penis for any amount of time after the orgasm doesn’t [necessarily] constitute post-orgasm play,” he explains. “It has to be purposeful and extended to some degree.” What about the difference between post-orgasm play and torture? The distinction can be a fine one, he tells me, but play is “more to do with the gentle sucking and caressing of the penis post-orgasm,” while torture involves “truly milking [it] in an unrelenting fashion.” He adds that in the early days of the subreddit, torture seemed a lot more popular, but as the community has become larger, milder post-orgasm play is in favor.
To the uninitiated, it might be hard to grasp the exact appeal of the kink, a sentiment Spruce Fap understands. “The appeal of it is a bit murky even to me,” he says. “I think it’s the intensity. I’ve only truthfully done it in real life twice, and those first couple of minutes feel like you’re going to pass out — it’s just an amount of sensation above what one can process.” There’s some overlap with femdom, and many of the subscribers of /r/postorgasm are male subs, an association that makes sense to Spruce Fap. “Allowing any kind of post-orgasm activity to occur means relinquishing control over what you feel, when you feel it and how you feel it,” he muses. “I get the feeling that in the early days, there was a larger presence of male subs [looking to spice up] the dom-sub sexual relationship.” These days, he says, the subreddit is populated by more cautious members who “might not be so aroused by the idea of being vacuum-sealed down, tied up or [into] any kind of degradation play.” To some degree, Spruce Fap considers himself in that camp. “It’s the act that I think is interesting and intense, not the associated fetish. That said, you grow to like the idea of being tied down,” he laughs.
Whatever the exact appeal for individuals, whether they lean vanilla or are into hardcore BDSM, the level of enthusiasm of /r/postorgasm subscribers is hard to overstate. The subreddit’s most popular post, titled “stop, stop, i’m still sensitive!” “i don’t care!” (NSFW), prompted a chorus of men to gush about the perfection of the female participant, who pins down her male partner with her legs and beams a pearly white smile as she performs a post-ejeculatory hand job while he squirms. “God damn, this girl is amazing,” one commenter raves. “Her personality. Her smile. Her body. Her movement. Her everything.” Another is more focused on the copulation itself. “It’s as if sex is a playground,” he marvels.
That post, now two years old, is important to Spruce Fap, because it represents the moment that the community became self-sustaining. “From that point onwards, I’ve been able to take a bit of a step back as a moderator, and just moderate when I have a chance,” he says.
From its humble beginnings, /r/postorgasm has grown into a robust and oddly positive community, where subscribers chatter politely and enthusiastically about the topic closest to their hearts: whimpering men, sadistic women and orgasms that kind of hurt.
Madeleine Holden
Madeleine Holden is a lawyer and freelance writer based between Berlin and New Zealand. She writes about relationships, sex, gender and whatever the hell else she feels like for MEL.
