The Ultimate "Reasons Porn Is Bad For You" Thread

Was just thinking about this and thought it might be handy to have a single thread that bullet-points all the reasons porn is bad for you. If you're feeling tempted to PMO and need some encouragement to move away from it, consider the following:

• it's an empty activity. Looking at pornographic pictures doesn't do anything to get you closer to experiencing the things you're looking at or fantasizing about. In fact, it's just a waste of time that pulls you away from the more productive behaviors that would make you more attractive to women.
• Porn presents a false reality and warps our view of beauty. Porn models are surgically enhanced, have professional hair and makeup staff, flattering camera angles, professional lighting, and are often acting for the camera--in other words, what they're showing isn't real, and comparing your own sex life to what you see in porn will almost always leave you feeling inferior.
• The demand for porn often lures women into sex work with promises of easy money. As a viewer, you're contributing to that demand.
  
• Some of the money in porn goes to organized crime groups involved in human sex trafficking.
  
• Porn is a super-normal stimulus that hijacks your brain chemistry and floods it with far more dopamine than you'd ever get in real-life scenarios.
  
• Over time, porn use causes dopamine receptors to close down. As a result, the simple pleasures of life won't feel as good anymore--not compared to the feeling of PMO use. It'll take the joy out of your life.
• Your energy will feel sapped. You'll feel worthless for the rest of the day.
• Because of the chaser effect, using PMO once makes it more likely that you'll use it again and again in succession (chaser effect).
• PMO is an inherently selfish activity--real sexual intimacy is meant to be shared with a partner. PMO conditions you to only focus on your own pleasure, and it treats women as if they're always eager for any sexual activity.
  
• Porn conditions a man to see women purely as sex objects, not as full human beings with their own desires, opinions, and dreams.
• Men in porn are typically far more endowed than the average man, and use viagra and other drugs to help them perform. This can lead to depression by unfair comparison--like the natural weight lifter comparing himself to the bodybuilder who's on several steroids.
• Simulated rape/gangbang porn presents an idea that non-consensual sex is somehow hot, promoting the belief that women are just meant to be tools for the sexual pleasure of men (and possibly promoting sexual assault in the real world).
  
• PMO is an exercise in instant gratification, which keeps us in a juvenile state. One of the evidences of being a mature, functional adult is being able to feel arousal without being compelled to do anything about it--or to delay immediate gratification in the interest of a bigger goal.
  
• Porn addiction is incredibly time-consuming. The hours you spend looking at porn could be used to write a book, practice a skill, build your body, start a business, or crush your grades in school.
  
• Porn use can cause erectile dysfunction and premature ejaculation.
• Porn typically leads to shame and isolation from friends and the activities you used to enjoy.
• Porn is essentially a beta activity--watch a movie or a TV show where a character is shown jerking off to porn, and every single time, that character is portrayed as a pathetic loser. You'll never see a scene where James Bond or Jason Bourne are masturbating to porn, because those guys are badasses and don't need that crap.
• Porn kills your ability to set goals and work toward rewards ... because porn itself gives rush of dopamine that feels like a reward, whenever you want it. Why would you work hard toward a goal when you can get something similar to the euphoric good feeling of success simply by PMO'ing?
• In today's technological age, we need as few reasons as possible to be staring at screens. Porn takes one of the most incredible physical experiences humans can have, and severs it from actual human contact.
  
• Men who abstain from PMO report all kinds of "superpowers" including sharper thinking, more energy, no more "brain fog", loads of social confidence, and renewed focus on achieving goals.
• While a vast majority of porn is free, porn often leads addicts to spend unnecessary money on cam shows, website accounts, prostitutes, strip clubs, etc--in addition to the money spent on excessive data plans or overages on your phone.
  
• PMO creates an addiction to novelty, which wreaks havoc on an addict's ability to focus--on tasks, on relationships, on anything.
• Porn can warp and pervert your own sexual desires, leading you down paths you never thought you'd take. Many addicts have found themselves aroused and drawn to alarming content simply because they were exposed to it in a porn search.

By no means is this list exhaustive. Feel free to add any others you can think of!