CYBERSPACE — Earlier this week, a Vice U.K. report from 2015 resurfaced on Twitter which included a section about a London-based obsessive anti-porn activist named Omid Mankoo, with performers and fans wondering if this person was connected to the ongoing harassment and hate operation against sex workers waged on Twitter and Instagram by a user calling himself “Omid.”
After the “Omid” harasser taunted performer Kit Mercer, whose Instagram account he boasted on Twitter he had taken down, one of Mercer’s fans unearthed an old Vice U.K. article called “Weed, Evangelism and Sex Addiction: I Spent an Entire Day at Speakers' Corner.”
In the 2015 article, Vice reporter Jack Cummings spoke to several eccentrics and cranks who congregated at Speakers’ Corner, a section of Hyde Park notorious for all kinds of Londoners espousing idiosyncratic opinions.
This is the section concerning Omid Mankoo:
Later on, self-confessed sex addict Omid Mankoo takes the corner, a lone figure performing some unusual exercise movements. He's perched beside a sign of Microsoft Word art promising "SEX ADDICTION SOLVED". I ask him to share his secret.
Hi Omid. Why are you here talking about sex addiction?
Omid Mankoo: One minute I was interested in women, then I didn't care. I don't like the term "addiction.” I prefer "strongly fixated.”
How did you find the cure?
I don't promise the cure, but I have solution material. Sex is exaggerated by media, society and presentation materials.
Do you mean porn?
Yes. First I studied God in ancient Indian scripture, then I applied it to sexuality by studying my aroused self.
Sounds interesting. Is it an abstinence type of thing?
No, I don't promote abstinence — it's all about freeing the mind
Have you had much success?
I helped myself, and over 180 people have the book. But it takes over three years to have a significant impact once the tricks are revealed.
Perhaps discouraged by the lack of audience (most visitors to Speakers' Corner prefer the more off-the-wall debates), Omid packs up and walks off after about an hour. He declines my handshake as he leaves.
A further online search for “Omid Mankoo” reveals an old Twitter account, @omidmankooauthr, that was set up in January 2012. The account ceased posting in April 2013. The main purpose of the account was to promote a book (most likely an e-book) called “Book: Open To Bliss — Sage Hope's 1st Gift to Humanity — The Definitive & Complete Solution Manual to Sexual Attraction & Addiction by Omid Mankoo.”
A description of the book in an alleged “review” site is actually written by Mankoo, who also calls himself Sage Hope. Like the person behind the “Omid” campaign of hate and harassment against sex workers that Twitter has been tolerating since November 2018, Omid Mankoo’s writings paint him as obsessive, self-righteous and rambling.
Omid Mankoo is obsessed with having “solved” the “problem of sex addiction” and is oblivious to the contradictions and obvious nonsense in his crusade. Omid Mankoo wants to help others and see this as a mission. He is also obsessed with “mind control,” specifically an unclear notion that porn videos hide subliminal messages and that they are harmful to society at large, even to those who don’t watch it.
Some of the material on his blog, called Sage Hope's School of Honesty, seems to date to 2009, though he promoted the book online mostly between 2012 and 2015. A self-shot rambling video on YouTube, titled “Original Main Video: Sex Addiction Solution Manual — Book: Open to Bliss” sounds a lot like the “Omid” targeting the historically marginalized community of sex workers in flagrant violation of the Twitter terms of service against harassment and hatred.
Also, when XBIZ conducted linguistic analysis for a psychological profile of the person behind the “Omid” Twitter accounts (for “Instagram and the 'War on Porn': An XBIZ Explainer,” May 28, 2019), this is what we wrote:
Well, after closely looking at the persona’s patterns (believe us, it is a thankless job to read and catalog every single one of the "Omid" posts and interactions), confusing ideology, monomaniacal obsessions, we performed a linguistic analysis on the grammar, syntax and vocabulary. It does seems possible to build a working character profile for "Omid."
Whoever is writing those posts is most likely an adult male 20-40, possibly from an area in Asia between Pakistan and Northern India (Punjab and Kashmir are options), trained in a tech institute, perhaps having spent time in the U.K., and familiar Hindu and/or Buddhist philosophy. He is vaguely religious but not a fundamentalist and quite likely not in the Christian tradition.
He is also obsessed with control, and particularly controlling beautiful women and “saving them” from porn. But he is not a stereotypical “white knight”: a telling sign is that he is not concerned with all the porn that is posted on Twitter. He is focused on Instagram because he is obsessed with rules and order, and making sex workers dance to his nonsensical tune.
If this person could not hide behind a computer screen, he may have turned into a dangerous, obsessive killer like Jack the Ripper, the Zodiac Killer or “Buffalo Bill” from “Silence of the Lambs” ("It rubs the lotion on its skin…”). His erasure of people is no less obsessive in the digital realm.
Although we have not ascertained whether obsessive anti-porn activist Omid Mankoo is behind the obsessively anti-porn Twitter accounts going by “Omid,” “Mankoo” is a high-caste surname common in Punjab, and Omid Mankoo is London-based, exactly like the person described in our tentative forensic profile in May.
Omid Mankoo was also active in the Yahoo Answer forums. To the question “Why do people enjoy watching porn that features taboo sexual acts?,” he replied:
There is a tremendous amount of mind manipulation within many sexual presentations that you are more than likely not aware of. Many are disguised as natural sexual attraction which hides them even further. They are under the influence of those manipulations, without knowing so.
This is a 2015 entry from Omid Mankoo's blog:
Most people do not know the solution to sexual fixation and addiction. thus they fall prey to the manipulations used that powerfully impact there mind. Manipulations you say? what manipulations? Well you see since most people believe that lust is completely natural they do not question that there is such a thing as manipulations. There are in fact a series of mind manipulations employed to powerfully affect the mind of the viewer. They are unknown to most people and they are disguised to appear natural.
I suggest the public to learn about them and also learn about the solution, teach it to others and practice it to free their mind. because as it is now masses of people are ruining their own lives and ruining families. Almost every family is tremendously affected by these manipulations either directly or indirectly by coming into contact with someone who has such a problem, such as a family member, friend acquaintance or a businessman, policeman, judge, lawyer, priest, teacher, etc. you get the picture.
Now its up to you. Really it is. if you look into the information yourself and learn it and spread the word to others. you with a few other visionary caring people will get the word to the masses. The book that has the solution is “Open to Bliss” written by Omid Mankoo.
A quote in his Goodreads page reads:
“First Embody the Emptiness of Silence
Next Embody the Fullness of Honesty & Love
Thus Be Heaven
Sage Hope (Omid Mankoo) SH...”
Omid Mankoo
This is tagged: porn-addiction, pornography-addiction, recovery, sex-addiction-solution-manual, sexual-addiction, spiritual
Update (Fri. 7/12/19) — XBIZ has just reviewed a cache of videos from Omid Mankoo's YouTube account. For the last few months, he has mostly been publishing videos of his music practice. The last two videos are a rant about the importance of silence and an exercise video that culminates in a long tirade about "Sexual Overwhelm" that shows his preoccupation with porn controling his mind and sexuality. Both videos were published in October 2018 (go to minute 30:43). In November 2018, the "Omid" campaign of hate and harassment began on Twitter and Instagram:
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For the full Vice U.K. article on eccentrics and cranks in 2015 London including the Omid Mankoo interview, click here.
For XBIZ's complete coverage of the "Omid" hate and harassment campaign against sex workers on Twitter and Instagram, click here.
