They aren’t nihilists, they have found a purpose and meaning: jacking off a whole lot in pursuit of a mental high. It’s just that the meaning they’ve settled on is disordered and crowds out alternate sources of meaning.
One of my hottest takes is that all the bad stuff we used to call “vices,” like porn, drugs, booze, gambling, smoking, and promiscuity, are actually bad. That doesn’t mean all bad things need to be banned and brutally suppressed but removing all frictions and stigma and pretending they are value neutral or maybe good is stupid. The harm also falls disproportionately on those least equipped socially, intellectually, or temperamentally to moderate themselves.
Porn should be legal, but making you ask for it at a gas station or venture out to a skeezy city limits store and park around back to hide your car was a good friction to maintain.
Smoking is legal but it’s a good social friction to make it costly and to tightly clamp down on where you can do it. It’s good to make it socially shameful.
Gambling shouldn’t be criminalized but you should have to go to a reservation or use a shady bookie or some shit. That is a good social friction; it’s not good to be able to make in-game prop bets tied to a credit card.
Many such cases.