No, I wouldn't. I believe that peddling pornography is the same as peddling drugs -- both are addictive, dangerous substances that do great harm to families. No matter how much easy money is in it (and there's a lot), I would keep my name and any money I had as far away from it as possible.
I am not in the least interested in porn, I prefer my bed partners in the flesh, but I find it interesting that you say these things with such certainty.
Families as such are not harmed by porn in any but the rarest cases, and then usually there are other factors besides.
There are people that are harmed by porn, but rarely directly, more usually as a by-product of a society that tries to control the behaviour of it's citizens.
The same arguments you make have been made countless times about prostitution, and are used to outlaw it in many countries.
But the cold hard facts are that prostitution exists everywhere, even where it is outlawed. And yet, only there you will find excessive violence, disease and rampant drug use. The reason for that is that by making it illegal the 'sex workers' as they're called get pushed in to being criminals, and that means they lose the protection that every other person is normally given. They can not go to the police when a customer (or their pimp) beats them up. They tend to have unsafe sex, the tend to use drugs.
Whereas in places where prostitution is legal prostitutes are treated no different from other professionals, they pay their taxes, they are protected by the law from their customers, instead of their pimps, they get regular medical checkups and so on.
With porn, it is similar. There are lots of people that simply enjoy it. Just like lots of people simply enjoy sex.
Looking at it doesn't make you go blind, it won't 'harm your family'.
As long as all parties involved in the consumption and the production of it are adults and are doing it of their own free will I have absolutely no problem with it.
As I wrote above, I have a website that has an 'adult part'. It was never my intention to be the webmaster of a site that is NSFW.
But when it happened I learned something about my self. That I'm probably more of a prude than I ever thought I was, mostly because the fact that I thought that these people were using my software for a purpose that I could not even envision were somehow betraying me.
But I learned over time that I was wrong.
They simply have a different viewpoint than I do, and they are - to put it bluntly - right, and I was wrong. And they are completely in the right to use the software that I put in to the world to use for whatever purpose they feel like, as long as it is legal.
They're in their own houses, they are safe from stalkers and other real life nuisances, and they enjoy what they do, be it that they're nudists or people that get it on in front of the cam, whatever works for them.
So, I learned to control my 'kill' instincts, and let go of it.
The practical upshot of that is that we have a website which is separated in to two portions, one that is non-adult, and one that is adult.
The non-adult cams are about 85%, about 15% is adult.
On the viewer side it is probably the reverse.
People are asked to label their content using a switch in the software, and any abuse of that switch (there are always jerks) is punished by a very permanent ban.
So, we all get to live in peace, those that care for porn, and those that don't.
As for my reasons for wanting to get out of this, I've been doing it for more than a decade and it is really time for fresh blood, besides that as I said I never wanted to be the webmaster of a NSFW site.
But that's my limitation, not one of the people on that site.
> ..addictive, dangerous substances that do great harm to families.
Wait, what? For one, I hardly think that porn the primary cause of any damage to a family; I would think that any family damage blamed on it probably has some deeper seated problems than porn. I further think that you would be hard pressed to prove that it is dangerous, especially when people are seeing actual naked people all the time without any damage. Addictive is arguable until the cows come home, mainly because addictive is a very subjective word.
And in every region investigated, researchers have found that as pornography has increased in availability, sex crimes have either decreased or not increased.
And:
Now let’s look at attitudes towards women. Studies of men who had seen X-rated movies found that they were significantly more tolerant and accepting of women than those men who didn’t see those movies, and studies by other investigators—female as well as male—essentially found similarly that there was no detectable relationship between the amount of exposure to pornography and any measure of misogynist attitudes. No researcher or critic has found the opposite, that exposure to pornography—by any definition—has had a cause-and-effect relationship towards ill feelings or actions against women. No correlation has even been found between exposure to porn and calloused attitudes toward women.
Please. There was a long thread about that link here just the other day. Correlation is not causation; the decrease in sex crimes over the last thirty years cannot just be attributed to the increase in availability of pornography, as the authors of that paper seem to think.
But think of all those sperm cells that did nothing more than moisten a kleenex. All of those are future babies that were basically murdered in cold blood!!!
What damage to families does porn cause? The same damage that condoms do? (If people can get off without making children, that's bad right?)
Also, what if I don't have a family? Does that mean I can use porn and drugs with impunity, since there is no family to harm? Or does it magically harm other families, perhaps via some obscure quantum effect that the Large Hadron Collider is studying?
I would keep my name and any money I had as far away from it as possible.
So far away that you read articles about it and post your "opinion"?
Anyway, this comment was amusing to read. Now to see if you are actually serious, which would, admittedly, make it a lot less funny.
This wasn't an article, just a straightforward question posted on a forum I frequent.
It damages families in a lot of ways. Porn users are almost universally addicts; you might say you're not, but if you're a regular consumer, try to go without it and see how long you last. I challenge all naysayers to do that. A few can do so without much effort, but the vast majority can't. This reality is opposite of the lie that most will claim.
There are accounts all over of addiction to porn and the feelings that it causes. Companions feel inadequate compared to the airbrushed, artificial bodies their companions lust after. Porn users perceive the subjects of their pornography in an abnormally sexualized light and it diminishes their emotional and intellectual sensitivity.
Pornography steals time, productivity, and money from its users; it is not a wholesome, upbuilding recreational activity as some here say, it is not comparable to video games. It is degrading to its subjects and its users.
Pornography, like drugs, is a mechanism to enrich a few for the moral entrapment of its many users. Porn users become addicted and can't stop using it. They go back for more and more. They desire harder and harder material. They seek to mimic what they see in their preferred pornographic material. How is any of this desirable?
Pornography has a large negative effect on its users. That's absolutely true and no amount of studies, hopes, oblations, snarky comments, or any other thing can change that.
> I challenge all naysayers to do that. A few can do so without much effort, but the vast majority can't. This reality is opposite of the lie that most will claim.
I have done this, and nowadays I don't even look at 1/100th of the porn I used to five years ago, e.g. all the porn I look at nowadays is a little of the person I might be sleeping with if I'm far away from him/her, and whatever random porn might be linked on random IRC channels I'm on (usually for amusement than arousal). Nothing really prompted me to change my porn viewing habits. But of course, then you will shove me into the "few" that can do this without effort. So what's the point of even answering that. :p
> Companions feel inadequate compared to the airbrushed, artificial bodies their companions lust after. Porn users perceive the subjects of their pornography in an abnormally sexualized light and it diminishes their emotional and intellectual sensitivity.
On one hand, I don't disagree that modern day mainstream non-amateur porn is ridiculous and artificial, it's almost become a total turn-off to me, minus a couple people like Sasha Grey, someone I never felt was really glamorized to that extent. But that does not mean that people are expecting airbrushed perfection, or that people feel inadequate compared to porn. I feel fat and full of stretch marks and a desperate need to exercise (stupid asthma issues right now) to get rid of all this flab on my body and I can never manage to get the perfect bikini shave down, but when I am sleeping with my current partner, and when I was with most of my former partners, I feel sexy, confident, attractive. Around him and what we do together, I get this amazing sense of sharing something so glorious, taking pleasure in pleasuring each other, happiness, stress relief...name anything good, and I've probably felt it. And I don't expect him to be perfect, I know he's got his own flab to lose, his own shortcomings, his own interests and fetishes that I might not be into and vice versa...and I know he's not 9" (or where the idea that "bigger is better" even came from). But I don't consider that to be a bad thing just because I saw (on some days) several hours of porn where there were perfect people doing everything I could possibly think of that I was into. Plus, half the stuff I've seen are so ridiculously unrealistic. In the heat of passion, are you REALLY going to be contorting bodies into that kinda position? Nope.
And I know every single person I have ever slept with has watched plenty of porn at some time or another and some still do. Yet none of them have gotten the idea that real sex is like the porn they watch. Because porn can only show so much, and if you don't realize it yet, you will once you actually sleep with someone.
(Oh oops, is this where the "you're promiscuous, clearly porn did that to you" part comes in?)
> Pornography has a large negative effect on its users. That's absolutely true and no amount of studies, hopes, oblations, snarky comments, or any other thing can change that.
"I'm right, you're wrong"...yes...how well that has solved arguments. Porn has been good to me, gave me an outlet for my sexual frustration (oh I never imagined I'd be talking about that on HN...), gave me something fun to watch and to make, gave me pleasure in one way or another. It hasn't made me skanky or promiscuous or hating on healthy relationships or preventing me from having them. It hasn't hurt me and it hasn't made me hurt anyone else, unless your idea of hurting people is safe, sane, and consensual fetish acts. There are far worse things in life, in my life? Maybe how I started playing WoW... :P
Personal anecdotes, yes, but hey, if we're all offering up our personal opinions and unsupported thoughts here...
Addiction and liking something are two different things. People like watching TV, so they do. People like watching porn, so they do. If either go away, they will read a book or something. (Some people do have addictions; like to caffeine. Take away the caffeine, and they feel strange psychological effects for a few weeks. But since everyone else in the world is addicted to caffeine, it's pretty easy to feed the addiction.)
Think of all the other things people are "addicted to" by your definition. Going to work every day. Eating. Brushing your teeth. Bathing. If you don't do those things, you will feel weird right? By your standards, routine == addiction, which makes your use of that word meaningless. Nice try though.
Pornography steals time, productivity, and money from its users; it is not a wholesome, upbuilding recreational activity as some here say, it is not comparable to video games. It is degrading to its subjects and its users.
Reading the newspaper steals time, productivity, and money. So does seeing a movie, or reading a book, or watching TV, or replying to trolls on HN. People do it anyway because the day is long and there is plenty of flexibility in most people's leisure schedules. An hour spent doing something enjoyable every few days is well worth the time cost for many people. For some people, that's porn. So what? Honestly, "getting it over with" probably increases people's ability to concentrate on something more interesting, since that part of their biology that needs to have sex is satisfied. So porn is probably good for productivity.
Companions feel inadequate compared to the airbrushed, artificial bodies their companions lust after.
I disagree. I have found everyone I've dated to be more attractive than anyone I've seen in porn. Outside of porn, though, I've definitely seen some girls that I would like to have but never will, perhaps unrealistically setting my standards. The reality it that any media or exposure to real life changes standards; porn affects those standards no more or no less than anything else.
They desire harder and harder material.
So what? Perhaps they wanted it before, but didn't know it existed? I have come up with a lot more interesting fantasies in my mind than I have seen acted out in porn. Does this mean I'm addicted to thinking?
Pornography has a large negative effect on its users. That's absolutely true and no amount of studies, hopes, oblations, snarky comments, or any other thing can change that.
You certainly haven't proven this in any of your posts. If anything, you are just projecting your fantasies onto others, just like you claim users of porn do.
But anyway, the good news is that your opinions on this don't matter. The rest of us will continue to enjoy porn. Sorry you won't join us.
It's not an addiction like "I'll feel weird for a few weeks". That's not an addiction, that's just a change in habit. It's an addiction in the sense that regular users cannot leave it alone. They won't make it a few weeks. It's like drugs -- some people have the force of will to quit cold turkey and some people luck out and never really develop a dependency, but the majority of users are hooked and need special treatment and help from others to quit. Pornography is the same way.
"Going to work" is not an addiction for most people. Most would be fine to stop going to work; they may languish or feel unproductive now that there's a huge chunk of underutilized time in their day, but they don't have a constant compulsion to need to go to work. Pornography users are addicted in the way that there is a constant, very-difficult-to-resist compulsion to use it again and again. They literally cannot bring themselves to stop using it.
Reading the newspaper does not necessarily steal money, time, and productivity. As long as the practice of reading a newspaper is moderated, it enhances its user by teaching him new things about the world, about his contemporaries, and so on.
Pornography is not some innocent indulgence. It is dangerous and harmful. It cannot ever produce a net good upon its user. It's not like playing a sport or game where effects incidental of the enjoyment are beneficial to the participants. Pornography is always bad.
My opinions are just as good as anyone else's. You are free to do research and substantiate or dissubstantiate them. I'm not interested in finding and providing that research in this context as noted elsewhere in this thread.
Pornography is not some innocent indulgence. It is dangerous and harmful. It cannot ever produce a net good upon its user. It's not like playing a sport or game where effects incidental of the enjoyment are beneficial to the participants. Pornography is always bad.
And once again, we go from here to there with nothing in between. A good argument starts with a set of facts, and then gradually introduces more facts and commentary until the conclusion is the natural outcome. Your arguments start and end at the same place, assuming facts that you never introduced and that, arguably, aren't even facts.
My opinions are just as good as anyone else's. You are free to do research and substantiate or dissubstantiate them. I'm not interested in finding and providing that research in this context as noted elsewhere in this thread.
I don't need to "do research and substantiate or 'dissubstatiate' them". Your opinion does not matter to me. You said something, I think you're wrong. I am going to continue advocating the awesomeness of porn, and there's nothing you can do about it.
It seems like most of the educated world agrees with me, so right or wrong, I probably win.
And finally, I disagree that your opinions are any good. A good opinion is based on provable facts and personal experience. Your opinions are based on neither!
(My opinion is better, because I have personal experience with porn. You speak in absolutes, but are clearly wrong, because I look at porn and this action hasn't adversely affected my life in any way. If your argument was correct, my life would currently be ruined.)
Not really. He made broad, sweeping and unreasonable assertions, incorrect assumptions and no one has any real reason to believe anything written up there.
It was a personal opinion that many disagree with.
>Not really. He made broad, sweeping and unreasonable assertions, incorrect assumptions and no one has any real reason to believe anything written up there.
I shouldn't have to convince you to be respected. I have other things to do with my life than gather together a compendium of research on porn. The truth is out there for all to see. You can find it yourself if you want to. The thing is not malicious, it's just an alternative opinion. I don't stand in your way, you are free to live your life as you like. If I condemn a thing you want to think is good, you don't need to take personal offense, just politely disagree and let's all be on our ways.
EDIT: I'm truly curious to see this one get downvotes. Do you guys really want people to call you out on every opposing opinion and make you run to and fro gathering a corpus of data, anecdotes, and other evidence to support every claim you make? I just don't have the time for it, and I don't have the interest because I know that I won't be changing any minds here, it'll just get written off with, "Well that psychologist/victim/whatever is a religionist so obviously he's backward", etc. Be sensible here, please.
I didnt vote but I dont like to see downvoting go unreplied - so here goes.
> I shouldn't have to convince you to be respected.
Here, like anywhere really, respect is definitely earned. To make a broad statement like you did without supporting argument you are going to need "respect" for your experience in the field.
For example Tptacek can make pretty broad statements about cryptography/security, Patio11 about business/startup etc. etc. without much clarification because we know their expertise is supporting the statement.
Yourself we know nothing about; except you consider pornography a problem on a level with drug abuse. Which is definitely not going to put your comment on a good footing to start off with. It sounds personal - and while we can respect you feel strongly with it the way it was presented is discouraged.
> If I condemn a thing you want to think is good, you don't need to take personal offense, just politely disagree and let's all be on our ways.
There are some problems here. Firstly the main problem downvoters will have had is how sweeping your statement was with no supporting evidence. You didnt even add "In my opinion".... presenting a theory without evidence is frowned on here :)
Secondly the statement is worded in a way that suggests either your trying to cause offence or trying to brand people who might think porn is ok (probably the majority actually) as bad/imoral/wrong/ destroying their families.
There's been many discussions on the purpose of downvotes and the consensus seems to be that it's inappropriate to downvote something far below zero when it isn't malicious or spammy because it decreases the possibility that less popular ideas will be seen and discussed.
It isn't nice, but it seems to be a reality and since there is no way of looking in to the heads of those that downvote you can't really know why they did so.
He implied that anybody who has pornography and a family is "doing great harm" to their family, and engaging in "dangerous" activity, and offered no reasonable basis for his widespread accusation.
That's pretty clearly malicious, and it most definitely breaks the "would you say this at a dinner party if you wanted to be invited back?" rule.
Comments
No, I wouldn't. I believe that peddling pornography is the same as peddling drugs -- both are addictive, dangerous substances that do great harm to families. No matter how much easy money is in it (and there's a lot), I would keep my name and any money I had as far away from it as possible.
Wow, where to begin...
I am not in the least interested in porn, I prefer my bed partners in the flesh, but I find it interesting that you say these things with such certainty.
Families as such are not harmed by porn in any but the rarest cases, and then usually there are other factors besides.
There are people that are harmed by porn, but rarely directly, more usually as a by-product of a society that tries to control the behaviour of it's citizens.
The same arguments you make have been made countless times about prostitution, and are used to outlaw it in many countries.
But the cold hard facts are that prostitution exists everywhere, even where it is outlawed. And yet, only there you will find excessive violence, disease and rampant drug use. The reason for that is that by making it illegal the 'sex workers' as they're called get pushed in to being criminals, and that means they lose the protection that every other person is normally given. They can not go to the police when a customer (or their pimp) beats them up. They tend to have unsafe sex, the tend to use drugs.
Whereas in places where prostitution is legal prostitutes are treated no different from other professionals, they pay their taxes, they are protected by the law from their customers, instead of their pimps, they get regular medical checkups and so on.
With porn, it is similar. There are lots of people that simply enjoy it. Just like lots of people simply enjoy sex.
Looking at it doesn't make you go blind, it won't 'harm your family'.
As long as all parties involved in the consumption and the production of it are adults and are doing it of their own free will I have absolutely no problem with it.
As I wrote above, I have a website that has an 'adult part'. It was never my intention to be the webmaster of a site that is NSFW.
But when it happened I learned something about my self. That I'm probably more of a prude than I ever thought I was, mostly because the fact that I thought that these people were using my software for a purpose that I could not even envision were somehow betraying me.
But I learned over time that I was wrong.
They simply have a different viewpoint than I do, and they are - to put it bluntly - right, and I was wrong. And they are completely in the right to use the software that I put in to the world to use for whatever purpose they feel like, as long as it is legal.
They're in their own houses, they are safe from stalkers and other real life nuisances, and they enjoy what they do, be it that they're nudists or people that get it on in front of the cam, whatever works for them.
So, I learned to control my 'kill' instincts, and let go of it.
The practical upshot of that is that we have a website which is separated in to two portions, one that is non-adult, and one that is adult.
The non-adult cams are about 85%, about 15% is adult.
On the viewer side it is probably the reverse.
People are asked to label their content using a switch in the software, and any abuse of that switch (there are always jerks) is punished by a very permanent ban.
So, we all get to live in peace, those that care for porn, and those that don't.
As for my reasons for wanting to get out of this, I've been doing it for more than a decade and it is really time for fresh blood, besides that as I said I never wanted to be the webmaster of a NSFW site.
But that's my limitation, not one of the people on that site.
> ..addictive, dangerous substances that do great harm to families.
Wait, what? For one, I hardly think that porn the primary cause of any damage to a family; I would think that any family damage blamed on it probably has some deeper seated problems than porn. I further think that you would be hard pressed to prove that it is dangerous, especially when people are seeing actual naked people all the time without any damage. Addictive is arguable until the cows come home, mainly because addictive is a very subjective word.
Studies back up your hunches:
And in every region investigated, researchers have found that as pornography has increased in availability, sex crimes have either decreased or not increased.
And:
Now let’s look at attitudes towards women. Studies of men who had seen X-rated movies found that they were significantly more tolerant and accepting of women than those men who didn’t see those movies, and studies by other investigators—female as well as male—essentially found similarly that there was no detectable relationship between the amount of exposure to pornography and any measure of misogynist attitudes. No researcher or critic has found the opposite, that exposure to pornography—by any definition—has had a cause-and-effect relationship towards ill feelings or actions against women. No correlation has even been found between exposure to porn and calloused attitudes toward women.
Read more: Porn: Good for us? - The Scientist - http://www.the-scientist.com/2010/3/1/29/1/
The anti-porn brigade is just as bigoted as the anti video game brigade.
The anti-porn brigade is just as bigoted as the anti video game brigade.
Porn and video games are enjoyable. Enjoying your life is a sin! Don't you get it?
Now get back down into that salt mine!
Please. There was a long thread about that link here just the other day. Correlation is not causation; the decrease in sex crimes over the last thirty years cannot just be attributed to the increase in availability of pornography, as the authors of that paper seem to think.
See http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1184510 for discussion about your link and its dubious methods.
Psst, your double-standard is showing.
But think of all those sperm cells that did nothing more than moisten a kleenex. All of those are future babies that were basically murdered in cold blood!!!
What damage to families does porn cause? The same damage that condoms do? (If people can get off without making children, that's bad right?)
Also, what if I don't have a family? Does that mean I can use porn and drugs with impunity, since there is no family to harm? Or does it magically harm other families, perhaps via some obscure quantum effect that the Large Hadron Collider is studying?
I would keep my name and any money I had as far away from it as possible.
So far away that you read articles about it and post your "opinion"?
Anyway, this comment was amusing to read. Now to see if you are actually serious, which would, admittedly, make it a lot less funny.
This wasn't an article, just a straightforward question posted on a forum I frequent.
It damages families in a lot of ways. Porn users are almost universally addicts; you might say you're not, but if you're a regular consumer, try to go without it and see how long you last. I challenge all naysayers to do that. A few can do so without much effort, but the vast majority can't. This reality is opposite of the lie that most will claim.
There are accounts all over of addiction to porn and the feelings that it causes. Companions feel inadequate compared to the airbrushed, artificial bodies their companions lust after. Porn users perceive the subjects of their pornography in an abnormally sexualized light and it diminishes their emotional and intellectual sensitivity.
Pornography steals time, productivity, and money from its users; it is not a wholesome, upbuilding recreational activity as some here say, it is not comparable to video games. It is degrading to its subjects and its users.
Pornography, like drugs, is a mechanism to enrich a few for the moral entrapment of its many users. Porn users become addicted and can't stop using it. They go back for more and more. They desire harder and harder material. They seek to mimic what they see in their preferred pornographic material. How is any of this desirable?
Pornography has a large negative effect on its users. That's absolutely true and no amount of studies, hopes, oblations, snarky comments, or any other thing can change that.
This is so frustrating to read.
> I challenge all naysayers to do that. A few can do so without much effort, but the vast majority can't. This reality is opposite of the lie that most will claim.
I have done this, and nowadays I don't even look at 1/100th of the porn I used to five years ago, e.g. all the porn I look at nowadays is a little of the person I might be sleeping with if I'm far away from him/her, and whatever random porn might be linked on random IRC channels I'm on (usually for amusement than arousal). Nothing really prompted me to change my porn viewing habits. But of course, then you will shove me into the "few" that can do this without effort. So what's the point of even answering that. :p
> Companions feel inadequate compared to the airbrushed, artificial bodies their companions lust after. Porn users perceive the subjects of their pornography in an abnormally sexualized light and it diminishes their emotional and intellectual sensitivity.
On one hand, I don't disagree that modern day mainstream non-amateur porn is ridiculous and artificial, it's almost become a total turn-off to me, minus a couple people like Sasha Grey, someone I never felt was really glamorized to that extent. But that does not mean that people are expecting airbrushed perfection, or that people feel inadequate compared to porn. I feel fat and full of stretch marks and a desperate need to exercise (stupid asthma issues right now) to get rid of all this flab on my body and I can never manage to get the perfect bikini shave down, but when I am sleeping with my current partner, and when I was with most of my former partners, I feel sexy, confident, attractive. Around him and what we do together, I get this amazing sense of sharing something so glorious, taking pleasure in pleasuring each other, happiness, stress relief...name anything good, and I've probably felt it. And I don't expect him to be perfect, I know he's got his own flab to lose, his own shortcomings, his own interests and fetishes that I might not be into and vice versa...and I know he's not 9" (or where the idea that "bigger is better" even came from). But I don't consider that to be a bad thing just because I saw (on some days) several hours of porn where there were perfect people doing everything I could possibly think of that I was into. Plus, half the stuff I've seen are so ridiculously unrealistic. In the heat of passion, are you REALLY going to be contorting bodies into that kinda position? Nope.
And I know every single person I have ever slept with has watched plenty of porn at some time or another and some still do. Yet none of them have gotten the idea that real sex is like the porn they watch. Because porn can only show so much, and if you don't realize it yet, you will once you actually sleep with someone.
(Oh oops, is this where the "you're promiscuous, clearly porn did that to you" part comes in?)
> Pornography has a large negative effect on its users. That's absolutely true and no amount of studies, hopes, oblations, snarky comments, or any other thing can change that.
"I'm right, you're wrong"...yes...how well that has solved arguments. Porn has been good to me, gave me an outlet for my sexual frustration (oh I never imagined I'd be talking about that on HN...), gave me something fun to watch and to make, gave me pleasure in one way or another. It hasn't made me skanky or promiscuous or hating on healthy relationships or preventing me from having them. It hasn't hurt me and it hasn't made me hurt anyone else, unless your idea of hurting people is safe, sane, and consensual fetish acts. There are far worse things in life, in my life? Maybe how I started playing WoW... :P
Personal anecdotes, yes, but hey, if we're all offering up our personal opinions and unsupported thoughts here...
Addiction and liking something are two different things. People like watching TV, so they do. People like watching porn, so they do. If either go away, they will read a book or something. (Some people do have addictions; like to caffeine. Take away the caffeine, and they feel strange psychological effects for a few weeks. But since everyone else in the world is addicted to caffeine, it's pretty easy to feed the addiction.)
Think of all the other things people are "addicted to" by your definition. Going to work every day. Eating. Brushing your teeth. Bathing. If you don't do those things, you will feel weird right? By your standards, routine == addiction, which makes your use of that word meaningless. Nice try though.
Pornography steals time, productivity, and money from its users; it is not a wholesome, upbuilding recreational activity as some here say, it is not comparable to video games. It is degrading to its subjects and its users.
Reading the newspaper steals time, productivity, and money. So does seeing a movie, or reading a book, or watching TV, or replying to trolls on HN. People do it anyway because the day is long and there is plenty of flexibility in most people's leisure schedules. An hour spent doing something enjoyable every few days is well worth the time cost for many people. For some people, that's porn. So what? Honestly, "getting it over with" probably increases people's ability to concentrate on something more interesting, since that part of their biology that needs to have sex is satisfied. So porn is probably good for productivity.
Companions feel inadequate compared to the airbrushed, artificial bodies their companions lust after.
I disagree. I have found everyone I've dated to be more attractive than anyone I've seen in porn. Outside of porn, though, I've definitely seen some girls that I would like to have but never will, perhaps unrealistically setting my standards. The reality it that any media or exposure to real life changes standards; porn affects those standards no more or no less than anything else.
They desire harder and harder material.
So what? Perhaps they wanted it before, but didn't know it existed? I have come up with a lot more interesting fantasies in my mind than I have seen acted out in porn. Does this mean I'm addicted to thinking?
Pornography has a large negative effect on its users. That's absolutely true and no amount of studies, hopes, oblations, snarky comments, or any other thing can change that.
You certainly haven't proven this in any of your posts. If anything, you are just projecting your fantasies onto others, just like you claim users of porn do.
But anyway, the good news is that your opinions on this don't matter. The rest of us will continue to enjoy porn. Sorry you won't join us.
It's not an addiction like "I'll feel weird for a few weeks". That's not an addiction, that's just a change in habit. It's an addiction in the sense that regular users cannot leave it alone. They won't make it a few weeks. It's like drugs -- some people have the force of will to quit cold turkey and some people luck out and never really develop a dependency, but the majority of users are hooked and need special treatment and help from others to quit. Pornography is the same way.
"Going to work" is not an addiction for most people. Most would be fine to stop going to work; they may languish or feel unproductive now that there's a huge chunk of underutilized time in their day, but they don't have a constant compulsion to need to go to work. Pornography users are addicted in the way that there is a constant, very-difficult-to-resist compulsion to use it again and again. They literally cannot bring themselves to stop using it.
Reading the newspaper does not necessarily steal money, time, and productivity. As long as the practice of reading a newspaper is moderated, it enhances its user by teaching him new things about the world, about his contemporaries, and so on.
Pornography is not some innocent indulgence. It is dangerous and harmful. It cannot ever produce a net good upon its user. It's not like playing a sport or game where effects incidental of the enjoyment are beneficial to the participants. Pornography is always bad.
My opinions are just as good as anyone else's. You are free to do research and substantiate or dissubstantiate them. I'm not interested in finding and providing that research in this context as noted elsewhere in this thread.
Pornography is not some innocent indulgence. It is dangerous and harmful. It cannot ever produce a net good upon its user. It's not like playing a sport or game where effects incidental of the enjoyment are beneficial to the participants. Pornography is always bad.
And once again, we go from here to there with nothing in between. A good argument starts with a set of facts, and then gradually introduces more facts and commentary until the conclusion is the natural outcome. Your arguments start and end at the same place, assuming facts that you never introduced and that, arguably, aren't even facts.
My opinions are just as good as anyone else's. You are free to do research and substantiate or dissubstantiate them. I'm not interested in finding and providing that research in this context as noted elsewhere in this thread.
I don't need to "do research and substantiate or 'dissubstatiate' them". Your opinion does not matter to me. You said something, I think you're wrong. I am going to continue advocating the awesomeness of porn, and there's nothing you can do about it.
It seems like most of the educated world agrees with me, so right or wrong, I probably win.
And finally, I disagree that your opinions are any good. A good opinion is based on provable facts and personal experience. Your opinions are based on neither!
(My opinion is better, because I have personal experience with porn. You speak in absolutes, but are clearly wrong, because I look at porn and this action hasn't adversely affected my life in any way. If your argument was correct, my life would currently be ruined.)
> They desire harder and harder material
This is true, I know only too well. I started my pornography career as a young boy, and my tastes have got more and more depraved over the years.
Now I can only get off with pictures of completely naked women.
Woah, people! Down votes on HN comments are only supposed to be used for malicious or spammy comments.
He's expressed a valid opinion. Don't downvote.
Not really. He made broad, sweeping and unreasonable assertions, incorrect assumptions and no one has any real reason to believe anything written up there.
It was a personal opinion that many disagree with.
>Not really. He made broad, sweeping and unreasonable assertions, incorrect assumptions and no one has any real reason to believe anything written up there.
I shouldn't have to convince you to be respected. I have other things to do with my life than gather together a compendium of research on porn. The truth is out there for all to see. You can find it yourself if you want to. The thing is not malicious, it's just an alternative opinion. I don't stand in your way, you are free to live your life as you like. If I condemn a thing you want to think is good, you don't need to take personal offense, just politely disagree and let's all be on our ways.
EDIT: I'm truly curious to see this one get downvotes. Do you guys really want people to call you out on every opposing opinion and make you run to and fro gathering a corpus of data, anecdotes, and other evidence to support every claim you make? I just don't have the time for it, and I don't have the interest because I know that I won't be changing any minds here, it'll just get written off with, "Well that psychologist/victim/whatever is a religionist so obviously he's backward", etc. Be sensible here, please.
I didnt vote but I dont like to see downvoting go unreplied - so here goes.
> I shouldn't have to convince you to be respected.
Here, like anywhere really, respect is definitely earned. To make a broad statement like you did without supporting argument you are going to need "respect" for your experience in the field.
For example Tptacek can make pretty broad statements about cryptography/security, Patio11 about business/startup etc. etc. without much clarification because we know their expertise is supporting the statement.
Yourself we know nothing about; except you consider pornography a problem on a level with drug abuse. Which is definitely not going to put your comment on a good footing to start off with. It sounds personal - and while we can respect you feel strongly with it the way it was presented is discouraged.
> If I condemn a thing you want to think is good, you don't need to take personal offense, just politely disagree and let's all be on our ways.
There are some problems here. Firstly the main problem downvoters will have had is how sweeping your statement was with no supporting evidence. You didnt even add "In my opinion".... presenting a theory without evidence is frowned on here :)
Secondly the statement is worded in a way that suggests either your trying to cause offence or trying to brand people who might think porn is ok (probably the majority actually) as bad/imoral/wrong/ destroying their families.
I hope that helps :)
They are also to express disagreement.
There's been many discussions on the purpose of downvotes and the consensus seems to be that it's inappropriate to downvote something far below zero when it isn't malicious or spammy because it decreases the possibility that less popular ideas will be seen and discussed.
Happens all the time.
It isn't nice, but it seems to be a reality and since there is no way of looking in to the heads of those that downvote you can't really know why they did so.
He implied that anybody who has pornography and a family is "doing great harm" to their family, and engaging in "dangerous" activity, and offered no reasonable basis for his widespread accusation.
That's pretty clearly malicious, and it most definitely breaks the "would you say this at a dinner party if you wanted to be invited back?" rule.
I guess that depends on who's populating the dinner party. Usually the subject of pornography wouldn't come up at all, so it wouldn't be a concern.
Your comment says boatloads about you, but little about porn.