Top all-time · #1982
Aella
Personal blog · aella.substack.comculturedatascience
Aella writes Knowingless, a personal blog at aella.substack.com about culture, data and science. Since 2022, 40 different Hacker News readers have linked it 56 times, most often “Fetish Tabooness vs. Popularity”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-30, and you can follow it by feed.
sex, psychedelics, and social analysis. Click to read Knowingless, by Aella, a Substack publication with hundreds of thousands of subscribers.
Most-linked posts?
- Fetish Tabooness vs. Popularity5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2022-12-30
- My Birthday Gangbang a slutistical breakdown(NSFW)3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2024-03-01
- /p/fetish-tabooness-and-popularity-v33 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2023-10-07
- Chattel Childhood – By Aella – Knowingless2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-05-30
- The Difficulty in Dating Good Men2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-04-23
- /p/who-took-my-big-kink-survey2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-12-30
- People Are Delusional About How Hot They Are2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-01-21
- Learning The Elite Class2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-07-14
- The Hotness Curve (how age changes a woman's appeal)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-06-24
What Hacker News says?
I can see why that idea is tempting, but it doesn't seem to work. Military had "don't ask don't tell" for a long time because legalisation and social acceptance are different (also seen in reverse order with cannabis). Even today, the percentage of people in the US who think society should not accept it, 21%, is higher than the percentage who are homosexual or bisexual: https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2020/06/25/…
Comment linking /p/fetish-tabooness-vs-popularity
on “Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'”Submitted Learning The Elite Class as a story · 271 points
HN discussion(This is going to upset some people.) A successful escort who is into statistical data analysis and market research talks about the details of organizing an orgy.[1] Aella's thing is to ask questions that lead to "what do women really want", and go from there to design events. She has about 800,000 raw survey responses, so there's enough data to look for patterns. The answers will upset some people. The conventional…
Comment linking /p/a-girls-guide-to-a-data-driven-orgy
on “Facts about throwing good parties”Submitted Bye, Mom as a story · 150 points
HN discussionNothing stops them, some people do do that. Two examples that come to mind are Aella's research on fetishes[1] and Scott Alexander's research on birth order effects[2]. But you don't get academic credibility by publishing online without peer review, and it's much harder to get university funding. [1] https://aella.substack.com/p/fetish-tabooness-vs-popularity [2] https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/01/08/fight-me-psycho…
Comment linking /p/fetish-tabooness-vs-popularity
on “Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton [pdf]”Submitted Our collective synesthesia, in graphs as a story · 73 points
HN discussionhttps://aella.substack.com/p/everyone-has-autogynephilia If you want to base your understanding of the world on data rather than anecdata, here.
Comment linking /p/everyone-has-autogynephilia
on “Show HN: I built an active community of trans people online”Submitted Onlyfans took over the World as a story · 35 points
HN discussionYou may be interested in the data surfaced by this large-scale survey[1] [1] https://aella.substack.com/p/fetish-tabooness-and-popularity...
Comment linking /p/fetish-tabooness-and-popularity-v3
on “OpenAI's new open-source model is basically Phi-5”Submitted Is Porn Misleading Men? as a story · 21 points
HN discussionThe sankey chart refers to her birthday: https://aella.substack.com/p/my-birthday-gangbang With my approval, organizers rejected anyone associated with e/acc, because we don’t need to give nice things to people hastening our doom (reedited to shorten)
Comment linking /p/my-birthday-gangbang
on “AI safety is mostly a sex cult”Submitted The Difficulty in Dating Good Men as a story · 19 points
HN discussionThat doesn't say anything about what percentage of sex workers were sex trafficked. The only stat it gives are what percentage of sex workers were sexually abused prior to entry. The best estimate I've seen for percentage of active sex workers that are currently being trafficked was between 3 and 4 %. https://aella.substack.com/p/what-percentage-of-sex-workers-...
Comment linking /p/what-percentage-of-sex-workers-in?s=r
on “OnlyFans creator stalked and had sex with Meta employees to reinstate Instagram”Submitted My Birthday Gangbang a slutistical breakdown(NSFW) as a story · 15 points
HN discussionIt's difficult for me to reconcile her grief at the loss of her mother with the horrific abuse her parents inflicted on her. (Mostly her father, to be fair, but with the full knowledge and consent of her mother.) https://aella.substack.com/p/the-joy-is-not-optional
Comment linking /p/the-joy-is-not-optional
on “Bye, Mom”Submitted The Other Sexual Orientation as a story · 8 points
HN discussionPerfect illustration of how tricky it can be to draw a firm line. Another survey in this same genre is "the rape spectrum" with >5k respondents ranking scenarios: https://aella.substack.com/p/the-rape-spectrum-survey-result... Tough topics to discuss (I see why the OP went with vehicles in the park). I'm glad I'm not in the content moderation business!
Comment linking /p/the-rape-spectrum-survey-results
on “The rule says, “No vehicles in the park””Submitted People Are Delusional About How Hot They Are as a story · 8 points
HN discussionAella has collected some great stats on polyamory https://aella.substack.com/p/polyamory-vs-monogamy-how-relat...
Comment linking /p/polyamory-vs-monogamy-how-relationships
on “How Did Polyamory Become So Popular?”Submitted The Joy Is Not Optional: The Growing Kids God's Way Protocol as a story · 7 points
HN discussionHere is some data: https://aella.substack.com/p/fetish-tabooness-and-popularity... I haven't looked at it closely, so I have no idea whether it supports or opposes the hypothesis. Just wanted to give you some data.
Comment linking /p/fetish-tabooness-and-popularity-v3
on “Are porn algorithms feeding a generation of paedophiles – or creating one?”Submitted The Difficulty in Dating Good Men (Aella) as a story · 6 points
HN discussionAella's guide to escorting includes a section on screening clients: https://aella.substack.com/p/becoming-a-whorelord-the-overly... Of course she couldn't choose a client who didn't even want to hire her, but rejecting a client who throws up red flags is certainly possible and advisable.
Comment linking /p/becoming-a-whorelord-the-overly-analytical-guide-to-escorting
on “OnlyFans Star Aella Talks Sex Work Economics”Submitted Learning the Elite Class as a story · 6 points
HN discussiongreat question. data source: https://aella.substack.com/p/my-birthday-gangbang the diagram is calculated with d3-sankey & rendered with imgui. you can stretch that window however you want—ok, enough. edit: the original steam-engine sankey diagram created a far stronger emotional reaction in me. the aella chart is just more modern, i guess?
Comment linking /p/my-birthday-gangbang
on “Addicted to Claude Code–Help”Submitted The Pain and the Glory of Nonmonogamy as a story · 5 points
HN discussionThis writer's much more recent post is better: https://aella.substack.com/p/the-polyamory-post?s=r I think she explains herself more thoroughly and isn't nearly as provocative about it, though still makes the same basic error in equating possessiveness with insecurity. Someone may be quite confident but still not like sharing. I think that's a basic impetus behind a whole lot of type A personalities and elite compet…
Comment linking /p/the-polyamory-post?s=r
on “Choosing Insecurity (2017)”Submitted Bodycount Impacts Relationships (graph dump) as a story · 3 points
HN discussionwell actually ... https://aella.substack.com/p/fetish-tabooness-vs-popularity
Comment linking /p/fetish-tabooness-vs-popularity
on “Meta's new AI dating coach will kink shame you (unless you're into foot stuff)”Submitted People Will Sometimes Just Lie About You as a story · 3 points
HN discussion
