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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 a

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.
    - psykotic 14y ago
      Good for you--I mean that. My addictive superstimulus is learning new things with no practical relevance my work, like orbital mechanics or calendrical calculations. When I catch myself going on extended binges, I try to extricate myself by consciously directing my time and energy elsewhere. But it would be silly of me to indict textbooks as harmful objects. Any hardcore procrastinator knows that the focus is incidental and essentially arbitrary.
    - Evbn 14y ago
      The average American isn't dead, so obviously you didn't say what you meant, if what you meant made sense.
      - learc83 14y ago
        He never specified a time frame--Watching 5 hours of TV will kill you over x number of years (also it's clear he meant the resulting inactivity will kill you).
  - andrewflnr 14y ago
    You have made a couple unfounded assumptions. One, that the GP, abstains from porn and two, that the fact that it's not clear that it's harmless is the reason for it. They were responding to a specific claim of the GGP, that porn is harmless. Respond to what people actually say. If you really need to respond to something unsaid, make it explicit. Anything else is a strawman fallacy.
    - psykotic 14y ago
      I accept your point while submitting that everyone in this thread, yourself included, fails this stringent test: > They were responding to a specific claim of the GGP, that porn is harmless. Speaking of strawmen, it was Jacob who used the word harmless. Nicholas went so far as to draw an analogy with drugs concerning the effects of responsible versus irresponsible use. When he said porn wasn't bad, he clearly didn't mean that it is harmless in an absolute sense but was expressing a nuanced point of view.
      - jacoblyles 14y ago
        You're right that Nicholas's comment was more nuanced than I gave him credit for. However, he paints the picture that porn has been with our society forever and that its effects are known and tolerable. I would argue that its widespread availability is an extremely novel phenomena and that its effects are unknown and likely harmful. I've had some first hand experience on that count, though not as extreme as the linked article.
        psykotic 14y ago
        > However, he paints the picture that porn has been with our society forever and that its effects are known and tolerable. I would argue that its widespread availability is an extremely novel phenomena and that its effects are unknown and likely harmful. You haven't clearly defined what you mean by harmful. Does it ruin otherwise healthy relationships on a massive scale? Does it teach impressionable young men that all women want to fuck them, leading to violence? Those seem like typical charges brought against porn. Were they true I'd agree there would be cause for serious concern. I haven't seen the data to back up these claims. If it exists, let's see it. Porn is widespread enough that you'd expect the large-scale statistical effects to be manifest.
- guard-of-terra 14y ago
  Let's pretend we figured out porn is kinda bad. Our next steps?
  - xk_id 14y ago
    Just like porn became a socialised behaviour… so can its rejection.
- VigUi7vv8G2 14y ago
  > We have normalized porn very recently and it is just a piece of modernist faith that it is harmless. Which is true of everything. How do you know eating chicken is harmless? What about cellphones? What about under arm deodorant? Laundry Detergent? There are tons and tons of new things added to society all the time. The only reason anyone has a problem with porn is because some people have moral hangups about it.
nerdfiles 14y ago
Yes, but porn can sometimes be the worst drug. Sometimes I find the analogy between porn and drugs to add more obfuscation to my thoughts than clarity.
- nicholassmith 14y ago
  They're very similar in some respects, both trigger pleasure and reward centres creating a similar level of craving. Not a wholy physical dependency, but certainly a mental one over time.
Skoofoo 14y ago
> Porn isn't bad, it's a part of society now and has been for a long while Logically speaking, that doesn't mean it's not a bad thing. EDIT: Porn is indeed almost a staple of Western society, but note that Western culture is also very image-focused and has high rates of divorce and eating disorders among women.
- a_bonobo 14y ago
  >Porn is indeed almost a staple of Western society I present to you, old Japanese porn: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dream_of_the_Fisherman%27s_Wife https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dream_of_the_Fisherman%27s... And here's a documentary about ancient Egyptian porn: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7HttHvJ8Gc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7HttHvJ8Gc And here's a book about Mesopotamian porn: http://books.google.com.au/books/about/The_erotic_reliefs_of_ancient_Mesopotami.html?id=9g83AQAAIAAJ&redir_esc=y http://books.google.com.au/books/about/The_erotic_reliefs_of... What I want to say is that porn is not only a staple of Western culture, it's a staple of humanity.
  - learc83 14y ago
    Just because porn existed doesn't mean it was a "staple" of society. It would have been too expensive for the average person to afford. Even 20 years ago porn was too expensive for the average person to afford very much of it.
    - a_bonobo 14y ago
      What I meant is that porn is not a "thing" of Western societies alone, but something of all societies, I think it doesn't matter how much there is.
    - illuminate 14y ago
      "Even 20 years ago porn was too expensive for the average person to afford very much of it." They could afford it, they could not afford to hoard and stream it at will. The mechanics have not changed significantly, even as we spend more time searching for "novel" mp3s and video. Do we have a "problem" with Netflix? Pandora? I spend constant (wasted) hours cataloging and retagging my music collection.
citricsquid 14y ago
It's one of those things that can rapidly spiral, you start needing a bigger kick to keep it interesting. There's been a couple of AMAs on reddit recently from people that have been convicted of possession of child porn (and other illegal material), quite a few have claimed exactly this to be the cause. They're not interested in the subject (children), they're interested in the "shocking" nature of the pornography, how it's something new to experience and it stems from their addiction to feeling something, eventually they become numb to watching a man and a woman having sex, so they move on to... and eventually end up with things like children, mutilation and bestiality (and other such "horrifying") things. I have no idea if these claims are true or trying to justify what they've done but it seems relevant and worth mentioning. Here is an AMA from a wife of one such man: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/15b3vt/iam_the_wife_of_a_man_who_plead_guilty_to/ http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/15b3vt/iam_the_wife_of...
nikster 14y ago
Porn is not bad as long as you keep in mind that its a bunch of BS. If you want sex better to spend your time on adult friend finder or similar. Or make a lot of money; theyll never admit but girls like money.
kiba 14y ago
I don't need a bigger kick, but a sexy kick. Porn are unsexy, which is why I am using them less and less these day.

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.
  - psykotic 14y ago
    Good for you--I mean that. My addictive superstimulus is learning new things with no practical relevance my work, like orbital mechanics or calendrical calculations. When I catch myself going on extended binges, I try to extricate myself by consciously directing my time and energy elsewhere. But it would be silly of me to indict textbooks as harmful objects. Any hardcore procrastinator knows that the focus is incidental and essentially arbitrary.
  - Evbn 14y ago
    The average American isn't dead, so obviously you didn't say what you meant, if what you meant made sense.
    - learc83 14y ago
      He never specified a time frame--Watching 5 hours of TV will kill you over x number of years (also it's clear he meant the resulting inactivity will kill you).
- andrewflnr 14y ago
  You have made a couple unfounded assumptions. One, that the GP, abstains from porn and two, that the fact that it's not clear that it's harmless is the reason for it. They were responding to a specific claim of the GGP, that porn is harmless. Respond to what people actually say. If you really need to respond to something unsaid, make it explicit. Anything else is a strawman fallacy.
  - psykotic 14y ago
    I accept your point while submitting that everyone in this thread, yourself included, fails this stringent test: > They were responding to a specific claim of the GGP, that porn is harmless. Speaking of strawmen, it was Jacob who used the word harmless. Nicholas went so far as to draw an analogy with drugs concerning the effects of responsible versus irresponsible use. When he said porn wasn't bad, he clearly didn't mean that it is harmless in an absolute sense but was expressing a nuanced point of view.
    - jacoblyles 14y ago
      You're right that Nicholas's comment was more nuanced than I gave him credit for. However, he paints the picture that porn has been with our society forever and that its effects are known and tolerable. I would argue that its widespread availability is an extremely novel phenomena and that its effects are unknown and likely harmful. I've had some first hand experience on that count, though not as extreme as the linked article.
      - psykotic 14y ago
        > However, he paints the picture that porn has been with our society forever and that its effects are known and tolerable. I would argue that its widespread availability is an extremely novel phenomena and that its effects are unknown and likely harmful. You haven't clearly defined what you mean by harmful. Does it ruin otherwise healthy relationships on a massive scale? Does it teach impressionable young men that all women want to fuck them, leading to violence? Those seem like typical charges brought against porn. Were they true I'd agree there would be cause for serious concern. I haven't seen the data to back up these claims. If it exists, let's see it. Porn is widespread enough that you'd expect the large-scale statistical effects to be manifest.
guard-of-terra 14y ago
Let's pretend we figured out porn is kinda bad. Our next steps?
- xk_id 14y ago
  Just like porn became a socialised behaviour… so can its rejection.
VigUi7vv8G2 14y ago
> We have normalized porn very recently and it is just a piece of modernist faith that it is harmless. Which is true of everything. How do you know eating chicken is harmless? What about cellphones? What about under arm deodorant? Laundry Detergent? There are tons and tons of new things added to society all the time. The only reason anyone has a problem with porn is because some people have moral hangups about it.

nerdfiles 14y ago

Yes, but porn can sometimes be the worst drug. Sometimes I find the analogy between porn and drugs to add more obfuscation to my thoughts than clarity.

nicholassmith 14y ago
They're very similar in some respects, both trigger pleasure and reward centres creating a similar level of craving. Not a wholy physical dependency, but certainly a mental one over time.

Skoofoo 14y ago

> Porn isn't bad, it's a part of society now and has been for a long while Logically speaking, that doesn't mean it's not a bad thing. EDIT: Porn is indeed almost a staple of Western society, but note that Western culture is also very image-focused and has high rates of divorce and eating disorders among women.

a_bonobo 14y ago
>Porn is indeed almost a staple of Western society I present to you, old Japanese porn: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dream_of_the_Fisherman%27s_Wife https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dream_of_the_Fisherman%27s... And here's a documentary about ancient Egyptian porn: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7HttHvJ8Gc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7HttHvJ8Gc And here's a book about Mesopotamian porn: http://books.google.com.au/books/about/The_erotic_reliefs_of_ancient_Mesopotami.html?id=9g83AQAAIAAJ&redir_esc=y http://books.google.com.au/books/about/The_erotic_reliefs_of... What I want to say is that porn is not only a staple of Western culture, it's a staple of humanity.
- learc83 14y ago
  Just because porn existed doesn't mean it was a "staple" of society. It would have been too expensive for the average person to afford. Even 20 years ago porn was too expensive for the average person to afford very much of it.
  - a_bonobo 14y ago
    What I meant is that porn is not a "thing" of Western societies alone, but something of all societies, I think it doesn't matter how much there is.
  - illuminate 14y ago
    "Even 20 years ago porn was too expensive for the average person to afford very much of it." They could afford it, they could not afford to hoard and stream it at will. The mechanics have not changed significantly, even as we spend more time searching for "novel" mp3s and video. Do we have a "problem" with Netflix? Pandora? I spend constant (wasted) hours cataloging and retagging my music collection.

citricsquid 14y ago

It's one of those things that can rapidly spiral, you start needing a bigger kick to keep it interesting. There's been a couple of AMAs on reddit recently from people that have been convicted of possession of child porn (and other illegal material), quite a few have claimed exactly this to be the cause. They're not interested in the subject (children), they're interested in the "shocking" nature of the pornography, how it's something new to experience and it stems from their addiction to feeling something, eventually they become numb to watching a man and a woman having sex, so they move on to... and eventually end up with things like children, mutilation and bestiality (and other such "horrifying") things. I have no idea if these claims are true or trying to justify what they've done but it seems relevant and worth mentioning. Here is an AMA from a wife of one such man: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/15b3vt/iam_the_wife_of_a_man_who_plead_guilty_to/ http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/15b3vt/iam_the_wife_of...

nikster 14y ago

Porn is not bad as long as you keep in mind that its a bunch of BS. If you want sex better to spend your time on adult friend finder or similar. Or make a lot of money; theyll never admit but girls like money.

kiba 14y ago

I don't need a bigger kick, but a sexy kick. Porn are unsexy, which is why I am using them less and less these day.