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What is online pornography doing to sexual tastes and youngsters’ minds?
- Kenji 11y agoThe boys used to have smutty magazines hidden away, now they have their hidden explorer folder. Same thing - different times. The relentless moralizing about sexuality and pornography disgusts me more than any sexual practice I've ever heard of or seen.
- irl_zebra 11y agoMoralizing on the subject is terrible, but there are legitimate issues with respect to production of the content and exploitation.
- nostrademons 11y agoDoesn't that apply to basically every industry in our modern capitalist economy?
- code_duck 11y agoSure, so why not discuss this one?
- sandworm101 11y agoThe porn industry does have some specific practical issues. Probably the most is the reliance on very young actresses. Most start while under 20 these days. People that age are too trusting. They get put in bad contracts and don't know their legal rights. For example, I had one girl come to me an say that a studio was claiming to "own" her real name, forbidding her from working under that name with anyone else. They had also not paid her. It boiled down to producers knowing they can bully these kids. The secrecy in which most of these girls wrap their work doesn't help. They are very hesitant to complain or reach out to lawyers.
- BinaryIdiot 11y ago> The porn industry does have some specific practical issues. Probably the most is the reliance on very young actresses. Most start while under 20 these days. People that age are too trusting. They get put in bad contracts and don't know their legal rights. I would argue this is not specific to the porn industry. For instance colleges rely on students being too young and naive to really understand the student loan that they are given. 10 years later many feel betrayed or scammed because they have a degree that isn't always the best in the current economy and still in thousands of debt.
- nostrademons 11y agoDitto the music industry with teen pop stars, the professional sports industry with dreams of the major leagues, the tech startup industry where only a small fraction of startups will succeed, all of academia where you have dozens of Ph.Ds competing for each tenured professor job, the legal industry where thousands of deeply-indebted fresh-faced associates seek to make partner, and every corporate hierarchy. As they say, "When a less-experienced businessman meets a more-experienced businessman, the less-experienced businessman gets some experience." Not sure if there's any way around this, though. The people who avoid getting taken advantage of when they're young tend to get taken advantage of their whole life.
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- gaius 11y agoThe games industry too is notorious for sucking in young talent and burning them out, there's always the next batch of naive graduates.
- mgkimsal 11y agoInteresting. I don't know the specific wording, but how much of a contract holds up if one side doesn't hold up their end (not paying the other party). I know it's all down to what's in the specific text, but.. certainly morally, when you quit fulfilling your end of the bargain, I don't feel much of a need to uphold mine. Yes, I'm older now, but I know I felt that way even as a kid. That particular story just bugs me. Somehow they'd rather pay attorney fees against her for doing something she should be allowed to do, vs just using that money to ... pay her for services rendered in the first place. Touches a nerve, cause I had someone not pay me. But they had money to respond to my lawsuit, and in extremely great detail (20+ pages to detail all the ways they do not owe me anything for the several weeks I built their project and delivered it to their client).
- Synaesthesia 11y agoYes but in this instance it frequently includes sexual degradation and exploitation.
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- gohrt 11y agoIt used to be a hassle to get fresh food too. http://yourbrainonfood.com/ http://yourbrainonfood.com/
- bnegreve 11y ago> The relentless moralizing about sexuality and pornography There is no moralizing in this article, just people trying to understand the impact of online pornography. Why is this disgusting?
- willemmali 11y agoThe site doesn't load any content for me? I only get a header and a footer. (Windows, Chrome, ABP)
- reader5000 11y agoIt is very easy to find sexual release with internet porn. More difficult with a real life woman. And therein lies the collapse of western civilization.
- jqm 11y agoWhen (eventually...they all do) western civilization collapses I highly doubt porn will be the leading cause. I lean more towards it being bankers, lawyers and politicians.
- FilterSweep 11y agoI completely agree, but it won't stop young men from being used as a scapegoat.
- a3n 11y agoLack of IRL interaction is a plausible cause. Japan is experience a reluctance to populate, not for porn, but still.
- ajmurmann 11y agoIt's even more severe in Germany. However, Germany as a country won't go away, it will just look very different, since there are many immigrants who are making up for it. Source: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-32929962 http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-32929962
- tsotha 11y agoBankers, lawyers, and politicians have always been corrupt and/or incompetent. People still used to have kids.
- lsc 11y ago> It is very easy to find sexual release with internet porn. More difficult with a real life woman. Very true... but I don't really see the problem. >And therein lies the collapse of western civilization. I suspect you are joking, but behind the joke, there's a very real, very disturbing attitude. It's a double-standard, really; in modern times, masturbation is largely seen as a positive thing, an empowering thing for women. But not so for men; the same act is somehow shameful for men. It's like there's this attitude that a man's sexuality, to be honorable, must impose it's will on others. It's an attitude that I think is both destructive to the men in question and to those we interact with. It's an attitude that should have gone away with the idea of ownership of other human beings.
- sandworm101 11y agoSo kids are forgoing realworld sex. When did that become a bad thing? My whole school life I was 'encouraged' to avoid sex, alcohol and every other vice at all costs. Going to a party on a friday night was a bad thing. Sex, whether through disease or pregnancy, would destroy your life. This is still the mantra, although nobody then told me that sex would send me to hell. That part is new. So why are we not surprised that kids today have found something else? Society tells them to avoid sex at all costs. Society is just now winning that conversation.
- jqm 11y agoIndeed. Wasn't there a US surgeon general who said schools should teach masturbation to young people as way to avoid sex related problems? Think I remember a flap about that and her eventually getting fired... because... Western Civilization and morals or something...
- Synaesthesia 11y agoSex is an important part of human relations, to forgo it is to leave out an important part of your personal development in my opinion.
- sandworm101 11y agoCareful. Sex is an agreement, not a choice. There are lots of people in this world who would like to have sex but for whatever reasons cannot or do not. Abstinence is also a focus of countless religious traditions. I would hesitate to tell any of those people they lacked in personal development.
- mbel 11y agoPersonally, I think it is crucial in personal development because, as you put it, it is an agreement, not a choice. There are some lessons to be learned from getting somebody to agree with you on something.
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- elorant 11y agoFrom my point of view online porn looks boring because it objectifies women too much. It’s just so mechanical nowadays. Whenever I happen to view porn from the eighties it looked much more natural. But then again I guess back then porn actors where only a few dozen and they knew each other quite well so this allowed some kind of intimacy to grow between them. Now porn has become a commodity, there are thousands of actors, a gazillion of different styles and the production is too big for anyone to bother bringing some quality to the mixture. I feel that this would be a threat to youngsters if they were to believe that sex doesn't require any kind of sentimental bonding.
- icebraining 11y agoThat's why Amateur is one of the most popular categories - though most of it is fake.
- Synaesthesia 11y agoThe problem with pornography is not that it reveals too much of the woman, but rather that it reveals too little.
- noonespecial 11y agoReally like that quote. I was thinking, G. K. Chesterton, or maybe C. S. Lewis on a good day, but it actually seems to be from Pope John Paul II! “There is no dignity when the human dimension is eliminated from the person. In short, the problem with pornography is not that it shows too much of the person, but that it shows far too little.” --Pope John Paul II
- UhUhUhUh 11y agoIt's funny to look at this like an electric circuit. There is a nominal tension, built in our very biological existence. If mere resistance (i.e. moralizing, law) is applied, tension will increase or output will decrease...
- Synaesthesia 11y agoI have found that quitting pornography and masturbation has had many benefits for my life. My energy levels, motivation are up and my mood is noticeably more stable. My relationship with my girlfriend and love life have also benefited. I think it's good to practice self-discipline in general. It can also become a problematic addiction.
- jqm 11y agoIt might be worthwhile to examine this phenomenon in a larger context. For example, I know a girl who is obsessed with watching sticky sweet romantic shows and movies like "twilight" and "the bachelor". The romance portrayed in these shows is extremely unrealistic and I feel it gives her unrealistic expectations of romantic relationships. Certainly there are no shortage of young men smoking too much marijuana and watching too much internet porn and generally not trying in life who wonder why they can't find a female partner, but likewise there are a lot women who are overweight, unclean, disorganized and generally not exciting (or even downright repulsive) watching romantic shows or reading sexy novels and thinking their world should be that way. The larger phenomenon is, in my opinion, media substitutions for reality. It's like to much sugar and causes certain individuals problems. But it's not a problem isolated to porn and young men.
- TickleMeHellNo 11y agoYou might find "Don Jon" a good watch: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2229499/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2229499/
- nyc_cyn 11y agoWell said.
- int_handler 11y agoDefinitely agree. What makes it difficult for many people to look at this phenomenon in a larger context is that it is much easier to be alarmist at anything sexual. Unfortunately, many parts of societies still view sex as something shameful and thus tend to attempt to avoid anything to do with it rather than having meaningful discussion about it.
- awayaway1337 11y agoNow let me tell you my side of the story: I'm a 19 year old male and I'm completly incapable of connecting with others on an emotional level. However, that wasn't always the case, I clearly remember having "feeling" (what ever that is supposed to mean now) when I was about 12 or 13 but it has slowly withered away. I realized this when one of my teachers in high school mentioned that I'm a very hard person to excite, that is even given "exciting" news I would just shrug it away as being nice, but inside I felt empty -- even now I feel absolutely nothing, like being drunk. Now, its not that I'm anti-social, no, I can "talk" to people and intrigue them (a by product of my pseudo-isolation is that it allowed me to get quite good in some areas) but this is something that I learned to fake: how to behave and what to say when someone is feeling sad, or happy, or whatever -- but in reality I don't care about you or your problems or how you feel, I'll just manipulate the situation and person into a favourable state to benefit me later on and that means that I have to through certain social rituals (comforting someone, compliments, etc) and manipulating truth (lying) comes naturally (not naturally enough however; I got called out on it once. Once.). Recently however I realized that no matter what I do, I'll never be able to connect with someone on an intimate level because I always put myself first (and I have a few rationalization of that, e.g. living in a capitalist society etc.) and I know for a fact that when people get "close" to me they see through me (I have a few friends that see me for what I am and cautiously accept that, with an occasional confrontation here and there). So how am I supposed to achieve a sexual release without pornograpy? Sure, I've gotten black out drunk and had sex, but that is the same thing, if not worse than pornograpy, because no real intimacy happens there either, and getting super drunk is not something I want either (it just makes the fake social interactions even faker as me on alcohol is not me).
- belorn 11y agoEvery once in a while we get this kind of articles that tries to create a story from a few studies that have found loose correlations (but never causation) between what people watch on cinema, TV and now computers/mobile phones, and what they do in real life. The problem is that if the theory of modified norms and behavior has for all the studies never been strongly linked. In theory, we should all be committing much more crime and violence in direct relation to the ease of access to news and movies, but crimes have steady gone down rather than up. Yearly statistics do show however an increased fear of crime in relation to reading news and watching movies, so it seems our perception about others behaviors has had a much larger impact than on our own behavior.
- vskarine 11y agoRelated to the subject of declining violence: http://www.businessinsider.com/mark-zuckerberg-bill-gates-recommend-steven-pinker-book-better-angels-2015-2 http://www.businessinsider.com/mark-zuckerberg-bill-gates-re...
- artnep 11y agoThe first myth addressed by makelovenotporn.com (mentioned in the article) regards "facials". I wonder how much men's desire to do this comes from watching porn. Any grecian urns with men "dropping loads"?
- douche 11y agoDoes anybody actually want to do this or have it done to them? There are a lot of weird tropes in porn, but this has to be one of the weirdest wide-spread ones. Really, you might as well just squirt super-glue at somebody. Seems like it would make a hell of a mess, and it also makes me think of this joke from Good Will Hunting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6il6tocb4ic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6il6tocb4ic
- throwaway_homo 11y agoI dunno, I'm gay, and I goddamn love it when someone does that to me.
- artnep 11y agoI think the majority of men in my demographic like to do it. And in my experience, about half of the girls are into it, the other half are indifferent.
- cthalupa 11y agoI've done it a few times, at the request of my girlfriend at the time. I was indifferent to it, personally. She was very much into dom/sub type relationships, so I expect most of the kink for her came from that.
- pluma 11y agoI've heard several explanations. The negative explanation is that it degrades the recipient (i.e. women), adding to the sadist/misogynist aspect of heterosexual intercourse. The pragmatic explanation is that it provides a visual cue for the viewer (particularly those who are more visually oriented) indicating the climax of the sexual act. If the orgasm were internal, it'd be hard to miss (though there's an entire niche for that, of course). As to why it's the face in particular: it's the easiest way to directly show the recipient's reaction at the same time, especially on low-resolution or small-scale displays (plus on those devices a close-up tends to be easier to recognize). The psychological explanation has something to do with there being a long-standing trope of portraying cannibalism as the ultimate infatuation (e.g. the communion of the Holy Spirit in Christianity representing "becoming one with Jesus" by consuming his flesh and blood) and ejaculate representing the "essence" of the male orgasm (biologically speaking the entire "point" of sex is to put one person's sperm in the other person's body). It may seem odd that there are people who are into the ejaculate itself but it's far more straightforward than a lot of other things some people enjoy (including pretty much everything else that can come out of a person's body, apparently non-sexual body parts and things that aren't even related to persons, or even BDSM which is so much about psychology it can get away without any actual intercourse taking place).
- deftnerd 11y agoPornHub has a great blog at http://www.pornhub.com/insights http://www.pornhub.com/insights where they put out all sorts of interesting statistics on viewership, preference of certain search terms, and demographics data. I'm not much of a porn connoisseur, but I love the data they publish! A recent post specifically talks about the porn consumption habits of Millennials http://www.pornhub.com/insights/millennials-demographics-statistics http://www.pornhub.com/insights/millennials-demographics-sta...
- cthalupa 11y agoI'd be curious to see the ratio of people that will watch something considered "extreme" in porn and want to re-enact it vs. those that will watch it but have no interest in being personally involved. I definitely fall in the latter - most of what I watch is pretty vanilla, but at times, I'll venture into things that are more risque. I'm not at all personally into bondage, for example, and I'm indifferent to anything more than just light roleplaying, but once or twice a month I might pull up a BDSM video and enjoy it. I doubt that I'm alone in sometimes wanting to watch something I'd not enjoy personally doing.