/edu/ - Education

>>6217
You can probably do a fitting critique of the modern pornographic industry on the basis of situationism (see Society of the Spectacle or The Revolution of Everyday Life) or theories about the commodification of societal relations in general.
>>6219
**What is pornography other than repression of sex?
I would argue the alienating nature of its present form ultimately overtakes the sexual release.
Spoiler for off board topic.**

>>6219
Lmao. Clown

>>6217
Pornography addiction is as real as Iraqi WMD's. The phenomenon of pornography addiction is merely propped up by "no-fappers" who need any evidence to support they're worldview. I believe the reason for the rise of "no-fap" or whatever it's called is because people have so little control over they're lives now, that they believe they are taking control by no longer masturbating. Just add ontop your own spices of ideology, and you have a very stupid online only ideology.

>>6721
very stupid, online-only post tbf

are you 14?

>>6721
The cause is more of just people having addictive genes and picking it up. It's similar to game addiction, which is "real" but it's un-duplicate-able.

>>6725
The gray matter thing can just be countered by doing activities that increase it like reading.

>>6233
>>6723
Anti-porns crying as per usual.

>>6743
>Caring for the mental health of your fellow human being and providing sources they asked for is "muh crying"
>countered by just doing activities
<oh yeah taking heroin can just be countered by having your stomach pumped and eating your veggies, no biggie!
Stop enabling porky.

>>6721
>>6743
>The phenomenon of pornography addiction is merely propped up
>addictive "genes"
>game addiction, which is "real" but it's un-duplicate-able
<it's all made up, I'm totally not coping about my constant fapping
<Not muh heckin hentai and gamerinos!
Please, get help and get off the internet. Your line of reasoning reminds me of Peter Hitchen's argument that there is no such thing as drug addiction, this argument being that there is no evidence that the free will of a drug addict is nullified by cravings. It doesn't matter how many shivering heroine junkies you put before his eyes, it won't be accepted as evidence because the bar is set above human observation or experience. The same is true for those who believe in the harmlessness of pornography, no matter how many attest to having degenerated through porn and no matter how many areas of knowledge regarding neurology and psychology can substantiate this, it will all be refused because the very act of not refusing said experience, evidence and reasoning makes someone or something, unreliable. Using this very line of reasoning, anything and everything can be denied. There are no chickens, there might be things that have feathers, lay eggs, have beaks and look like chickens, but there is no scientific study whatsoever that has proven that those things that some allege to be chickens are in fact chickens.

>>6721
No, I only went no-fap because I felt that I was becoming retarded with no motivation to do anything other than fap to 2D fap.

>>6752
let me guess, you now think you are smart and is addicted to your computer.

>>6752
>I felt that I was becoming retarded
Not far from the truth probably

>>6753
>and is addicted to your computer.
mp4 related

>>6751
<If your not anti-porn your pro-porn and are a slave to it, I.E. cumbrain.
This is /edu/, not /leftypol/. Your meme image showing supposed evidence against the evils of porn (which I'm sure you haven't read), just show that people get aroused easily. This is not new, and never has been. With our sex-heavy society, its no wonder people get aroused a lot, sexuality is very strong and is a big money maker.

>>6753
Please explain how it is not possible for one to be addicted to the stimulation from computers and pornography

>>6756
You should think about the role of abundant, instant-access porn in the establishment of this "sex-heavy society" and you do not need to talk about the "evils" of it or argue with morals like right-wingers do to see that cooming to porn in a compulsory way has observable and undesirable effects on the brain and that has consequences. To deny this is to be unmaterialistic.

>>6756
>unamused.jpg
<this is /edu/
Imagine posting an actual meme image, and ignoring the image with cited sources while calling the other out for "memes".
>your pro-porn and are a slave to it
<Just control the addiction, heroin isn't so bad if you got control!
Inb4 "false analogy" the effects of pornography are comparable to heroin and other hard drugs, not some basic bitch shit like alcohol and weed.
>which I'm sure you haven't read
I did, you didn't given that your "argument" is
just screeching "M-moral-fag!!!" when literally none of my post is about morality or ethics whatsoever. COPE HARDER FAGGOT.
>show that people get aroused easily
Except that's a oversimplified and intentionally misleading claim
>This is not new, and never has been
Actually it is, faggot. Pornography wasn't as graphic, easily-accessible and wide-spread even back in the 90s, people jacked to Hustler and Play Boy, which was just nude girls, not sex scenes and were free and couldn't be sold to minors legally. Anyone can open Pornhub and find tens of thousands of videos, pictures and more today.
In the past, before the 1960s porn was limited to very esoteric circles of photographs which were neither widespread, nor widely sought. Erotic imagery from actual art is not the same as pornography either, so don't bring up some ancient depiction of a sex scene as some evidence of porn being old.
>sexuality is very strong and is a big money maker
Again, PORN IS FREE, only in a trap will you find free cheese - YOU are the product, retard.

>>6760 fucking autocorrect
>and were free
and weren't free

>>6760
>Inb4 "false analogy" the effects of pornography are comparable to heroin and other hard drugs, not some basic bitch shit like alcohol and weed.
This is very clearly just sexuality being a strong presence in the human experience. Your treating it as if its an opiate that should be rejected at every turn.
>>show that people get aroused easily
>Except that's a oversimplified and intentionally misleading claim
Elaborate.
>Actually it is, faggot. Pornography wasn't as graphic, easily-accessible and wide-spread even back in the 90s, people jacked to Hustler and Play Boy, which was just nude girls, not sex scenes and were free and couldn't be sold to minors legally. Anyone can open Pornhub and find tens of thousands of videos, pictures and more today.
>In the past, before the 1960s porn was limited to very esoteric circles of photographs which were neither widespread, nor widely sought. Erotic imagery from actual art is not the same as pornography either, so don't bring up some ancient depiction of a sex scene as some evidence of porn being old.
Deliberate misinterpretation of what I said but I'll bite. Your acting as if before pornhub people had more "tame" sexuality. Go out and look through the ancient drawings of sex and you will see its just as raunchy as it is today.
>Again, PORN IS FREE, only in a trap will you find free cheese - YOU are the product, retard.
No shit.
This is simply rebranded evangelical talking points of the 80s moral panics, but we're stuck in a time loop between the 80s and now. Clearly your under 25 and a virgin who is afraid of they're own dick. Go outside, have sex and pay attention in school.

I don't know why people go out their way to defend such garbage. Modern p*rn is distinct from what we've seen in the past in terms of accessibility and the ability to escalate. There's probably not much from a leftist perspective unless you want to dip into radfem stuff.directxDirect X

>>6770
>very clearly just sexuality being a strong presence
So basically you're just repeating yourself without actually arguing, concession accepted
>eating it as if its an opiate that should be rejected
If you can't see the difference between literal brainwashing of dopamine receptors and normal libido, you need help.
>Elaborate
The fuck is there to elaborate, yes humans are horny beings but porn is an unnatural product, that doesn't fulfill basic needs and actively affects our minds in similar ways to narcotics; that being addictive and damaging to the brain. Porn is not a part of normal sexuality and people shouldn't be aroused this easily because that's called hypersexuality, which is a disorder.
>our acting as if before pornhub people had more "tame" sexuality
Yes, yes they did. Outside of the upper class and other lazy bastards with money, most people had sex to have children and did not diverge too far from just that sex. Moreover even casual sex is still less shitty than pornography because its actually real.
>see its just as raunchy as it is today
Come back to me when you find the dozens of futa furry porn and shemale domination and all sorts of fucked shit. Come back to me when you show me that murals, paintings, drawings, wood-cuttings, frescos, carvings, sculptures and more depicted sex constantly, graphically and in public. And no showing genitals or having a mildly erotic scene is not porn.
>This is simply rebranded evangelical talking points
1) Wrong
2) I think I'll side with the Evangelicals on this one given that porn and pro-porn liberals have tended to be the worst kind of glowfaggot scum anyhow
>Clearly your under 25 and a virgin who is afraid of they're own dick
<I have no argument so I'll call you a kid and a virgin
Amazing argument… or lack thereof. I have no problem with ocassional masturbation and certainly no problem with sex. No, what I have a problem with, is porky, their porn and their emphasis on making people obsessed with sexuality, sex and porn because dumbing people down is optimal for them. And I'm not afraid to call it out for what it is, degeneracy. Defending porn glows and reeks of coping sex-obsession.
>have sex
Yeah that's the point, retard
>pay attention in school
<says the person who wrote "they're" instead of "their"
If you're going to claim an anon here is a kid, then have the decency not to make such elementary mistakes.

I know it's late to say this, but I'm just going to say it.
Genuinely, anti-porn almost ruined my life.

I struggled focusing on school and would spend all my time on image board, social media, youtube, and of course porn.
Anti-porn people sold me that my dopamine receptors was destroyed by these systems

I bought into it since I was miserable and disappointed in where I was in life.
What stopped me though was when I did a 100 day "challenge"; stopped porn and masturbation for 100 days, plus even social media – and found myself just as miserable after the challenge ended.
The only happiness I "gained" was having extra time from not doing those activities, which were consumed by video games or X coping system to deal with the demand from my classes.

It was only until half a year ago I found the actual answer when I was diagnosed with inattentive ADHD, and massively improved my life with medicine.
Obviously the medicine wasn't some silver bullet – I''m procrastinating right now even – (remember kids, get your 8 hours of sleep) – but it's still very helpful to know what I have to work around.

I always despised the anti-porn movement when I saw it birthed on 8chans /pol/, made for the purpose of doing a long game of selling antisemitism – (for those unfamiliar, sell anti-porn, then push propaganda of how all jews own porn).
But now seeing truly what the false promises you guys sell, it absolutely makes me sick.
And you guys take kernels of truth, such as people having addictive personalities, or the porn industry being toxic – but then sell the slippery slope starting with porn being some inherit addictive thing.

To all these posters,
>>6233
>>6723
>>6725
>>6749
>>6751
>>6760
>>6776
>>10303
Your greatest submission to society will be your suicide.
Go back to /pol/; or take a shot gun, and paint the walls with your brain.

I've mixed feelings about discussion about porn, mostly because it always degenerates into shitflinging without any productive arguments, or just anecdotal storytelling (people defending anti-porn as having helped them, or trying and concluding it's just bollocks, etc.)

Might be a bit useful to separate things a bit: to separate the porn from the addiction, so to speak.
Now, pornorgraphy is a very contentious term; are 19th century japanese wood engravings of people having sex "porn"? Surely the category seems to be spurious in that case. When "porn" is evoked by its detractors (or even by its defenders) what comes to mind is a gargantual production of images, much of them being industry-made but also tons of "amateur" content which is essentially just people sharing (consensually or not, see "revenge porn") themselves engaging in sexual acts.

Personally, I have a difficult time seeing arguments against the latter form of "porn", so long as its consensual; how can you stop people from showing themselves fucking? Is that even a "bad" thing? This mostly ends up being a morality argument (not even an ethics one) as to how one feels about depictions of sexual acts, whether based on religion or something else.

As for the industrial part of pornoography, I see two sides to it: proper capitalist exploitation (as in Brazzers and Pornhub and the like) and what one can call "artisanal" pornography, meaning people recording themselves and selling on Onlyfans. The mass industry of porn is, I believe without much contestation, a horrid business. It's proletarian exploitation on it's most crude form, and the industry has a vested interest in having as many people watch porn as possible, normalizing the watching of porn by having doctors say it's healthy, make it be a part of general culture through ads, etc.; that, I suspect, is the prime mover of the "pornification" of society, the usual carrion-call of reactionaries everywhere (who typically blame socialists for destroying society's morality or w/e). There is no reasonable way to defend the porn industry, and it should be destroyed, together with the rest of capitalist exploitation.

As for "artisanal" production, seems to me (though it's probably a more complex issue) to be a response to the decaying state of capitalism, where a mass reserve army of labor is just permanently unemployable, and thus being a gendered "solution" to the problem: women commodify themselves and thus enter into the circuits of capital by producting pornographic content of themselves, at a very low capital investment (artists that produce drawn pornographic content also mostly fit here). It's this demographic (as well as prostitutes) that the category of "sex-work" seems to uphold. It seems to me that it's a structural element that will mostly be abolished under a different system; there is very little need for people to expose themselves for money otherwise (maybe there will always be exhibitionists, but they'd fit into the "non-porn" category, I feel). That being said, seems to me that in the end there isn't much of a point in considering it a very significant force, or giving it much attention; it's not the women's (and few men's) fault that essentially selling themselves in the most blatant sense of the word is one of the few ways of eking out a living.

As for addiction, the discourse also feels very flawed to me. Addiction gets talked about as something which is a property inherent in objects, as in the object cocaine has the "addiction" property, when it seems much more to be a (dialectical) relation (Richard Seymour has some interesting bits on this idea in The Twittering Machine, annexed to this post). It's fundamentally a human response to their environment translated by means of substance abuse. I don't have data to back me up here, but it seems to be a truism that drug addictics usually start their usage when their existence has some difficult problems they might want to escape from (be it family, personal relationships, work, etc.) and thus drugs seem to them to be an easier way out (which then compound into further problems becoming a problem of their own, alongside the rest).

This, of course, is strictly about substances, but even in that sense I feel that the "addiction" model is very flawed. I personally have found it hard to ignore Herbert Fingarette's take on alcoholism (annexed to this post). Fingarette (who was no marxist) argues that there is no such "disease" called alcoholism, because it has no actual consistent nosology (i.e. a classification with consistent causes and sympthoms), nor has it any sensible treatment. He criticizes Alcoholics Anonymous by working essentially by declaring that the only way out is abstinence, and thus forcing people to go through it, declaring those that fail to have failed to escape alcoholism, instead of questioning the premises of abstinence in the first place (and that "alcoholism" is in fact a response to bad life situations—see the epidemic of alcohol abuse after the destruction of the USSR).

In a sense porn "addiction" is much closer to gambling "addiction" instead of substance abuse, but the framework makes theorists become enamoured with stupid ideas such as "dopamine circuits" and bad use of evolutionary psychology instead of questioning why the fuck are people going to porn in the first place. I don't have the answer, but blaming poor man's biology seems to be quite the wrong way to go about it, with its only benefit being making people not feel stigmatized since addiction would be something entirely out of their control. This may have good short-term results, but on the overall an approach that actually takes into account personal and societal considerations (i.e. a dialectical approach…) seems much more rewarding and fruitful, and produces what seems to me the only actual cure to addiction: changing your circumstances, if at all possible (or living the rest of your life fearing the "one drop" of alcohol that will make you relapse, perpetually afraid of your own shadow).

tl;dr: it's not about porn, it's about people and society

>>12883
I believe I failed to address the point of specifically "porn addiction", that is, the combination of the two terms. It seems to me that porn addiction is a non-concept, useful only insofar as it leads to criticize a particular mode of acting. This, of course, does not mean industrial pornography is good or that masturbating nonstop is a good idea, merely that we shouldn't try and conflate things. That there are papers that argue that porn causes hypofrontality or whatever else effects on the brain does not explain why do people start engaging consistently with porn in the first place, which is, in my view, the far more important question, and which seems to be better answered by the idea of "habit" than of addiction (though I cannot personally confirm, it seems that, because of the nature of pornography being directed at men, and thus being written with male consumers in mind, that women oftentimes just find porn offputting. If this is the case, then one would have to argue that men are more biologically susceptible to porn, which seems spurious, or admit that porn is just as much about the person watching than about the content itself).

One can get "addicted" to quite literally anything: biting one's nails when nervous, drinking coffee (even without caffeine), doing exercise, having sex, etc. That such "addictions" are possible says very little about the nature of the behavior itself (is sex bad because people can get addicted to it? obviously not) and a lot about the circumstances of the people who find themselves in the throes of behaviors that seem impossible to stop, but that, by a combination of incentive and inertia, take over their lives as if demons possessing them. To say that porn has powers bordering on the metaphysical is to miss the point entirely, as if the screen had the power to compel your eyes to watch.

>>6725
Isn't the logical corollary of this thinking that all sex is bad though? For example, I could have sex with my gf whenever I want (yes, that is a humble brag), wouldn't that also be "free" dopamine. Or even without sex, there's plenty of things you can do to get "free" dopamine that aren't harmful. For example, meditation, yoga, and exercise can all grant you dopamine pretty much on demand, but we wouldn't say these things are bad for you for that reason. It sounds scary when you use words like "synthetic," but really all that means is that it was deliberately designed to give you pleasure, which can be said of things that partners do to spice up irl bedroom tomfoolery as well. I'm not trying to say that porn is totally guiltless and unproblematic - it's generally a pretty fucked up industry - but this whole if you coom you've basically given yourself brain AIDS, cancer, and your brain is going to collapse into dust at any second line of thinking is pretty silly imo.

>nofap discussion
>its another shitshow of the pro arguing vs. the anti
instead of reading books about jacking it or arguing to random strangers on the internet find out for yourself if you want to do it for not.

stop for three weeks. if you:
>cannot do this
>can just barely do it
>did it and felt much better

dont consume pornography

if you:
<did it
<did it easily
<didnt find any improvements from doing so

then do whatever. stop letting a bunch of losers online tell you what you should do and figure it out for yourself.

>>6217
just read baudrillard and come to your own conclusions. welcome to the seksu of the hyperrealo

>>6219
what a load of garbage

>>6721
True. I don't even like porn, but the anti-porn stuff also has its own agenda.
>>6725
>synthetically generated dopamine
Lolwut