by Keoni Galt
I have a very good memory despite years of constantly bombarding my brain with mind and mood altering substances. I’ve always thought I had a good memory, but now I know for certain that my memory is better than most people.
I’m now approaching an age for which many of the folks in my circle of family and friends don’t remember a lot of shared experiences. I usually remind them, and only after supplying a lot of little details of the memory do they remember the event or thing I’m talking about.
Because I have such a vivid, detail-oriented memory, I still “feel” like I’m a young man, because I remember my youth so well.
Perhaps I’m simply experiencing the calm before the storm of the “mid-life crisis” all humans supposedly experience in their 40’s. Perhaps not. But I recently came across a website that made me realize I was mistaken in thinking I perfectly understand the experiences of life in our bravenewworldorder by Gen Y/Millenials
Sometimes, I discover a website/blog/forum, and the content gives me a personal paradigm shift in attitudes and beliefs. A game changer.
For instance, I remember the first time I read Roissy in D.C. Back in those days, the archives were not that extensive. I read the entire blog in under two hours. This was about 6 months before his comment threads turned into the breeding grounds for what we now know of today as the manosphere.
On the other hand, when I first discovered the Weston A. Price Foundation’s website, that took me over a week to make it through every single article on their voluminous little library of traditional diet and nutrition research. That was back in 2006. It would take even longer now.
It’s been awhile since I’ve found a site for which I was compelled to devour the website’s archives in a single session of furious speed reading…similar to reading an entire book in a single sitting.
Today, I came across such a site: https://www.yourbrainonporn.com/
Holy shit. I had no idea how big and bad this beast has grown.
I remember when the entire “pornography experience” was girly mags some friend stole from some relative, and we young boys eagerly thumbed through it, thrilled that we were doing something we were not supposed to…looking at the pictures of naked women and feeling the rush of dopamine and testosterone the simple sight-of-nude-females effects on the pre-adolescent male brain.
Then, in my early teens, I became friends with a guy whose parents owned a few hardcore porn VHS tapes. When they were at work, he would sneak a tape from his parents room and play it on the living room tv.
We could only watch it rarely…so when we did, it was even more exhilarating. Its effects on my teen age brain were dramatic. I still remember the cheesy plots and specific dialog that were in all Pr0n before the interwebz metastasized into the pervasive, society wide mind-fuck that it is today.
I remember real vividly, the early days of the interwebz, when teh Pr0n industry was first raking in credit card subscription fees (I used to have one) and when most of the “actresses” sported “glorious natural pelts” and did not have tattoos or belly piercings. Even back in those days, when I became a frequent consumer , I was keenly aware of it’s effects on me…I recognized it was similar to a drug.
In the first few years of being married, I regularly looked at teh Pr0n several times a week. I hid my credit card statements that showed the billing company info. I consumed it in secret. It was a forbidden thrill.
Than one day, I was ruminating while lying in bed, in a post-coital haze after consummating marital relations with her, and I realized something: Teh pr0n was ruining my enjoyment of the real thing. It was corrupting my marriage. I had begun feeling like no matter what sex act or novelty we tried, it wasn’t enough…more…More….MORE.
Now when I used to look at girly mags or watch videotapes, I never had any problems or sense of dissatisfaction with my real life carnal experiences at all. I had a flash of insight.
Teh Pr0n was insidious. Fuckin’ evil.
Soon thereafter I quit cold turkey. I cancelled my subscription and stopped visiting the then just emerging free sites. Within a week or so, my attitude and satisfaction with marital relations improved dramatically.
It’s been years since I deliberately consumed teh pr0n on teh interwebz. Yet when I discovered YourBrainOnPorn.com, I was utterly fascinated. It brought back vivid memories of my feelings, emotions and attitudes about sex and how the early days of teh pr0n had begun to affect me mentally.
But reading the archives of that site and some of the forum entries also made me feel like an old man.
I never truly considered the idea that my Gen X experience with the advent of Pr0n on teh Interwebz was only the beginning stages of some very real dysfunctions it can apparently inflict. I vastly underestimated the depths of the problems it could cause for all those who’ve grown up with it as a way of life. Apparently I quit using just as it exploded into the mainstream.
Now I understand why Mr. Bardamu had felt the need to publicly swear off masturbation and eventually write an e-book about the topic.
Apparently teh Pr0n turns masturbation from an occasionally necessary release for all men youngdumbandfullofcum that involves an exercise of the imagination…to the compulsive and nearly uncontrollable habit of fapping in front of a computer monitor multiple times per day.
Apparently old school smut and it’s medium of glossy photo mags and clunky VHS tapes that interspersed five or six sex scenes with fictional plots and cheesy dialog doesn’t literally change your brain the way the instant access to an endless variety of sex acts and a near infinite variation of participants are on teh interwebz, does.
It seems the old porno mags and VHS tapes were the equivalent to doing a line of coke or smoking a joint…whereas today’s norm of opening up multiple windows of 30 second clips and viewing them in rapid succession while furiously fapping is the equivalent to smoking crack laced with PCP.
There’s a kicker though. The capacity of our teen to wire up new sexual associations mushrooms around 11 or 12 when billions of new neural connections (synapses) create endless possibilities. However, by adulthood his brain must prune his neural circuitry to leave him with a manageable assortment of choices. By his twenties, he may not exactly be stuck with the sexual proclivities he falls into during adolescence, but they can be like deep ruts in his brain—not easy to ignore or reconfigure.
Sexual-cue exposure matters more during adolescence than at any other time in life. Now, add to this incendiary reality the lighter fluid of today’s off-the-wall erotica available at the tap of a finger. Is it any surprise that some teens wire semi-permanently to constant cyber novelty instead of potential mates? Or wire their sexual responsiveness to things that are unrelated to their sexual orientation? Or manage to desensitize their brains—and spiral into porn addiction?
Incidentally, are you a guy remembering your own adolescence—and how you could never climax enough during those years? Perhaps you’re supposing that Internet porn would have been a splendid innovation. If so, read these two articles: Porn, Novelty and the Coolidge Effect and Porn Then and Now: Welcome to Brain Training. Porn, its content, the way it’s delivered, and its potential effects on the brain have changed radically. For today’s users, more orgasm can lead to less satisfaction.
I think I now understand David Alexander a little bit better.
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