‘I thought you would like it’: The risky sexual practice popularized by TV shows and TikTok

On the pair of series Euphoria (2019 -) and The Idol (2023), sex scenes are so plentiful and incendiary that they tend to eclipse the central plot. Both have featured erotic asphyxiation practices in memorable scenes.

Euphoria’s two seasons, soon to be joined by a third, have turned it into a contemporary reference point, one that has come to characterize an entire generation of teens and brought us such undeniable rising stars as Zendaya and Jacob Elordi. The Idol was seen as a vanity project of its creator, The Weeknd, and became an unmitigated flop — though it may well be on its way to cult classic status.

But this was not the first time that erotic asphyxiation has been depicted in fiction. In 1976, the Nagisa Ōshima film In the Realm of the Senses generated scandal around the world. The movie was based on a real-life 1936 event; the murder of a man, suffocated by his lover, which turned out to have been the product of a sexual passion that included the practice. From then on, erotic asphyxiation has been installed in the collective imagination, linked to the accidental death of actors and singers, prevalent in pornography (where it’s often practiced on women by men) and in fiction via television, books and films (from Stephen King mystery series Murder One to films like Basic Instinct 2, in which a female character carries it out on a man, for a change). Curiously, no one seems to have learned any lessons from the practice’s fraught history.

For the current generation of young people, erotic asphyxiation came to the fore during a scene from the first season of Euphoria. Algee Smith tries to strangle Cassie, played by Sydney Sweeney. She puts her foot down and says she doesn’t like it. He was under the impression that all women were into getting choked, because he grew up watching it on the porn that appeared on his computer screen. “I thought you would like it,” he says, chagrined and surprised. The exchange may well have been pulled from real life.

While Euphoria at least led viewers to reflect on the practice, in a scene from The Idol some four years later, depiction of the practice reached a new level. And for some critics, the series did so for the sake of pure aesthetics, leaving little room for analysis or subtlety. “If this means the return of torture porn, with women performing reductive postcards of desire for the male gaze, we’re getting off this orgasm,” wrote Noelia Ramírez in an EL PAÍS article titled “The worst sex on television is on The Idol”.

Marina Marroquí, author of the Spanish-language book Eso no es sexo (That is not sex; Crossbooks, 2023), says that normalizing this particular practice is quite dangerous. “What it shows is not only degrading, it also turns violence into something normal and acceptable. Boys are presented with violent and dehumanizing imagery, while girls, in general, are compelled to accept that violence,” says the social educator and gender-based violence specialist.

But just what is erotic asphyxiation? It consists of impeding own one’s breathing, or that of one’s parter, under the logic that a lack of oxygen increases the pleasure felt climaxing during sex. Lucía Jiménez, a sexologist at Diversual, explains that “strangulation maximizes the erection and vaginal and anal contractions, producing a vasodilatory effect in the body. It is found among the practices encapsulated by RACK [Risk Aware Consensual Kink]. In the world of BDSM, it is said that everything in your practice must be safe, sensible and consensual. Still, there’s never total safety when it comes to these practices.” Sexologist Anna Sánchez Bendahan adds that, physiologically, erotic asphyxiation generates a temporary reduction in the flow of oxygen, which can intensify physical and emotional sensations, release endorphins and lead to a euphoric high. “Psychologically, it can also be linked to power play, vulnerability and commitment,” she adds.

A recent study by the University of Hamburg and the Ilmenau University of Technology on violent and consensual sexual practices found that 40% of adults under the age of 40 have incorporated this kind of practice into their sexual relations, in which men normally take an active role. Bendahan says that this phenomenon can lead to multiple outcomes. “On one hand, it visibilizes diverse kinds of pleasure. On the other it can lead to imitations that are out of context, without explicit consent and involving power imbalance. What goes mainstream is not always well understood or well practiced,” says Bendahan. The mainstreaming of a practice once confined to BDSM communities has concerned publications like Dazed, the BBC and The New York Times. All three have published coverage on the issue in recent months.

Miriam Al Adib Mendiri and Diana Al Azem, authors of Cuando la cigüeña empezó a ver porno (When the stork started watching porn; Alienta Editorial, 2025), explain to EL PAÍS that the eroticization of violence, and in particular erotic asphyxiation, is no longer fringe behavior, and that today’s young people get less of their sexual education at home or at school, but rather from TV and pornography. “These practices are represented in contexts of glamour, desire and transgression, which contributes to their normalization. Also, we are living in a society that constantly looks for the extreme and the impactful, and that is also reflected in the sexual,” the authors say, before warning that erotic asphyxiation can be lethal. “The line between arousal and real suffocation is very thin. Normalizing it can lead adolescents and young people to try it without being aware of its physical risks: cerebral injuries, arrhythmias and sudden death. There is also the emotional risk of confusing violence with desire and learning that to give pleasure, you have to put the other person’s life in danger.”

A community has sprung up under the hashtag #KinkTok that speaks openly about BDSM sex and that the experts consulted for this article think generates awareness and rapid normalization without offering a critical look at the widespread adoption of such practices. Dominatrix Veronika Kestral explained to Mashable that, although it’s not ethical to teach physical technique on TikTok, people do so all the time. “Some of this stuff is actually harmful. Some of it is physically dangerous,” she says.

“No one should initiate play that involves pain, restriction of body parts or, as in this case, respiration, without first consulting with the other person. It’s not safe, and we don’t know what kind of reactions might be provoked in the receiver, if they feel trapped, claustrophobic, or what kind of pain tolerance they have. If someone, just because they saw it in a porn, does it without consent, the other person should stop. And if they agree to play, set limits as to how far it can go, and which are your uncrossable red lines,” says Jiménez.

To sum up, Al Adib Mendiri and Al Azem say they think it is necessary to state that porn has created a model of masculinity based on domination, resistance and aggression that many young men feel like they must embody, even if they don’t identify with it. “That can cause distress, disconnection with one’s own desires and a sexuality that is experienced more as an obligation than enjoyment. It’s important to convey that manhood doesn’t mean putting one’s partner at risk, but rather building safe, pleasurable and consensual encounters,” they say. Perhaps part of the problem is that in its fictional depictions, it’s not clear that erotic asphyxiation participants are having all that much fun.

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