But also, we shouldn't forget this:
> The studies from the United States and Australia do little to answer these critical questions — but they do open a new avenue for research
This isn't a fully understood area of research yet.
> Yet it would be naive to ignore that there’s significant overlap between the general ideology behind NoFap — and, to a degree, No Nut November — and that of the far right, which has increasingly coopted the principles of masturbation abstinence. Because the challenge is associated with abstaining from porn, some people associated with the movement have taken the extra step of harassing adult performers on social media, giving it an additional layer of troubling implications. “In the past [No Nut November] has always been like, ‘Oh, look at this ridiculous thing some people are participating in,'” says adult performer and director Casey Calvert. “This year, people [in the industry] are talking about, ‘Oh, actually this is connected to the far right and maybe we shouldn’t just be saying hahaha, No Nut November.'”
Was UK Mass Murderer Radicalized in Anti-Porn Groups? - https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/women-who-stray/2021...
> Like the incel groups, online discussions of ways to stop masturbating or cease watching pornography have also been identified as groups filled with hatred towards women, homophobia, antisemitism, and threats of violence. In 2019, I appeared on The Daily Show, describing how these groups radicalize young men by teaching them to fear masturbation.
> Since that appearance, I've regularly received threats, death threats, and intimidating emails, including troubling messages from Gavin McInnes, founder of The Proud Boys. Recent research examining the discussions in these anti-porn and anti-masturbation groups has repeatedly documented that they thrive on the rejection of science and embrace extremely conservative, highly religious themes. These groups promote abstinence from pornography and masturbation as ways for men to become more masculine and successfully attract mates. As you might imagine, there is a significant overlap between the incel and these anti-porn/anti-masturbation groups.
That episode is https://www.cc.com/video/bgws7v/the-daily-show-with-trevor-n...
...and oil companies were among the first to predict global warming and might have coined CO2 budgets. Who came up with something doesn't really matter for the thing's merit, especially when it lives a life of its own. People fill in nonutnovember as they want, not per whatever extremist views. I don't really see the point of sidetracking the conversation into a political corner.
Is there is some slightly increased cancer risk necessary to enjoy life, so be it.
With human sexuality in particular there are so many cultural taboos that very little research has been done. Limiting your understanding of your own sexuality to peer reviewed research is just silly, you will miss millions of obvious things, and also miss the fact that people are individuals and experience and respond differently to the same things.
It’s crap and in bad faith.
I'm not familiar with the arguments used to 'recruit' people, as I've had Reddit blocked on all of my devices for years.
It's great that it might help someone, but it doesn't mean we all should accept everything this community produce is something good and normal.
As someone who has done exactly that and is involved heavily in recovery communities, no one would describe sobriety as "gaining super powers", and I'm sick of people conflating porn addiction and heroin addiction as if they have anything in common. They really do not, and anyone who does has obviously never experienced opioid dependence. "But but but dopamine pathways" -- if you don't understand the difference in orders of magnitude between exogenous chemicals that directly operate on those pathways, and that which your body and brain can create on their own, I don't know what to tell you.
If someone was shot in the head with a 22 would you dismiss this as insignificant, because some people get their heads blown off with rocket launchers? That seems like the same logic you're applying here.
You may not owe (non-)masturbators better, but you owe this community (much) better if you're participating in it.
Nofap like many things has been turned into a brand, and even politicised to the point some idiots attack it saying it's far right ideology. On the other hand there are teenagers with serious porn-related issues that think nofap will turn them into superhumans. But the smug nerd on the internet doesn't stop to consider the nofap movement that's become a caricature of its former self, still is a major indicator of the emotional and physical problems porn is causing to many men and women. It's an epidemic.
Go crank all you want because a popsci article said so, but if you haven't seen how widespread and destructive porn addiction is, this must be your first day on the Internet. I already imagine the retort "well, just don't watch porn then." Because only idiots and weak-willed people get addicted.
Sorry, I'm in a cranky mood because I've struggled with porn addiction myself, I have had someone confess they suffer from it just a few hours ago, and I'm bitter how what was a porn addiction support group like nofap managed to turn itself into a joke—and they have themselves to blame, yet porn still is something people laugh about for internet karma.
/rant
Made me look up the word cranky and found “crankshaft” - a shaft driven by a crank that turns reciprocating motion into rotating motion. Legit.
What are the physical problems one can get through watching porn? If this study is accurate, it seems batting off more often may be a good thing ?
It has nothing to do with porn consumption and is physiological.
I read somewhere some people have "performance anxiety" after watching a lot of porn and lose their boner before penetration, but that's completely different to "never getting a boner".
whenever groups of young men engage in sexual self-repression that almost always has a political component. And pay attention to the "men" part, because nofap is almost exclusively a male phenomenon. Religious sexual repression is not, if anything the opposite. Also religious sexual repression is compliance with religious law, not necessarily an act of voluntary discipline.
"nofap" in contrast is essentially an extremely online version of Fight Club, and the political undertones are pretty obvious. It's mostly disaffected guys deciding to undertake some Yukio Mishima-esque training to combat their low self-esteem.
And one thing I haven't seen mentioned a whole lot, the release of Stable Diffusion has made my problem way, way worse. I've been magnetized to the screen for weeks on end reading up on machine learning concepts and training on dozens of datasets, just to fuel my addiction and the inner weaknesses that prop it up
I sometimes wonder if this is the future, if this kind of irresistible, infinite ultra-personalization is here to stay, and the paper writers will continue to keep their "Ethics" sections to a maximum of five sentences each buried in the back
All of this is in the site guidelines, so if you'd please review them and stick to them in the future, we'd appreciate it.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Edit: We already had to ask you this just recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34528453