9 ms·

Is porn making young men impotent?

82 points by drugme 8y ago

intelliderp 8y ago
Sex is the strongest motivator for young men to develop the mind, the body, become cultured, make more and more money, and to enter into demanding relationships. If sexual desire can be completely fulfilled alone at home, then what is the point of all society? The strong arches and buttresses that support high roofs collapse and leave only solitary ruined columns.
vsviridov 8y ago
Betteridge's law of headlines...
- saberience 8y ago
  This isn't a cast iron law. There are many, many, 100's of examples even, where this law isn't true.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago
    Sure, but as heuristics go, this one is pretty good.
josefresco 8y ago
From the linked study: "While non-organic sexual dysfunctions have been presumed psychological in origin, and therefore the province of mental health experts, the unexplained sexual dysfunctions now rising sharply in young men (ED, difficulty orgasming, low sexual desire) are, to the extent they are reversible by quitting Internet pornography, not arising from “performance anxiety” (that is, psychosexual dysfunction, ICD-9 code 302.7), although performance anxiety may certainly accompany them." It seems they fall short of saying porn is "making" these men impotent, but rather that quitting porn does improve the situation.
- HarryHirsch 8y ago
  Today's porn is just too crass to compete with real life. Hans Billian's oevre was slightly silly, and Patricia Rhomberg could actually act, and nowadays it's violent excess, and good sex isn't like that. No surprise that laying off BIG COCK DESTROYS ASIAN STEPSISTERS ANUS improves things.
  - josefresco 8y ago
    The porn market is very diverse, there's plenty of loving/reasonable porn, you just have to work to find it. Your criticism about porn being "crass" is a good description of mainstream porn, which being "mainstream" is of course a problem. The porn industry is influenced by tracking data - this is why the popular "tube" sites are dominated by extremes, family and taboo porn - it gets clicks. Similar to Facebook, and other social media - giving people more (and more, and more) of what they like can have serious dangers.
    - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
      >there's plenty of loving/reasonable porn A lot of it has a blue icon beside it on a certain website that also has orange in its color scheme. The whole point of that icon is to denote content less likely to be of a mainstream/professional nature. Of course that never stopped anyone from putting every keyword imaginable in the title.
      - stcredzero 8y ago
        This website has orange in its color scheme. I suspect you mean a different one, however.
    - Kye 8y ago
      >> "The porn market is very diverse, there's plenty of loving/reasonable porn, you just have to work to find it." Very true. Furry porn is overflowing with loving expression. It might not be coincidence that most furry artists (and furries in general) are something other than cisgender and heterosexual men.
olivermarks 8y ago
It may be the Guardian that is making men impotent, they seem to run endless articles promoting womens right and undermining men's confidence
- kadendogthing 8y ago
  If your rights and confidence are inversely proportional to other's people rights and confidence then you have a seriously toxic problem that you should address.
  - olivermarks 8y ago
    They aren't and I was being flippant
ratling 8y ago
No. News at 11. Leno after. You won’t stay up for midnight at the Apollo.
- tivert 8y ago
  > News at 11. The saying is "film at 11." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_at_11 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_at_11
  - ratling 8y ago
    shrug I’m quoting myself.
JohnJamesRambo 8y ago
Isn't it much more likely the marked decline in testosterone is to blame? https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17062768 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17062768 Relevant Image: https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*n6SXZ6_p4vX9sprDI1UdUQ.jpeg https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*n6SXZ6_p4vX9sprDI... A man in the 1980s had a testosterone level of around 525, that level is now getting into the 400s, this is a massive change in the hormone that is responsible for sex drive, etc.
- jasonbarrah 8y ago
  My money is still on cell phones radiation from the front pocket.
  - crankylinuxuser 8y ago
    Not this again. I actually watched Larry King on CNN when he had the person with the brain tumor say 'My cell phone gave me this tumor'... And lo and behold the meme is now "Cellphones cause X" If, however you want a good hormone disruptor candidate, look no further than BPA and other estrogen-like compounds. With the amount of plastic we have in our biosphere, along with 'interesting' resultants from decomp, my money'd be on hormone disruption. I have to wonder if any uni is actively investigating this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/xenoestrogen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/xenoestrogen is very much a thing.
    - themagician 8y ago
      It’s porn? No, it’s low testosterone. No, it’s cell phones. No, it’s plastic. We are so adamant about finding the “one true cause” of any given thing that we don’t stop to consider that it doesn’t matter what it actually is. If we pretend it’s all of them, what’s the worst outcome? We watch less porn, eat better food, spend less time with our phone and use less plastic? What a terrible scenario that would be. We might do all these good things for no good reason! It’s the same problem we have with climate change. Always looking for the scapegoat instead of recognizing that the problem can be alleviated without finding the one true cause, assuming there even is one.
m0skit0 8y ago
My naive hypothesis is that health problems are only going to get worse because we've killed the fundamental constant force of improvement in nature: natural selection. Industrial countries people have way weaker health and more health problems than countries with bad health and hygiene systems. I'm definitely not advocating for a Social Darwinism but our genetics will only get worse in the context of an ever changing ecosystem that surround us. Sometimes we think we live in a bubble outside of the ecosystems but we don't. If we don't find a solution for this we're definitely doomed.
- maceurt 8y ago
  The fact that first world countries/ wealthy people are not having many kids and that third world countries/ poor people are having a lot of kids is very problematic. Natutal selection is seemingly going in the opposite direction to were we want it. Though to argue against this point, humans every year score on average better than they did last year on old IQ tests. The size of human skulls and brains are also increasing too, so natural selection may be working, just in a different way than we would expect.
  - com2kid 8y ago
    > Natutal selection is seemingly going in the opposite direction to were we want it. You have to compare childhood mortality rates. Countries with high rates of childhood mortality see mothers having more children. The cost of having a child also factors into it, in Western countries each child is really expensive. (30k for birth in the US! And that is just the cost to get started!) Also you are making the implicit assumption that people in poorer countries are having "worse" babies than people in developed countries. Off the top of my head, a few countries that used to be looked down upon by everyone else include England, Germany, Ireland, and the US. Also all of northern Europe, all of SW Asia, and all of East Asia. The fact that China thought the same thing about Europe that Europe thought about China is also a good indicator that "undeveloped" is a rather crude benchmark. Every major study has shown that if you correct for environmental pollution, childhood nutrition, and childhood health care, IQs between regions of the world are all within spitting distance of each other, and human potential falls along a nice bell curve. tl;dr clean up the air, feed the kids, get them to doctors, and everyone thrives. Also stable environments means there be less pressure to have lots of kids, so the population will stabilize than decline.
dontreact 8y ago
Fully quitting porn has had a tremendous positive impact in my life. But it was extremely difficult to do it. I’ve found a group of people to help and support me through this and our experiences are fairly similar. I would say that anyone who thinks porn isn’t affecting them should try to quit fully for a few months and see. It costs nothing, and you might find out that you have less control than you thought. The effects can be more subtle than what is mentioned in this article: for example constantly craving for novelty despite being in a good relationship with someone you love.
- stcredzero 8y ago
  I haven't quit (yet) but I did have a moment of revelation. I realized that I was taking all this effort, closing my eyes trying to bring back moments from videos. Then I opened my eyes and looked into the face of my spouse, and rediscovered something.
- bargl 8y ago
  I kinda went the opposite path to the same end result. In my 20s I watched almost no porn. This was kinda crazy to most people. When I did pick up the habit for a while after I had kids, I noticed a marked decline in my interest in putting out "effort" to have romance when a video would suffice. I found porn made me lazy, not impotent. Anyway, cutting that out has been really good, it makes me have to work to maintain a healthy relationship with my wife. This is obviously anecdotal, I went through a lot of changes in that time period as well, not working out as much, having kids, etc. But it's a little thing I can control to make life happier.
- hnthrowaway543 8y ago
  How did you quit? I just can't seem to do it for long :(
  - sreyaNotfilc 8y ago
    I'm struggling with it. I guess that realizing that it is a problem helps. Remember, porn is not the problem, abuse of it is. Its to the point that I can't sleep well without it. That's bad. What I'm doing, right now, is to create a simple chart of the days that I venture to the "dark side". So when I do go, I know in the back of my mind that I will have to write this stuff down. Another step is, when you find yourself going down that rabbit hole, to do you best to stop it immediately. Your mind is very clever at making excuses like "You deserve to see this. Its just this one time. Promise." For me, what I ended up having to do is to get out of the room of the device and let myself relax. Its getting warmer out. So I'll probably take a walk around the block if I notice the habit returning. I want to get rid of it so badly. Support groups are out there either virtually or in person. Perhaps that's another way to go about it. Good luck!
thegayngler 8y ago
I think this is related to the foods we are eating. It does catch up with you. Also exercise as well can help keep testosterone levels up.
- bargl 8y ago
  I would agree that this probably is a variable, but I wouldn't dismiss the effect of porn either.
g45y45 8y ago
Nope, and this is part of the building case against Porn in the UK. Please ignore the lies coming from the UK, this will only ramp up as the Porn Ban is rolled out - that is correct, porn will be blocked by default in the UK.
- g45y45 8y ago
  Downvoted. If you live in the UK, you will need to buy a 'perverts card' in order to prove your age. This will of course lead building of biggest Blackmail database outside of the Intelligence Community. Nothing could possibly go wrong.
sigmaprimus 8y ago
Maybe porn isn't the cause at all, maybe its the fact that the #metoo man hating feminazis have emasculated a large percentage of young men to the point they are subconsiously afraid to preform sexually due to the social and financial concequences of impregnating single women, how many of these young men were raised by single mothers? Beyond that there is also a new breed of young females who wish to dominate said young males in the bedroom which is probably a turn off to most young men, and finally is it possible that the actual appearance of the "Viagra" type drugs may be affecting the number of people needing it? Eg. There were a lot less Crack addicts before it was invented.
hirundo 8y ago
Is there a similar problem with romance novels, addicting women to the domamine/norephinephrine rush, less interested in the local talent? Maybe we can extend the issue to the whole hyper stimulated media saturated culture. A paleo media diet may be the right direction. Confine ourselves mostly to the nearest practical approximation of the info environment we evolved with, a bubble of a few dozen people and the work that sustains us. That would result in people with smaller lives, but maybe also healthier ones. But then people inclined to believe this wouldn't be reading this.
- stevebmark 8y ago
  There are some bizzare, ignorant, sentient-fedora replies in this thread, and I think this one wins them all as the worst.
- ericmcer 8y ago
  I have always dreamed of doing this, but wouldn’t this also allow me to shut out all the negative impacts my own existence is tied to? Like political and environmental news? I think we all have a slight social responsibility to be aware of the world around us.
  - lukifer 8y ago
    I forget where I heard this, but one approach is to simply lag behind the news by a week or so, on the premise that anything meaningful to you as a citizen/voter will continue to be relevant a week later. (Obviously there are exceptions for policy makers, or when some news is otherwise salient to one's profession.) In practice, a significant portion of the news habit is a sort of FOMO, a desire to be included in water-cooler conversations, complete with intelligent opinions and "hot takes". Which is fine as far as it goes; but, it does come at the cost of the emotional rollercoaster of a highly manipulative news cycle (not to mention tribal battle lines[0]). Those who focus their water-cooler game on relative trivialities like sports and pop culture might actually be on to something. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc
momentmaker 8y ago
It's more the constant variety of HD porn that triggers the dopamine so much that men built up such a high tolerance for the level of depravity. Sort of like a drug addict. And it all stems from the mind. Think about it. The trigger/need to watch porn stems from the mind before the body responds with an erection. The mind is a powerful tool which can be used for good or bad.
- lukifer 8y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernormal_stimulus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernormal_stimulus
0x8BADF00D 8y ago
> When he was 23, he said: “I tried to have sex with a beautiful girl, a woman I was extremely attracted to, and nothing happened. I couldn’t feel any physical arousal and couldn’t get the slightest bit of an erection.” Could that be due to an entirely different reason? A gay man would react in the same way, for example.
TomMckenny 8y ago
>Is porn making young men impotent? Or is it a moral outrage in search of a justification?
- stevebmark 8y ago
  you really need to read things before knee-jerk blaming everything on "moral outrage"
forgottenpass 8y ago
Alternate hypothesis: We want the problem to be the porn, otherwise the issue is societal. And that's terrifying because we would have no tools to investigate or understand the problem (let alone fix it). If stopping porn treats the symptoms though: phew, we can all sleep at night knowing that there is nothing wrong with the way society collectively rears children (through parents, school, "SFW" media) that leads to anything less than healthy sexual relationships.
- forgottenpass 8y ago
  Here's a more specific take in that vein. It's an interesting way of thinking about the topic, even if it doesn't convince you of anything: https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2011/02/hes_just_not_that_into_anyone.html https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2011/02/hes_just_not_that_in...
Cypher 8y ago
I can't wait for their follow up article: "Are eggs making young women fertile".
nate_meurer 8y ago
Discussions around the negative effects of pornography are infected with insufferable religious moralizing. Nevertheless there is some really interesting and concerning evidence that porn is a uniquely addictive behavior. A striking pop-sci illustration is at [1]. The source cited for this graphic is pretty dodgy, but there's plenty of research out there that supports the same conclusions. I like [2] for summaries and links to studies. 1 - https://visual.ly/community/infographic/health/porn-effects-dopamine-levels https://visual.ly/community/infographic/health/porn-effects-... 2 - https://www.yourbrainonporn.com/relevant-research-and-articles-about-the-studies/ https://www.yourbrainonporn.com/relevant-research-and-articl...
towaway1138 8y ago
Came here for the dumpster fire, was not disappointed. My own take: Erotica is a good thing to the degree that it takes the edge off of libido. Being dragged around by your "little man" is a curse, and your life will greatly improve once you figure out how to stop this (one way or another). Your first reaction to a naked woman should be "meh". It's only after you know her well that it might be more.
bobbydreamer 8y ago
Well I have 2TB of videos. I am sure I will never watch or never will have time to watch again or delete it. But addiction to the habit of downloading and saving it. Only one time I deleted 500GB of videos just shift delete and was free for 10 months. Then it's what the heck let me checkout if there is any new hot pornstar or same girls. Well in a period of 10 months girls completely change. At the moment it's 2TB. Dont know why I am having it, don't want to delete it either. I have quit watching porn then and then like 2-6 months for the same reason nothing new to watch. But mostly the content of videos I watch is changing originally when I started it was PRIVATE productions now it's a amateur videos or scripted videos with some funny dialogue or scenes. I am also sort of looking at the interiors of the bunglows, carpets, rooms, bed covers and some times way they had designed the apartment. Not sure about impotency but what I saw is, if I masturbate next 2-3 days my gym performance is not good and I feel bad. If I don't do it(watch porn or mastrubate) for 2-4 weeks I am lifting good. So it's all diet I think. Always wonder how much those male porn stars jizz like are they for real. Looking at BTS scenes brings some confidence as that 20mins scene sometimes has been shot for two days. Sometimes question in the head pops up how long can last 3-5-10mins without any breaks or I am just lucky with no complaints. Porn sometimes stresses me out as well. Sometimes you go address bar, fingers automatically type porn site name. And in office you have to act like you are slow in typing, actually I am fast but automode might be dangerous, so another stress. Mostly porn eats time. If you have anything you want to achieve cut it out. So it's mostly on and off. Don't know what to do with those videos. Seriously....

82 points by drugme 8y ago

Sex is the strongest motivator for young men to develop the mind, the body, become cultured, make more and more money, and to enter into demanding relationships. If sexual desire can be completely fulfilled alone at home, then what is the point of all society? The strong arches and buttresses that support high roofs collapse and leave only solitary ruined columns.

vsviridov 8y ago

Betteridge's law of headlines...

saberience 8y ago
This isn't a cast iron law. There are many, many, 100's of examples even, where this law isn't true.
- yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago
  Sure, but as heuristics go, this one is pretty good.

josefresco 8y ago

From the linked study: "While non-organic sexual dysfunctions have been presumed psychological in origin, and therefore the province of mental health experts, the unexplained sexual dysfunctions now rising sharply in young men (ED, difficulty orgasming, low sexual desire) are, to the extent they are reversible by quitting Internet pornography, not arising from “performance anxiety” (that is, psychosexual dysfunction, ICD-9 code 302.7), although performance anxiety may certainly accompany them." It seems they fall short of saying porn is "making" these men impotent, but rather that quitting porn does improve the situation.

HarryHirsch 8y ago
Today's porn is just too crass to compete with real life. Hans Billian's oevre was slightly silly, and Patricia Rhomberg could actually act, and nowadays it's violent excess, and good sex isn't like that. No surprise that laying off BIG COCK DESTROYS ASIAN STEPSISTERS ANUS improves things.
- josefresco 8y ago
  The porn market is very diverse, there's plenty of loving/reasonable porn, you just have to work to find it. Your criticism about porn being "crass" is a good description of mainstream porn, which being "mainstream" is of course a problem. The porn industry is influenced by tracking data - this is why the popular "tube" sites are dominated by extremes, family and taboo porn - it gets clicks. Similar to Facebook, and other social media - giving people more (and more, and more) of what they like can have serious dangers.
  - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
    >there's plenty of loving/reasonable porn A lot of it has a blue icon beside it on a certain website that also has orange in its color scheme. The whole point of that icon is to denote content less likely to be of a mainstream/professional nature. Of course that never stopped anyone from putting every keyword imaginable in the title.
    - stcredzero 8y ago
      This website has orange in its color scheme. I suspect you mean a different one, however.
  - Kye 8y ago
    >> "The porn market is very diverse, there's plenty of loving/reasonable porn, you just have to work to find it." Very true. Furry porn is overflowing with loving expression. It might not be coincidence that most furry artists (and furries in general) are something other than cisgender and heterosexual men.

olivermarks 8y ago

It may be the Guardian that is making men impotent, they seem to run endless articles promoting womens right and undermining men's confidence

kadendogthing 8y ago
If your rights and confidence are inversely proportional to other's people rights and confidence then you have a seriously toxic problem that you should address.
- olivermarks 8y ago
  They aren't and I was being flippant

ratling 8y ago

No. News at 11. Leno after. You won’t stay up for midnight at the Apollo.

tivert 8y ago
> News at 11. The saying is "film at 11." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_at_11 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_at_11
- ratling 8y ago
  shrug I’m quoting myself.

JohnJamesRambo 8y ago

Isn't it much more likely the marked decline in testosterone is to blame? https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17062768 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17062768 Relevant Image: https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*n6SXZ6_p4vX9sprDI1UdUQ.jpeg https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*n6SXZ6_p4vX9sprDI... A man in the 1980s had a testosterone level of around 525, that level is now getting into the 400s, this is a massive change in the hormone that is responsible for sex drive, etc.

jasonbarrah 8y ago
My money is still on cell phones radiation from the front pocket.
- crankylinuxuser 8y ago
  Not this again. I actually watched Larry King on CNN when he had the person with the brain tumor say 'My cell phone gave me this tumor'... And lo and behold the meme is now "Cellphones cause X" If, however you want a good hormone disruptor candidate, look no further than BPA and other estrogen-like compounds. With the amount of plastic we have in our biosphere, along with 'interesting' resultants from decomp, my money'd be on hormone disruption. I have to wonder if any uni is actively investigating this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/xenoestrogen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/xenoestrogen is very much a thing.
  - themagician 8y ago
    It’s porn? No, it’s low testosterone. No, it’s cell phones. No, it’s plastic. We are so adamant about finding the “one true cause” of any given thing that we don’t stop to consider that it doesn’t matter what it actually is. If we pretend it’s all of them, what’s the worst outcome? We watch less porn, eat better food, spend less time with our phone and use less plastic? What a terrible scenario that would be. We might do all these good things for no good reason! It’s the same problem we have with climate change. Always looking for the scapegoat instead of recognizing that the problem can be alleviated without finding the one true cause, assuming there even is one.

m0skit0 8y ago

My naive hypothesis is that health problems are only going to get worse because we've killed the fundamental constant force of improvement in nature: natural selection. Industrial countries people have way weaker health and more health problems than countries with bad health and hygiene systems. I'm definitely not advocating for a Social Darwinism but our genetics will only get worse in the context of an ever changing ecosystem that surround us. Sometimes we think we live in a bubble outside of the ecosystems but we don't. If we don't find a solution for this we're definitely doomed.

maceurt 8y ago
The fact that first world countries/ wealthy people are not having many kids and that third world countries/ poor people are having a lot of kids is very problematic. Natutal selection is seemingly going in the opposite direction to were we want it. Though to argue against this point, humans every year score on average better than they did last year on old IQ tests. The size of human skulls and brains are also increasing too, so natural selection may be working, just in a different way than we would expect.
- com2kid 8y ago
  > Natutal selection is seemingly going in the opposite direction to were we want it. You have to compare childhood mortality rates. Countries with high rates of childhood mortality see mothers having more children. The cost of having a child also factors into it, in Western countries each child is really expensive. (30k for birth in the US! And that is just the cost to get started!) Also you are making the implicit assumption that people in poorer countries are having "worse" babies than people in developed countries. Off the top of my head, a few countries that used to be looked down upon by everyone else include England, Germany, Ireland, and the US. Also all of northern Europe, all of SW Asia, and all of East Asia. The fact that China thought the same thing about Europe that Europe thought about China is also a good indicator that "undeveloped" is a rather crude benchmark. Every major study has shown that if you correct for environmental pollution, childhood nutrition, and childhood health care, IQs between regions of the world are all within spitting distance of each other, and human potential falls along a nice bell curve. tl;dr clean up the air, feed the kids, get them to doctors, and everyone thrives. Also stable environments means there be less pressure to have lots of kids, so the population will stabilize than decline.

dontreact 8y ago

Fully quitting porn has had a tremendous positive impact in my life. But it was extremely difficult to do it. I’ve found a group of people to help and support me through this and our experiences are fairly similar. I would say that anyone who thinks porn isn’t affecting them should try to quit fully for a few months and see. It costs nothing, and you might find out that you have less control than you thought. The effects can be more subtle than what is mentioned in this article: for example constantly craving for novelty despite being in a good relationship with someone you love.

stcredzero 8y ago
I haven't quit (yet) but I did have a moment of revelation. I realized that I was taking all this effort, closing my eyes trying to bring back moments from videos. Then I opened my eyes and looked into the face of my spouse, and rediscovered something.
bargl 8y ago
I kinda went the opposite path to the same end result. In my 20s I watched almost no porn. This was kinda crazy to most people. When I did pick up the habit for a while after I had kids, I noticed a marked decline in my interest in putting out "effort" to have romance when a video would suffice. I found porn made me lazy, not impotent. Anyway, cutting that out has been really good, it makes me have to work to maintain a healthy relationship with my wife. This is obviously anecdotal, I went through a lot of changes in that time period as well, not working out as much, having kids, etc. But it's a little thing I can control to make life happier.
hnthrowaway543 8y ago
How did you quit? I just can't seem to do it for long :(
- sreyaNotfilc 8y ago
  I'm struggling with it. I guess that realizing that it is a problem helps. Remember, porn is not the problem, abuse of it is. Its to the point that I can't sleep well without it. That's bad. What I'm doing, right now, is to create a simple chart of the days that I venture to the "dark side". So when I do go, I know in the back of my mind that I will have to write this stuff down. Another step is, when you find yourself going down that rabbit hole, to do you best to stop it immediately. Your mind is very clever at making excuses like "You deserve to see this. Its just this one time. Promise." For me, what I ended up having to do is to get out of the room of the device and let myself relax. Its getting warmer out. So I'll probably take a walk around the block if I notice the habit returning. I want to get rid of it so badly. Support groups are out there either virtually or in person. Perhaps that's another way to go about it. Good luck!

thegayngler 8y ago

I think this is related to the foods we are eating. It does catch up with you. Also exercise as well can help keep testosterone levels up.

bargl 8y ago
I would agree that this probably is a variable, but I wouldn't dismiss the effect of porn either.

g45y45 8y ago

Nope, and this is part of the building case against Porn in the UK. Please ignore the lies coming from the UK, this will only ramp up as the Porn Ban is rolled out - that is correct, porn will be blocked by default in the UK.

g45y45 8y ago
Downvoted. If you live in the UK, you will need to buy a 'perverts card' in order to prove your age. This will of course lead building of biggest Blackmail database outside of the Intelligence Community. Nothing could possibly go wrong.

sigmaprimus 8y ago

Maybe porn isn't the cause at all, maybe its the fact that the #metoo man hating feminazis have emasculated a large percentage of young men to the point they are subconsiously afraid to preform sexually due to the social and financial concequences of impregnating single women, how many of these young men were raised by single mothers? Beyond that there is also a new breed of young females who wish to dominate said young males in the bedroom which is probably a turn off to most young men, and finally is it possible that the actual appearance of the "Viagra" type drugs may be affecting the number of people needing it? Eg. There were a lot less Crack addicts before it was invented.

hirundo 8y ago

Is there a similar problem with romance novels, addicting women to the domamine/norephinephrine rush, less interested in the local talent? Maybe we can extend the issue to the whole hyper stimulated media saturated culture. A paleo media diet may be the right direction. Confine ourselves mostly to the nearest practical approximation of the info environment we evolved with, a bubble of a few dozen people and the work that sustains us. That would result in people with smaller lives, but maybe also healthier ones. But then people inclined to believe this wouldn't be reading this.

stevebmark 8y ago
There are some bizzare, ignorant, sentient-fedora replies in this thread, and I think this one wins them all as the worst.
ericmcer 8y ago
I have always dreamed of doing this, but wouldn’t this also allow me to shut out all the negative impacts my own existence is tied to? Like political and environmental news? I think we all have a slight social responsibility to be aware of the world around us.
- lukifer 8y ago
  I forget where I heard this, but one approach is to simply lag behind the news by a week or so, on the premise that anything meaningful to you as a citizen/voter will continue to be relevant a week later. (Obviously there are exceptions for policy makers, or when some news is otherwise salient to one's profession.) In practice, a significant portion of the news habit is a sort of FOMO, a desire to be included in water-cooler conversations, complete with intelligent opinions and "hot takes". Which is fine as far as it goes; but, it does come at the cost of the emotional rollercoaster of a highly manipulative news cycle (not to mention tribal battle lines[0]). Those who focus their water-cooler game on relative trivialities like sports and pop culture might actually be on to something. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc

momentmaker 8y ago

It's more the constant variety of HD porn that triggers the dopamine so much that men built up such a high tolerance for the level of depravity. Sort of like a drug addict. And it all stems from the mind. Think about it. The trigger/need to watch porn stems from the mind before the body responds with an erection. The mind is a powerful tool which can be used for good or bad.

lukifer 8y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernormal_stimulus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernormal_stimulus

0x8BADF00D 8y ago

> When he was 23, he said: “I tried to have sex with a beautiful girl, a woman I was extremely attracted to, and nothing happened. I couldn’t feel any physical arousal and couldn’t get the slightest bit of an erection.” Could that be due to an entirely different reason? A gay man would react in the same way, for example.

TomMckenny 8y ago

>Is porn making young men impotent? Or is it a moral outrage in search of a justification?

stevebmark 8y ago
you really need to read things before knee-jerk blaming everything on "moral outrage"

forgottenpass 8y ago

Alternate hypothesis: We want the problem to be the porn, otherwise the issue is societal. And that's terrifying because we would have no tools to investigate or understand the problem (let alone fix it). If stopping porn treats the symptoms though: phew, we can all sleep at night knowing that there is nothing wrong with the way society collectively rears children (through parents, school, "SFW" media) that leads to anything less than healthy sexual relationships.

forgottenpass 8y ago
Here's a more specific take in that vein. It's an interesting way of thinking about the topic, even if it doesn't convince you of anything: https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2011/02/hes_just_not_that_into_anyone.html https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2011/02/hes_just_not_that_in...

Cypher 8y ago

I can't wait for their follow up article: "Are eggs making young women fertile".

nate_meurer 8y ago

Discussions around the negative effects of pornography are infected with insufferable religious moralizing. Nevertheless there is some really interesting and concerning evidence that porn is a uniquely addictive behavior. A striking pop-sci illustration is at [1]. The source cited for this graphic is pretty dodgy, but there's plenty of research out there that supports the same conclusions. I like [2] for summaries and links to studies. 1 - https://visual.ly/community/infographic/health/porn-effects-dopamine-levels https://visual.ly/community/infographic/health/porn-effects-... 2 - https://www.yourbrainonporn.com/relevant-research-and-articles-about-the-studies/ https://www.yourbrainonporn.com/relevant-research-and-articl...

towaway1138 8y ago

Came here for the dumpster fire, was not disappointed. My own take: Erotica is a good thing to the degree that it takes the edge off of libido. Being dragged around by your "little man" is a curse, and your life will greatly improve once you figure out how to stop this (one way or another). Your first reaction to a naked woman should be "meh". It's only after you know her well that it might be more.

bobbydreamer 8y ago

Well I have 2TB of videos. I am sure I will never watch or never will have time to watch again or delete it. But addiction to the habit of downloading and saving it. Only one time I deleted 500GB of videos just shift delete and was free for 10 months. Then it's what the heck let me checkout if there is any new hot pornstar or same girls. Well in a period of 10 months girls completely change. At the moment it's 2TB. Dont know why I am having it, don't want to delete it either. I have quit watching porn then and then like 2-6 months for the same reason nothing new to watch. But mostly the content of videos I watch is changing originally when I started it was PRIVATE productions now it's a amateur videos or scripted videos with some funny dialogue or scenes. I am also sort of looking at the interiors of the bunglows, carpets, rooms, bed covers and some times way they had designed the apartment. Not sure about impotency but what I saw is, if I masturbate next 2-3 days my gym performance is not good and I feel bad. If I don't do it(watch porn or mastrubate) for 2-4 weeks I am lifting good. So it's all diet I think. Always wonder how much those male porn stars jizz like are they for real. Looking at BTS scenes brings some confidence as that 20mins scene sometimes has been shot for two days. Sometimes question in the head pops up how long can last 3-5-10mins without any breaks or I am just lucky with no complaints. Porn sometimes stresses me out as well. Sometimes you go address bar, fingers automatically type porn site name. And in office you have to act like you are slow in typing, actually I am fast but automode might be dangerous, so another stress. Mostly porn eats time. If you have anything you want to achieve cut it out. So it's mostly on and off. Don't know what to do with those videos. Seriously....