In 2016 Nicole Prause created “PornHelps” website & social media accounts to serve the porn industry

Introduction

Nicole Prause is a former academic with a long history of harassing and defaming authors, researchers, therapists, reporters, men in recovery, academic journal editors, multiple organizations, and any who dare to report evidence of harms from internet porn use. She appears to be quite cozy with the pornography industry, as can be seen from this image of her (far right) on the red carpet of the X-Rated Critics Organization (XRCO) awards ceremony. (Wikipedia explains that, “the XRCO Awards are given by the American X-Rated Critics Organization annually to people working in adult entertainment and it is the only adult industry awards show reserved exclusively for industry members.^[1]“).

In her blatant support for the porn industry, Prause has created at least 2 pro-porn websites with social media accounts:

2016 – PornHelps,” which had its own Twitter account (@pornhelps) and a website promoting the porn industry as well as outlier studies reporting the “positive” effects of porn. “PornHelps” chronically badgered the same people and organizations that Prause also often attacked using her own name and social media accounts. In fact, Prause would team up with her apparent alias PornHelps to attack individuals on Twitter and elsewhere in tandem with some of her other identities (see 1, 2, 3, 4). Both the @pornhelps Twitter account and PornHelps website were suddenly deleted when Prause was outed on Psychology Today as being PornHelps.
2019 – Prause, as manager of RealYBOP Twitter and RealYBOP website, is also engaging in defamation and harassment of Gary Wilson, Alexander Rhodes, Gabe Deem, NCOSE, Laila Mickelwait, Gail Dines, and anyone else who speaks out about porn’s harms. In addition, David Ley and two other RealYBOP “experts” are now being compensated by porn industry giant xHamster to promote its websites (i.e. StripChat) and to convince users that porn addiction and sex addiction are myths! Prause (lord of the trademark-infringing RealYBOP Twitter) appears to be tight with the pornography industry, and uses RealYBOP Twitter to promote the porn industry, defend PornHub (which was called out for hosting child porn and sex trafficking videos), and attack those who are promoting the petition to hold PornHub accountable.

Quid Pro Quo?

Does Prause’s relentless support for the porn industry arise from a quid pro quo, or more than one? Certainly, a public exchange of favors occurred in 2015 when the Free Speech Coalition (porn industry lobby) offered Prause assistance and she accepted. Immediately she attacked Prop 60 (condoms in porn, which the industry didn’t want).

A second possible quid pro quo occurred in 2016. Prause was given a bucket-load of money to produce a hired-gun study on the heavily tainted and very commercial “Orgasmic Meditation” scheme (now apparently under investigation by the FBI). Orgasmic Meditation, an MLM pseudo-cult that charges big bucks to teach men how to stroke a partner’s clitoris.

We are not sure, but the clitoris-diddling study (OM) may have hit a predictable snag: the challenge of finding female subjects who want their genitals rubbed while being hooked up to machines and monitored by researchers. To reach her target of 250 OM couples, it appears that Prause may have obtained porn performers as subjects through porn industry interest group, the Free Speech Coalition. The favor to the FSC? Then, almost two years later, Prause publicly began exclaiming that her upcoming OM study (which previously had nothing to do with porn) would now also debunk porn addiction. As of this writing (June, 2020) the OM study has yet to appear (much more here).

Back to Prause as “PornHelps”

In 2016 Nicole Prause created a username called “PornHelps,” which had its own Twitter account (@pornhelps) and a website promoting the porn industry as well as cherry-picked outlier studies reporting the “positive” effects of porn.

“PornHelps” chronically badgered the same people and organizations that Prause also often attacked. In fact, Prause would team up with her apparent alias PornHelps to attack individuals on Twitter and elsewhere in tandem with some of her other identities. Some of the Prause/PornHelps coordinated attacks are documented in these Prause-page sections:

The @pornhelps Twitter account and PornHelps website were suddenly deleted when it became apparent to everyone that Prause was behind both. While many of us being attacked knew “PornHelps” was really Nicole Prause, the following @pornhelps tweet left no doubt:

Prause, a Kinsey grad, calls herself a neuroscientist (although it’s not clear that she has a degree in neuroscience), and appears to have started college about 15 years earlier than the above 2016 tweet. In response to several ad hominem attacks by “PornHelps,” which perfectly mirrored many of Prause’s usual comments, “PornHelps” was confronted in the comments section of Psychology Today with this and other evidence: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/comment/887468#comment-887468

Within a few days of the above Psychology Today comment the PornHelps website and @pornhelps Twitter account vanished without a trace. All that remains of PornHelps is a smattering of comments on various sites and this abandoned Disqus account, listing 87 comments. (80-page PDF of numerous aliases Prause used to defame and harass Gary Wilson).

Want more confirmation that PornHelps was really Prause? The following comments, tweets, and coincidences make it apparent. PornHelps Disqus account posted 87 times:

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Here Prause and Russell J. Stambaugh simultaneously comment under an article about porn. Prause & Stambaugh are close allies and often comment together in pre-planned assaults in comment sections.

A more recent coordinated attack by Prause, Stambaugh, and 3 other members of Prause’s harassment brigade is documented in this section: May 30, 2018 – Prause falsely accuses FTND of science fraud, and implies that she has reported Gary Wilson to the FBI twice. (Addendum: Gary Wilson filed a freedom of information request with the FBI and the FBI confirmed that Prause was lying. No report had ever been filed on Wilson. See – November, 2018: FBI affirms Nicole Prause’s fraud surrounding defamatory claims).

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Much of this Prause/PornHelps coordinated attack on researchers is chronicled here: June, 2016: Prause and her sock puppet PornHelps claim that respected neuroscientists are members of “anti-porn groups” and “their science is bad.” But let us re-examine the evidence that Prause is “PornHelps.”

Nicole Prause, a Kinsey grad, in a tweet about this study posted for commentary (since published in Neuropsychopharmacology), falsely claimed that its 9 researchers (including top researchers in the addiction neuroscience field) were members of “anti-porn groups,” and that their new study was “bad science.” Prause’s tweet (pictured here) appeared on the same page as the study (Can pornography be addictive? An fMRI study of men seeking treatment for problematic pornography use), but was later deleted.

At the same time that Prause tweeted the above, “PornHelps” began posting in the comments section below the paper. See a few of PornHelps’ comments below. How does PornHelps know so much about research methodology and statistics? (Prause’s PhD was in stats.):

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And here’s more confirmation that PornHelps is Prause. The PornHelps comments under an NPR interview of Prause are nearly identical to Prause’s usual spin about the claimed benefits of porn:

Nearly identical in this article quoting Prause – with her usual spin:

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Now a taste of Prause (as PornHelps) attacking Wilson on various websites: promoting porn and misrepresenting the current state of the research. (Note: PornHelps was very busy attacking others on PT and other websites, and of course, via Twitter).

Here’s PornHelps going after Wilson, mirroring Prause’s defamatory language in many comments (“stalker,” “massage therapist,” “fake,” etc.)

Look familiar? Prause is the only commenter who calls Wilson a cyberstalker and a massage therapist (other than her sidekick David Ley):

Prause’s long history of fabricating victim-hood is well documented, even exposed by investigative journalists: Nicole Prause’s fabrications of victim-hood exposed as groundless: she is the perpetrator, not the victim.

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Here PornHelps is discussing Prause’s EEG study – Modulation of Late Positive Potentials by Sexual Images in Problem Users and Controls Inconsistent with “Porn Addiction” (Prause et al., 2015)

Pornhelps knows an awful lot for a porn-industry hack!

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This comment about Wilson can be found under Prause’s 2016 op-ed – Op-ed: Anti-porn school program misrepresents science.

Again, Prause is the only commenter who calls Wilson a cyberstalker and massage therapist (other chum David Ley). The truth about Prause’s op-ed – Op-ed: Who exactly is misrepresenting the science on pornography? (2016)

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The following are some of the over 20 comments under the Prause op-ed by PornHelps. Prause’s #2 obsession after Gary Wilson is FTND, about which Prause posted numerous times. The comments perfectly mirror Prause tweets misrepresenting the research and attacking FTND. PornHelps “Discus” account posted 87 comments.

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PornHelps mentions the same Australian study that Prause tweeted regularly:

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Here PornHelps mirrors dozens of Prause tweets or comments – both naming the exact same findings from outlier studies.

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Another example of Prause/PornHelps attacking Wilson (while teaming up with David Ley). Many more examples can be found on this page.

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Trolling random forums

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More evidence. We start with a tweet by the author of the TIME cover story, “Porn and the Threat to Virility,” Belinda Luscombe:

This was followed by @pornhelps calling both Alexander and Belinda liars. @NicoleRPrause eventually chimed in to call TIME journalist Luscombe a liar (more in the next section). The back and forth contains too many tweets to post here, but most can be found in these threads: Thread 1, Thread 2, Thread 3. Below is a sampling of @pornhelps’s unstable-sounding tweets falsely claiming that Alexander faked his story of porn-induced sexual problems (all later deleted):

@luscombeland @nytimes “Brave”? Faking a problem to promote his business? You failed to verify any part of his story
@GoodGuypervert @luscombeland exaggerating makes them money, esp in his case. These guys are mostly unemployed, no college…got $$$ somehow
@AlexanderRhodes & @luscombeland are creating fake panic to sell their wares. Disgusting.
@AlexanderRhodes @luscombeland @GoodGuypervert uh-oh, he’s gone full ad-hominem BC he got caught faking to make money off young scared men.
@AlexanderRhodes @luscombeland @GoodGuypervert then I await your proof that any of your claims actually happened to you, fake profiteer.

Alexander answered several times, with no resolution. Eventually Belinda tweeted the following:

Pornhelps responds, seeing if a lie will stick: “I heard you got blackballed for false reporting.” Eventually Prause’s “NicoleRPrause” Twitter account chimes in calling Luscombe a liar (below). Hmm…how did @NicoleRPrause know about this Twitter thread? Another bit of evidence suggesting Nicole Prause masqueraded as @pornhelps.

In this same Twitter thread Pornhelps (who is Prause) tweeted about a just published David Ley interview of Nicole Prause.

In the Ley interview Prause claims to have unpublished data falsifying any connection between “porn addiction” and penile injures (Prause also said she will never publish the data). It’s important to know that both Prause and Pornhelps had been saying that Alexander lied about his masturbation-induced penile injury and porn-induced sexual problems.

Is it any coincidence that 3 days after multiple @pornhelps tweets called Alexander a liar, Ley and Prause publish a Psychology Today blog post directed at one of Alexander’s complaints (that he injured his penis from excessive masturbation)? Interestingly, their own data apparently showed that a fifth of those surveyed had experienced similar injuries. But again, Prause refuses to publish the data, while claiming her data somehow (inexplicably) prove that Alexander must be a liar. In any case Prause’s blog claims remain unsupported as she did not assess “porn addiction” or compulsive porn use in her subjects (read the comments section of Ley’s post).

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Nicole Prause & “PornHelps” falsely accuse TIME editor Belinda Luscombe of lying and misquoting. Luscombe has been with TIME Magazine since 1995, becoming a senior editor in 1999. (See her Wikipedia page and her TIME page.) Luscombe spent a year investigating porn-induced sexual problems in young men, which resulted in the March, 31, 2016 TIME cover story “Porn and the Threat to Virility.” Both Prause and Ley have attacked the TIME article, even though both were featured in it and quoted (minimally).

Unfortunately for the public, Prause and Ley are usually the only “experts” featured in most mainstream porn-addiction articles, while the true addiction neuroscientists and their work are not even acknowledged to exist. Not this time. Two world renowned neuroscientists, who have published fMRI studies on porn users, were interviewed for the TIME article. So was a urologist, as well as several young men who have recovered from porn-induced erectile dysfunction. Put simply, the TIME article was more carefully researched than other articles on this subject, and its content reflected both reality and the (then) current state of the science. Since then, even more support for the possible link between internet porn use and sexual dysfunctions has come out in the peer-reviewed literature.

In response to Belinda’s earlier tweet (pictured above) about working on the story for a year, we have @pornhelps, tweeting the following:

Pornhelps is psychic: she knows “for fact” how long Belinda worked on the story. Ten minutes later Prause tweets claiming Belinda misquoted her and “lied about her sources”:

As always, Prause provides no examples and no documentation. Not being tagged, how did Prause know about Belinda’s tweet or @pornhelps’s reply? Maybe Prause is psychic too?

Reality Check: It is Prause and @Pornhelps who are lying. As many can verify, Luscombe interviewed Gary Wilson, Gabe Deem, Alexander Rhodes, Noah Church, David Ley, and others, during the year before the TIME cover story was published. In addition, Luscombe and several TIME Magazine fact-checkers contacted each individual several times to corroborate each interviewee’s claims.

We know that Wilson’s former employers were contacted, as were the girlfriends of the men with porn-induced sexual problems. Interviewees were also asked to deny or confirm claims given to TIME by David Ley and Nicole Prause. This was done in writing, often 2-3 times for each claim.

For example, Prause falsely claimed to TIME magazine that Gabe Deem masqueraded as a medical doctor(!) to write this peer-reviewed critique of Prause & Pfaus 2015 (which was, in fact, written by a medical doctor/researcher). Even more astonishingly, Prause boldly lied toTIME that UCLA had traced the “Richard A. Isenberg MD” critique (Letter to the Editor) to the young man’s computer! This outlandish attempt to defame Deem is all documented above.

In an attempt to end the conversation Belinda tweets the following on July 25:

“PornHelps” tweets two more unstable responses (Update – @pornhelps later deleted their Twitter account as it became apparent that Prause often tweeted with this account):

No one responds to feed the troll.

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