ABSTRACT
To answer the question as to whether Butt, with its visual variations of masculinity/maleness and a shift from sexuality to affect, also produces new forms of community, in the last chapter and conclusion, “Pink Poverty,” the fanzine must finally be considered once again in the context of a digital pornographic culture. The use of online dating platforms and apps can initially be characterized through strategies of neoliberal self-promotion. In the online world, self-pornofication appears as a form of “communicative capitalism” in which homo economicus also shows himself to be sexually efficient. With some canonical texts from the anti-social turn as an instrument of analysis, however, another picture emerges, not only for offline but also for online sexual communities. Behind the narcissistic spectacle of pornographic propaganda, a different form of connectedness takes place, in which self-assertion through sexual norms as a form of subjection is replaced by a more radical option of desubjection. Against this background, Butt must be understood as a specific form of media practice. Pornographic fatuousness is transformed into sexual friendliness, shown by male bodies that no longer need to mask everything that does not serve to increase sexual arousal. From desubjection a new form of subjectification emerges. With its pink-tinged photographs, Butt articulates its promise of a different masculinity, a different sexuality, and a different form of community.
