A couple of 20-year-old developers make $500,000 a month promising to help men to stop watching porn, but exposed their private porn watching habits.
A couple of 20-year-old developers make $500,000 a month promising to help men to stop watching porn, but exposed their private porn watching habits.
EDIT: Folks very fairly pointed out the dismissiveness of my wording, and y’all are right. While I do think therapy can and does help with addictions of any type, my wording about guilt rather than addressing the actual addiction only served the humor I was going for and wasn’t respectful for the condition. I’m leaving what I wrote as is below mostly because the quip about birding and boobies still gives me a chuckle.
Men will do literally anything other than go to fucking therapy. Jesus. Guys. You’re allowed to watch porn, let’s just direct the fear of people finding out into finding ethical porn you don’t need to feel guilt for. Or better yet, pay for your porn and support creators directly.
Also find some hobbies that get you out of the goon cave. Take up fucking birding and go find some different boobies.
Therapy is incredibly expensive and most people can’t afford it. You don’t understand how privileged you are if you can afford it
True. I make right around 20k a year and manage to scrape together $155 per visit to my therapist. So I promise I know it’s expensive. I do still think lots of people, of all genders/presentations, that could be in therapy and should be, aren’t and at no fault of their financial situation.
There’s even great tits!
I’m more of a blue tit kind of guy
Not just tits, bushtits too! And boobies of course. Can’t forget the mighty cock.
Hmm. Might need a bird addiction app.
Come to NZ and see a titipounamu, morepork, kaka
Are there any ASMR puppy play birds?
I suppose an appropriately trained parrot might do.
Porn addiction has nothing to do with feeling guilty about porn or masturbation, and if you think that’s the problem you have no business pronouncing on it.
Yeah. You’re right. I added an edit because a handful of people have called me out. Ty for the correction.
To be clear though, you should just watch the birds.
Most ethical porn is furry porn hahaha
I mean, YMMV on that ethical porn business. I’ve found that to be more of a marketing gimmick than anything I can sleep soundly on.
Might just settle on not feeling guilty for beating off.
I mean if you pay a creator directly I don’t see how that could be unethical
But also, every job under capitalism is unethical. The system is fucked but people still need to eat, so you know, choose your evil I guess
Plenty of actresses and cam girls - particularly those working overseas - are managed directly by pimps or by agencies that function no differently. Plenty more are exploited indirectly in the same way Uber and Lyft exploit their drivers - treated as contract labor, underpaid, and subjected to abuse both off and on camera.
Sure. “No ethical consumption under capitalism”, yadda yadda.
And there’s plenty of arguments for why direct sourcing has better broad economic incentives. But Hugh Hiefner played this game with Playboy sixty years ago, insisting everyone was paid well and treated respectfully. And that was the softest of soft core. Turns out his organization was barely a step above the guys making porn videos for Times Square.
You make the best decisions you can. But at some point you have to recognize that you’re buying a narrative as much as anything.
For you first paragraph I mean, fair, I guess I had an inexplicit assumption that you’re gonna vet the creator/know them (like, say, from social media). Ofc it doesn’t guarantee everything but. Maybe I shouldn’t have said “I don’t see how”, it’s strong wording. I know sex workers irl so it’s them I had in mind.
But still, yes, you’re right, things are, as usual, always a bit of a mess in our world.
I mean, sure. If you know the person IRL for some reason and you’re just sending them money for nudes in a sugar daddy relationship. Idk how common that is in practice though.
But just going on OnlyFans and opening your wallet isn’t any more ethical than hitting up a strip club.
I mean, that’s half the reason for decriminalizing sex work. So you’re not offering up police/prosecutors and associated regulators as leverage over people doing the actual work.
Yup that is mostly marketing bullshit. As long as the creator is having fun it’s ethical to me, still keeping in mind that selling your body is not good but still legitimate because of the system we live in
It never ceases to amaze me how incredibly dismissive people on this platform are toward those suffering from porn addiction. Just imagine telling an alcoholic there’s nothing wrong with drinking beer or that they should “just get some hobbies.”
I can only come up with very cynical reasons for why, of all addictions, this particular one gets ridiculed - even by people who probably consider themselves empathetic and compassionate.
You’re right. I added an edit to give credit to the multiple people calling me out. I 100% jumped on the opportunity for humor. I stand by the core point of people, not just men, needing to be more open to therapy as an option, but amounting the addiction to just feeling guilt for watching porn was disingenuous. Ty for the correction.
It’s exceedingly rare for anyone to acknowledge their error online these days - and for that you have my respect.
Probably because all of the loudest people talking about porn addiction like to pretend there is no difference looking at porn a few times a week and spending multiple hours every day trapped in a goon cave that you can’t peel yourself out of.
You’re not wrong, but like gambling, porn addiction exists, but that goes to your first point about therapy. I don’t understand why anyone would load this type of information into an app. I assume it’s ignorance to technology, which is sad, but I can’t help but think how anyone would think it’s a good idea.
Most people don’t really even think about privacy.
Sad but true.
Porn / sex “addiction” does not exist. Some nice folks who were super invested in proving it gave up a while back.
Most people have perfectly average porn / sex use, and are shamed by a partner or cultural messages.
A small percentage of people deal with “OCSB”, out of control sexual behavior.
I disagree, but that’s fine. There are people that squeeze porn into every open minute of their lives, sacrifice relationship is because of it, and spend more than they have to view it. If that’s not addiction, then we might as well say that any non-chemical vice can’t be considered one, like gambling.
Just because many people don’t seem to notice their addiction that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. The methodology used to disprove the existence of porn addiction is just to completely and utterly ignore all the people who experience it and than claiming it doesn’t exist
Reading through this thread has been a bizarre experience - I genuinely couldn’t have imagined the amount of pushback you get here just for speaking up for people struggling with this. It seems exactly the kind of thing I’d have expected deep compassion for, given the userbase here.
Still, my conclusion is that much of it boils down to the term “addiction” - since it’s a medical term, people seem to think that once you medicalize it, you’re paving the way to ban it.
Personally I don’t care what term we use. If people prefer “compulsive porn use,” then fine. For me the point has always been the lived experience of what people mean when they talk about living with a porn addiction - even if it officially doesn’t count as one. In my opinion it does, because it checks virtually all the boxes of the standard definition: you need more of it, you seek out more extreme stuff, you get cravings when you stop, and you keep going long after the negatives have started to outweigh the positives. If that’s not addiction, then I don’t know what is.
Its crazy that everyone is comfortable with the idea of social media being able to cause an addiction, but when the said social media is about sexually explicit content, it automatically becomes ultra healthy and extremely good with no limits and its use always legitimate and to encourage. Porn sites are, at their core, still social media designed with the very intention to keep people into the loop of consumption. Porn sites don’t profit from people who use it every once in a while but to users who watch it hours and hours of it on a daily basis
Then we can argue to the fact that it’s is technically an addiction or not, but if you got all the symptoms of an addiction, if it impacts your life and you still do that even I it means postponing important things of your life, craving it inappropriate moments and constantly feeling the pulsion to do that no matter what even in public, THAT IS AN ADDICTION! I have seen firsthand people who have COMPLETELY changed just by removing porn, including myself. Again, not removing sex or masturbation, but just removing EXCLUSIVELY porn (and maybe increasing how much they have real sex in real life). It can definitely change your life to the better. Moreover, the guy who linked the studies is acting like porn isn’t a multi-billion dollars industry managed by huge corporations with basically unlimited power
I haven’t read any such study myself, but it sounds like a BS study. Anything that controls a person’s life can be considered an addiction. There are certainly people where porn has controlled their lives. One person who’s been very vocal and brutally candid about how it was ruining his life is The Primeagen, a coder on YT. My best friend’s father died in huge debts because he was buying copious amounts of porn outside of his means, and phone sex lines. That’s addiction.
We are talking about sexual addiction and bro linked studies about average and moderate use of adult content lmao
I understand people have big feelings about sex / porn. At present addiction is a narrowly defined medical issue; the NIH has some great information about it, and some cool brain scans! The science, (PET and fMRI) disagree with the feeling porn / sex qualify as an addiction. Researchers and clinicians do recognize that some people are profoundly impacted by sex / porn, and acknowledge it - OCSB, out of control sexual behavior. Researchers and clinicians want to have a better understanding / definition of OCSB, but it’s very difficult to get funding for research into sexuality.
David Ley talks about this in numerous books.
Mayo Clinic - https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/compulsive-sexual-behavior/diagnosis-treatment/drc-20360453
NHS mentions behavioral addiction - https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/addiction-support/addiction-what-is-it/, but oddly doesn’t support it in the IDC-11 🤷♂️
The American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors and Therapists (AASECT) - https://www.aasect.org/position-sex-addiction
Grubbs, J. B., Perry, S. L., Wilt, J. A., & Reid, R. C. (2020). Sexual addiction 25 years on: A systematic and methodological review of empirical literature and an agenda for future research. Clinical Psychology Review, 82, 101925. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7044607/
Prause, N., Pfaus, J. G., & Steele, V. R. (2021). Viewing sexual stimuli associated with greater sexual responsiveness, not erectile dysfunction. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 130(7), 742–749. https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/abn-abn0000501.pdf
I have more, but I’m at the wrong device
Light hearted blog post if you don’t want to dig through research - https://www.livingauthenticity.com/post/sex-addiction-isn-t-real-here-s-what-the-science-actually-says
I’m not saying someones sex or porn habits might be causing harm, but please consider the confounding variables defining why it’s considered harm. Consider who is most often reporting the harm. And, please, keep in mind there is a multi billion dollar industry (not considering churches), out there who want to convince someone their behavior is problematic and can be fixed for a nominal fee.
Thanks for the resources. I will read through them when I get a chance to give them a fair read. Just on the surface, it feels like the term addiction is too narrow, or perhaps there should be a better word that encompasses compulsive behaviors that control one’s life. Things like food addiction, gambling, porn, gaming, or literally anything that is done to an unhealthy amount feels like it should be grouped as addiction to me.
Addendum: The terminology: OCSB - out of control sexual behavior, seems to be slowly losing favor to CSB, compulsive sexual behavior.
Again, competent clinicians and researchers are not denying anyone’s experience, or that sex / porn can on occasion be problematic. There is a movement to more appropriately label distressing sex / porn use.
Ahh yes, an “everyone needs therapy because I do” fool.
Never said everyone. If someone is battling addiction, therapy is generally a good idea.
At least they’ll be jerking it with some sunshine.