Pornography Is Boring

I am deeply convinced that the internet will be the cause of a huge uptick in violence, and porn is fighting for the #1 reason, together with social media.

Rare stuff monopolizes internet content, it follows Power's law. But that stuff being rare means that although everybody can see it and be aware of its existence, not everybody can have it, because wealth and luck also follows power's law.

This causes anxiety, frustration, FOMO, depression...eventually every guy will become convinced that they deserve a pornstar in their bed and a private jet and so they'd try to get those things or die trying.

The internet completely wiped away the process of discovery which starts in each person locality and then grows more and more the further they can travel.

Now you can immediately see the hottest girls or the fastest cars or the largest yachts.

For sure, but that doesn't mean you can actually have those things.

From a practical standpoint it's much better not to know.

Internet porn was also a major driver of secure online payment systems and consumer pressure for higher bandwidth.

Socially, it’s a bit weirder than its precursors as there’s a lot more free stimulation available than pre-internet.

I think the societal risk is less from internet porn and more from the larger fraction of purely on-line interaction, i.e not as much IRL sex and social interactions to keep the porn and reality separated. But people have been railing against porn with varying definitions for centuries. I don’t think the violent gang rape culture in India has anything to do with net porn, guys will be assholes anyway throughout history.

Porn is just another way to deal with anxiety, just like most other things in a consumer society that devalues humans and views them as commodities. The post touches on some of this but doesn't provide any useful guidance on how to develop resilience against the anxiety that leads to excess consumption. It's entirely possible to avoid porn if one is willing to address the root causes of their anxiety. Vipassana meditation is a good starting point.