Porn Addiction (And Everything Else You Need To Know About Porn)

(An attempt has been made to censor the images in this article to avoid triggering those of you with porn addiction. But be warned, there are sexual images down below)

“Porn exists in a parallel universe, a shadowy otherworld. When you force anything into the shadows and underground, you make it a lot easier for bad things to happen, and a lot harder for good things to happen” – Cindy Gallop – Founder of MakeLoveNotPorn.

In the dawn of the 21 Century, with everybody’s eyes focused on the emerging technology of the internet, a huge unrivalled force managed to sneak into our lives undetected.

High-speed internet Porn became available at the click of a button for anybody with an internet connection.

For the first time in human history, any sexual fantasy you can possibly imagine (And some you’d never want to imagine..) is available for anybody to see, at no cost whatsoever.

This could potentially be the biggest social experiment in history.

This is a huge deal. This is not trivial. This is completely new. And this is going to have major effects on human beings.

Ugghh… Another article against Porn? Really?

Shut the fuck up and pay attention. This article is not “against” porn. I’m just giving you the facts. And considering you almost definitely watch it (If you’re a man), you may want to know what porn does to your:

• Brain

• Sexual preferences

• Self-esteem

• Quality of life

• Society

• And how it’s probably making your REAL sexual performance worse. (Now I’ve got your attention ;D)

All technology has its own effects. Technology changes us completely. And porn changes people globally. 

As internet porn gets to play out it’s game, we can now see more clearly the effects it has on our population.

An Uncontested Path Into Our Lives

This tidal wave of porn has risen in an era of sexual freedom, where anything between consenting adults goes. The main opposition to porn, religion, is shunned to the side with the majority being firmly on the side of science.

Nobody is going to allow religion to make them feel guilty for masturbating. The idiotic sexually restrictive religious practises has only strengthened the reputation of porn.

Feminist objections are pushed aside as radical and prude. Typical feminists right?

Our cultural climate has allowed porn to move into mainstream culture almost completely uncontested. A well meaning, freedom loving population has encouraged porn into our lives while massively underestimating/not giving a shit about the effects it might have on us.

Who cares? Its just porn. People like porn. Stop trying to control what people do behind closed doors. Everybody masturbates right? Porn is nothing more than a tool to help people masturbate after all. Hop online. Pleasure yourself for 10 minutes then move on with your day. Who would have a problem with that?

Men actually. Loads of them.

Introducing, Nofap.

 Porn and the Male Brain

For those who aren’t aware, NoFap is a community full of people (mostly men) struggling with their porn habits.

The NoFap Subreddit currently has 345,000 subscribers. The majority of these members being men between the ages of 15-30.

The goal of the movement? No more porn. And no more masturbation.

Who could of imagined there would be a movement of young men against masturbation and porn?

Since when are teenage boys and men the group that are actively criticising porn and masturbation? Is this real life?

Well, it’s destroying their sex life. In massive numbers. (Ah, now it makes sense..)

The brain wants sex.

2 million years ago, there weren’t all that many humans around. Through evolution, the brain developed a strong dopamine reward system around sex. Sex feels good. This ensured we had as many children as possible and the human race kept increasing.

It shouldn’t take much to make a man aroused by a woman.

But when it comes to porn, it’s clear that our unconscious brain can’t tell the difference between porn and real sex. When seeing naked women on the screen, your brain is tricked into thinking real naked women are available to have sex with.

You get aroused by pixels on your laptop screen

Harry the fisherman scowled at at a picture of a French girl in a bikini. Fred, understanding that he seemed a bleak, sexless person to Harry, tried to prove that Harry had him wrong. He nudged Harry, man-to-man. “Like that, Harry?” he asked.

“Like what?”

“The girl there”

“That’s not a girl. That’s a piece of paper.”

“Looks like a girl to me.” Fred leered.

“Then you’re easily fooled,” said Harry. “It’s done with ink on a piece of paper. That girl isn’t lying there on the counter. She’s thousands of miles away, doesn’t even know we’re alive. If this were a real girl, all I’d have to do for a living would be to stay home and cut out pictures of big fish.”From Kurt Vonnegut’s novel, “God Bless You Mr Rosewater”

If your brain could tell the difference between a porn video and real sex, you wouldn’t get aroused.

Because funnily enough, you can’t pass your DNA onto an electronic device.

Now, many men watch more porn than they do real sex. This is a problem.

Because women in porn are hypersexualised. (Porn is a superstimuli)

Porn actresses are unusually attractive. They have a makeup artist perfecting their flaws. The lighting and shadows on their body are in exactly the right place and the noises they  make are comically over-exaggerated. (Mmm! Oooh! Yes! Yes! Uh! Uh!)

Sorry guys, these aren’t real women.

And when men spend more time watching porn than having sex, their brain expects to see the hypersexualised woman they saw in porn, not a real woman. They become Desensitised and they become less aroused with a 3D, non-pixelated woman in the flesh.

But there’s more to it than that.   

Watching porn has characteristics than real sex doesn’t.

Being alone. Watching from a third person perspective. Clicking. Searching. Sitting in a particular position. Watching a screen. 

Your brain will rewire itself to associate arousal with these characteristics. To a frequent porn user, real sex just won’t feel right.  

Why is there another person here? Why am I seeing the scene from a first person view? Why am I not sitting down with the mouse in my hand? Why am I not in my usual porn-watching position? And most insidious of all: Why can’t I switch to a new tab to see a different woman?

By far the biggest problem with internet porn is the number of different women a man can see in such a short space of time. Many frequent porn users will have picked up the habit of switching between different videos in rapid succession.

Most animals, including humans, experience what is know as “The Coolidge Effect” when having sex with the same person for a number of times.

Watching porn gives the male brain access to an endless stream of different naked women. Your subconscious brain thinks that you’ve hit the evolutionary jackpot and the user will experience a spike in dopamine with each new female on screen. (Little does your subconscious brain know; you haven’t had sex in the last 18 months)

The brain begins to expect the constant novelty of new women, thus men get less aroused when having sex with their long term girlfriend.

These constant dopamine spikes are also the reason why many men succumb to pornography addiction. 

This constant influx of new females to the brain is strictly a consequence of high-speed internet porn. These kinds of download speeds have been available since around 2008.

Quickly switching between porn videos and seeing 15 new girls in 20 minutes is something that has only been available for around 10 years in the entirety of human history.

It’s no wonder that the negative effects of porn are only really just being discovered.

The average 16 year old can see more naked women in 1 hour than his ancestors would have seen in an entire lifetime.

Now, this constant binging of new females and dopamine spikes leads to a build up of the brain chemical Delta-FosB in the brain’s reward circuit. This means 3 primary structural changes in the brain.

1. Numbed Pleasure Response – Everyday pleasures begin to be less satisfying.

2. Hyper-reactivity to Porn – While everyday pleasures seem boring, porn becomes extra exciting.

3. Willpower Erosion – The frontal cortex is changed, leading to a weakening of willpower.

All 3 of these brain changes are features of all other addictions, including drugs, alcohol and gambling.

Members of the NoFap community frequently talk about their massively increased motivation and enthusiasm for life after quitting porn. This is because their brain’s pleasure response has returned to normal and is no longer being constantly numbed by the use of pornography.

These symptoms are not only present in men with extreme porn addictions, but to everybody that watches pornography, just to a lesser extent.

So an entire generation of men have grown up with a CONSISTENT drop in motivation and willpower. 

 This will affect men at varying levels. With some it will be barely noticeable, with others it will cause serious problems. But the effect will always be there on some level in any frequent porn user (Which most teenage boys are).

While it’s not scientifically proven just yet, porn is correlated with depression, anxiety, and low self-esteem. It seems likely that the scientific community will eventually find solid evidence of the links between porn and these mental health disorders

The NoFap community often talk about massive drops in each of these mental disorders as little as 7 days after quitting porn.

(Its also worth noting that women also watch porn and studies show that 30% of porn addicts are women. A smaller, but still significant percentage.)

The Internet Porn Rabbit Hole

Why has internet porn become more and more extreme, disgusting and absurd over time?

Search through any porn site and the chances are high you will find some extreme porn on the homepage.

Extreme Bondage, Gilf’s, Feet worship, Public Humiliation, Piss, Vomit, Rape.

Are these really people’s natural tastes?

No.

For most people, these tastes were created by high-speed internet porn.

While there would be small fringe groups with these sexual preferences, they should not be front page material. 

Because constant use of porn leads to desensitisation. The vanilla videos you used to watch just don’t do it for you anymore. So you move onto more extreme genres. After a while, these genres no longer give the dopamine high they used to and you move onto even more extreme genres.

Over a large scale, the tastes of the audience become more extreme. So the porn website responds by featuring more of this extreme content. Gradually you begin to find extreme content on the front page of the website. This increases the exposure of this extreme content and leads to even more people adopting these extreme sexual preferences.

It’s a downward spiral.

Many NoFap users report becoming sexually confused as their porn preferences begin to include those of the gender they’re not attracted to. Straight men start watching gay porn. Because their brain needs more and more taboo content to get the same dopamine.

A Generation Educated By Porn

 As high-speed internet porn crept into our lives around 2008, sex education stayed exactly the same.

The most students will remember from sex-ed is putting a condom on a banana and having a good laugh with their friends.

Sex education, like most education, failed to keep up with technology. Schools don’t teach teenagers about sex, internet porn does.

Somewhere between the ages of 11-17, most teenage boys start watching pornography. From here on, most of them watch countless hours of it right into their 20s. This is often a long time before they experience real sex.

This is a problem.

Pornography isn’t sex. But a teenage boy doesn’t know that.

Even a grown man can be mislead by the blurred line between porn and real sex.

Watching adult, muscular men with larger than average penis sizes, fuck a girl moaning constantly in an over exaggerated way can lead a teenage boy to feel inadequete about his own sexual attributes.

His girlfriend stays quiet when they have sex, she must not be enjoying it. His penis seems smaller than the ones he sees on the screen. He’s a scrawny little boy, not like the muscular man on the screen. He can only last around 10 minutes, the man on the screen can go for a full hour non-stop.

He may begin to get the sense that something is wrong with him.

Or perhaps it has a different effect.

His girlfriend has small breasts. She doesn’t do deepthroat like he saw on the screen. She won’t let him give her a facial. She won’t even do anal.

She must be a prude.

Or maybe the effects are more sinister.

Maybe he gets the sense that contraception isn’t important, he’s never seen a video where the guy uses a condom after all. Maybe he gets the sense that consent isn’t important. Chances are, he’s seen plenty of rape porn, violent porn.

Perhaps more importantly, relationships mean nothing in porn. It’s entirely centred around sexual gratification. Which could shape how the teen approaches sex as he grows up, especially considering the teenager brain is prime to be wired in a certain way between the ages of 12-20.

Porn Outside of Porn

For some addicts, avoiding porn is a living nightmare.

Soft porn is everywhere.

Sex sells. On every platform.

Instagram models use soft porn to build massive audiences make profit visa sponsorship. Advertising uses soft porn to associate their product with attractiveness. Magazines use soft porn to increase sales.

Thousands of businesses everywhere are trying to make a profit. And sex is an effective way to sell.

The end result is a world saturated with soft porn.

Who Owns The Porn Industry?

People have a tendency to look at the porn industry in the wrong way. They get distracted by sex aspect and don’t really consider that the porn industry is a business, just like any other.

The porn industry is absolutely enormous. Recent estimates value the industry at around $98 Billion. 

The industry has transformed with the invention of high-speed internet porn. The money is no longer in production but in distribution.

You’ve heard of Youtube. You’ve heard of Netflix. How about Mindgeek? No?

The websites run by Mindgeek consume more internet bandwidth than Facebook or Twitter.

Because Mindgeek now has a monopoly on the porn industry. Pornhub, Youporn, Redtube (all 3 of these being in the top 300 websites in the world) as well as adult film production companies Brazzers, Babes.com Reality Kings and Men.com.

So if porn videos are free, how do they make so much money? 

The first way? Advertising. We’ve all seen the ad banners on porn sites selling “Dick enlargement pills”. As hard as it may be to believe, people actually click these adverts. Porn websites get money per click, like any online advertisements.

But the real money is in the paid subscription services. Porn production companies like Brazzers will post a free teaser video on Pornhub and then try to direct traffic to their website for full videos.

In fact, after extensive research, they realised the perfect amount of time for the teaser video is around 3-6 minutes. Enough to make the guy aroused, but not long enough for him to ejaculate. 

Men with boners don’t tend to think through decisions very carefully.

It’s no wonder the subscription services like Brazzers make so much money.

Now considering Mindgeek owns the main free porn websites, they can purposefully direct traffic to their own porn production companies. EG. They can feature Brazzers videos (Their company) on the front page of Pornhub (Also their company).

As Mindgeek takes over more and more of the porn industry something quite disturbing is coming into play.

One single company is controlling the sex education of the world’s younger generations.

Yeah…this probably isn’t a good thing.

Is the porn industry evil?

Opinions on porn are all over the place.

It’s one of those never ending arguments full of religious, feminist, moral, economic and political concerns that really require a full book to explain.

Still, there are a few things about the industry the average person needs to know:

Porn fuels demand for sex trafficking – A certain % of porn watchers end up as “Johns” (Buyers of sex). The Johns see something in porn that they simply cannot do in the real world. Porn can act as a teaser trailer for hiring a prostitute. So, they they use a prostitute to live out their fantasies. Some women are prostitutes voluntarily, others are not.

By watching online porn and funding the porn industry, you are inadvertently contributing, in a small way, to sex trafficking. There really isn’t any way around this one.

Women have both good AND bad experiences of working in the porn industry – Some woman love their job as a pornstar. They work in a friendly environment, with a responsible boss and get paid well. Many are passionate about porn in an artistic sense and enjoy their role as an actor. Their co-actors will reliably show accurate STD tests and they never have any problems with disease.

Other woman will experience working in a toxic environment where they will have to do sexual acts they’re not comfortable with. They will be coerced into the job with promises of fame, money and “acting” roles. They will find themselves in a culture filled with drug abuse, sexual abuse and manipulative bosses.

If you watch porn, you will watch some videos with women happy in their job as a porn star, and others with women miserable in their role. But you won’t be able to tell the difference.

Some women are forced into porn – In a certain sense, porn IS prostitution. Women (and men) are being paid for a sexual act. Some women are forced by their pimp to produce porn. This is more likely to be the case in “Gonzo” porn (The cheaper, amateur stuff) Than “Feature” porn (The polished, professional stuff)

The Porn Industry is linked with the Child Porn Industry – Some people are born paedophiles. Others had their sexual tastes for children built over time. The popularity of online Child Pornography is on the increase, an increase that is fuelled by people moving from watching adult porn, over to child porn.

The porn industry also pushed to change the Child Pornography Protection Act of 1996. The act used to restrict the use of any porn actors that appeared to be under 18. After a push from the porn industry, this part of the law was removed.

Almost over night, Teen Porn was born. 

A genre that uses over 18 actors who pretend they’re children in videos where a Step-Dad will have sex with his Step-Daughter. These videos are only within the law because the porn industry wanted it that way. 

These kinds of porn videos could act as a gateway into child porn.

The Future Of Porn – Virtual Reality

VR Porn is already available.

Right now, you can watch porn in a first person view, as if you’re in the scene. Eye-contact with the porn actress feels real.

But we’ve seen nothing yet.

We’re beginning to see sex robots incorporated with VR. Silicone tits and asses to groped in synchronisation with VR porn.

And the technology is only going to get more and more realistic.

Considering the huge problems already caused by 2D Porn, just imagine the kind of problems that 3D Porn will cause.

There will come a time when 2D porn seems old fashioned.

VR Porn is coming. the question is, where will it lead us?  

Men will stop going outside – As extreme as this sounds, it will be true for a minority of men. The pursuit of sex is one of the main motivators for young fellows to head out into the world. But when they can fulfil their sexual desires to a large extent in a VR porn scene, why bother?

Hikikamoris in Japan already live this way on a diet of 2D Porn, gaming and TV shows. It’s obvious that VR Porn is going increase the number of shut-in young men.

The NoFap movement already shows that 2D Porn saps the motivation and enthusiasm of men in massive numbers. So what happens when the porn is 3D?

VR porn means less motivated men, more porn addiction and more men with sexual problems.

More empathy or less? – It’s impossible to tell which direction this will go until we’ve seen VR porn enter the mainstream for a few years.

With VR porn, you’re no longer watching the scene from a voyeuristic perspective.It’s first person, not third person.The feeling of connection and the feeling of eye-contact you get with the porn actress may make men more empathetic with their partners in real life.

But.

The chances are that VR Porn will follow the same rabbit hole effect we’ve seen in 2D porn. Audience sexual tastes will get more and more extreme as they’re desensitised from vanilla content.

This will lead to the same extreme BDSM, violent porn becoming more mainstream, just in VR this time. Will realistic, violent porn from a first person perspective make people more violent towards their partners in real life?

Probably..

Fuck anybody you like. Celebrities or your Nextdoor Neighbour  – Right now, it’s possible to use AI to to attach a celebrities face to a pornstar’s body. The results are shockingly realistic.

Celebrity sex tapes will soon lose their edge.

The technology is in it’s early stages, but at some stage, you will be able to take anybody’s face and put them into a VR porn scene.  Simply grab a few photos of them from their social media and you will be able to fuck them inside VR.

Yeah..

The future of porn is going to be interesting..