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In this episode, we discuss porn.
Participants: Yassine, Interversity, Neophos, Xantos.
Links:
E016: The Banality of Catgirls (The Bailey)
Is Internet Pornography Causing Sexual Dysfunctions? A Review with Clinical Reports (Behavioral Sciences)
How Pornography Can Ruin Your Sex Life (Mark Manson)
Does too much pornography numb us to sexual pleasure? (Aeon Magazine)
The great porn experiment (TEDx)
Hikikomori (Wikipedia)
The Effects Of Too Much Porn: "He's Just Not That Into Anyone" (The Last Psychiatrist)
Hard Core (The Atlantic)
Recorded 2022-12-18 | Uploaded 2023-01-12
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Notes -
Thoughts about the last two episodes. (Great show by the way!)
There is a story that comes up a lot on the topic of superstimuli. It goes something like this. 40th percentile person Joaquim Expemplar uses media and drugs in his formative years. Because games, porn, and weed satisfy Joaquim's basic needs, he feels okay about his life and is unmotivated to pursue achievements and authentic relationships. Over time, by indulging himself in peace, Joaquim stagnates into becoming a 20th percentile person, then a 10th percentile person, and then one day he wakes up and finds he's a big failure who is compulsively using superstimuli to distract himself from the squalor of his life.
This story makes a lot of sense. But recently, I think the causal chain is getting reversed here. Mine isn't an original hypothesis, but it's worth restating.
People who are living even mediocre lives don't fall into the trap by playing more and more videogames, taking harder and harder drugs, and watching more and more porn. Every teenage boy is trying drugs and playing videogames and watching porn a lot. Nine out of ten times, this behavior decreases to a healthy(er) equilibrium after the boy grows up, gets in an LTR, joins the workforce, etc. Now, it could be that the other boy was genetically predisposed to get wrecked by superstimulus. But it seems to me the only people who ultimately became addicted are those whose lives were already decisively moving in the direction of FUBAR before they started dosing.
n=1 sample. I spent five years in a pit after college. The need to write an 100 page capstone threw me into an anxiety crisis that spiraled out of control. I just barely finished the required task a year after graduation. I was too afraid to interview, so I ended up staying at a dreary dead end job as an on-call substitute teacher. I actually inbox-ignored a good job offer from a professor because I found myself too humiliated for him to learn what happened to me. I couldn't bring myself to go out and socialize, visit family, etc. After work I would religiously play Europa Univeralis III (for the sense of an interesting job), then watch a slice of life anime (for a sense of friendship and going outside to do fun things), and of course masturbate to porn afterwards.
You can say that, if I hadn't had access to these things, I would have been more motivated to get out of the pit. That doesn't seem right to me. I have reflected on this and I'm convinced that, all those years ago, had there been a fitocratc revolution in the late 00s and a public health inquisition shut down all the porn sites, arrested the hosts of Nyaa Torrents, and installed firmware in my computer to block eu3.exe from loading, I doubt I would have formed healthy habits to fill the vacuum.
I was like a mouse caught in the airbubble of an upside-down cup. The mouse treads water without knowing which way to swim to reach the big blue sky again. Sometimes, the mouse may try treading water even harder, elevating its body momentarily out of the water. But this can't work, so the mouse eventually tires and collapses, back to bobbing its nose to breathe.
Realistically, I was in the pit because I was terrified, not because I was unmotivated. Without these replacements I likely would have exited stage left.
That is my personal experience. But I also think I pretty sensitive to changes in people I've known in life longitudinally, and I can't think of any cases of people who were doing okay in life, and then went off the deep end into a superstimulus rabbit hole. For example, a second cousin I know who's been in and out of rehab for years was a marginalized weirdo, friendless, and withdrawn when he was eight. You can't tell me drugs ruined him. He was already ruined.
Superstimulus, in this story, is just bread and circuses for the broken-hearted. Things like porn and pizza are not existential threats. The existential threat is the mismatch between a technological society's requirements and human social and cognitive reality. This puts people in a position where porn and pizza really are their best option.
Apologies if this is rude, but do you exercise/get outside much? Videogames, drugs, porn, etc. all perhaps make life more tolerable, sure. My issue with them is that they are tempting substitutes for healthier coping strategies such as exercise. I have a brother who got very into videogames and slumped deeply into depression for reasons related to anxiety. The thing that got him out of that hole was ridiculous amounts of exercise. Even today he tells me that that's pretty much the only time he feels good, but since he does it all the time life is pretty good.
And sure, you could just say that that's one guy who just really likes exercise, but even if it's literally just [guy finds a hobby he likes] then even that is prevented by the behavior you describe.
I won't tell you drugs ruined him, but I think it's plausible they prevented him from getting better. Who knows what sorts of experiences someone can have in their many decades of life that might turn them around.
If my point isn't clear, I think the general rule here is that all behaviors have substitution effects. For you, porn and pizza substituted for suicide and that's great, but I argue that they may also have substituted for some more healthy behavior which would have substituted for suicide. I'm sure that both events (substituting for suicide and substituting for exercise) happen so it's kind of a bravery debate how much we should encourage these less healthy pastimes.
These days, I work out about five hours a week early in the morning, and try to go to at least one social event on weekends. I am very well these days. In the period I'm talking about, though, entering a gym or party would be like a normal person entering them in the middle of a five alarm fire.
Exercise, sleep hygiene, etc is a good solution to moderate problems. Not everyone's problems are moderate. (For the record, I saw a therapist during that period but didn't benefit from it, in part because he sucked and in part because I bullshitted threatening questions.)
In my case, I have a high predisposition to social anxiety, and the structure of life set me up so that I had invested many tens of thousands of dollars, including a good deal from my parents, and at the eleventh hour I went from a 95 percentile student to someone who was on the verge of flunking because he could not do what society required of him. Getting out of that mindset, years later, required defeating self-loathing despite a lot of external evidence that I was lowlife. Were I to meet my mid twenties self today, I could give him good advice, but I guarantee jogging wouldn't have done the trick. (I tried self-improvement projects, sometimes successfully, but they never touched my feeling of worthlessness.)
This is a good point. I certainly won't discount vicious cycles; at minimum, my second cousin nuking his brain precludes him reaching a normal life. Lucky for me, Azumanga Daioh didn't have the same effect. I would just suggest that he entered the vicious cycle because of the hyper-bleak nature of his life, rather than superstimulus leading his life to become bleak, which is the way people usually talk about addictions.
I wonder how much of the difference between the two comes down to consistency of the stimulus. I just saw an episode of azumanga dioh and found it healing, but if I had a constant happy voice in my ear, perhaps I would find it too much, as people who constantly drink soda or take drugs find themselves dissapointed with life once their hedonic treadmill 'speeds up' in response.
Personally, I'm in my early 20s and would love to hear your advice. I had a crisis and dropped out of college senior year, but instead of using supernormal stimuli, tried to punish my 'bad' self by rejecting media and pleasure, and ended up just wallowing in pain under the covers with occasional food, internet browsing, or masturbation binges. I think what really brought me out of it was reading a terry pratchet novel and laughing for the first time in a while. When I was younger always having a comedy or fantasy novel was immensely helpful in dealing with the pressures of school. Personally, I'm taking classes again vaguely connected to what I actually care about, though eithout a clear path, and trying to make friends irl, but I still have days I hide from everything. Any little bit you can give helps!
Hm, let me give it a shot. Sounds like you're doing better than me at that point. It's worth linking Scott's survey of anxiety interventions from back in the SSC days, which ranks common advice by effect sizes. That said, if my story sounds familiar, I may have some tailored advice.
Getting better is about putting yourself in the best position to experience the gift of grace. What is grace? Sometimes a baby bird warbles in its nest for a long time, but mother never returns. Eventually the baby bird stops making noises. It does not believe mother will return. The bird may grow to believe warbling is pointless and it really ought to be learning to fly. If you do not warble, though, you're unlikely to experience grace.
If you're like me, your problem is a socialization defect from early childhood that leads you to create walls between yourself and others. Everything else wrong with your life is a second order effect. Sometimes your problem manifests "positively", such as when you work fiendishly hard to show a respectable face to the world. However, when respectability seems impossible, you retreat and attempt to become invisible. It may feel strained to say "You failed to complete your coursework because your couldn't form close and genuine relationships", but that's what it is.
First, something important to understand, at least intellectually. A person's ability to be loved does not spring from arete. Although arete is a good thing to cultivate — indeed, it may come from a healthy self-love — excellence is orthogonal to human worth. You may agree with that, or if you're a cynic, deny it; but either way it's not the way you feel in your bones. Developing the notion that your "core" is pure and can be touched, and feeling it deep down, is the gift of grace. In it, you are able to glimpse yourself in the third person, and feel naked compassion.
Upthread @Ioper suggested turtling and delayed adolescence come from young adults with unrealistic expectations for themselves. They deserve to be famous artists, or have a super hot girlfriend, be rich, etc. I would say he's a little off. A young adult who turtles has convinced themselves they must be remakarble to compensate for what is defective; they must be so remarkable that no one could accuse them of being useless, rotten. This leads to alternating cycles of feverish preening and quiet despair.
Getting better is about assembling evidence that you're wrong. You need to compile this evidence that you are lovable in a currency your limbic system understands. A few approaches:
Practice pitying yourself. This is usually frowned upon because it reinforces learned helplessness, but for this issue it may be useful. Identify the ways in which you were set up to fail, and where you had a hard time. It's fine if the only thing you can think of is that you're weaker than others. Practice might take the form of journaling or structured meditation. Alternatively you could read fictional or non-fictional stories about people like yourself and experience vicarious pity.
Find the people who you know (logically) are nicest and/or closest to you. Speak to them in an unvarnished way about yourself. Go from smaller less threatening truths to bigger one, in a structured progression.
If the above is impossible, try imagining it. Invest the time in filling in and visualizing the interaction.
Try expressing your admiration for people you respect or feel a debt towards. Cards and birthdays are an excellent chance to do this without it seeming awkward. Carefully observe their and your own reactions.
By hook or crook, get a circle around you at least that knows you exist. Worming into an existing group is ideal, but it's also fine if it's just 'The people who come to Panera every day around 6pm.' You will not connect with them properly, but it's important that such people are around if the miracle of grace occurs.
Practice identifying times you are comparing yourself to others. When you notice these comparing thoughts, think about what you observed in 1-4.
You may realize this closely resembles cognitive behavioral therapy. Yep.
While you do these things, you may want to engage in /r/getdisciplined or /r/fitness style self-improvement. I won't dissuade you from that, per se. I actually recommend nutritional tracking a lot actually. However, it's important to remember you are not doing these because you "must", that you will be a loser if you don't improve yourself. You are doing them because you wish to be happy.
Best of luck!
That is not quite what I meant. I meant that people who have the capacity to become a nurse refuses to do so because they think being the medical field and not being a doctor is beneath them.
What they think they deserve is high status and refusing to settle for average/slightly above average status leaves them with nothing.
This also happens to (mostly) boys in school. They feel like they will be humiliated if they exert effort and only get an ok grade or fail, so they disengage.
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My brother was in a similar situation and, well, jogging didn't help, but more exciting stuff like skiing did. The trick wasn't to defeat self-loathing but rather to get busy, exhilarated, and adrenaline-fueled enough for it to no longer matter so much.
I'm pretty sure 95% of the benefit of most therapists is that they listen to you. I also tried a therapist at one point and she also sucked. I think they are mostly just founts of compassion rather than problem-solvers, and that's not what I needed. Was your experience similar?
Yep, I've been there too, and videogames were there for me when it happened. I don't want to totally bash on them. For years of my life, I haven't been unhappy, but I've consoled myself by basically saying "well, if everything I'm striving for fails, I would still be pretty happy to just hang out in an apartment and play videogames all day." It's nice to have that rock-bottom, guaranteed safety net.
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Honestly reminds me a bit of the debates around vaping, regarding how much it is substituting for smoking cigarettes vs getting people hooked on nicotine who otherwise wouldn't be.
I'd say the most obvious things that pot/porn/video games have replaced (in terms of being the go-to unhealthy coping mechanisms for young despondent males) are booze/whores/gambling. Of course, booze/whores/gambling are still on the table, so in addition to weighing pot/porn/video games substituting for those vs getting people who would otherwise be clear, you have to consider that now someone can go for all six.
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One thing I noticed is that, among my acquaintances, those who do go down the rabbit hole of drugs, porn, and video games are all men.
Now that might be just my social circle but the difference is quite striking. I have several explanations as to why:
Male and female dysfunctions are different. It is more socially acceptable to spend hours on instagram than hours gaming.
We are wired not to see female losers as losers. Women have intrinsic value, men only insofar they accomplish and provide something. A woman who doesn't accomplish anything is still a woman, therefore intrinsically valuable, therefore not a loser.
Greater male variability hypothesis: There are more male geniuses, but also more male dumbasses.
Glass floor: women have better support systems/ social support and don't fall as deep
Superstimuli are geared towards male taste. I know much fewer female potheads / video game junkies. Superstimuli for women (e.g. instagram) seem to be harmful in less obvious ways
Not only do we not see female losers as losers, but I think that often we fail to perceive them at all. A third of homeless people are female, for instance, but the prototypical homeless person in the public consciousness is almost invariably male. I think there's also a recent upswing in young male dysfunction owing to the collapse of masculine-coded blue-collar work. Service sector jobs code as more feminine and better pair with female agreeability, while males chaff under the subservience required of them.
Are they sleeping on the streets though or are they bouncing around couches?
Sometimes they really are on the street (usually obese, weird looking, skeletal, etc.), but I think people tune them out because they don't enjoy contemplating unfeminine women. They are actively unwholesome in ways that slovenly men are not. It is the dual edge of the women are wonderful trope.
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You pretty neatly covered the possibilities, although I might phrase a few differently. My guess is 50% glass floor, 30% male variability, 20% women are wonderful bias.
Women do, by objective measures, seem to be doing better at not becoming losers. Whether this is more about the intrinsic nature of women or the structures of society is a lot like asking why a lake exists: is it the hole or the rain?
One more thing I forgot to mention: Women tend to score higher on agreeableness. Being an anti-social loser requires some immunity against social disapproval.
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Maybe but there is also issue of "best alternative".
Lets imagine a future world: you can get generated porn tailored to your interests (lets say without creepy incest titles if you are not into it), you can get extremely tasty food that will not make you fat, you can play excellent games better than anything existing now, better illusion of companionship (GPT-189 as a girlfriend/friend/son substitute).
I bet that it would be far more attractive than current games/porn/parasocial stuff like Only Fans. And far more people would end there.
Also, we would have less suicides, I guess.
And our world has things in that direction that have not existed 200 years ago or were much less attractive. So for more people it may be more attractive - or even a truly better alternative!
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I've known and seen many of these people.
Looking at some failures around me it seems to that it's a bit of both. There is a mismatch between a person's self-perception, their actual ability and what they perceive to be an acceptable outcome of effort. There are good paths available, the person knows what they are but chooses not to pursue them. In essence narcissism and insufficient ability leading to an identity crisis and preventing them from growing up.
Instead of forcing themselves to reconcile this contradiction, grow up and become reasonably happy and productive adults, superstimuli offers a suboptimal out for some.
This shit is everywhere and the subject of much escapist fiction. It's hardly new either.
I haven't had a chance to listen to the podcast yet (but it downloaded fine for me too) so I hope this hasn't already been talked about, but expanding on what you said, "Never grow up" was practically the millennial slogan, pushed on them by their God, television. Unlike previous generations who grew up without fathers because they were too busy at work, both millenials' parents were trapped at work, leaving only screens to watch over and be watched - teaching lessons like 'everything always goes back to normal at the end of the adventure' and 'relationships without drama are doing it wrong' and 'the underdog is always right'. As a result it's a whole generation of narcissists, emotionally stunted and convinced both that everything is a story and that we are the protagonist.
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