The Coming Age of Super Entertainment and Super Porn

Playing around with stable diffusion, I’m wondering if the act of prompting/“creating” pornography is somehow more engaging/addicting than simply consuming pornography. Watching gambling channels isn’t the problem. Actively making gambling choices leads to the problems. I suppose we will find out.

Also, the sort of inconsistent porn/IP controls these image creation AIs implement add a peep show element (will it or won’t it generate this image, or something close…let’s find out) which is oddly more engaging. It adds a puzzle element to the mix…”boudoir oil” prompts combined with historical eras lead to a range of sensual images most wouldn’t know even existed as part of the history of Western Art. Their training sets pretty obviously include sensual images of many eras, and clever folks with a knowledge of cultural history can ferret that content out with the right stream of legitimate prompts. So that gaming/discovery element unintentionally makes generating these “almost-porn” AI images under simple screening more engaging/addicting than a simple Internet search. Boy, I would have been a popular 14 year old boy in AI class in junior high…

I have 3 diagnosed family members with ADHD.

These are systems that are designed to capture attention and addict you to the dopamine rush. That's absolutely brutal on a brain that seeks novelty and dopamine hits by design. It's the perfect trap.

In his words (oldest son) "I really worry about good VR because I would never leave. There would be limitless things to do and explore."

Even just a regular videogame with limited immersion can grab him for 8-16 hours and he will forget to eat during that time.

It's a different type of brain that developed a different way.

I asked because I have ADHD myself, and I just don't see VR as any kind of danger to my attention. It requires conscious decision to carve out some space and time to start playing, even more than a regular console, and exploring in games tends to only be fun while its novel. I've never finished any superlong open world game, not even BoTW, these just get boring after a while. I have played shorter games - those that pose challenge in which you can keep improving - over and over again, but with those it's much easier to decide "ok, enough for today".

Compared to some other things, such as social media feeds, gaming is pretty much benign. Social media is always there, one click away, and you suddenly end up noticing that you're wasting time on one without getting anything in return, feeling like a dopamine junkie. I never "find myself playing a game" like that, it's a conscious decision to start playing and VR only adds a few more "do I really want to do this right now?" checkpoints due to its whole physical nature. The goggles won't suddenly appear on my face with me standing in a safe distance from room's furniture unless I choose to.

Maybe it's because I've been always more focused on creation rather than consumption. It's easy for me not to start watching a TV series, because I know that if I do, I won't be doing anything else for several days until I finish the binge, and I know that merely watching a thing made by someone else won't be as rewarding and engaging as creating something by myself, so it usually seems like a poor way to spend my time. As a result, I get most of my mainstream media literacy from memes.