Do you watch porn?

[Tscott]

Just curious for all you straight guys watching porn, do you care or pay attention at all to what the guys look like?  If so, do you prefer "better" looking men or more average type, or even fat/ugly?  Or are they all just a distraction.  Just idle curiosity.

The more nondescript the better.  Ugly guys, or guys who look like thugs or assholes can ruin a scene.  Also any hardware on the junk, or odd discolorations can ruin it too.  The more unremarkable the guy is, the more I'm able to keep the fantasy going that I could be there instead of him.

And to answer the original question... er... no... I don't watch porn.... 

[Crux]

I used to. Been reading a lot about brain chemistry and plasticity lately. There's been a lot if data on the effects of porn in recent years. I quit cold turkey.

Care to elaborate? Coles notes is fine.

x2. Inquiring (and dirty) minds wants to know!

Short version, and it's late and I got 1 hour of sleep last night and spent 13 hours in the car so accuracy might suffer.

But essentially, it can be as addictive as drugs for many people. The hormone release creates very, very strong neural pathways in the brain that are self-rewarding to reinforce. It's a vicious cycle that ends very poorly for people, frequently without them ever realizing.

Hmm.  So basically it feels good.  I need to stop eating ice cream, drink beer, exercise, and take naps.  All of those do the same thing...they make me feel good and are self rewarding.

No, that's not it at all. There are detectable differences in brain scans between people who watch lots of porn and those who don't. It is a lot more significant than the simple pleasure of just eating a food you like.

[Captain Caveman]

Chatting with strangers on gaming forums is my false intimacy of choice. 

[Zekester]

Ewww

maybe I should put a helmet on

[hispanicgamer]

Ewww

maybe I should put a helmet on

Is it purple? 

[Crux]

Just wanted to elaborate at least a little now that I have a moment. Sorry for brevity of replies earlier - am in the middle of a 1700 mile road trip!

So in the last 20 years, neurologists have discovered indisputably that the human brain is actually plastic - the long-held belief that our brain operates like some sort of a machine where each part does a specific thing and only that specific thing is wrong. Different parts of your brain can learn to handle different tasks - for example if you were to go blind today, the visual processing portion of your brain wouldn't just stop working. Instead it would be tasked over to processing other senses - this is why people who are lacking a sense have heightened other senses - they have greatly increased processing of those senses due to brain plasticity.

This is important because one of the things that has come out of all of the research is this concept that 'neurons that fire together, wire together'. Ie, when you combine activities or stimuli, you can create physical links in your brain structure. For example they took monkeys, sewed their fingers together for a period of time so they could only move both fingers at once. They when they separated the fingers again and mapped the monkey's brain, they found that the brain map for the fingers had fused together into a single brain map, and the monkey was incapable of moving the two fingers independently - it could only move them together as though they were still sewn together.

This is relevant for porn and masturbation, because researchers have now found many links between porn and sexual disfunction amongst men. There are a handful of people on this board who have difficulty achieving orgasm during normal sex with a partner. Not because there's anything physically wrong with them, but because through extensive watching of pornography combined with masturbation, they've remapped their brains to link the two. And unlinking them is difficult.

It's really fascinating stuff - came across it as part of general reading on brain plasticity. "The Brain That Changes Itself" is a book I'd highly recommend to anyone who is remotely interested. Incredible things they are learning about the human brain in the last few years, and the impact this has on people as they go through life.

And yes, I know. TLDR.

[Huw the Poo]

I like boobies.

[Arclight]

Never really got into it. Now that I'm 56 even sex itself isn't the draw it use to be. I've always felt it was over rated even when riding a bus would produce Mr. Woody.

[Gratch]

It's really fascinating stuff - came across it as part of general reading on brain plasticity. "The Brain That Changes Itself" is a book I'd highly recommend to anyone who is remotely interested. Incredible things they are learning about the human brain in the last few years, and the impact this has on people as they go through life.

Weird.  I'd never heard of this book before, and now this is the second time it's been recommended in a week (once by a client, and now here).  Guess that means I should read it. 

[The Grue]

It's really fascinating stuff - came across it as part of general reading on brain plasticity. "The Brain That Changes Itself" is a book I'd highly recommend to anyone who is remotely interested. Incredible things they are learning about the human brain in the last few years, and the impact this has on people as they go through life.

Weird.  I'd never heard of this book before, and now this is the second time it's been recommended in a week (once by a client, and now here).  Guess that means I should read it. 

[The Grue]

Oh, and appropriate for this thread:

[CeeKay]

somewhat related did you know porn could be used for medicinal purposes?



I'm not kidding  

[Zinfan]

Never liked porn....always felt it was gay because most the shots are of the guys junk.

This reminds me of a thread topic I was going to start but never did.  Just curious for all you straight guys watching porn, do you care or pay attention at all to what the guys look like?  If so, do you prefer "better" looking men or more average type, or even fat/ugly?  Or are they all just a distraction.  Just idle curiosity.

Tat'ed up or steroid'ed up guys are a distraction and I don't like the bad kind of threesomes either.  I like scenes that tell a story and have foreplay and slow sultry undressing going on, I hate when you see the girl in a outfit and next thing is her naked and being pounded by some dude, no finesse or art to those and I don't like extreme closeup's of the action either.

[corruptrelic]

I don't really care for "regular" porn, but love women's erotic wrestling.. there's a company that does purely women sexual wrestling (100% competitive with sometimes kissing and fingering during the match) with the loser getting the strap-on treatment.