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Yet sex/porn and esports are both addicting. How does that math add up? Games maybe not so much by nature, but the publishers are trying everything they can to

Yet sex/porn and esports are both addicting. How does that math add up? Games maybe not so much by nature, but the publishers are trying everything they can to increase your time in game.

duskwuff 7y ago
"Esports" typically refers to professional competitive gaming, not to video games in general -- the focus is on viewership, not participation. There are some related side industries which might fit that description (like esports betting sites), but the industry itself isn't particularly "addictive", at least no more than traditional sports. The classification of sex and pornography as "addictive" has been controversial, and all I'll say about that is that there is no scientific consensus that they should be considered as such.
- mtnGoat 7y ago
  ok, i can get on board with the esports part. Porn, you can call it anecdotal, but over a decade in that industry taught me, its certainly addictive for some, and is are some very manipulative marketing going on by the smarter companies. But i do see the opposing argument, people get addicted to all kinds of strange things and nothing about porn per se is addicting. it's that ending they are addicted to, not the content.
  - rurp 7y ago
    I used the work in the gaming[0] industry and did my best to read up on addiction, both in general terms and related to gambling. One of the main takeaways I found was that the addiction rates are surprisingly similar across different vices. It doesn't matter if the vice is gambling, porn, alcohol, shopping, or whatever -- some low single digit percent of the population is likely to get dangerously addicted, a somewhat larger group will spend way too much money but not otherwise disrupt their life, and the vast majority of people will treat it like just another type of recreation. I really wish our society could take all of the energy that goes into criminalizing and stigmatizing vice industries and instead use it to offer help to people who are dangerously addicted. Just think of how much free therapy, rehab, and drug research could be funded by the tens of billions of dollars that the drug war has cost. [0] Gaming is the industry term for gambling
- mensetmanusman 7y ago
  People say they get addicted to porn, what does science have to do with what they say?
  - duskwuff 7y ago
    Science says that there is a distinction between the colloquial definition of "addicted" and the technical definition of a physiological / psychological addiction. Many people will also say that a delicious food, an entertaining game, or an enjoyable TV show is "addictive", but these do not actually constitute addictions either.
    - mensetmanusman 7y ago
      Sure, but science doesn’t say that, per se, because science is about quantitative measurement. We have no machine that can measure addiction. People with scientific backgrounds hypothesize all the time, and they have machines that can make brain scan images, but we aren’t very close to being able to measure addiction on a numerical scale. The best we have is listening to people, maybe analogous to how we listen to people when they believe they are a different gender, etc. since there is no quantitative measure for ‘feelings’ (see Olympic male/female athlete controversies, et al.) We may get there some day...
      - random42 7y ago
        > science is about quantitative measurement Hard sciences may be, but there are quite a soft science domains such as psychology. We do not yet know exact nature of addiction, but psychological, environmental impacts have not been ruled out, by most scientists.
      - jay_kyburz 7y ago
        I believe we do have machines that can measure substance addictions. You can certainly measure how sick they get from withdrawals.
      - ZephyrP 7y ago
        I actually just happened to be hanging out downtown and found myself at a convention for people devoted to answering just that question! DeltaFOSB is a gene transcription factor and is the precursor for the development of all forms of what is clinically called "addiction". However what the other commentators suggested [food is not addictive] is not actually true, it has a measurable affect here. In fact, Delta-FOSB can be and often is used as a biomarker of addiction in patients who are already deceased (and can have their brains broken open). Now, as to the question of addictiveness, nobody mentioned anything about pornography there, but I did hear an interesting anecdote about the raw power that certain addictions have that clearly isn't present in pornography; Delta FOS-B accumulates in the ventral tagamental area and nucleus accumbens, two central regions of the brain, and many drugs have the action of creating floods of FOS-B precursors there, for example, this effect is so strong in heroin addicts, that they nearly always throw up upon recent re-exposure (sometimes newer Methamphetamine addicts as well) where the mechanism here is the flood of FOSB, which an outer region (she had mentioned but I have already forgotten which) interprets as "poisoning". So while it may be true that pornography is "addicting" - when is the last time you saw someone throw up when they looked at pornography (modulo ordinary "disgust"). What was doubly interesting was that she said the change in dopamine regulation (meaning the introduction of new dopamine-like substances + the change in the rate that your body "reuptakes" dopamine) in the most powerful addictions -- benzodiazapines and opiates, aren't actually that high, and compared with drugs like methamphetamine and cocaine aren't much different from marijuana. It's this secondary affect that creates these changes in reasoning and reward structure with these drugs (she also mentioned that both have "withdrawal", which while technically unrelated to addiction is extremely painful and sometimes life-threatening). However, to be fair, it was repeatedly stressed that the "secondary" affect was more than just Delta-FOSB. There were changes in signaling, new kinds of peptides that unaddicted people can't produce (???), something about phosphoration of camp ("new notes on camp") and bunch of change to "Dendritic Spiny Structures". Among the living, questions like "drug-use reinstatement likelihood", "place conditioning preference" (the more addictive the drug, the more you want to use it in a safe, known place), increase in use over time, etc. are how this stuff is generally measured with reasonable economics.
smt88 7y ago
> sex/porn and esports are both addicting Sex is not similar to alcohol, tobacco, or pharmaceutical addictions. You can have orgasms alone without purchasing anything. There's also debate about whether you can be addicted to sex. 1) It's a normal part of our lifecycles, 2) there's no withdrawal effect after you get off of it, and 3) it's a convenient way to pathologize bad behavior. E-sports are game competitions, not video games in and of themselves. You can be no more addicted to them than you can be to the NBA.

Yet sex/porn and esports are both addicting. How does that math add up? Games maybe not so much by nature, but the publishers are trying everything they can to increase your time in game.

duskwuff 7y ago

"Esports" typically refers to professional competitive gaming, not to video games in general -- the focus is on viewership, not participation. There are some related side industries which might fit that description (like esports betting sites), but the industry itself isn't particularly "addictive", at least no more than traditional sports. The classification of sex and pornography as "addictive" has been controversial, and all I'll say about that is that there is no scientific consensus that they should be considered as such.

mtnGoat 7y ago
ok, i can get on board with the esports part. Porn, you can call it anecdotal, but over a decade in that industry taught me, its certainly addictive for some, and is are some very manipulative marketing going on by the smarter companies. But i do see the opposing argument, people get addicted to all kinds of strange things and nothing about porn per se is addicting. it's that ending they are addicted to, not the content.
- rurp 7y ago
  I used the work in the gaming[0] industry and did my best to read up on addiction, both in general terms and related to gambling. One of the main takeaways I found was that the addiction rates are surprisingly similar across different vices. It doesn't matter if the vice is gambling, porn, alcohol, shopping, or whatever -- some low single digit percent of the population is likely to get dangerously addicted, a somewhat larger group will spend way too much money but not otherwise disrupt their life, and the vast majority of people will treat it like just another type of recreation. I really wish our society could take all of the energy that goes into criminalizing and stigmatizing vice industries and instead use it to offer help to people who are dangerously addicted. Just think of how much free therapy, rehab, and drug research could be funded by the tens of billions of dollars that the drug war has cost. [0] Gaming is the industry term for gambling
mensetmanusman 7y ago
People say they get addicted to porn, what does science have to do with what they say?
- duskwuff 7y ago
  Science says that there is a distinction between the colloquial definition of "addicted" and the technical definition of a physiological / psychological addiction. Many people will also say that a delicious food, an entertaining game, or an enjoyable TV show is "addictive", but these do not actually constitute addictions either.
  - mensetmanusman 7y ago
    Sure, but science doesn’t say that, per se, because science is about quantitative measurement. We have no machine that can measure addiction. People with scientific backgrounds hypothesize all the time, and they have machines that can make brain scan images, but we aren’t very close to being able to measure addiction on a numerical scale. The best we have is listening to people, maybe analogous to how we listen to people when they believe they are a different gender, etc. since there is no quantitative measure for ‘feelings’ (see Olympic male/female athlete controversies, et al.) We may get there some day...
    - random42 7y ago
      > science is about quantitative measurement Hard sciences may be, but there are quite a soft science domains such as psychology. We do not yet know exact nature of addiction, but psychological, environmental impacts have not been ruled out, by most scientists.
    - jay_kyburz 7y ago
      I believe we do have machines that can measure substance addictions. You can certainly measure how sick they get from withdrawals.
    - ZephyrP 7y ago
      I actually just happened to be hanging out downtown and found myself at a convention for people devoted to answering just that question! DeltaFOSB is a gene transcription factor and is the precursor for the development of all forms of what is clinically called "addiction". However what the other commentators suggested [food is not addictive] is not actually true, it has a measurable affect here. In fact, Delta-FOSB can be and often is used as a biomarker of addiction in patients who are already deceased (and can have their brains broken open). Now, as to the question of addictiveness, nobody mentioned anything about pornography there, but I did hear an interesting anecdote about the raw power that certain addictions have that clearly isn't present in pornography; Delta FOS-B accumulates in the ventral tagamental area and nucleus accumbens, two central regions of the brain, and many drugs have the action of creating floods of FOS-B precursors there, for example, this effect is so strong in heroin addicts, that they nearly always throw up upon recent re-exposure (sometimes newer Methamphetamine addicts as well) where the mechanism here is the flood of FOSB, which an outer region (she had mentioned but I have already forgotten which) interprets as "poisoning". So while it may be true that pornography is "addicting" - when is the last time you saw someone throw up when they looked at pornography (modulo ordinary "disgust"). What was doubly interesting was that she said the change in dopamine regulation (meaning the introduction of new dopamine-like substances + the change in the rate that your body "reuptakes" dopamine) in the most powerful addictions -- benzodiazapines and opiates, aren't actually that high, and compared with drugs like methamphetamine and cocaine aren't much different from marijuana. It's this secondary affect that creates these changes in reasoning and reward structure with these drugs (she also mentioned that both have "withdrawal", which while technically unrelated to addiction is extremely painful and sometimes life-threatening). However, to be fair, it was repeatedly stressed that the "secondary" affect was more than just Delta-FOSB. There were changes in signaling, new kinds of peptides that unaddicted people can't produce (???), something about phosphoration of camp ("new notes on camp") and bunch of change to "Dendritic Spiny Structures". Among the living, questions like "drug-use reinstatement likelihood", "place conditioning preference" (the more addictive the drug, the more you want to use it in a safe, known place), increase in use over time, etc. are how this stuff is generally measured with reasonable economics.

smt88 7y ago

> sex/porn and esports are both addicting Sex is not similar to alcohol, tobacco, or pharmaceutical addictions. You can have orgasms alone without purchasing anything. There's also debate about whether you can be addicted to sex. 1) It's a normal part of our lifecycles, 2) there's no withdrawal effect after you get off of it, and 3) it's a convenient way to pathologize bad behavior. E-sports are game competitions, not video games in and of themselves. You can be no more addicted to them than you can be to the NBA.