2022-10-31
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Gef talks about addictions, porn among them.

gopher://sdf.org/0/users/gef/phlog/addiction

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It is an interesting theme. I am not sure why I haven't talked
about it here. Maybe it's a bit triggering for me. I feel like
a lot of the topics I keep circling around are somehow to do with
porn, actually. Or at least porn could be an analogy for many
of the usual topics. I also feel that gopherspace is possibly one
of few spaces online where one could talk about porn seriously,
since the clickbait potential is not there.

Am I addicted to porn? I think at this point I would say no.
Have I been? Sure, I think so. I have used it with enough
frequency that if it was a substance, I would have had serious
health issues.

I don't feel particularly sexual lately. Am I getting old? It's
probably more about my life situation and my mental sanity 
challenges. When I use porn these days, it is more about wanting
to disconnect from the reality for a moment. Actually, I think
I would be better off getting seriously into psychedelics. They
are closer to what I am looking for.

When I limited my visual input from my media diet, I did this with
porn too. I have pretty much completely removed any visual
browsing that isn't extremely specific. This leaves me with very
limited selection when it comes to porn. Audio hypnodom is my
usual fix.

As Gef points out, porn is a reflection of how distorted the
culture is. I feel it's very likely that porn is not a reflection
of my sexuality at all. It just doesn't seem to connect. Sex is 
not a thing that you can just ingest like that.

When it comes to sex that is floating around in the digital
hivemind, I mostly find it repulsive in it's crude form. Like
the concept of Tinder, for example. There are these people lined
up and you just swipe and swipe? Uh. And you want to line yourself
up there too? Talk about demeaning. Or the way sex is used for
marketing tv shows: There is the one sex scene that doesn't have
anything to do with the show's theme, it's there only so they can
make a more marketable teaser of the first season. I would like
the sort of media landscape where things are either done properly
or not done at all. So, if you have a series about sex, have real
sex in it. And if it is not about sex, then film it like it's
the 1950s.

There's also something about the digitalization of sexual
orientation. It seems to me that there is a tension between how
the definitions of sexual styles are getting more diverse and
the real world connections that these definitions will allow are
getting narrower. In the digital space it makes sense to put
yourself in a niche, while in real life it is rather superfluous,
and I would think counterproductive as well. Niche is more about
what is left out than what is let in. Like, if you are a furry
who's into strangling, maybe there is a nice community for you
online, but offline? You better live in a big city.

I feel sort of exasperated at what dating might mean these days.
Mostly I just don't think about it. If I was to explore some of
these themes, I think I should somehow work on embodying myself
better. I am not very kinetic by nature. I also have some deep
knots about physical self-expression. I feel some pull towards
some trance-like experience having to do with sex. I think I
would like to have some kind of boundary push, where sex is not
as narrowly defined as it usually is. I like nudism, which feels
like on that boundary, but the problem in my country is that the
few nude beaches always draw in masturbating old men to the nearby
bushes. It sort of dampens the mood. Like Gef was saying, the
definition of sexual is pushed into it's own basket, and it pulls
in all the not-as-overtly-sexual in with it.

Maybe I am just a bad case for this topic. There are plenty of
people who seem to get something out of the plasticky sexuality
offered by the approved channels. I feel like an outsider.
Nothing new, of course. I feel like an outsider at so many things,
it's probably all related.

All in all, I don't find it surprising that people in the West
are having less sex nowadays. It seems that sex as it occupies
the hivemind and sex as a natural phenomenon are two different
things, and one is getting in the way of the other.

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