Is it the porn that's bad or is it the masturbation and ejaculation itself that is harmful?

Porn is the worst.
Masturbation is also bad but not as bad as porn.

I recommend you quit both porn and masturbation.

 

Agreed on the above.

You could watch "your brain on porn" on YouTube to get a deeper understanding. In short, it goes as follows:

You are, as a human, hardwired to reproduce. The more you do that, and with the more partners, the beter. As such, your brain releases dopamine (which is addictive) whenever you encounter a new member of the oppositie sex (or same of you are homosexual) that presents themselves in a sexually open manner. So for instance, encountering multiple naked wonen sequentially continually releases absurd high levels of dopamine. Unlike our ancestors, we are able to gain access to such imagery by way of internet porn, which is something we were never designer to handle. This is the biggest problem.

Of course, continually achieving a high number of orgasms has a similar effect. Through masturbating, you are providing yourself with higher-than-usual levels of dopamine.

As with any addiction, it is easy to de-sentisize yourself, promoting you to go after more and more of the substance matter. Whether it is porn or orgasms, the general principles are still in place.

I'm jumping to conclusions here, but the reasoning is sound. If youre interested, watch the video i recommended. Good luck!

 

I can offer some unique insight here since I've been doing NoFap for a while now and have tried all of the following out:

- Porn with no masturbation or orgasm.
- Porn with masturbation but no orgasm
- Porn with masturbation AND orgasm, the unholy trinity PMO, prior to NoFap.

- Masturbation with no porn or orgasm.
- Masturbation with orgasm but no porn.

So I can tell you which have the most negatives and which leave you feeling best.

The order from worst to best might surprise you.

So the WORST is not P + M + O, but actually P + M. Edging to porn is actually worse than just finishing.
Then next worst is P + M + O.
Then P with no MO.

Then M without O (i.e. edging without porn).
Then finally MO, to fantasy rather than porn, is the lesser evil out of all of those.

Porn, masturbation, and orgasm all have negatives. Orgasm's negatives are balanced out by many positives when in the context of sex, otherwise this site would be called NoSex and be about abstinence rather than NoFap. Masturbation has a lot of negatives. Edging has even more negatives than masturbating to orgasm. Porn has the most negatives out of them all by a country mile.