I didn't find the "My hoop addiction and other things" thread as funny as the other ones but I had to include it because it really confirms John Toast's theory from the early episodes. The first time these guys saw hoop earrings was also the first time they got a boner, so I guess that's what their sexuality is now! I'm glad it even got addressed at the end of the episode. I mean, I just cannot comprehend it, but there's been so many examples in the podcast's history now, so it must be true!
I really liked how much these guys tried to keep it bottled up, like "No, no, it's totally not sexual! It's all about fun and being a free spirit!", yet you could clearly see the cracks in the dam. In posts like Likeglass', the girlfriend one and the totally real webcam story there's an undercurrent of "Hoops are causing women discomfort and pain and it's really hot." which is supremely creepy. They want to have their cake and eat it too by wanting women to dress like sluts and be hurt the way they deserve it, the sluts they are, but also vehemently protesting against the idea that hoops frame women in a negative image.
It's almost as if they're coyly trying to recruit women into their fetish by whitewashing the whole "fetish" part, but I wouldn't give that idea any credence. After all, it's not like I encountered a thread on the forum about creating a mirror of hoopfetish.com, called something innocuous like hooplovers.com, where it would be the exact same site, but with all the NSFW content stripped, so that anyone -- and I do mean anyone, but let's just say women visiting the site -- would be fooled tricked led to believe it's a normal site about them and their fashion choices being appreciated by men and not a site where their worth as human beings wholly depends on how big the metal circle hanging from their ears is. That last part is my conjecture, by the way, that wasn't in the thread. The whole thing sounds familiar though, I could swear I saw a site like the one I just described on... Tripod? Nah, I must be thinking of something else.
It's such a melting pot of fetishes too, it's dominance and submission, there's a dash of cuckolding in there, but the stew in this melting pot's never really boiling. It's just simmering ominously and that's somehow way worse. By the way, if you have any doubts this isn't sexual, there's the obligatory media sharing thread on hoopfetish.com aaaaaand several people seem to be proud of their extensive collection of hoop porn videos and photos! I also saw a video capture of a woman giving a guy a BJ while he was holding her hoop earrings like they were bike handlebars. I assumed neither of them made "vroom vroom" sounds while doing it though, so I didn't even bother clicking through.