
What is online pornography doing to sexual tastes and youngsters’ minds? - jimsojim
http://www.economist.com/news/international/21666113-hardcore-abundant-and-free-what-online-pornography-doing-sexual-tastesand?fsrc=scn%2Ffb%2Fte%2Fpe%2Fed%2FAusersmanual
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sandworm101
So kids are forgoing realworld sex. When did that become a bad thing?

My whole school life I was 'encouraged' to avoid sex, alcohol and every other
vice at all costs. Going to a party on a friday night was a bad thing. Sex,
whether through disease or pregnancy, would destroy your life. This is still
the mantra, although nobody then told me that sex would send me to hell. That
part is new. So why are we not surprised that kids today have found something
else? Society tells them to avoid sex at all costs. Society is just now
winning that conversation.

~~~
Synaesthesia
Sex is an important part of human relations, to forgo it is to leave out an
important part of your personal development in my opinion.

~~~
sandworm101
Careful. Sex is an agreement, not a choice. There are lots of people in this
world who would like to have sex but for whatever reasons cannot or do not.
Abstinence is also a focus of countless religious traditions. I would hesitate
to tell any of those people they lacked in personal development.

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mbel
Personally, I think it is crucial in personal development because, as you put
it, it is an agreement, not a choice. There are some lessons to be learned
from getting somebody to agree with you on something.

~~~
6d0debc071
Certainly. However, there are many things where people are expected to reach
agreement. It's not clear that this has to be the matter on which they learn
it.

Indeed, considering the harm that can result, it's probably better if they
learn to reach agreement on some other matter first.

~~~
int_handler
Can you elaborate? There is potential risk of harm resulting for many other
areas of personal developments as well.

~~~
6d0debc071
Specifically on risks of harm? Sure:

Faults in agreement include parties generating agreement that doesn't reflect
their values and/or desires, and the illusion of agreement by one or both
parties.

While there is potential risk of harm in many other areas of development -
including other areas of agreement - the stakes are not usually so high.
Getting an illusion of agreement for what movie to see, what restaurant to eat
at, or (at a younger age) what toy to play with, will tend to have less severe
consequences than an illusion of agreement over whether to sleep with someone.

It is not clear that someone gains the most from risking the most. Why is an
agreement over sex the defining developmental step of the skill? Especially
since there are so many easy ways to reach such an agreement if you're not
particularly picky. (I believe the classical example is, 'You give me money
and I sleep with you.')

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jqm
It might be worthwhile to examine this phenomenon in a larger context. For
example, I know a girl who is obsessed with watching sticky sweet romantic
shows and movies like "twilight" and "the bachelor". The romance portrayed in
these shows is extremely unrealistic and I feel it gives her unrealistic
expectations of romantic relationships. Certainly there are no shortage of
young men smoking too much marijuana and watching too much internet porn and
generally not trying in life who wonder why they can't find a female partner,
but likewise there are a lot women who are overweight, unclean, disorganized
and generally not exciting (or even downright repulsive) watching romantic
shows or reading sexy novels and thinking their world should be that way.

The larger phenomenon is, in my opinion, media substitutions for reality. It's
like to much sugar and causes certain individuals problems. But it's not a
problem isolated to porn and young men.

~~~
int_handler
Definitely agree.

What makes it difficult for many people to look at this phenomenon in a larger
context is that it is much easier to be alarmist at anything sexual.
Unfortunately, many parts of societies still view sex as something shameful
and thus tend to attempt to avoid anything to do with it rather than having
meaningful discussion about it.

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belorn
Every once in a while we get this kind of articles that tries to create a
story from a few studies that have found loose correlations (but never
causation) between what people watch on cinema, TV and now computers/mobile
phones, and what they do in real life.

The problem is that if the theory of modified norms and behavior has for all
the studies never been strongly linked. In theory, we should all be committing
much more crime and violence in direct relation to the ease of access to news
and movies, but crimes have steady gone down rather than up. Yearly statistics
do show however an increased _fear_ of crime in relation to reading news and
watching movies, so it seems our _perception_ about others behaviors has had a
much larger impact than on our own behavior.

~~~
vskarine
Related to the subject of declining violence:
[http://www.businessinsider.com/mark-zuckerberg-bill-gates-
re...](http://www.businessinsider.com/mark-zuckerberg-bill-gates-recommend-
steven-pinker-book-better-angels-2015-2)

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deftnerd
PornHub has a great blog at
[http://www.pornhub.com/insights](http://www.pornhub.com/insights) where they
put out all sorts of interesting statistics on viewership, preference of
certain search terms, and demographics data. I'm not much of a porn
connoisseur, but I love the data they publish!

A recent post specifically talks about the porn consumption habits of
Millennials [http://www.pornhub.com/insights/millennials-demographics-
sta...](http://www.pornhub.com/insights/millennials-demographics-statistics)

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Kenji
The boys used to have smutty magazines hidden away, now they have their hidden
explorer folder. Same thing - different times. The relentless moralizing about
sexuality and pornography disgusts me more than any sexual practice I've ever
heard of or seen.

~~~
irl_zebra
Moralizing on the subject is terrible, but there are legitimate issues with
respect to production of the content and exploitation.

~~~
nostrademons
Doesn't that apply to basically every industry in our modern capitalist
economy?

~~~
sandworm101
The porn industry does have some specific practical issues. Probably the most
is the reliance on very young actresses. Most start while under 20 these days.
People that age are too trusting. They get put in bad contracts and don't know
their legal rights.

For example, I had one girl come to me an say that a studio was claiming to
"own" her real name, forbidding her from working under that name with anyone
else. They had also not paid her. It boiled down to producers knowing they can
bully these kids. The secrecy in which most of these girls wrap their work
doesn't help. They are very hesitant to complain or reach out to lawyers.

~~~
BinaryIdiot
> The porn industry does have some specific practical issues. Probably the
> most is the reliance on very young actresses. Most start while under 20
> these days. People that age are too trusting. They get put in bad contracts
> and don't know their legal rights.

I would argue this is not specific to the porn industry. For instance colleges
rely on students being too young and naive to really understand the student
loan that they are given. 10 years later many feel betrayed or scammed because
they have a degree that isn't always the best in the current economy and still
in thousands of debt.

~~~
nostrademons
Ditto the music industry with teen pop stars, the professional sports industry
with dreams of the major leagues, the tech startup industry where only a small
fraction of startups will succeed, all of academia where you have dozens of
Ph.Ds competing for each tenured professor job, the legal industry where
thousands of deeply-indebted fresh-faced associates seek to make partner, and
every corporate hierarchy.

As they say, "When a less-experienced businessman meets a more-experienced
businessman, the less-experienced businessman gets some experience."

Not sure if there's any way around this, though. The people who _avoid_
getting taken advantage of when they're young tend to get taken advantage of
their whole life.

~~~
gaius
The games industry too is notorious for sucking in young talent and burning
them out, there's always the next batch of naive graduates.

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reader5000
It is very easy to find sexual release with internet porn. More difficult with
a real life woman. And therein lies the collapse of western civilization.

~~~
yc1010
I wonder how many problems in the middle east would be solved by bringing em'
easy access to porn...

~~~
amelius
It might as well be the other way around. Perhaps these men already have easy
access, and are now frustrated that they cannot find women who can live up to
their expectations (the real women are often covered by a burqa, after all).

Also, porn is known to be capable of messing up marriages, so I guess it will
certainly not solve any problems related to normal family life (which is what
we want these men to pursue), and the morals that come with it.

~~~
int_handler

        the morals that come with it
    

You're assuming that all porn is immoral.

Another counterargument to your claim is that porn can provide an alternative
to infidelity, which tends to mess up marriages to a greater extent.

Further, some of those societies already have many of these problems, such as
objectifying women (which they do to a greater extent such as requiring them
to cover their entire bodies), as a direct result of the culture being so
closed in terms of sex.

~~~
amelius
What is meant is that these men committing war-crimes is immoral.

Also, regardless of the "marriage" argument I made, if these men had normal
relationships with women, I think the problems would be much less severe. Porn
is working against that, not helping it.

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elorant
From my point of view online porn looks boring because it objectifies women
too much. It’s just so mechanical nowadays. Whenever I happen to view porn
from the eighties it looked much more natural. But then again I guess back
then porn actors where only a few dozen and they knew each other quite well so
this allowed some kind of intimacy to grow between them. Now porn has become a
commodity, there are thousands of actors, a gazillion of different styles and
the production is too big for anyone to bother bringing some quality to the
mixture. I feel that this would be a threat to youngsters if they were to
believe that sex doesn't require any kind of sentimental bonding.

~~~
facepalm
Perhaps you can explain to me what "objectification of women" means? Does it
mean being attracted to their bodies? So what would be an OK thing to be
attracted to - their ability to recite the digits of PI perhaps?

To me it seems that the "anti-objectification" campaign only seeks to replace
one attractor with another. So maybe less pretty women would prefer to be
measured by their IQ? Why is one better than the other? Or is it generally not
OK to be attracted to somebody - or only once you are married and officially
in love?

I'm not saying that I like everything that is done in porn, just that I don't
understand what "objectification" is supposed to mean? And it seems ridiculous
to me to presume men should not be attracted to the female body. So we should
just as likely want to have sex with a horse or a hedgehog as with a woman?
"American Pie" was just fiction - at least I personally was never tempted by
an apple pie, because the looks of "the object" matter.

~~~
elorant
It means having sex for a half hour without one kissing the other even once.
It also means that women must have at least a dozen plastic surgeries to be
considered acceptable by the industry.

~~~
facepalm
The plastic surgery part certainly isn't true. The porn industry caters to all
sorts of tastes, including imperfect bodies. A single visit to a popular porn
site will demonstrate that.

As for kissing - OK, so that is one understandable definition, thank you for
that.

I think sex is simply weird - if you think rationally about sex it is not
really appealing. It only works in a state of arousal. That plays into the
hands of feminists who frame sex as something disgusting being done to women -
it works because people are rarely aroused while reading feminist pamphlets...

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UhUhUhUh
It's funny to look at this like an electric circuit. There is a nominal
tension, built in our very biological existence. If mere resistance (i.e.
moralizing, law) is applied, tension will increase or output will decrease...

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cthalupa
I'd be curious to see the ratio of people that will watch something considered
"extreme" in porn and want to re-enact it vs. those that will watch it but
have no interest in being personally involved.

I definitely fall in the latter - most of what I watch is pretty vanilla, but
at times, I'll venture into things that are more risque. I'm not at all
personally into bondage, for example, and I'm indifferent to anything more
than just light roleplaying, but once or twice a month I might pull up a BDSM
video and enjoy it.

I doubt that I'm alone in sometimes wanting to watch something I'd not enjoy
personally doing.

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artnep
The first myth addressed by makelovenotporn.com (mentioned in the article)
regards "facials". I wonder how much men's desire to do this comes from
watching porn. Any grecian urns with men "dropping loads"?

~~~
douche
Does anybody actually want to do this or have it done to them? There are a lot
of weird tropes in porn, but this has to be one of the weirdest wide-spread
ones. Really, you might as well just squirt super-glue at somebody.

Seems like it would make a hell of a mess, and it also makes me think of this
joke from Good Will Hunting:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6il6tocb4ic](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6il6tocb4ic)

~~~
cthalupa
I've done it a few times, at the request of my girlfriend at the time. I was
indifferent to it, personally. She was very much into dom/sub type
relationships, so I expect most of the kink for her came from that.

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willemmali
The site doesn't load any content for me? I only get a header and a footer.

(Windows, Chrome, ABP)

~~~
njs12345
Probably the paywall - try Incognito Mode?

~~~
yabatopia
> I only get a header and a footer.

Maybe your browser is in Fetish Mode?

