this post was submitted on 24 May 2025
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Am I the only one that thinks there’s something positive to stricter control of pornography?
Even if you love porn and grew up exposed to it as a kid, you gotta admit that there are psychological effects on avid adult viewers and more on minors.
Think about what was available as a kid, too. Wait 10 min for a 3 minute to load or just search pics. Now it’s a completely different overstimulating world that transforming how people relate to sex and themselves.
It's just people not using their brains, everything is just viewed at its surface level with no deeper analysis ever conducted. They are the sort of idiots that think that Starship Troopers is profascism.
People that like Fight Club, American Psycho, and Starship Troopers... k, but like, do you get it or are you a nut job?
I understand your point of view. These conservative law-makers are hiding their true intentions, but you’re only allowing yourself to think about porn restriction in the lens of current day right-wing politicians. The intent to put more restrictions on porn is not a one way street.
Your analogy to banning artistic freedom is like saying putting restrictions on alcohol is a slippery slope that’s going to eventually have you explaining to a soldier why you have kombucha.
There are so many variations of porn. Some porn is dangerous to be consumed by children and even adults, especially when consumed compulsively through addiction. Maybe not dangerous to straight cis men, but dangerous to almost the entire half of society. I believe that is why it’s so hard to put any restrictions on porn. Straight cis men are clutching onto their undiagnosed porn addictions as hard as they can and using right wing laws to make hasty generalizations about porn restriction leading to the Islamic Revolution.
Also, congrats. Happy safe and healthy jerking.
Not enough to warrant uploads of your fucking license.
Also I really think its kind of goofy so many people are upset about porn when kids are exposed to violence in the media all the time.
Not that I think violent video games are the devil, my first memory of a game was GTA III lol, but I think seeing violence is probably worse than seeing sex.
At least if you take the American Puritan mindset out of it.
Either we chill the fuck out, or the next logical step is every rated 'M' game purchase or rated 'R' movie will require a license in a digital copy of your drivers license. Who knows, maybe next it'll be req'd for age-restricted social media content.
If you don't want your kids watching porn don't give them unfettered internet access.
If your a first worlder below the age of 45, and don't know how to do that, that's probably on you for not being able to intuitively use UX after decade of using computers in school and the workforce. Yes I expect modern humans who've been exposed to computing their entire life to use basic smartphone features, no hitting the pretty icons in the right order is not hard
If that you find that to be challenging god help you in raising an entire human child.
Yes, I mean, one is (ideally) about two (or more) people enjoying time they have together in an intimate way, the other is about hurting one another maliciously. I certainly prefer one of these things to be more prominent than the other
There is a discussion to be had about stuff like objectification and porn that doesn't depict people like, consenting, and such, but at least in an ideal I'd much rather have media that focuses on pleasure and love than hate and suffering
Um, there is plenty of violence in porn…
That's mostly what I was referring to in my latter paragraph, yes
But the important takeaway is that it's not the core of what pornography is
Violence isn’t the only problem though. The way women are treated is not realistic or healthy in much of porn. It creates unhealthy expectations. Kudos if you’re watching exclusively healthy sexual relationships in porn.
I’m just saying there’s something good in restriction, not the way in which it’s being implemented. I think games like GTA are bad too. There’s also plenty of violence in porn. Towards the women so maybe you don’t perceive that unless it was towards men.
Parental controls are only effective if all parents control. Should alcohol and guns have no restrictions and be up to parents to control? Exactly.
Citation needed when we're talking about implementing laws and opening up lawsuits suing for $75k+. Multiple robust peer-reviewed citations needed. Preferably not funded by a Catholic church group.
Also it's a leap to say top-down privacy invading laws are the way the state or federal government should handle it instead of the concerned parent monitoring computer usage. There's so many free and subscription based parental control tools out there. Comprehensive sex education would be a potential alternate way for the state to support parents and teens to educate them on porn consumption and safe internet usage.
FYI, NCOSE, the group joining (likely funding) the lawsuit, is against comprehensive sex education.
You’re talking about a few separate things here.
No you don't. That is right wing propaganda completely unfounded by science. That porn addiction nonsense so many Americans babble about is a product of that propaganda, and doesn't actually exist.
Wow. You don’t think porn addiction exists? Said like a true porn addict.
If every person who disagrees with you counts as further evidence that you're right, then you're thinking in an unfalsifiable manner, which is the basis for many a flawed conclusion. It doesn't necessarily make you wrong, but you should really make sure to find justifications for your beliefs that are based on falsifiable reasoning instead. That's the best way to know if what you're believing is right or wrong, because you can try to falsify your beliefs in the way that you know them to be falsifiable, and if they still couldn't be falsified, then you can say "Well, I tried to disprove this, and it still passed that test!"
So, let me ask you this, what would, hypothetically, suffice to prove or at least suggest evidence that porn addiction does not exist? If your answer is "nothing", then you're in unfalsifiable territory.
It goes both ways. People are gonna find whatever study supports whatever they want to believe and just cling to that. Denying porn and, even sex addiction for that matter, doesn’t exist is denying the basis of addiction and the human brain. Dopamine.
So then can anything that produces dopamine be addictive? Can I get addicted to hugging my girlfriend, or addicted to reading books, or jogging? Or is there some threshold? Does the intensity per time matter, or just the intensity, or just the time? What about the frequency of exposure? Does any amount of dopamine release make me slightly more addicted to whatever it is, or is there some threshold that needs to be exceeded? Do dopamine-based addictions produce physical withdrawal symptoms, always, never, sometimes? Depending on what? And are physical withdrawal symptoms necessary to constitute addiction or are there different tiers of addiction?
You see what I'm getting at. There's sooo many questions that need to be answered before just saying "this produces lots of dopamine therefore it's addictive and bad and should be limited". While I appreciate and empathize with your sentiment about people cherry-picking the studies they like (sounding like an LLM here lol), it's not as if science doesn't know how to deal with that problem, and it certainly isn't a reason to stop caring about or citing studies at all, or say "well you've got your studies and I've got mine". Just because both sides have studies that give evidence in their favor doesn't mean both sides are equally valid or that it's impossible to reach an informed conclusion one way or the other.
My next biggest question (and what I'm trying to drive at with the semi-rhetorical slew of questions I opened with) would be what makes something an addiction or not? Am I addicted to staying alive, because I'll do anything to stay alive as long as possible? That seems silly to call an addiction, since it doesn't do any harm. And how do we delineate between, say, someone who is addicted to playing with Rubik's Cubes vs. someone who just really likes Rubik's Cubes and has poor self-control? Or what about someone with some other mental quirk, like someone who plays with Rubik's Cubes a lot due to OCD, or maybe an autistic person who plays a lot with Rubik's Cubes out of a special interest? Does the existence of such people mean that "Rubik's Cube Addiction" is a real concern that can happen to anyone who plays with Rubik's Cubes too much? Or perhaps Rubik's cubes are not addictive at all, and it is separate traits driving people to engage with them in a way that appears addictive to others.
I know I've written a long post and asked lots of questions. It's not my intention to "gish gallop" you, just to convey my variety of questions. The Rubik's example is the one thing I'm most curious to hear your thoughts on. (There I go sounding like an LLM again)
Come on man. You can look up what addiction means. This is proving why there need to be stronger restrictions. If you can’t look up a definition parents can’t work parental controls.
Here’s part of what makes something addiction:
Continued involvement despite physical, psychological, social, or legal problems.
Porn could easily fall into this not only rolled into sex addiction but think about somebody who is jerking it all the time and this has an affect on their relationship, or they’re watching violent porn and this affects how they treat women, or they see the infantilization or submission of women in porn and think women should be like children or that they’re entitled to women’s bodies.
I get it. Yall love porn, but we also need to be responsible and not be in denial.
The Rubik’s cube example is an easy question for neurotypical people when you take the above criteria into account. It can be addiction of solving this Rubik’s cube is affecting their life in a negative way. Have you ever seen My Strange Addiction? Lots of different addictions other than drugs and alcohol.
The inclusions of mental conditions is a whole different story. Autistic or OCD compulsions would generally not be addiction because it’s an anxious thing instead of tied to dopamine reward. It is an interesting intersection, but not what we base laws that control society on.
Porn addiction is real. If you can’t accept that then therein lies the problem.
Not sure why you're getting down voted. Porn can absolutely become a behavioral addiction.
I used to work at a place where we had a lobby guard that watched porn on his phone all day (sound off). Not sitting there trying to jerk it, it was a compulsion. He would just be watching it while talking to other people, standing by the door...it was weird. He eventually got fired because he genuinely couldn't not watch porn.
That being said, I'm a huge privacy advocate, and while there are actually ways to anonymously be on a website and verify age, that's not how anyone is doing it. Things like signing up for an account on a site and scanning your ID are just abysmally stupid. There's a zero percent chance that this system as is doesnt lead to data theft and possibly even extortion.
Sounds like a better state-backed initiative would be to make mental health services available to this dude and to anyone else dealing with addiction issues. Especially since I assume this door guard was older than 18 and age verification, no matter how private, would have done nothing to stop his access to porn.
Also true, no doubt there.
I’d advocate for us to update our ID systems to be able to verify age without the risk of data theft or extortion, but that’s not really relevant to this conversation, just kinda talking to the void
I totally agree. Everybody is misinterpreting what I’m saying into being an advocate for the ways they’re implementing the restrictions. They need a punching bag. I get it. I’ll be it.
But some people here don’t want to admit porn addiction exists. That’s a sign that it is a problem.
The problem isn’t just addiction though. The access to and normalization of violent porn to adults and especially children is damaging to society. Maybe people don’t care because it mostly effects women negatively.
I understand and agree with what you’re saying. I think people should need licenses to have kids, but that’s a different story.
The conflict that this often boils down to is that the digital world does not emulate the real world. If you want to buy porn in the real world, you need ID, but online anything goes. I love my online anonymity just as much as everybody else, but we’ll eventually need to find some hybrid approach.
We already scan our faces on our phones all the time, or scan our finger on our computer. How about when you want to access a porn site you have to type in a password or do some biometric credential?
I think 50% or more of the resistance of restricting porn is really just that people really love porn and are ashamed of what they view. There’s a whole other social psychology that needs to change in regards to how we view sex and I agree with more education.
Do it like this: you have to go to a notary and show your ID and they don’t scan it or anything, but they then authorize you to create an account with biometric credentials. Now only you can use that account to watch porn online. Hybrid approach.
You show your ID and a notary enters their credentials to allow you to create an account with your fingerprint or FaceID.
Your ID doesn’t get saved. Your biometrics are only saved in the way that your iPhone saves them for a password.
Work with me. What’s a solution that would be acceptable for you? Get creative.
I’m convinced this was written by GPT. We disagree on how good or bad porn is for society and the youth, so the rest doesn’t even matter.
If you’re a man I would propose the notion that you only have the perspective of the part of society that is predominantly watching porn and who is predominantly sexual abusers. Your perspective is limited and it’s evident by arguments you make. For example, limiting the support for your opinions to light or moderate porn viewing and that the porn doesn’t include non-consenting individuals or underage, etc. you’re completely ignoring the problem areas the maintain your point of view. Try thinking outside your bubble just as an exercise. Don’t mean this in an offensive way. I can understand your perspective and as such the narrow-sightedness of it.