Fitting Curves Derives Me Crazy

October 21, 2021 3:09 PM

In the depths of Pornhub, buried beneath a mountain of hardcore erotica, a 34-year-old Taiwanese man named Changhsu (張旭) taps away at a green chalkboard while speaking a steady stream of Mandarin. In nearly all of his 226 videos, he wears a gray hoodie and black-rimmed glasses, and he never once does anything even remotely pornographic — no blow jobs, no 69s, no anal. He’s on Pornhub for a different reason: To teach calculus. From The Determined Math Tutor Teaching Calculus on Pornhub [Mel Magazine] [CW: calculus]
posted by chavenet (43 comments total)

there is a "pull my other one" joke in here somewhere

it's the 21st century and who would have guessed our water-skiing squirrel stories would be replaced by Pornhub calculus disruptors.. I'll take it, great (and odd) story
posted by elkevelvet at 3:12 PM on October 21, 2021 [5 favorites]

Not sure about you sickos and perverts as I have personally only ever visited Pornhub for the calculus videos
posted by windbox at 3:15 PM on October 21, 2021 [32 favorites]

Hey guys, Rule 35 'n' all...?
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 3:24 PM on October 21, 2021 [2 favorites]

If porn is going off on a tangent this would be the right way to do it.
posted by storybored at 3:28 PM on October 21, 2021 [22 favorites]

Pornhub? I only watch it for the integrals.
posted by mhum at 3:35 PM on October 21, 2021 [5 favorites]

That's very smart. I'm envious of people who can create valuable, helpful content & then get it in front of people and then pay their bills & create decent jobs. Really A+ human-ing I think.
posted by bleep at 3:36 PM on October 21, 2021 [4 favorites]

This guy’s work is entirely derivative. Really needs something to differentiate himself
posted by armoir from antproof case at 3:38 PM on October 21, 2021 [41 favorites]

Nothing wrong with applying the chain rule, so long as everyone consents to composition.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 3:39 PM on October 21, 2021 [12 favorites]

I only watch it for the integrals
posted by sjswitzer at 3:50 PM on October 21, 2021 [2 favorites]

Kind of them to provide a link to “Jerking off to CALCULUS", in case the actual prof wasn't doing it for you.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 3:52 PM on October 21, 2021 [2 favorites]

[CW: calculus]

😄
posted by Greg_Ace at 3:55 PM on October 21, 2021 [16 favorites]

These are always fascinating! That said...
a) As noted in the article, there are lots of non-porn-things hidden away on pornhub because, you know, it's a big deal.
b) I always feel a bit icky about them ever since I listened to the Jon Ronson mini podcast series on Pornhub, because it just feels like there’s this real tension between a “ha ha porn!” marketing image and the extreme hardball (heh) that the company has played to make money.
posted by Going To Maine at 4:00 PM on October 21, 2021 [4 favorites]

Can we assume his Only Fans page is video after video of him being thanked for helping with maths homework?
posted by biffa at 4:02 PM on October 21, 2021 [4 favorites]

there is a "pull my other one" joke in here somewhere

Just don’t mess with Mr. In Between.
posted by jamjam at 4:15 PM on October 21, 2021 [2 favorites]

> a 34-year-old Taiwanese man

I always wondered where Rule 34 came from.
posted by tonycpsu at 4:24 PM on October 21, 2021 [2 favorites]

Putting the “cul” back in “calculus.”

(That one’s for my Francophone friends. I’ll show meself out.)
posted by The Underpants Monster at 4:30 PM on October 21, 2021 [15 favorites]

I guess there’s videos for both natural and unnatural numbers.
posted by njohnson23 at 4:40 PM on October 21, 2021 [3 favorites]

I would have thought this medium had certain limits, so I'm surprised to learn that it does.
posted by aws17576 at 4:55 PM on October 21, 2021 [3 favorites]

Is this the digital equivalent of only reading Playboy for the articles?
posted by tafetta, darling! at 4:58 PM on October 21, 2021 [6 favorites]

Be sure to check out the topology lessons. Good section in there on knots.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 5:07 PM on October 21, 2021 [6 favorites]

Calculus and alcohol don't mix.
Don't drink and derive.
posted by Multicellular Exothermic at 5:13 PM on October 21, 2021 [9 favorites]

“Next week, we’ll go back in history to a simpler time and study Sir Isaac Newton’s seminal work, the Principia Monogamatica”
posted by armoir from antproof case at 5:23 PM on October 21, 2021 [2 favorites]

I am working my way through all the videos on Pornhub to find the educational ones, but my progress is infinitesimally slow.
posted by TedW at 5:35 PM on October 21, 2021 [17 favorites]

Pornhub turned into Coursera so gradually I didn't even notice.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 5:44 PM on October 21, 2021 [10 favorites]

"Stepbrother, I didn't know you could integrate by parts."
posted by sjswitzer at 5:49 PM on October 21, 2021 [9 favorites]

Pornhub should fully integrate this educational component and see what profits they derive
posted by nubs at 6:06 PM on October 21, 2021 [1 favorite]

Hey guys, Rule 35 'n' all...?

If a medium exists, there is someone using it to earnestly teach mathematics?
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 6:21 PM on October 21, 2021 [9 favorites]

National Lampoon magazine from the early 1980s had sex scenes interpreted in various genres of literature, one of them was phrased in equations from a Mathematics textbook, I thought it was funny.
posted by ovvl at 6:22 PM on October 21, 2021 [1 favorite]

A decade or so ago there was "Britney Spears' Guide to Semiconductor Physics" which, to say the least, hasn't aged well at all.
posted by sjswitzer at 6:37 PM on October 21, 2021 [3 favorites]

“Stepbrother, I didn't know you could integrate by parts."

Alternatively: “Help me step-brother, I’m stuck! On this really hard math problem.”
posted by dephlogisticated at 6:52 PM on October 21, 2021 [8 favorites]

Ha, I actually ran across a whole page of those videos just the other day. If you want dirty math (just very suggestive) go look up the story of Little Miss Polynomial. It's a masterpiece of math innuendo.
posted by zengargoyle at 7:51 PM on October 21, 2021 [2 favorites]

I am working my way through all the videos on Pornhub to find the educational ones, but my progress is infinitesimally slow.

I'm doing the same thing! Funny thing is that one of those non-educational Pornhub videos will capture my attention for a while, and after that I suddenly lose interest in calculus.
posted by zardoz at 8:55 PM on October 21, 2021 [3 favorites]

It's a shame blackboards in porn stopped updating, I'm sure they'd have a field day.
posted by ckape at 9:24 PM on October 21, 2021 [3 favorites]

my progress is infinitesimally slow.

If you watch half the videos today, then half the remaining ones tomorrow, and so on..
posted by axiom at 9:33 PM on October 21, 2021 [6 favorites]

Waiting for him to branch out into geometry so I can make that joke about how it’s twelve inches long but he doesn’t use it as a rule.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 9:37 PM on October 21, 2021 [3 favorites]

Surprised the computer science guys haven't gotten in on this.

unzip, strip, touch, finger, grep, mount, fsck, more, yes, fsck, fsck, fsck, umount, sleep
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 10:03 PM on October 21, 2021 [11 favorites]

If you watch half the videos today, then half the remaining ones tomorrow, and so on.

Zeno's pornodox?
posted by Greg_Ace at 11:48 PM on October 21, 2021 [8 favorites]

In fact, Changhsu even tried to extend his reign to other adult websites like XVideos and XNXX, but he says “those platforms know which kinds of videos are adult and which aren’t, and they forbid them.”

Considering rule 34 this kind of surprised me. I'm guessing the sites don't want to have any sort of content that might be seen to attract children.
posted by Mitheral at 7:26 AM on October 22, 2021 [1 favorite]

Does someone think that calculus is attractive to children??
posted by gingerbeer at 7:27 PM on October 22, 2021 [5 favorites]

Well, a lot of people visiting those sites do seem to be keen on the act of multiplying, at the very least...
posted by Greg_Ace at 8:40 PM on October 22, 2021 [3 favorites]

Does someone think that calculus is attractive to children??

Probably not [but actually yes, lots of people under 18 are studying Calculus. It was offered starting in grade ten, 13-15 year olds, at my high school]. But the policy is probably something along the lines of "if no one gets naked or engages in some sort of main stream sexual activity then it's banned". The occasional rare false positive of someone not being able to post their Calculus lesson is likely considered an acceptable loss for having an easy bright line filter.
posted by Mitheral at 9:44 PM on October 22, 2021

Beanplating a jokey comment is the Metafilter equivalent of posting calculus videos on Pornhub.
posted by Reverend John at 8:04 AM on October 23, 2021 [3 favorites]

Beanplating a jokey comment

As long as everyone takes a shower, I don't see the problem with it.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 2:29 PM on October 23, 2021 [3 favorites]