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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   34937 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 30, 2023

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So? We can't go our whole lives avoiding doing anything that causes people trivial amounts of "psychological harm". That kind of mental safetyism is abhorrent and would have us all walking on eggshells for our entire lives, and having our behaviour dictated by utility monsters. Or empathy monsters, I suppose.

The value gained from porn obviously isn't zero, as people pay for it, and people enjoy it.

So? We can't go our whole lives avoiding doing anything that causes people trivial amounts of "psychological harm". That kind of mental safetyism is abhorrent and would have us all walking on eggshells for our entire lives, and having our behaviour dictated by utility monsters. Or empathy monsters, I suppose.

This kind of distress is felt by a vast majority of the human race, at least that portion who even understands what the Internet and photos are. Unless you're claiming that most of humanity are utility monsters, I'd suggest that if you don't feel such distress, you are extremely weird and you should avoid typical-minding on this subject.

This kind of distress is contingent on societal values though. It'd be incredibly weird in $X_BC to not care about the virginity of your daughter or future wife, less so now. "There are deepfakes of me" seems like something people would adapt to and stop being distressed about if it became commonplace (and there's a good chance it will, the interest is there and a stable-diffusion sized deepfake model you can torrent and run on your pc is technically doable). Is 'psychological distress' even bad, absent something worth being distressed over? Compare to ... confusion and doubt in a tough intellectual problem, it isn't comfortable or pleasant, but it isn't bad.

Distress is over-egging it a lot. Mild discomfort seems like it should be more appropriate, at best. Literally what is there to be upset over?

Woe is me, someone finds me attractive enough to go to the effort of faking a video of me having sex so they can watch it and pretend it's real. And people are paying for it! Oh no how awful I must feel, being in such demand.

If there's one thing we know about humans, it's that they absolutely hate feeling sexually desirable.

You are extremely weird and you should avoid typical-minding here.

You are extremely weird

Unnecessary. You already made this point, less antagonistically.

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