Doppelbanger (noun) – someone you want to bang solely because they look similar to another person you want to bang.

/r/Doppelbangher (noun) – a forum on Reddit that helps you find porn stars that look like girls you know.

“We provide this service because most Redditors are socially inept, fat, unattractive, and will never be with a real woman,” says Daniel, a moderator for the Doppelbangher subreddit. He and several others mods are responsible for managing an intimate corner of the internet – a support group of sorts – for people in search of a porn star who resembles a crush from their past.

“The concept of this subreddit is very straightforward and simple,” Daniel explains to us. “People can post pictures of people they know, famous people, stock photos, or anyone else within our guidelines, for the purpose of finding doppelbangers, or look-alikes, who do porn or other nude content.”

He elaborates, “The intent is to provide better-than-imagination masturbation assistance where the requester can watch porn while pleasuring themselves and getting a visual representation of their real life crush that they otherwise don't have an opportunity to bang.”

Although Doppelbangher is far from the most popular masturbation-oriented community on Reddit, it still boasts about 28,000 subscribers whose posts reveal the struggle of unfulfilled fantasies and the desperate cries of unrequited love. Many users request lookalikes from predictable places, such as classmates, co-workers, and companions who have brutally friend-zoned them. Others fantasize about women they’ve never met, such as a “lead singer of a Korean pop band,” a “Super sexy Chicago TV personality,” and a “young Alicia Silverstone from the movie Clueless.”

Inside these posts, they share images, presumably pulled from the women’s personal Facebook or Instagram pages, in hopes that some good Samaritan will respond with a lookalike porn star. The requests appear to be made entirely by men, with only one likely lesbian found in a scan of over 100 postings. Wanton women have the option to post in the subreddit that serves as Doppelbangher’s female counterpart, r/Doppelbanghim, but their requests would likely go unanswered, as the Doppelbanghim forum goes mostly untouched.

The Doppelbangher forum has only a handful of rules. Quite obviously, no girls under the age of 18. In fact, any submissions with the word “school” in the title are immediately deleted. A high school crush is a notorious request, but the term of “classmate” is commonly used in the posting as a workaround. Another hard rule is that pictures cannot have any identifying information, like a college name or a company logo. While a stranger identifying a woman in a posting is less than ideal, even worse is when a woman finds herself.

A story of that exact scenario unfolded a few years ago, when a woman discovered her photos in a Doppelbangher posting. In response to the request, she commented on the post, “She looks pretty identical to this girl! ;)” accompanied with a link to a photo of herself holding a sign that reads “you’re disgusting.” While the woman handled the offense lightly, problematic relationships — like male teachers and their female students, male employees and their female bosses, and ordinary men and their ex-girlfriends — might make the subject of a posting far more upset.

Far and away, the men’s most popular requests are for ex-girlfriends. When asking my friend, Scott*, if he’d ever use the Doppelbangher forum, he responded that he would, and the girl of his choosing would be his ex. He said he wishes he knew of Doppelbangher when they first broke up. Scott told me, “Having this memento of her might have prevented me from spending years searching for girls that looked exactly like my ex. After she tore a hole in my heart, I looked to fill that space with someone who had the same haircut, same eyes, the same height, even the same voice.”

For Scott and thousands of other men, Doppelbangher provides an opportunity to cure them of their infatuations. Perhaps they can stop worshipping their ex if they lower her to the standard of masturbation material. Then, they can jack off to her like any other pretty girl and let her go.

Whether grieving the loss of a girlfriend or fulfilling some elaborate fantasy with the weatherwoman, these men see Doppelbangher as a sexual sanctuary. There, their delusions aren’t shamed, but supported. The sad reality is that these men will likely never achieve their desires with the woman of their dreams. But for them, it’s better to have loved and fapped than never to have loved at all.

*Not his real name

(Originally published on July 21, 2017)