How Pornography Distorts Intimate Relationships - Bret Weinstein Released yesterday (1/9/24) and already has 108K views.
Interesting, makes sense. So, is chastity part of the solution? The change required to move forward, or, no because so much of it is tied to fantasy/videos out there, it doesn't take hold?
Elon Musk may be right when he states: The greatest threat to humanity is population decline. There's evidence that in the most developed nations birth rates have seen declines. As more developing nations roll out better internet in years to come, they might experience similar reductions. Add to that the explosion of other sociatal shifts and roll out of sex robots in the near future, it's not only porn that takes its toll.
you're the first person i've ever seen to attribute falling birth rates to better internet connections - this started happening long before the internet.
Let's be completely real here. Porn is more affordable than kids. Economic woes have always lead to a decline in birthrates. The internet is probably playing a much smaller factor than most of us being broke.
On the other hand, economic success (and accompanying improvements in education) is linked to falling birth rates.
I 100% agree with the premise of the video, and I agree with Brett that porn (and IMO other sources of instant gratification such as computer games, the internet as entertainment, and TV) is leading to a dumbing down of society and will eventually destroy it. "Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times."- G. Michael Hopf. I think western society is in a state of weak men creating hard times. I also think that porn is a driving factor for the whole gender question that has exploded over the last 20 years.
There's more wealth in the world now than ever before. Airline travel to hit all time highs in 2024. I call hogwash to your claim. If you're broke it's you,...not everyone here is broke.
I'm thinking of it in a "selective pressure" aspect as well. Given a certain environment (call it Good Times environment), risk is low, safety is high, resources are in abundance, there is low selective pressure so there is less need for punctuated "strong" masculinity or even consider strong masculine, feminine polarity. Lines will get blurred because there is no selective pressure to force things to be "strong" to overcome risks, lack of resources, etc. The population trend will be towards becoming soft/ambiguous as a result. Likely the pendulum will swing back, as you're saying @JaySaysYes and "weak" men (and women) will need to rise to the challenges presented, each from their own (masculine/feminine) perspective. The current wide swing that includes aspects of the feminist movement, porn/media/sugary foods/etc is creating the 'hard times' that will need to "correct" at some point. I like the quote!
I agree. The old adage of "too much of a good thing is bad for you" is, in my opinion, very true. The internet as enertainment, including games and porn but also the endless stream of propaganda presented as news (which is now just entertainment), creates a reality distortion field that affects every aspect of life. I could rant on about it.
You probably don't understand that almost all of that wealth is in the hands of about 1-ish% of people. And you also probably don't understand that most of that air travel is 1) CREDIT CARDS (credit debt is at an all-time high) and 2) boomers being in retirement. And you also also probably missed the headlines where people are electing to hold off having kids specifically because of the state of the economy and the world. AND and also also you probably aren't going to like that I'm not going to argue. Have fun!
I didn't realize how much porn I watched until I quit watching it because I'm caged so what's the point to me. Don't believe it ever qualified as an addiction or problem but not watching it and jerking off now. Really surprises me how often I was looking back.
The ever-improving optimization of consumable material is something our society's economic model will inevitably always produce. This has accelerated in the internet age, as we use computers to optimize things further, from maximizing eye-focus on imagery (porn, marketing, etc), to minimizing parcel delivery times. In the near future, nearly all art forms will be at least partially AI-generated. Music will have beats and hooks that are AI-generated based on target demographic inputs (if not entirely AI-generated). Advertisement artwork will be AI-generated for sure. The optimization advancements we've seen will be taken to a previously unimaginable degree with AI. And yes, porn will be impacted in the same way. Many young people would say the "problems" that video identifies are exactly what they WANT (which is probably the source of why it could become a problem). Young men see the ability to satisfy sexual desires via porn or quick tinder hookups as an empowerment. The video mentions the historical great accomplishments of men being a result of sexual drive.. young men now would say they love the freedom of no longer needing to do those things... now they can stay in their room and do whatever dopamine-delivering activity they want. OnlyFans models would also say they've become empowered... they can generate an income without being a wage slave, forced to wake up unnaturally, commute stressfully, or be yelled at and belittled by bosses. Now they are their own boss. So the very people this video describes as "sufferers" are willfully and happily engaging in these acts. Who is to say what is good/bad with that? As for birth rates and fertility, there are MANY factors at play, and it definitely concerns me. The biggest one is that sperm rates have dropped by more than 50% in the last 100 years! That is astonishing and extremely disturbing. Current theory is that it is due to the use of plastics in society (which have estrogenic effects). I'm shocked this isn't currently a crisis-level issue, on par with climate change. I anticipate it will become such an issue in the next hundred years. Socio-economic, class, and generational wealth issues are the other biggest factor for birth rates. Yes, it has long been recorded that as a nation becomes more developed (industrial and then tech/info based economies), birth rate declines. You no longer need to birth 8 kids so that 6 survive to work the field to keep everyone alive. This has been happening since at least the 70s. But now we are seeing a more extreme generational wealth gap than ever, with the youngest generation having an average income that has never been more disconnected with cost of living. About 10 years ago, average age of permanent move-out from parents home in Canada had risen to 27! I'm not sure what it is now, but you can be certain it is much higher. And it is pretty unlikely couples will connect and have children while still living with their own parents. This creates a "squeezing" effect, between a minimum age to START trying for kids, and the biological maximim age where fertility becomes a medical challenge, and then is simly no longer possible. So if we as a society want to increase the frequency of traditional marriage-pairings and offspring, that economic issue is way more important to solve than the porn thing. Now, most young people have given up entirely on things like home-ownership because it is simply not feasible. For the last 80 years, most of the western world tended to pursue "the American dream"... the white picket fence, 1 or 2 cars, and 2.3 children. That image is so far removed from reality now, young people have had to start finding new personal life goals. They are more interested in travel, education, personal fulfillment, experiences, entertainment, etc. With all this in mind, porn (and onlyfans, tinder,etc) becomes a small and helpful component to pursue this new model of life goals. Is it causing spiritual decay and suffering in young people? I don't know. Maybe we should talk to them and find out what they think?
It won't. The low hanging fruit, the kind that the middle classes hang on their walls above their LCD fire will remain mass produced garbage masquerading as art and may well be generated by a "prompt engineer" but art itself comes form a place that cannot be automated or mass produced. The only people that think it can be are those that do not create art. No. The top 1% generate 90% of the revenue, while the remaining 99% simply scrape by while holding down other jobs, while they slowly become completely disillusioned by the lies they have been sold. Just like other addicts, needle to the vein. Here we can agree. Who indeed? Perhaps this is simply natures way of restoring balance, and ensuring these people simply do not reproduce. Ah, why are you so certain when you don't know? Are you a politician? In two paragraphs you went from knowing about young people to not knowing. Which is it?
I think you need to look at the mediums that carry the largest volume of artistic output. The most popular music, literally "pop", has used formulaic production practices for decades. This refinement has only increased, and AI is already taking it to new levels. Another massive area of artistic production is marketing, which has long had strong sway towards tool-based automation. I'm intimately familiar with the marketing industry, mainly creative area, and in the past 20-30 years the landscape has already moved significantly in this direction. My primary personal artistic area is in game development, which is also going to have ever increasing levels of AI assisted asset creation. I've been using procedurally-generated assets for over 10 years. Initially it was because I was only 1 man and it would be impossible to produce all game assets by hand. But since then, the big AAA studios started using procedural asset generation more and more as well. That isn't decreasing! If something can be done cheaper and easier, it always will be unless there is a strong enough counter-force. So as AI art generation increases, what is the counter-force to prevent this cheaper, faster, more targetable output from taking over? If you think of "art" as a picture you hang on a wall, then we are having 2 different conversations. Sure, there will be fine-art that will always be produced by raw human creative talent (though given a few decades and maybe this will also change.. I hope not), but that is a tiny, almost insignificant portion of our society's overall artistic output. For the sake of my argument, think economic art, not cultural. Their level of success is irrelavent to my point. Their behaviour, intentions, and plans are what matters. If it is so negative, then they stop doing it and problem solved. But they haven't stopped, have they? Eventually the specifics will shift, as they always do, but the core of the trend will continue until something more significant changes. JFC, why are you so nitpicky? I don't have a current exact stat, but I don't need a PhD and cited references on a subject to do simple math. If, in 2006, the number is 27, and then in 2011, 2016, 2021, the "trend is increasing", and one can see that the expert-identified conditions causing it have only gotten worse, one can reliably deduce that the number is now something more than 27! You realize evaluation, synthesization, and extrapolation, based on evidence, that leads to speculated conclusions is acceptable in essays, right? I'm not going to spend a fucking week researching and citing sources for an internet kink forum. I think you might want to step back and consider the environment you're trying to police. I know what is HAPPENING at a demographic trend level, but I haven't surveyed or spoken with enough young people yet to have a sufficiently solid picture of what they THINK about it. If you want to know what I have found, so far, it is that young people seem to be dissolutioned to the point where they aren't caring much anymore. Younger millenials and older Gen Z had or have some hope, such that they want to fix things, but I'm seeing some younger Gen Z have stopped caring entirely. As I said, this is only based on a small number I've talked to, so I wouldn't normally present this, but apparently you need to know everything about the source of my opinions. Don't worry, JaySaysYes, I'll make sure to record and document all my future conversations and readings so that anything I post passes your required threshold for internet forum opinions. Or... might that perhaps still not matter if it differed from your opinion?
Don't get so bent out of shape when you are questioned, it's an ugly trait. You're not under attack unless you think you are. Right, you are talking about mass produced garbage and calling it art. Got it. Ultimately we'll see LLMs producing content that other algorithms comment on, like, repost and rehash. No humans needed...but maybe there will be prompt engineers still vying for likes on the internet unaware that their audience is their own algorithm which is canibalistically consuming it's own output. Meanwhile, the real people will finger paint, dance, sing, write poems, and fuck.
If you liked what Bret had to say in the video in the OP then I highly recommend the book A Hunter-Gatherer’s Guide to the 21st Century, written by Heather Heying and Bret (they are married). It's a fascinating perspective on why were are unprepared for modern life (devices, porn, work, etc.) and some advice on how to deal with some of the problems. I highly recommend it.