site banner

Small-Scale Question Sunday for April 21, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

1
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

A related question is whether onanism has actually increased since the advent of online pornography.

Almost certainly. Even if instances of actual sex are only replaced by a single instance of masturbation(seems probably a lower bound to me), actual sex has declined as the percentage who use internet pornography has increased. This is not caused by young men taking vows at a monastery instead.

Furthermore, I’m given to understand that masturbation-caused health problems used to be a punchline to a ‘it’s got to be bad for you somehow’ joke, whereas now they’re a thing that actually happen even if perhaps somewhat less commonly than nofap would have you believe. I suppose it’s possible that alien space bats caused this, but it’s more plausible that there’s simply a lot more onanism than there used to be.

Furthermore, as noted downthread, it’s difficult for me to imagine(I have not watched porn since I was a teenager) watching pornography and not masturbating. Higher pornography consumption- as nearly every piece of data indicates is the long term trend- probably drives more masturbation rather than less.

Intuitively I can't imagine a universe where that didn't happen. This is from personal experience being a young male and knowing and talking to many other young males...

Beating thy meat has a low but non 0 level of activation energy required, having an especially good video certainly provides some (actually A LOT) of that energy.