Of course, the NYT "loves" this... if love includes loving the virality of something so clickable and sharable.

The New York Times loves this comment

— Joe Gabriel Simonson (@SaysSimonson) December 22, 2020

Click and reclick the image to read the full comment that begins "It all depends on your attitude."

Now, Joe Gabriel Simonson withholds a link to the NYT, so he's onto their game and refusing to play... and he himself is using a woman's sex tale about her daughter to get links for himself... including this one from me. Reading the comments on his tweet, I see that no one believes the story, but they sure do find it hilarious. 

I don't mind giving the NYT the link they deserve. Here's "The Joys of Frivolous Sex/The pandemic has brought out a nasty puritanism" by Megan Nolan. 

Looking through the NYT-selected comments, I don't see the story that's in Simonson's screenshot. Maybe the woman — who used what might be her real name — took her comment down. If she really has a daughter, did she realize it was wrong — even if hilarious — to appropriate her daughter's identity for her own purposes?

The third-highest comment over there is "Read the whole thing again pretending it's written by a man." I'll be reading the column for the first time, and I don't need that prod. I always do the gender switcheroo when I read sex things. 

Let's read:

In early lockdown, I spent most evenings in the front room of my mother’s house, drunk, staring at a computer, reeling at the prospect of my body being deprived indefinitely of touch.... Only weeks earlier, I was in New York for an extended visit, recently single and pleasantly crazy with the desire to date far and wide. My romantic and sexual value seemed higher then and there than it had ever been anywhere else.... [One man] looked fondly down at me in a hotel room and inexplicably exclaimed, “I love New York!” at the sight of my body.

Inexplicably. 

And then in March came the shutdown. ... I was urgently trying to recast the concept of pleasure as something that could occur without other people.... I made the mistake in this period of suggesting in a Facebook post that single people, especially those living alone, could not be expected to go an unlimited amount of time without socializing or close contact. Some people reacted to this as though I had proposed an orgy on every street corner, pandemic be damned, but that wasn’t what I meant. What I meant was that human beings can’t be expected to endure the sudden and total loss of social comfort.... 

The coronavirus pandemic has brought out a nasty puritanism in some people.... One doesn’t even need to actually break a rule to earn their disgust, only to express dismay over things they consider unimportant or, worse, hedonistic. To even complain about what it feels like to live alone and not be able to date right now is regarded as unseemly, dismissed as trivial.... 

Most of society does not really believe that casual, nonmonogamous encounters can actually hold meaning, rather than simply serve as crude ways to blow off steam. I know that they can. Living as a purposefully single and promiscuous person was one way to know others, one way to find joy in the world, and it’s gone for now. Single people have lost something important, and should be allowed to bemoan it.

This is a very well-written and impressive statement of a point of view that should be part of the discussion! She's not saying her desire for physical love is more important than children going to school and elderly people staying alive. She's saying the interest in living real life is important too. 

Now, Nolan invites attacks by calling other people names. Her antagonists are puritans — and nasty ones at that. And she makes their argument easier by using the word "promiscuous" to describe the interest she wants us to take seriously. 

Back to the comments. I see this from Low-Notes-Liberate, who says he's a musician and thus "supposed to be wildly frivolous in general." But he prefers "long-term intimacy."

After the initial hide and seek of bodies is, for me, when the real adventure begins. Who is this person, who am I, who are we together. It is perhaps more a journey into the mind through the body. Not to say that love simmering like carnalized onions in an iron skillet, animal nature is incredibly sexy.

Carnalized onions! 

But I like the journey taken over time. That said, I can easily relate to the horrifying ten months of deserted island sexuality many of us have endured. I was happy to see this article because it needs to be discussed and out in the open. What is a life of masturbation? Videos? Amazon brown boxes arriving with the hopes of a new variation on the same old theme?