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Did porn warp me forever?

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Re: Did porn warp me forever?

#71

Post by psykotic »

andrewflnr wrote: post #68
psykotic wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 someon…

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.

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.

Re: Did porn warp me forever?

#73

Post by Renaud »

dkarl wrote: post #57
jacoblyles wrote: post #41

There's a part of the paleo subculture that avoids porn as an unnatural superstimulus. See http://yourbrainonporn.com/ or http://www.reddit.com/r/nofap Anecdotally, I find their arguments compelling.

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…

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.

Re: Did porn warp me forever?

#74

Post by Mz »

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.)

Re: Did porn warp me forever?

#75

Post by shadowfiend »

dkarl wrote: post #57
jacoblyles wrote: post #41

There's a part of the paleo subculture that avoids porn as an unnatural superstimulus. See http://yourbrainonporn.com/ or http://www.reddit.com/r/nofap Anecdotally, I find their arguments compelling.

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…

There are few arguments that I have more disdain for than the one that somehow because our brains (or bodies) haven't experienced something before, they aren't built to cope with it. It's not like we are, or have ever been, built for a single temperature, type of sex, kind of food, etc. Our bodies and minds are adaptable, and while we can try to logically reason about how our minds and bodies adapt to certain stimuli, we are still guessing at best.

To address the particular hogwash in that editorial, glimpse a tribesperson across the savannah? Human beings were living in groups with topless women tens of millenia ago. So it doesn't even stand on those grounds.

Re: Did porn warp me forever?

#76

Post by stephengillie »

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.

Re: Did porn warp me forever?

#77

Post by Firehed »

w1ntermute wrote: post #64

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.

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.

Re: Did porn warp me forever?

#78

Post by jacoblyles »

psykotic wrote: post #71
andrewflnr wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

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.

Re: Did porn warp me forever?

#79

Post by jpatokal »

Renaud wrote: post #73
dkarl wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

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_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?

Re: Did porn warp me forever?

#80

Post by psykotic »

jacoblyles wrote: post #78
psykotic wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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 linke…

> 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.

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