No Nut November Is Taking Over TikTok, and Men Feel Like It's Asking a Lot

The Gist:

• The abbreviation "NNN" is once again making its rounds on TikTok.
• The viral abbreviation "NNN" stands for "No Nut November."
• No Nut November has nothing to do with the tasty fruits or legumes you might consume when seeking healthier snacking alternatives.

For years now, November has been a month defined in part by month-long trends. For a while, No Shave November was the dominant version of this, in which men were asked to put down their razors for the whole month in order to raise money and awareness around cancer.

In more recent years, another trend has popped up on social media, and this one is abbreviated to "NNN." Because many of the TikTok videos don't provide much context around the meaning of NNN, we're here to help you make sense of this confusing trend (or challenge might we say).

Some users on TikTok and other social media platforms may have noticed the abbreviation "NNN" floating around on the platform and wondered what it means. As it turns out, this acronym is short for No Nut November, and it's another month-long trend that asks men to make a sacrifice. The trend was born on the internet, and anyone can participate, assuming they have some self-restraint.

Self-restraint is necessary because No Nut November requires men to give up ejaculating for the entire month of November. "Nut" can be used as a slang term for ejaculation, which is how the challenge got its alliterative name. According to Know Your Meme, the challenge was first posted on Urban Dictionary a decade ago by a user with the handle bicboi6969696969. In 2017, the trend started to catch on online in a way it hadn't before then.

The challenge reportedly emerged out of the NoFap community on Reddit, which is dedicated to "porn addiction and compulsive sexual behavior recovery," according to its description. The forum is known for hosting challenges that call for participants to abstain from pornography and masturbation for a period of time.

The rules of participation are fairly simple. For the entire month of November, you have to abstain from having sex, masturbating, or in any way "nutting." Women are not mentioned in most descriptions of the event, but they are allowed to participate if they choose to. Some women have actually complained about the challenge, though, saying that they have been forced to go without sex for the entire month because their partner is participating in the challenge.

Although there are some people who participate in No Nut November quite seriously, there are plenty of people who just use the challenge as an opportunity to make plenty of jokes. In general, those jokes are about how difficult the challenge is for most men, and how quickly they tend to prove themselves incapable of actually doing it.

TikTok users have been posting about No Nut November for several years now, but the trend seems to have gained an even greater level of popularity more recently as jokes have emerged about the annual ritual and more men have discovered that it exists.

Most men may find the trend almost impossible to complete, but the challenge's level of awareness with the general public has never been higher. Whether you decide to take the month off or not, No Nut November is a bigger trend than ever before.