Porn addiction reduces libido (mildly NSFW). I think this is the culprit behind Japan's "herbivorous men". http://t.co/FEbIkd2D9R
— Noah Smith (@Noahpinion) September 6, 2014
Ah, the internet — is there anything it can’t break?
Needless to say, somebody has a book to sell:
VICE: So the main premise of your book is that you can either watch porn or have sex, but you can’t have both. Is that right?
Gary Wilson: It is of course possible to have both. But for some guys it is difficult to have both. With internet porn some men are having not only erectile dysfunction (ED) but they’re also having other sexual symptoms such as inability to orgasm, delayed ejaculation, declining libido with real partners, loss of attraction to real partners, and also very commonly their sexual taste—at least in porn—have morphed into something which is strange and upsetting for them.Can you watch some porn and still have a healthy sex life? Is there a safe level?
Watching porn will always affect you. How much it will affect you is hard to say. So in other words we have seen guys who are terribly addicted, and it has deeply affected their sex lives. They need a year or more off porn in order to get a real erection with a real partner. So that’s an extreme occurrence. On the other end of the spectrum however you will have some guys with a girlfriend and they will watch porn a couple of times a week. But here’s the deal. You don’t know how much it affects you until you remove the variables. So these guys will just do a challenge and say, “OK I’ll stop watching porn,” and what they find is that they will still get benefits. And the benefits that they’ll get is that real sex is far more exiting. Their wife or girlfriend looks a lot better. They didn’t think that porn was affecting them but once they quit they found out that it was. Essentially porn has a broad spectrum of effects…
One is dubious. But this is a full service blog, so I figured you all would like to know this was, as the FOXbots say, “out there”.
NotMax
All things in moderation.
Including moderation.
beltane
People really need to get out more.
balconesfault
Any vice for Baal has got its useful side
It’s the men who practice them he can’t abide
Vices have their point once you see it as such
Stick to two, for one will be too much …
Baal, Bertold Brecht
rikyrah
real people are better for you than videos.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
Seems apropos. NSFW
NotMax
@rikyrah
On the other hand, one is not expected to converse with videos.
/hermit
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@balconesfault:
“Nothing suits worse with vice than want of sense”
— John Wilmot, 2d Earl of Rochester
Bobby B.
We all know this ses news should, nay, must be known.
beltane
Some people earn their Darwin awards quietly in the privacy of their own rooms. I don’t see this as a problem.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
Any stimulus has an effect. Music, art, porn, drugs, etc.
mclaren
The usual hysterical symptom of America’s sick twisted puritanical culture. Why not just come out and say “Sex is bad, the human body is evil, and people need to flagellate themselves in order to attain virtue”?
This kind of crazy propaganda belongs to the same category as the parents who refuse to allow their daughters to get HPV vaccine injections. Parents in America are so sick in the head and so psychotically fearful of sex that they’d rather watch their daughters die slow screaming from cervical cancer than give tacit approval to them having sex.
America is a deeply demented society. There’s a profound link between the unholy joy Americans take in napalming brown babies in dirt-poor third world countries and Americans’ fear and loathing of sexual pleasure. It’s disturbing, and truly disgusting.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@mclaren: Christ, what an asshole.
mclaren
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name):
Eating food has a broad spectrum of effects: obesity, high blood sugar, sleepiness, and much more. Clearly we should stop eating.
This is a perfect example of the kind of junk science that now dominates today’s news. Coming soon: scare headlines about the DANGERS OF DIHYDROGEN OXIDE!
Little Boots
fine, omnes, you are no steeplack, but damn, you bang a gong bitch, and you are awesome.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@mclaren: You have an amazing ability to misinterpret text. Stunning actually. My fucking comment was denigrating the article in the OP. Seriously, it is possible that you are dumber than dirt. Didn’t the Wilmot quote in my first comment give you a hint? Or do you have no idea who Wilmot was, you illiterate fuck?
Comrade Dread
@rikyrah: One’s partner may have less of a libido than you do, but are otherwise a fine mate, a good friend, and a great partner.
Love my wife, but sometime’s she really does have a headache, you know?
srv
This is up there with that analyst on PRI saying ISIS is the result of arab youts doing too much computer gaming and pr0n and acting out their fantasies.
cmorenc
Well, watching porn could cause you to sprain your wrist.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@efgoldman: Nothing. And then he dug deeper.
srv
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name):
Actually, Christians, what assholes.
beltane
@srv: If it was really an issue of too much gaming, none of these young men would have left their homes let alone traveled to Syria to wage holy war. Or maybe they came from homes with poor internet connections.
mclaren
Once again we get the usual insightful analysis from Omnes Omnibus:
Standard vacuous Balloon-Juice name-calling. No evidence, no facts, no logic to support your case: just the standard McCarthy-style smear tactics.
By contrast, I have tons of evidence for my contention that America is a pathetically twisted puritanical culture deeply fucked up in the way it deals with sex, particularly young people have sex:
Exhibit A:
Teens in Montana Told that Condoms Cause Cancer
Cue clowns like Omnes Omnibus to recite the usual smear: about the women who write the articles at feministing.com, he’ll doubtless write: “christ, what assholes.”
Exhibit B:
If you want a really disturbing looking into America’s twisted puritanical psyche, check out these
“Striking Portraits of Fathers and the Daughters Whose Virginity They’ve Pledged to Protect,” from Slate magazine online. This one is truly disturbing.
And now once again we cue Omnes Omnibus to intone about the guy who wrote this article: “Christ, what an asshole.”
Exhibit C:
And of course here’s yet more evidence for fanatical American puritanism. This poster for the new Sin City 2 movie was blocked by the MPAA on the grounds that it’s “too revealing.” What is this, 1879? Gimme a break! You can’t see anything! But nooooooooo, noooooo, noooooooooooo, we must maintain the fanatical American fanatical against showing flesh of any kind — no doubt the next movie poster will be banned because “the woman shows too much ankle.” This is crazy. It’s postively Victorian.
Only in Shithole America do you find this kind of crazed hatred and fear of the human body. On European TV, women are shown topless without comment. It’s just not even a concern. But here in America, organizations go mad with rage and fear if a diaphonous dress shows even the outline of a woman’s breasts.
This is deeply disturbed stuff. America is badly fucked up. The entire country needs serious therapy. This stuff represents Victorian levels of sexual fear and repression.
Exhibit D:
“Kicked out of high school for ‘public lewdness’ after reporting rape.”
NBC News website, 23 December 2011
…Aaaaand now we cue Omnes Omnibus to smear this girl with his standard line: “Christ, what an asshole.”
The rest of us recognize that Shithole America is deeply sick when it comes to sex. Fanatically puritanical, bizarrely repressed, Shithole America adores suffering and fears pleasure. “No pain, no gain,” goes the depraved motto in Shithole America — a dead giveaway of this demented society’s deeply sick attitude toward the human body and sexual pleasure.
No wonder America’s movies fetishize torture porn and gruesome onscreen murders in sick evil films like Saw and Hostel, while avoiding with terror and loathing any inkling of joy or celebration of the human body.
America is a sick sick sick culture. It’s disturbed at a profound level, and people like Omnes Omnibus are one of the biggest red flags for that society-wide dementia.
Little Boots
don’t encourage the omnes. although, there is this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjCw3-YTffo
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@srv: That messes with the New Yorker meme, however accurate it may be in aggregate.
jl
Is this a hoax?. I can’t find anything about him except he is blogger and ‘biology teacher’.
From the talk, the effect of porn on sex with real people: “Don’t know much about it” That is my take away from this talk.
Edit: OK, they found some ex-losers who gave up internet gaming internet gambling and internet porno-ing and decided to do actual things in real world. Which proves… … …? One TED talk I will not bookmark.
srv
@beltane: I just see it as another example that goverment can’t do anything right. I expect better propaganda on public radio for my federal dollars.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@mclaren: You spent all of you time on that with me as a centerpiece when I am pro-libertine? How sad for you. You’ll never get those minutes back.
Stillwater
One is dubious.
What the hell are you dubious about? The guy just presented some innocuous evidence suggesting the an addiction to pron isn’t sexually healthy. Is there really anything at stake in his conclusions one way or the other? Christamighty, we’re talking about fucking porn here.
Little Boots
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name):
told ya, they get angry this time of night.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@Little Boots: If you want to do a live version of that, you can give Levon the respect of letting him sing it.
ETA: OTOH This one from the Last Waltz is almost perfect.
jl
@Stillwater: My friends tell me, and I have read, only read of course, that there are many kinds of porn these days. in ‘fucking porn’, you still see people fucking or at least interactint in ways the often result in wholesome bouts of some kind of sodomy and actual fucking. So maybe that kind keeps the boys’ minds heading in the right direction.
Little Boots
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name):
why you are awesome.
beltane
@jl: Maybe in the days before internet porn and gaming everyone had rich and rewarding sex lives in the real world.
trollhattan
Know there are a few fellow Debra Bowen fans here (Cali Sec of State). She’s been noticeably awol the last year or two, as it turns out with an unexpected cause.
While I once felt she had a bright future in national politics, my sole wish is that she can get the help she needs to heal and reclaim her life. She’s given the people of this state enough.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@mclaren: Dude, I have no problems with pr0n, nudity, or the varied concepts of sexuality. I lived in Europe on town different occasions as was never shocked by sexuality or nudity in ads, TV shows, or movies. My personal tastes may be rather vanilla, but I don’t have any problems with anything any person, couple, or gaggle want to do or watch as long as everyone involved is a freely consenting adult.
NotMax
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
One of the drawbacks of aging is not remembering the safe word.
eemom
@mclaren:
Lectures about sex from a self-proclaimed jerk off to Megan McArdle. Doesn’t get any better than this.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name): But midget pr0n goes too far, am’i rite?
jl
@beltane:
“Maybe in the days before internet porn and gaming everyone had rich and rewarding sex lives in the real world. ”
Ah yes, when magic unicorns flew through the flowery knolls with cute frosted cake shrubs and farted cotton candy clouds in rainbow and gum drop land, when every yearning young lad had a nice girlfriend. I remember those halcyon days well.
NotMax
@BillinGlendaleCA
Well, it falls short.
jl
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name): Many parts of evil soulless suicidal northern Europe has a lot more soft porn around as part of everyday advertising and entertainment life, and it is sad, they were so deadened and desensitized to real human contact, why an All-American guy couldn’t get any…. wait a minute, let me recall my memories a bit longer on this… never mind.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@NotMax: Honestly, the safe word with mclaren is “don’t engage.” Once one has done it, one is open to random abuse, misinterpretation, and accusations of masturbating to holocaust pr0n. mclaren is not an honest participant in discourse.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@BillinGlendaleCA: Not my thing, but if it makes you happy, go at it.
BillinGlendaleCA
@efgoldman: Cleek’s pie filter doesn’t work on Chrome, any more, or IE. It may still work on Firefox.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@efgoldman: Yes, it is. OTOH, on principle, I don’t pie people. I may ignore them – and sometimes I should ignore them, but I don’t make their comments disappear. I may have mentioned that I am a near 1st Amendment absolutist… It comes from that.
Oh, yeah, as to your question, I do believe the pie filter exists.
Ruckus
@efgoldman:
Yes it is. Not sure if there are any other versions than Firefox, but the about 8-10 trolls and other bothersome folks I have in Cleek’s bakery never bother me any more. Today’s fave was one of the first behind the locked door. My BP went down 10 points by the use of the pie filter.
Ruckus
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name):
I’m not stopping them from talking, just crossing the street so I don’t have to hear them. I believe that everyone has the right to speak their mind but I also think I have the right not to listen.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@Ruckus: I have no criticism for people who install the filter. I am a 1st Amendment absolutist – not everyone is (and that is a reasonable position). My legal position is a minority view. But, as long as I hold the view, I won’t install the filters.
Ruckus
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name):
Would you stand and listen to the folks from WBC?
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@Ruckus: I would say that they have a right to speak. No one has an obligation to listen. I tend to scroll past certain people. I do not have anything bad to say about people who install filters – hell. I wish I could – but I can’t. I have so few principles that I really feel compelled to live by those I have.
ETA: I would defend their rights in court if asked.
Yatsuno
@eemom: Oh Lawd, I had forgotten about that incident. I think I’m about to die laughing.
Ruckus
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name):
I see we are mostly in agreement. I’ve been thinking for a few minutes now and I can’t think of anything I am an absolutest about. I probably sound like it here when I talk about conservatism but I find that while I don’t understand how a thinking person can hold about 98% of their positions, there is always some doubt that I may be wrong another 2-3% of the time. An example, I have a friend who was in the army and he liked the food. Now I know it’s possible to have properly prepared food in the military, I had a E8 cook whose food you just always ate, no matter what it was. It was good, it was varied, it was like good home cooking. He retired 2 months after I reported on board and within 2 weeks the food sucked. Bad enough that a few months later we almost had a mutiny. And I’m not kidding, people were talking about breaking into the small arms locker and taking over the ship. So not all military food is horrible, I can believe that. But one two month period at one duty station doesn’t change the fact that every other day of my time in, military food sucked donkey balls. So even there, where I feel pretty safe being absolute, I can’t be. YMMV
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@Ruckus: If you want to say it, no matter what is, I support your right to say it. At the same time, i support my right to think you are a delusional/dangerous asshole and act accordingly.
jl
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name):
don’t know what they have to say,
It makes no difference anyway,
Whatever it is, I’m against it.
No matter what it is or who commenced it,
I’m against it.
Your proposition may be good,
But let’s have one thing understood,
Whatever it is, I’m against it.
And even when you’ve changed it or condensed it,
I’m against it.
Ruckus
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name):
Cool.
Later.
cokane
@mclaren: perhaps the problem is too many powerful men are fapping to the napalming?
Chopper
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name):
Quiet, he’s rolling.
Chopper
@BillinGlendaleCA:
For chrome there’s always the troll filter.
Chopper
one thing missing for the story are Gary Wilson’s credentials. Which generally makes me think he has none, which is a bad sign.
Chopper
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name):
I think that’s going to be on his tombstone someday.
Seriously, it’s much easier if you read his posts imagining they’re being said by Rik from The Young Ones.
different-church-lady
Two are dubious.
different-church-lady
@mclaren:
Nope. Nothing but consensus.
WereBear
@BillinGlendaleCA: Correction:
http://ok-cleek.com/blogs/?page_id=19041
ThresherK
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name): +1 for the Saint Molly nod.
Svensker
I actually knew a guy who had this problem. He was totally porn addicted and decided real women were gross. His wife divorced him.
Applejinx
Dear Mister “Porn is bad because it makes you not appreciate your real wife”: Fuck you.
I’m 46 years old, work stupidly hard at all sorts of things in this decaying economy to barely survive, I’ve got autism and a fucked-up, abusive childhood.
You’ve got a lot of nerve going ‘think of your real wife’ when women (not unreasonably) won’t get past the social awkwardness and not-looking-like-Brad-Pitt (and I’m 180 pounds and 6′ and far from handicapped in that area!) and even if they did, me surviving in the only ways I know is too big of a time and energy committment to let me compete effectively with wealthier males that have free time and more freedom of action.
You want healthy family units? Fuck the porn-shaming. Set up an economy like the Fifties where one person can support two or more with a normal job.
While you’re at it, set up SOCIAL INJUSTICE and sexism. Go back to where women were expected to tolerate a whole bunch of crap and might be honestly grateful to run across anything remotely human, team up with the reasonably-acceptable male, and call it a day. It’s easy to find all men wives if wives are property!
But if women get to choose what happens in their lives THEY WILL BE CHOOSY and a fair amount won’t even end up paired off and that’s completely okay and what freedom looks like. Turning sex and pairbonding from an unjust social equation grossly exploiting women, into a market transaction with decent freedom of choice and freedom of information (not hard, guys wear their entitlement like a codpiece), means large numbers of humans will be and stay single ALL their lives.
Barring immediate suicide porn is the best possible solution for this. Lay off the porn. It has obstacles enough and doesn’t need MORE shaming.
Shakezula
This debate will be completely novel to people who aren’t aware that there was porn before the internet and that this debate has been roiling without end probably since some scam artists gained positions of authority by claiming they knew how to keep the Lightning Thrower happy, so everyone had better do what they say if they didn’t want to wind up a hunk of charred meat.
And I note that the master debaters (sorry!) are still only concerned about hetero males. Perhaps it is that hetero males are the only ones who find porn lowers their quality of life. I doubt it, but if this is the case, maybe someone should ask what is it about hetero males that makes it hard (sorry!) for them to stop besmirching the racy postcards/magazine/computer monitor.
Applejinx
Cool, though—thanks to Balloon Juice I’ve now spent the morning reading about Japanese ‘herbivore men’. I relate to these guys SO MUCH MORE than red-pill MRAs. Right on.
Though the ironic thing is I eat way too much meat to literally be a herbivore. Eggs, breakfast sausage, chicken, beef, even using rendered beef fat to cook with. I’m like the most unvegetarian herbivore ever.
But given how much I identify with the grass-eaters of My Little Pony it’s kind of an obvious match. Herbivores FTW, meat-eating or non. Heck with the very toxic and mixed up expectations in every direction. Someone’s got to tend the gardens while so many people stampede around wrecking everything they can. I respect that.
Fair Economist
Generally I think lower sex drives are probably a good thing. Less rape, less crime in general, less unwanted pregnancy – these are problems how? It is certainly giving the younger generation unrealistic expectations for their sexual partners – as early as fifth grade my son and his friends were apparently discussing how they didn’t want porn with “ugly” or “disgusting” women with flaws like muffintops and unshaved you-know-whats. Long term that kind of attitude concerns me although I admit I like the idea that during his teenage years he might only want sex with a extensively prepped supermodel.
PhilbertDesanex
@mclaren: Yup. and regular sex causes deep changes in behavior and mood, and often leads to abuse, and divorce.
Also, from the article: (Good lord and her sister Hillary):
“They found a correlation suggesting that those who watch porn actually have less gray matter.”
“Guys suffering from sexual dysfunction aged between 40 to 50 who grew up consuming porn through magazines are now developing ED having switched to Tube sites” – Ah the good old days, Hustler = OK, YouTube=ED !? And this could have nothing to do with aging from 40 to 50 !?
Christ what … um… rubbish
lefty
They’ll get my porn when they unstick from my cold dead hands.
Mnemosyne
@PhilbertDesanex:
There probably are people who get addicted to porn, just as there are people who get addicted to shopping, or addicted to gambling, or addicted to the internet. But the problem lies within the brains of those individual people and how they respond to stimuli, not with the fact that porn exists.
As has been frequently pointed out, the first thing the printing press produced was a Bible. The second thing it produced was porn. Such is human nature.
MBunge
Just so I’m clear, is it just porn that has no effect on you or is it everything? Art, poetry, music, theatre, TV, movies, books, political propaganda, etc? Are we saying human beings are immune to any form of intellectual or emotional stimuli or is there just something about porn that makes it different from everything else?
Mike
Cervantes
@Mnemosyne:
That would be a mistaken assertion.
Tehanu
@Fair Economist:
“Less rape”? Rape isn’t a crime of wanting sex; it’s a crime of wanting power over another person so they can be humiliated and your ego can be fed. You’re dangerously close to the assertion that men can’t control their urges and therefore women (or children, or prisoners) need to be prevented from arousing those urges by being covered from head to toe or by staying away from public places — after all, how could a weaker person’s right to go about their business unimpeded be more important that a man’s right to fulfill his urges any time he feels like it? People who aren’t sociopaths — male OR female people — can control their urges no matter how strong their “sex drive” is; rapists just don’t want to — or have been trained to think they shouldn’t have to, either by a society like ours that fetishizes “freedom” and individual expression, or by a society like Iran that fetishizes “God’s” approval of male domination.
eyelessgame
@mclaren:
My first (okay, second) reaction to that poster is “where exactly is her right forearm?”