21 ms·

Did porn warp me forever?

• msluyter 14y ago
  On the same topic, "The Great Porn Experiment" TED talk, which provides some empirical grounding for the anecdote in the article: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSF82AwSDiU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSF82AwSDiU
  • therobot24 14y ago
    Makes some valid points, but some of the evidence he uses in the talk reminds me of evangelical christians tv hosts - 'Just look at this testimonial! While on the porn he dropped out of college twice, was fired twice, was taking paxil, ritalin, and tried several anti-anxiety pills. BUT once he gave up porn he doesn't need those pills, has no depression or anxiety, and frankly...he feels like a stud!'
    • vy8vWJlco 14y ago
      The testimonial was after 2 months, which is about the longest I've ever restrained myself personally and frankly, by that point, I thought about nothing else. I felt like a stud alright. Everything was hyper-arousing. It just wasn't sustainable for me. It was fun, but I probably would have been arrested for public indecency if I tried for 3 months. I think it's necessary to learn to live with and love your lusts if you want to be in control of them. "Know thyself."
  • rimantas 14y ago
    Minor detail: that's TEDx talk, not TED talk. And there were concerned posts recently about the quality of TEDx talks.
• klibertp 14y ago
  I had similar thoughts on this very topic when I was around 17 years old, I think, and still a virgin. I was thinking that maybe watching all this porn made me into a pervert, who is never going to have a fulfilling love life. I even tried not to masturbate for an extended period of time (I don't think this was all that healthy) just like the author. I watched tons of porn; it wasn't a hot topic for discussion in my peer group, but I knew that almost everyone watched it too. And when I say "tons" I mean it - I remember entire days filled with porn and almost nothing else. Oh, how ashamed I should be! Or not. Because here I am, more than a decade later, in a happy relationship with a woman for almost ten years, having done things the author would almost certainly classify as "things that [he] wouldn’t have dreamed of doing" and guess what? Those things, beside feeling really good (well, most of the time...) helped me understand myself and my partner much better than before. I'd argue that 'those things' are in part why we are happy together for this long and probably will be for many, many years to come. And I wouldn't even know about "those things" were it not for porn; maybe I'd try to reinvent them, but we all know how much better it is to use available library than to write your own from scratch. And it's safer, too. I'm a pervert. Oh, how perverted I am (and how ashamed I should be!). I won't bore (or excite, depends on an age I suppose) you with details, suffice it to say that my partner and I both carry a triskelion. I must be a double pervert, because I feel not a bit of shame, nor guilt. The thing with porn is that it gives you many paths to choose from. Half of these paths are artificial and not fulfilling at all, half of them, while genuine and based on very real human traits, are strictly forbidden by cultural norms. The problem with the second half is that almost everyone, given a freedom of choice, would subscribe to one of those paths (fetishes, styles of making love) but almost no one is granted such freedom: especially when we're young and sensitive about "what others think". The author is worrying about what exactly? That classical, missionary style sex does not turn him on? Neither does it turn me on. And it's somehow a bad thing? Well, it is not - it just means that missionary style is not his fetish (nor mine). I would advice him to stop bothering innocent women, go back to porn and stare at it hard, long enough to understand what his fetish is - and then find a partner who shares the same fetish. It's really that simple. Just not easy at all. Or he can pretend that he's normal, whatever this means, live a life of frustration and spend a small fortune on psychologists. While it's obvious that porn is not about love, it is, by definition, about sex which is one of the things that love consists of. Watching porn as a teenager helps in determining an answer to a very important question, namely: "how do you want to f^&k in the future?" - which, in turn, is a part of an answer to a bigger, more important question: "how do you want to love in the future?" It's really not obvious at all that you have to love a person of another gender and it's not at all necessary to have sex with your loved one in a missionary style position. I wish more people realized this.
• antihero 14y ago
  There are people who watch a huge amount of porn but have a perfectly healthy sex life and relationship with women. It's about understanding what it is and it's context, and realising that there's a difference between that and reality.
  • cheeseandbacon 14y ago
    This is much easier said than done. Schrödinger's addicts I like to call them.
    • illuminate 14y ago
      Porn is a symptom of their neuroses, not the cause.
• counterdatapt 14y ago
  As a counter data point, I immensely enjoy both porn and real sex. I've never had troubles "getting it up" or ejaculating.
  • just2n 14y ago
    I agree and I'm the same. I can relate to many of the stories told by the author, however I find real sex immensely more exciting, to the extent that even when viewing porn I will often fantasize about sex I've actually had. I also think more about women I meet and date than I do about porn I've watched (and I've watched pretty much everything there is). I am curious though, was your upbringing liberal regarding sex, or was it considered a taboo as well? For me, it was very much even taboo to think about it, even though I later found out this is terribly hypocritical considering those telling us it was taboo were doing it just as much as we would eventually. I even got in trouble for uttering the word "condom" once, almost to the same extent as for saying "fuck", which seems utterly ridiculous to me now. I'm curious if sex having been taboo for so many years is actually what makes it more stimulating, or if it's just a difference in sexuality from person to person.
• stcredzero 14y ago
  Betteridge's law applies. Better than an even chance the author will one day die, so won't be warped then. Answer is no.
• w1ntermute 14y ago
  I remember reading just a couple of weeks back about how this issue goes away after abstaining from porn for a month or two. They called it "porn detox" I think.
  • Firehed 14y ago
    The author said he went cold-turkey for months at a time to little effect. I'm sure that approach helps some people, but I'd wager there are a lot of variables here.
  • mattm 14y ago
    Depending on the person and amount of use, I have heard it usually takes from 3-18 months to fully return to normal.
  • vy8vWJlco 14y ago
    Assuming there is such a state, calling it detox implies it's normal or good. I'd be curious what, if any, physiological changes result to reduce the influence of one's sex drive. If so, why not "simply" auto-castration? (If the goal is to reject one's drives...) I see a general male catharsis that borders on the neurotic. Society demands verile/potent men who can, at the same time, subjugate themselves fully to society and their mates.
    • w1ntermute 14y ago
      I don't remember exactly what it was, but there are probably some neurological/mental conditioning aspects to it.
• andyzweb 14y ago
  I found this article easy to fap to
• Mz 14y ago
  Both his parents were psychologists.* Any psych major knows the old saw that you probably got bad stuff like this from your parents. Some of the psych majors I have personally known struck me as folks who had no clue how humans work and were hoping to get a clue by majoring in it. When I went to GIS school, this observation was reinforced by a classmate who had a Master's in Psychology and was looking to change careers because of the lunacy of the people around her. Supposedly, Kinsey's wife said something like "I never see my husband since he took such an interest in sex". In other words, he spent so much time studying sex in an intellectual, analytical way that he stopped bothering to make time for actual sex and relating with his wife. People interested in studying human psychology frequently strike me as seriously hung up. Therapy was useful to me for a time in trying to get over my own hang ups. More useful was spending time with men who liked having actual sex with actual women rather than talking about it in some abstract, analytical fashion. "Forever" is a really long time. Sexual preferences can change. Pavlovian response is learned behavior. If you don't like the stimulus that makes you drool currently, you can retrain yourself. I am glad the author is actually trying to do that instead of merely blaming his issue on porn/the internet as I have seen other articles do. * (Not intending to slam all psychologists or psych majors. My observation is anecdotal and admits to bias.)
  • rhizome 14y ago
    There's an old saying, "people study psychology to figure out their own problems."
  • larrys 14y ago
    I would confirm that from my observation and interaction over the years as well. I wonder if there has been any study in that area that proves or disproves.
  • ams6110 14y ago
    Seems maybe his scientist parents didn't teach him about correlation and causation either. There are many guys who have trouble with "real" sex because of insecurity or any number of other fears that have nothing to do with/were not caused by looking at porn.
• stephengillie 14y ago
  porn — especially the porn I was watching — just had to be taboo. The author's fetish is with the anxiety of getting caught. He's making anxiety porn by watching something so extreme that it's guaranteed to offend anyone who catches him. The author has connected the anxiety of being caught with sexual desires in his head. It's actually a very common fetish.
  • jayferd 14y ago
    Yes. And it's one that's completely okay if handled correctly, like any fetish.
  • grimboy 14y ago
    Maybe he should be an exhibitionist.
    • VigUi7vv8G2 14y ago
      Why do you think he wrote that article?
• guard-of-terra 14y ago
  Do we care? The next thing he will suggest: let's censor, let's break the web, let's put people in the jail, let's force parents to spy on their children, let's take parenting rights from ones who don't. Let's create a police state because he doesn't like porn. His problems with porn is just his problems. I suggest dealing with it.
  • JulianWasTaken 14y ago
    So you got to the end of the article that suggested none of these things and said to yourself "well he didn't say it but I bet he was thinking it"?
    • guard-of-terra 14y ago
      That's what actually gets proposed (and sometimes even passed) as laws each time.
      • mattgreenrocks 14y ago
        Aren't you just projecting your own fear here? We can deal with it as comes up.
        • guard-of-terra 14y ago
          Of course I do, that's the point. I can't see how we can deal with things I fear. (Because dealing with fear without treating harmful things being feared seems pointless)
    • ownagefool 14y ago
      To be fair it's not the uncommon proposed answer, so if he's not responding to the article specifically, in general he'll probably still have a point for a lot of people who agree with the tone. I'm about 5 years older than the article poster. I haven't had unfiltered Internet since way before puberty, but I knew where my dad kept the tapes and magazines and I've had the Internet connection by the time I was 15-16. Either I was too young to care or old enough to know where to find it. I don't think my parents would have added anything to either of our lives by filtering the Internet connection. They spent enough time trying to push me away from computers, which in hindsight I think they'd admit was folly since it was this "addiction" which I used to dig myself out of a childhood of poverty. Anyway part of that time was used looking at porn, more of it on on-line games and a bit of it learning interesting things. Other than turning into a geek, I don't really think I'm messed up in any special way. We now have two data points running contrary from each other. I see no significant evidence to suggest porn is really the problem it's make it out to be.
• alan_cx 14y ago
  I only clicked the link to see if there were any boobs. So, in my case.......
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• FrojoS 14y ago
  Does it make sense to teach this to children? Just like "Smoking isn't good for your health."(which I believe worked for me) you could teach "Porn isn't good for you, if you want to enjoy sex."
  • antihero 14y ago
    No, because that is ludicrous. A porn addiction is bad for you, but watching other people fuck isn't necessarily bad. Just like certain electronic components exhibit weird properties when taken to extreme levels, we wouldn't write off using op-amps because they go funky when abused.
  • guard-of-terra 14y ago
    Porn is an instant pleasure. Enjoying sex in eight years (earlier if you're lucky but don't cross your fingers just yet) does not compare very well to that. I've never tried to smoke so I can't really compare.
    • illuminate 14y ago
      "Porn is an instant pleasure. Enjoying sex in eight years (earlier if you're lucky but don't cross your fingers just yet) does not compare very well to that" I'm glad you've discovered masturbation, but what does this have to do with the topic at hand?
  • Skoofoo 14y ago
    It'd make more sense to go broader and teach that due to how our brains work, all pleasure becomes diluted the more we have. Therefore, it is desirable to avoid living in unrestricted excess, be it with drugs, sex, food, or what have you. One should have control over their pleasures, not the other way around.
    • barrkel 14y ago
      We have tested and tasted too much, lover-- Through a chink too wide there comes in no wonder. But here in the Advent-darkened room Where the dry black bread and the sugarless tea Of penance will charm back the luxury Of a child's soul, we'll return to Doom the knowledge we stole but could not use. (Advent, Kavanagh)
• Flimm 14y ago
  I couldn't finish the article because I found the examples too disturbing. Just a warning for those of you who aren't very familiar with online porn. Could someone give me a summary of the article?
  • evincarofautumn 14y ago
    The author is concerned that his sexuality has been irreparably damaged by his adolescent pornographic pursuits, and that youths with similar unfettered access to pornography, lacking guidance or education, are in danger of repeating his experience.
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  • nikster 14y ago
    If you cant even read an article about porn then you certainly have bigger problems than the author of said article.
    • noonespecial 14y ago
      There are people from every walk of life frequenting HN these days. I'm guessing the world of online porn can be pretty disturbing for the uninitiated. The fact that an average person can't summit Everest while a practiced climber can is not a disparagement on the former.
• Skoofoo 14y ago
  There is a subreddit with dozens of thousands of people with the goal of quitting porn/masturbating. http://www.reddit.com/r/nofap http://www.reddit.com/r/nofap I am concerned about the future. Augmented reality is just around the corner, and virtual sex is almost certainly in our future. How would easy access to an unlimited amount of all types of "sex" imaginable affect society?
• freshhawk 14y ago
  Betteridge's law of headlines.
  • dalke 14y ago
    Nope. You can't knee-jerk exclaim "Betteridge's law" when you see a "?". It's meant for news articles. This article is an introspective "life story" article and doesn't meet the preconditions. For example, the previous life story article ending with a question mark on Salon was "Can I date a Republican?", and the clear answer from the article is "yes." The one before that is "Should the terminally ill control their deaths?" and the author's statement is "A year after my mother's uncomfortable decline, it's a question with which I'm still wrestling", but it's clear that the author supports people learning more about the options for palliative care over attempts at staying alive for as long as possible. I'll put this as a "yes." Then there's the quoted question '“Are you on the cover of a magazine?”', where the answer is definitely "yes", but this too doesn't fit Betteridge's law. And "Was I selfish to have fertility treatments?", where the author states "I honestly don’t think my choice was any more selfish than anyone’s choice to have a child." So that's a "no." But there wa s a while when she worried about the question. I think you get the idea.
    • freshhawk 14y ago
      In the case of Betteridge's Law the point being made is that if someone has actual evidence then the headline reflects the evidence. It states the fact that there is new knowledge about something. If it's just speculation or useless fluff then they add a question mark. And yes, it was not made for opinion pieces or personal narratives and, like in the examples you give, doesn't generally work in these situations. My intention was just to point out that it happens to apply here because the headline is childish link bait. The author covers in the piece that it wasn't really porn that lead to this and it's not going to be "forever" either if he does something about it.
      • dalke 14y ago
        I can't tell from your response if you think that Betteridge's Law applies here or not. Betteridge's Law describes articles where an author wants to write a specific story but doesn't have the information to back up the point, and/or doesn't want to do the research to get that information. That doesn't apply here, because "if he does something about it" is a different cause than not having enough information. It looks like you say that it "happens to apply here" because 1) the answer is no, and 2) it's "childish link bait." Why not then just say "No. This is childish link bait."? Suppose the NM governor wrote an op-ed piece "Should I stay the death penalty?", which outlines her ongoing thoughts both for and against commuting the sentence for the last two people on NM's death row. Suppose you are ardently pro-death penalty, support RepealTheRepeal, and believe that only fools would be against it. You could quite justifiably answer "no" to that headline and believe the title to be "childish link bait." But you would be wrong to say that Betteridge's Law applies.
• whalesalad 14y ago
  There is an entire movement on reddit dedicated to this, http://reddit.com/r/nofap http://reddit.com/r/nofap Actually their specific mission is to avoid masturbation. I don't think there is anything wrong with masturbation. In fact sometimes, particularly as a male, it helps to improve your focus if you release occasionally. For someone who isn't in a relationship or a position to have sex on a fairly regular basis (read: me, living in a basement, working every waking hour on a combination of vitamins and adderall) it helps every few days. Some argue, and to an extent I agree, that it also helps to avoid it. Your body builds more testosterone during a period of abstinence. Apparently only up until about 7 days, where that begins to trail off. Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins won't let his band mates have sex before a show, so they let out their energy on stage. That being said, porn definitely fucks with your head. Just stay away from it. I've never been one of these guys who watches it more and more and more and more. I can't even imagine being desensitized to sex or imagining porn during sex. That's a serious problem. Anyway, the nofap guys talk about this stuff a lot so I'd encourage anyone interested in this to head over there as there are lots of other interesting resources that point out why porn is bad and how it fucks with your brain. In the end it's purely chemical, where you become accustomed to the dopamine response that you receive from watching porn, so you need more and more and more. Like any other addiction or dependence. At some point what you have is not enough and you need more.
• nicholassmith 14y ago
  It's one of those things that can rapidly spiral, you start needing a bigger kick to keep it interesting. The problem being it is incredibly difficult to talk about, it's something parents will start needing to discuss with their kids straight up. Porn isn't bad, it's a part of society now and has been for a long while, but it's the same way drugs aren't necessarily bad unless you start needing a bigger and bigger kick.
  • jacoblyles 14y ago
    >"Porn isn't bad, it's a part of society now and has been for a long while" Are you sure about that? It seems that widespread, easy access to porn is something very new. Before the internet, you would have to go through some embarrassing procedure at a checkout counter to purchase just a few pornographic items. The amount of free porn I could access in the next hour would have cost me thousands of dollars in the 1980s. We have normalized porn very recently and it is just a piece of modernist faith that it is harmless.
    • psykotic 14y ago
      > We have normalized porn very recently and it is just a piece of modernist faith that it is harmless Do you abstain from television, computers, rock and roll, role playing, comic books and video games by this same line of FUD? Mass media has the power to create unrealistic expectations. Someone growing up in the age of Petrarch and Dante had unrealistic expectations of romantic love. It's easy to imagine that someone growing up in the age of internet porn would have unrealistic expectations of sex. Beyond that, I'd have to see hard, consistent evidence before I'd write off porn as especially harmful.
      • jacoblyles 14y ago
        Some of it. For example, the average American watches 5 hours of TV a day. That will kill you. I watch about 1 hour Video games are very addictive to me. After playing Starcraft for 16 hours straight one saturday, I carefully watch and moderate my video game play and have deleted most games from my system. In your battle to live a meaningful, purposeful life, the peddlers of superstimuli are your enemy.
• pixie_ 14y ago
  This reads more of a commentary of how sex, masturbation, and porn are viewed in our culture as something that is shameful and wrong. While you can't go anywhere without seeing violence glorified, but also discussed in our custure. Guys skull getting blown off in a movie - acceptable, tolerated, laughed at. Guy with a penis in a movie - wrong, disgraceful, embarrassing, and no one talks about it, especially families. What's the solution? I don't know, but I think tackling the problem from an early age is important. Adventure Time is the best example of a kids cartoon I can think of that deals with girlfriends, kissing, etc.. while still containing the stereotypical violence of a childrens cartoon. Aside, porn to me is like violence in media. It's enjoyable, but at the same time absurd. And for most people (I hope) it's an easy distinction that how people in porn and movies act is different from real life.
• jrockway 14y ago
  I'm sure there are people who have never watched porn that don't particularly enjoy sex either. This sounds like all other articles that generalize one anecdote to data.
  • groovy2shoes 14y ago
    And I have a converse anecdote: after having had sex, I don't enjoy porn anymore. Different strokes for different folks, I suppose.
  • vy8vWJlco 14y ago
    TL;DR: self-love heals all wounds. From the outset (and still at the end), he frames porn as deviant so you know what his overwhelming internal language is. (Porn didn't put that in him, he was taught it.) He then takes a cold-turkey approach to change and self-moderation (and why not - everyone's made a New Year's resolution...). Like abstinence (and over eating, and anger management, and the list goes on) though, extreme denial often (though not always; everyone's different, but often...) leads to extreme periods of indulgence followed by acute shame (remember that New Years resolution?). I think his thoughts and feeling say more about his environment and his ingrained attitudes than they do about the effect of watching porn. (I and every guy I know watched more porn than TV during their early teens. Their respective perviness has more to do with their self-image than anything... The ones who think of themselves as freaks, present themselves as freaks, even though they have identical interests to others...) It sounds like he thinks he has to hide, even from himself, which sounds like a self-acceptance issue to me. For starters, it might be productive for him to seek more relationships that give him stronger feelings of acceptance. (Which he is: "What helped the most was talking to friends, particularly women, who have had more positive relationships with masturbation." In other words, he needs a companion who likes similar things sexually... No surprise there.) He even admits at the end that he has an addictive personality, but ultimately assigns the blame on porn when he's in full control. Or at least he would be if he came to terms with having genitals like everyone else. It could have just as easily been food, or coffee, or the Sears catalog... He'd still have to learn to live with himself. At 23 that's still happening quite a bit, but his article is a social commentary. Unfortunately he's too close to the issue to see that he's the only one responsible for his own self-image and feelings of self-worth.
• deleted 14y ago
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• ChikkaChiChi 14y ago
  Looks like the author was accurate in how uncomfortable we are as a society to talk about the role of porn in our lives. I think the article speaks more to the issue with recovery and the issues surrounding "getting back to neutral." This problem exists. He explains in laymen's terms a simple Pavlovian response that requires more and more brain stimulation to achieve the same level of dopamine needed for ejaculation. I'm not a neuroscientist, but I bet someone out there can explain it better than I can.
  • pekk 14y ago
    Some people don't like how they use porn. But, some people don't like how they use normal sex. And in both cases, the problem isn't porn or sex but that the person doesn't like their relationship to porn or sex; that it is interfering with their lives. This isn't true for everyone and it certainly isn't unique to porn. For everyone who doesn't like their relationship to porn, there are other people who don't like that they got diseases, or got pregnant without a plan. But we don't pathologize this. Let's be careful not to follow in the footsteps of Dr. Kellogg, who used the trappings of science to push predetermined conclusions in a campaign against harmless sexuality.
    • ChikkaChiChi 14y ago
      Fair point. In my opinion, I don't think this is by any means a "new" problem, its just another way addiction manifests itself as a byproduct of how accessible pornography has become. It can happen a million different ways; for the author, it was (probably) porn.
• jacoblyles 14y ago
  There's a part of the paleo subculture that avoids porn as an unnatural superstimulus. See http://yourbrainonporn.com/ http://yourbrainonporn.com/ or http://www.reddit.com/r/nofap http://www.reddit.com/r/nofap Anecdotally, I find their arguments compelling.
  • dkarl 14y ago
    Alain de Botton has written about it, too: "A brain originally designed to cope with nothing more tempting than an occasional glimpse of a tribesperson across the savannah is lost with what’s now on offer on the net at the click of a button: when confronted with offers to participate continuously in scenarios outstripping any that could be dreamt up by the diseased mind of the Marquis de Sade. There is nothing robust enough in our psychological make-up to compensate for developments in our technological capacities." http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2012/12/26/why-we-should-limit-internet-pornography/ http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2012/12/26/why-we-should-limi...
    • Renaud 14y ago
      While the Marquis de Sade had an unusual penchant for buggery (which was illegal at the time) and blasphemy (also illegal), he himself was certainly not "diseased of the mind". You could consider him an early Libertarian, fighting for freedom above anything else. He was a humanist opposed to the death penalty (very much used at the time). His writings are provocative, and his mind was certainly unusual, but you also have to consider that he wrote most of his work while imprisoned (32 years of his life!) and frustration certainly played a big part in the excesses that haunted him. By the way, the word 'sadism' comes from his name, but he himself never actually physically hurt anyone. He was very much perceived as a threat by the successive governments of the time as he had no respect for authority and didn't hesitate to put himself in danger for speaking his mind and denouncing the hypocrisy of the society he lived in. He would be very much at home here today. A larger than life hero.
      • jpatokal 14y ago
        He never physically hurt anyone?! His first scandal was for imprisoning and assaulting a woman, and plenty more of that followed. See Wikipedia for a quick overview: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marquis_de_Sade#Scandals_and_imprisonment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marquis_de_Sade#Scandals_and_im... Also, if 120 Days in Sodom is not a work of a diseased mind, I'd be curious to find out what you think is. I'm sure 32 years in prison sucks, but would most people get relief by graphically daydreaming about torturing their own children to death?
• huhsamovar 14y ago
  This is not news. Why on Earth was this upvoted?
  • angersock 14y ago
    To get it up. :)
• mattm 14y ago
  I know this is outing myself but this is my personal experience. I won't post anonymously in case anyone wants to contact me. I came to the realization about 2 years that I am addicted to porn. For anyone out there struggling with the same thing, it can get better and yes, it is probably having a negative influence on your life. Previously I would look about once per week but in the past 6 months, I have probably viewed only 3 or 4 times and am hopeful going forward that I will never view it again. The difference between internet porn and porn from the past is just the abundance of new material that there is. Each time you view something new, your brain gives a hit of dopamine. In fact, porn addicts are not really addicted to porn, they're addicted to the chemical sensations that their brain provides. At the basic level, it really is not much different from any other addiction. Old, offline porn is different in that it gets stale pretty quickly. There are only so many times you can look at a magazine or video without it getting boring. The problem with this is that your dopamine levels get out of whack. You need a higher and higher amount to feel satisfied. This is how people get roped in. This also caused normal, life things that were once enjoyable to become less so, such as hanging out with friends or programming. Life just becomes more dull. In fact, now that I have learned about this, whenever I see a post on HN about how someone has lost their interest in programming or other activities, the first thing I think of is probably this person has a porn addiction. It's not a far stretch seeing as how most of HN is young men. Having drastically reduced the amount I see, I have noticed many benefits in my life including better health and ability to focus better. Porn, like other addictions, are also a way of masking stress and a way of distracting yourself from negative emotions. Dr. Gabor Mate has done great research linking addictions of any kind to stresses in the body. Porn gives a way to temporarily release the stress but puts the person in a vicious cycle of causing more long-term stress. Personally, I use the recovery information from http://www.feedtherightwolf.org http://www.feedtherightwolf.org. It has been the only thing I have across which can really break the cycle. As someone else pointed out the videos from http://yourbrainonporn.com/your-brain-on-porn-series http://yourbrainonporn.com/your-brain-on-porn-series will really help you understand what is going on in your brain.
  • CKKim 14y ago
    "I am addicted to porn"..."I would look about once per week" It seems odd to me that being addicted to porn would go with only looking "about once per week". I think I understand how this could still be technically an addiction, but compared to other addictions and - I imagine - especially porn addictions, it seems rather bizarre. Certainly if pornography was only being consumed once a week then the rate of let's call it "stimulation inflation" can't have been that high, or can it? Could you elaborate?
• julienmarie 14y ago
  There is just something really wrong here, and even if it may appear cliché, it is really not cliché. There is a great confusion between sex and desire. Making love with someone is not about having sex, it is about desiring someone. This works only if you share a real intimacy, i.e. if you let this intimacy exist between you two. The arousal doesn't come from sexual prowesses, but just because you desire that specific person you share your intimacy with. After, sex for sex, is always about fantasies, power... in a word, "fun" ( even when it's not fun ;) ) And then there is hygiene, just bodily functions. Like masturbation. Sexuality is wide, wild, and complex, it's the mirror of our inner world. Porn is just a business around it.
• ChuckMcM 14y ago
  I find that its hard to communicate with young people about the weird way in which sexual climax is plugged into your brain. Through out history people have have exploited that link and human physiology as a tool to control people. Growing up in Las Vegas I had a pretty unconventional view of sex, and was completely caught off guard by the emotions that came with my first actual sexual experience.
  • deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
• nikster 14y ago
  Boy needs to grow up, thats all. Porn is porn, masturbation is not sex, its not the same thing, and its not even close, porn is just a masturbation aid. I suppose it could also be useful in some very limited way to figure out if some weird kinky stuff turns you on. What I have learned from porn: The vast majority of it is comically bad when it comes o depicting what actual good sex is like. I sometimes wonder if people think this is real and feel a little bit bad for them, same as I feel sorry for people who think WWF wrestling is real. Lots of real world sex with different partners will get you over it quick. Porn is to sex like WWF wrestling is to fighting. For those dudes who actually want to get seriously into it theres a vast body of literature, tantra, deida, and I also like the tao of sexology.
• dakimov 14y ago
  I suspect that the article is fictional and is written by a 44-year old female writer.
  • cindygallop 14y ago
    No, he's for real. We're meeting for coffee next week. :)
• FrojoS 14y ago
  From my favorite Paul Graham essay, The Acceleration of Addictiveness http://www.paulgraham.com/addiction.html http://www.paulgraham.com/addiction.html " Societies eventually develop antibodies to addictive new things. I've seen that happen with cigarettes. When cigarettes first appeared, they spread the way an infectious disease spreads through a previously isolated population. Smoking rapidly became a (statistically) normal thing. [...] As knowledge spread about the dangers of smoking, customs changed." So yes, porn has always existed. So has smoking. But, industrial cigarettes and broadband porn streaming are "more concentrated forms of less addictive predecessors." and hence they are more dangerous. PS: Just to clarify, Pg did not mention porn addiction in his essay. He does mention Internet addiction, though.
  • pekk 14y ago
    Characterizing porn as "more concentrated" does not in any way demonstrate that it is dangerous.
    • veidr 14y ago
      I don't think that anybody is saying "it is dangerous", just "the ubiquitous and instant availability of virtually any kind of high-definition porn is a relatively new thing, and its effects might be different than the wood block prints and paper magazines enjoyed by previous generations".
    • philwelch 14y ago
      It certainly increases the risk of addiction, which is a danger of sorts.
  • rimantas 14y ago
    Speaking of internet addictions, posts worth reading: http://mindhacks.com/2007/08/20/why-there-is-no-such-thing-as-internet-addiction/ http://mindhacks.com/2007/08/20/why-there-is-no-such-thing-a... http://mindhacks.com/2008/03/19/internet-addiction-nonsense-hits-the-ajp/ http://mindhacks.com/2008/03/19/internet-addiction-nonsense-...
  • SilasX 14y ago
• xk_id 14y ago
  "9/10th* of the working of the gonads is to vitalise the whole body – brain included. If the gonads would secrete a blue fluid, the whole body would be blue, and the brain very blue – and even the bones would be slightly blue. […] It is quite often the case that very creative people have very active gonads." * fundamentally true; not correct, but fundamentally true.
  • PaperclipTaken 14y ago
    This sounds compelling but I'm not willing to trust it. Where did you get this information?
    • xk_id 14y ago
      From Alfred Korzybski, who claimed he got it from a physician.
• calinet6 14y ago
  "Both of my parents were shrinks" Nope, it wasn't the porn.
• PaperclipTaken 14y ago
  I have tried to quit porn before. In high school I tried very hard, for religious reasons. I never succeeded. In college I got to the point where 2 30-90 minute sessions daily was the norm. I then tried to quit again. I went 5 days, and then 4 days, and then gave up on the idea, resigning myself to immense sexual activity. Every month or so, I'll go on a complete rampage with as many as 10 orgasms a day for 2-3 days, rarely coming out of my room. Sometimes it even interferes with food. My sexual tastes have grown increasingly complex, sometimes illegal, sometimes not outwardly sexual at all (example, the thought of loneliness in a girl). It has changed how I look at nearly everything, but I'm not ready to conclude that it has been for the worse. I had sex for the first time this week. I didn't climax. My parter had no issues but I was completely uninterested, which is interesting because I had been looking forward (greatly) to the encounter for more than a week. But when it finally happened... complete disinterest. I did my best to think of porn and at least play along, but part of me felt that was more rude than just failing to climax so I sat back and let my partner enjoy her share. ED was no issue. It's worth adding that I had never met the girl before, seen pics and talked via phone but never met in person. I had little (if any) emotional attraction to the girl, and for this reason specifically I'm not very worried. It just caught my attention because I would never have guessed that a 19yo boy would go through 40 minutes of sex with an attractive girl and not climax. Since then I've been more motivated to quit, but I'm still not ready to conclude that porn has been a negative or bad experience. It has consistently given me a lot to think about, especially watching my interests and needs shift over the past few years. I've noticed a better control over my need for porn but it's only been a few days.
  • Evbn 14y ago
    You sound like millions of other hormonally charged teens. You will be fine. Porning all day is over doing it, but still is far better than syphilis and herpes and AIDS and surprise pregnancy jealousy and heartbreak and all the jazz that comes with immature sex outside of a committed relationship.
  • danenania 14y ago
    I'd recommend that you quit the porn for awhile just to show yourself that you can. But to me it sounds like the issue for you is probably less about porn specifically and more just being inside, on the computer, and in your own head too much. Try taking a few days in a row to get up early and be outside, active, and away from the computer all day, ideally with other people you enjoy being around if possible. Hiking, camping trips, road trips with friends, even volunteering are all things that can help you to clear out compulsive and destructive thought cycles and get a better outlook on things. The world is a really beautiful, rich, and incredible place--porn is quite empty and boring by comparison. Even in the realms of sexuality and eroticism, you can find a lot more potent and interesting forms of arousal out there if you open up to other people and new experiences. I'd guess if you could start to do that, the pull porn has on you would naturally subside.
• prawn 14y ago
  Seems that there are a few comments getting killed by an automatic process reacting to keywords or possibly links?
• goostavos 14y ago
  "Data, is not the plural form of anecdote." The number of unsourced, or "it worked for me!" comments are a little more than I would have expected for HN. Here's the wikipedia page on masturbation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masturbation#Health_and_psychological_effects http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masturbation#Health_and_psychol... Is it the best source of information? No. But its linked medical studies carry a little more weight than "Stopping changed my life and it will change yours!" Until there is cold hard medically relevant data to support these claims, you may as well also start wearing magnetic bracelets and donning aura crystals. Both have equal bodies of evidence. Not to mention, a lot of this seems to be a masked religious gilt as well as FUD. The current top comment has a link here: http://www.feedtherightwolf.org http://www.feedtherightwolf.org. After a brief look around the site, I stumble across the post "30 Sample Reasons to Avoid Pornography." Lets look through them. * My hopes of having a wife and a child will come true if I walk away. * I will be able to hold down and maintain a job if I walk away. * Remember the pain and hurt I caused my family and myself? * I am a good person and do not need to prove it by using. * I will live a more independent and worthwhile life if I walk away. * I will be a positive role model for my children if I walk away. * I want and deserve a good future for myself. * I am a worthwhile and productive person. * I will regain my self-respect and dignity if I walk away. * I don’t want to end up like my father. * I will be able to feel better about myself if I walk away. * My Family will be proud of me if I walk away. * If I continue to use I will die. * I will be proud of myself if I walk away. * If I walk away my physical health will improve. * I will reduce my chances of going to jail if I walk away. * My hopes and dreams for future will come true if I walk away. * I will be a positive role model for my friends if I walk away. * I will be able to get in touch with my true feelings if I walk away. * I will live a calmer and more peaceful life if I walk away. * I will be able to spend my time on healthy alternatives if I walk away. * Remember the high risk situations I faced while perusing my addiction? * I will be able to open my own business if I walk away. * If I continue to use I will lose everything. * I will be a positive role model for my family if I walk away. * Remember the stupid things I did to get my high? * Remember the look at my Girlfriends face when she found out about my addiction? * I will be stronger and more in control if I walk away. * I accept full responsibility for everything that takes place in my life. * My mission in life is to be a good man, to love my family, and to carry out God’s will for me to the best of my ability Really? "If I continue to use I will die?" This list is heavily slanted towards appeals to emotion, and, of course, a little religious guilt. I'd like to see "you'll die because reason x [link to study]" I see the /r/nofap people on Reddit all the time spouting this same nonsense. The critical error is taking an anecdote, and extrapolating it out into a generally applicable result. I'm not saying that porn addiction doesn't exist, I mean, good lord, some of the comments here.. Like the 3 hours a day guy, or the marathon guy -- those, are legitimate problems with negative results. However, a TedX talk and a couple of blog entries do not science make. A wank every now and again is medically beneficial for a the average person.
• cm2012 14y ago
  Yes, I'm glad someone is putting the truth out there that pretty much everyone from the Millennial generation has been watching porn since our pre-teens. The vast majority, as far a s I know, havn't experienced problems from it. There is a vocal minority like in r/nofap, but considering that literally 99.9% of millions of males do it, that can't be a surprise.
• linuxhansl 14y ago
  Porn and masturbation are quite normal, as long as they do not affect your everyday life. It's easy to think you are addicted or think that you are not normal. But what is normal anyway? Watching porn once a day, a week, a month, not at all? I'd posit that "not at all" is not normal. It turns out that men often fantasize during sex and that women rarely do. Whether the fantasy is about some prior experience, some random fantasies, and scenes from the porn movie seems immaterial to me. Personally I do not understand how porn can possibly measure up to real interpersonal sexuality, but that does not mean that I do not watch porn. :)
• notdonspaulding 14y ago
  I can definitely relate to the author. I first found porn at the age of 14. I'm 29 now, and until recently, porn has always been something I've "struggled with". I've seen several comments that have opposed what I would call the Church & Moral perspective on porn, without really having an example of what that perspective is. Let me put forth a few claims, so those of you who would disagree with them have something concrete to which to attach your arguments. FWIW, I'm a religious person. I've been married for 9 years, and I've only ever been physically intimate with my wife. I accept that that deeply colors my perception of the world and this issue specifically. Here are my claims: - Porn is designed to be "used" by an individual to satisfy themselves sexually. - Especially when encountered at a formative age (such as the author's and my own), porn greatly influences your perception of "good sex". - Pornography and sexual intimacy are diametrically opposed. - Sexual intimacy is more satisfying, on the whole, than porn. - There is no such thing as "harmless porn". Finally, a standing invitation. If you ever want more information on the mainstream evangelical Christian viewpoint on pornography, or my viewpoint specifically, feel free to email me at donspauldingii at googlemail dot com
  • lucian1900 14y ago
    Well, your claims are largely silly. While much porn isn't of particularly good quality, lots of porn is designed for couples. And it's great! You should try it with your wife. Again, you've been watching the wrong porn. Plenty depicts beautiful sexual intimacy.
    • notdonspaulding 14y ago
      While I don't see how you've refuted any of my claims specifically, I will address your assertion that I should try porn with my wife. Having used porn myself for the majority of my life, and for almost the entirety of my marriage, I have quite a number of empirical data points of its affects on me and my sexuality. I will say that my wife and I need much less of the influence of porn on our sex life, not more.
      • illuminate 14y ago
• lizzard 14y ago
  I wish you would all read this brilliant speech by Andrea Dworkin. Try to keep an open mind for a seed of truth, even if you come from a very different place politically. http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/dworkin/WarZoneChaptIIIE.html http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/dworkin/WarZoneChaptIIIE.htm... ". . . if equality is what you want and what you care about, then you have to fight for the institutions that will make it socially real. It is not just a matter of your attitude. You can't think it and make it exist. You can't try sometimes, when it works to your advantage, and throw it out the rest of the time. Equality is a discipline. It is a way of life."
  • guard-of-terra 14y ago
    How is it relevant to the article being discussed?
    • npsimons 14y ago
      Dworkin was a big critic of pornography, claiming it caused rape and subjugation of women. While there are undoubtedly some women in porn against their will (or verging on doing it for lack of better options (ie, "for the money")), this point of view completely ignores women who are aware of their options, but choose to do porn and see it as an issue of "their body, their choice".
      • guard-of-terra 14y ago
        There is enough porn produced already so if the production ends today there's enough already for most of people. Concerning distribution: is there anybody stupid enough to ask for an never-ending, positional "war on porn"? As if wars on drugs and on pirates wasn't enough
        • npsimons 14y ago
          I never paid much attention to Dworkin's arguments, but I wouldn't be surprised if there were people interested in a "war on porn". Never underestimate the human capability to formulate simple "solutions" to complex "problems". As for the production aspect, as I said, there are women in porn who view it as a women's rights issue, ie who is to say what women can and can't do with their bodies.
• corporalagumbo 14y ago
  If he had paid attention when he read his Foucault, he'd be keeping quiet rather than wringing his hands and dissecting himself on a major website.
• lizzard 14y ago
  The really amazing thing about this article is that I'm supposed to care more about this guy's boner, and guilt complex, than I care about the systematic oppression and degradation of my half of the human species. Really . . . What a wanker!
  • notdonspaulding 14y ago
    Technically don't you have a little over half of the human species, due to the extra chromosome? Seriously though, where is the discussion happening about the link between porn and the degradation of women? Is there just no argument against it, or does HN not even realize it's there?
  • nvmc 14y ago
    Well aren't you charming.
• kjackson2012 14y ago
  As long as people realize that porn itself is a caricature of sex, then it's fine. Usually sex is a lot more clumsy, and a lot shorter than any of the porn movies you find on the web. Guys with huge penises that take 45 mins to climax, women with huge breasts that love to get finished on, etc, is not how most of the world is. It's certainly exciting to see, but it's totally unrealistic. It's sort of like martial arts. Real martial arts isn't guys jumping 30 ft at each other, or fighting 10 opponents at once, doing somersaults, etc. If kids go to martial arts training expecting this, they will be sorely disappointed. Most martial arts is practicing moves over and over again. It's tedious and boring for those that are expecting Jackie Chan or Jet Li. Over the course of many years, you can get to a certain level of expertise. But the martial arts movies are essentially a caricature. Hopefully the kids growing up today realize this.
  • TeMPOraL 14y ago
    > Hopefully the kids growing up today realize this. Martial arts - maybe. But if your never had sex and your only education on the topic is porn, then how could you know how it really looks like? And then you have your first, and second, and third time, and you feel a bit disappointed that it didn't feel or look like you expected, and even if you realize that porn is a caricature, you're still left wondering, how much of the difference between porn and real life is because of lack of realism in videos, and how much is because of your deficiencies. It's a real problem and it's sad that the only sexual education kids usually get comes from porn. EDIT There was a TED talk about this topic once, [0]. While her site doesn't have much content and I don't recall the book being very insightful (though definitely an interesting read), she raises some good points so I recommend the video (it's 4 minutes). [0] - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FV8n_E_6Tpc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FV8n_E_6Tpc
    • malandrew 14y ago
      Having porn before sex is probably a lot more instructive and useful to our sexual well being than an alternative world where your only contact with sex before having it is just private conversations about it with the few people you feel comfortable discussing it with. I'm very glad that I live in a post Kinsey Report world.
• konstruktor 14y ago
  The language he uses to talk about his experiences sounds extremely judgmental and puritan. It seems to me that his problem is not pornography but guilt tripping himself.
  • Udo 14y ago
    Definitely. Apparently, his puritan hangups are also themselves sexualized - no wonder the real world doesn't do it for him. I find both the article itself and the discussion of it here on HN surprisingly weird and alien. I hope I'm not the only one...
• billybob123 14y ago
  My wife is a nurse and they have a saying about anyone in the mental health field. "You can't tell the players from the fans"
• tommorris 14y ago
  Well, if we're all just going to trade anecdotes at each other, I may as well do so too. Unlike the author of the original piece, I'm happy to use my real name. I looked at porn on the Internet as a teenager. I'm gay and back then I was deep in the closet. And I grew up when Section 28 was still in force. It was a law passed in the 80s that said schools "shall not intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality... [or] promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship". In practice, that meant the sex education we got in schools didn't cover those of us with a preference for what the law called unacceptable "pretended" relationships. Back then, it it was still dialup and early broadband. No high-quality video, so it was almost all pictures. But porn gave to a lot of gay kids the reassurance and sexual freedom that society more generally was unwilling to even see or mention. Porn was a paracetamol for loneliness: it didn't solve it, but it eased the pain. You opened the newspaper and every time they mentioned something related to being gay, it was framed as some giant moral debate, a culture war, a political football. But on the Internet, there wasn't any of that bullshit, just sex and porn and other people (albeit behind screen names). If schools don't want to teach the gay kids about their sexuality, then the Internet and porn will do it for them. My friends didn't need the Internet: probably every school in the country has an underground trade in porn, whether it's Internet-based, magazines, hacking satellite/cable TV, whatever. Heterosexual teenage boys will get their hands on images of naked ladies and distribute/trade them. That's just how it is. Access to porn throughout my teenage years made life bearable. And, at risk of oversharing, the thing I find most attractive in porn isn't the whips and chains, as the author says, but simple expressions of real, genuine emotional intimacy.
  • exim 14y ago
    Regarding differences in easy accessibility of "materials" for different orientation persons, one interesting thing worth mentioning - unlike heterosexuals, homosexuals carry this "material" all the time with them - their body...
    • chubbard 14y ago
      "intimacy - a close, familiar, and usually affectionate or loving personal relationship with another person or group." Therefore, you can't experience intimacy by yourself. It requires at least another person.
• kinnth 14y ago
  really well written piece. Bares a lot of resemblance to my life. I think it takes time to grow up but most of the time most people do eventually do it.
• gopi 14y ago
  This comment may be down voted here. But i think there is a case to be made for a new law that mandates the ISP's to password protect all porn websites by default.
  • papsosouid 14y ago
    Yep, because if someone claims something might be bad for them, we should restrict access for everyone! By the way, hacker news makes me slack off at work, so I'm looking forward to the law that forces ISPs to block it by default.
    • gopi 14y ago
      I am not worried about the adults but Kids who can now easily access all the pervert filth's of the world (many times accidently). BTB, I am not talking about blocking porn, just users should go through a password wall. Also the users should be able to change this default setting if they like. This is not much different from the password protection for adult content offered by many cable tv companies.
      • papsosouid 14y ago
        You seem to have conveniently missed the point. What you randomly decree is "filth" and what someone else randomly decrees is "filth" aren't the same. There is no reason to believe that porn is bad, hence no reason for you to be deciding who can access it and who can't. Your position is just as detestable as people who would want access to any non-christian religious material restricted.
  • guard-of-terra 14y ago
    And in a few days we'll figure that every site The Man does not like is considered a porn site. And is "protected" from you. Pirate Bay and other trackers, for example.
    • illuminate 14y ago
      I'm sure that user is just fine with such abuses.
• cindygallop 14y ago
  I took part in a HuffPoLive chat with Isaac, the author of the post on Salon, Naomi Wolf and John Stoltenberg, 2 days ago - here's our discussion: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/16/internet-porn-men-pornography-male-sexuality_n_2488056.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/16/internet-porn-men-p... Do check out my venture https://makelovenotporn.tv/ https://makelovenotporn.tv/ 'Pro-sex. Pro-porn. Pro-knowing the difference.'