I recently encountered a video titled It's visible that you watch p*rn, and I had some thoughts after watching it. The woman in the video is not wrong, but I think she is mixing a bunch of (at least potentially) related things, some of which were mentioned in other comments there, but I wanted to try to untangle them still.
Instinctual
It is definitive that our instincts are being abused.
To be fair that's true for women's instincts as well, but since historically it's more men that are providers, they are being abused more. No offense to adult models, but myriad of platforms for them do exactly that. Thousands of porn sites - do that. AI does that.
I used to visit a certain site with drawn art, and it had a lot of explicit imagery there to begin with, but at some point this year 99% of all content there became AI slop. Explicit AI slop. Sometimes very disturbing or, at least, tasteless. Even when checking popularity, it was outnumbering real artists with truly beautiful works (explicit or not). Because the AI slop provided the "reality" closest to the users' fantasies, which human artists did not for some reason or not.
This is all for the sake of milking us, and not in a sexy way. Forcing out time, views, and in the end - money.
Quick hit
The "skip 10 seconds, watch another 10 seconds" kind of thing is result of 2 factors.
First one is a more universal one: quality. Most of the content you see right now is trash. Utter trash. Even when it's not AI. Not just because it's short (although that often is also a problem), but because it is unimaginative, non-artistic, outright boring. At the same time it's "too clean". Not in a sense that everyone used to be in mud "back in the day", and now not.
This is similar to issue with movies, that some critics and reviewers bring up: the goal is to make a perfect frame, and be as high-fidelity as possible. And, hey, I am a sucker for 4K as much as the next guy, but when things are filmed "too perfect", I just... Notice that, and it feels unreal. It may still be visually pleasing, but it does not please the mind.
To better understand what I mean, check some reviews of "The Batman" from 2022 on YouTube (or read my review, although this aspect is not the focus there). They mention that what made it feel "more real" is the fact that frames often did not capture the scene perfectly, there was some obstruction, and the darkness of the natural lighting added to that. But if you take a more generic super hero movie, everything is shiny and perfect, even in destruction scenes. Similar thing is happening with characters, where there are too perfect or, at least, too "one-sided", not complex.
Modern adult content is kind of like that. Not that porn was ever "high art" or anything, but it's just worse.
Addiction
Second factor is actual addiction.
Not all men have it, of course, but from what I hear (and do not quote me on this, I am not a proper researcher of this) the number of men with porn addiction grows and grows. Men with such addiction will be scrolling through heaps of content. And since there are tons of it, and a lot of it is of poor quality, unlike stuff from late 80s and 90s - they will be skipping from one thing to another.
TikToks and Instagrams also enforce short-format content, which spread to adult sites, as well, and that further worsens the issue. This is both availability and fear of missing out at play here. "I want to see it all, but there is so much of it, and I do not have much time, and I am already about to burst, what do I do?". Let alone that men have refraction period, which further limits their time. Thus skipping, watching at higher speed or even watching multiple things at one time are probably becoming a thing there same as in mainstream media. Again, do not quote me on that, this probably warrants a proper research.
Gotta catch 'em all
But it's not just addiction, which is a problem in and of itself. It is also factors that push men towards this addiction. In essence it's all stress, or rather "stressors", and men are collecting all of them at an ever-increasing rate. Porn allows to get just a little bit of dopamine to help battle against it with little to no effort.
There are lots of sources of the stress: people are losing jobs, cost of living is getting higher and higher, wars, verbal and physical abuse from others, unresolved childhood trauma, loneliness... Yes, to be fair all of them a gender-agnostic, but men are usually considered problem solvers, so it is expected of them, that they will just resolve them willy-nilly or, at least, do not complain (which is another can of worms, really).
These expectations could even warrant being a separate point in the list. The video, that prompted this, is kind of the source of it as well, at least the "it's the only time you feel a man" part of it. At the least, that's a shallow and generalizing take. But if you combine it with shaming for consuming adult content (even if moderately, not talking about addiction at this point), and then also with literal flocks of women looking for men who will only provide for those women, as if they are walking wallets (or ideally pay-pigs, as they are called), and other flocks that essentially tell men to not come up to them and even think of suggesting a coffee, let alone anything else...
It just affects men in a very negative way, causing them to give up, because in combination with everything else they just do not see it worth the effort. Not all men, and of course, this is not to say that all women are like that (with some women even advocating for men), but as usual, at least perception of the numbers of such men and such women increasing is spreading. Whether it is factually true - I do not know, this may warrant another actual research.
No solution
The main point is that it's never been quite so easy to just click all of these away by limiting yourself to porn. The video is not wrong. There is a problem, and it's getting worse over time, but at the same time it's not just one thing, and even if we treat it as one thing, then it is more of a symptom. "Stop watching porn" will solve it just as good as "just smile" will solve depression. But what will?
No idea.
Obvious things like "be kinder to others" and "dismantle all corporations" probably won't ever happen. Even if they do, will that really solve everything? Maybe banning certain types of content or, in a more general sense, "behaviors" could help, so that people's weaknesses are not abused? But with the current state of the world that would imply dismantling corporations, and they would not allow that either way. Something needs to change, probably the way money is viewed.
View money as a resource, as a tool, that needs to be used, and not just accumulated. Let it expire as food, perhaps, and if you do not use it in time - distribute it to less fortunate people? Some would call this "communism", but it's "socialism", and something that in the long term is good, because the resource of "strong working people" increases. Not like this is directly related to porn, too, so... Dunno... Share your ideas, if you have any.
