Something I wonder about is ... if people can commonly imagine in a "minds eye" [0], why would they use porn?
My ex-wife and I got along fine when we first met. But it wasn't a match made in heaven. We didn't kick boots [1] very often after getting legally hitched. In the dry months I went back to using the internet porn, which i despised/despise, but horny is horny. I would have rather have an imagination [3] or a partner, than 2-dimensional pixels on a screen.
Reddit has vastly more subreddits of pictures of naked women than of naked men. Mostly this is a scarcity thing: penises are a dime a dozen; $$$ is enough to motivate some women to show skin for men who they otherwise have no interest in.
Many young women have vast amounts of interest from men. One of my female friends, who isn't particularly attached to her partners, has a string of ex-boyfriends who obsess over her. She's said something about her fitting the 'wild-woman' archetype, whatever that means.
When women get pregnant they have a long-term project on their hands, so evolution has decided that women get to decide who to father their likely children. (not all human societies respect womens' desires -- arranged marriages, etc. most societies don't help girls appreciate that boys' attraction is entirely different). Feudal societies disposed of excess men with conscription and pointless wars.
Women whose best assets don't show up on the pixels sometimes have to put more effort into fishing for males than those with looks, but they still find partners. A friend of mine, who did not reciprocate my attraction for her, hooked me up with her not-particularly-choosy friend. I did not find the friend particularly attractive, but it was complicated at the time. It was traumatic, and completely unsatisfying.
Men who have money get more attention from women who market their looks. But money is not required for female attention. Some men have figured out how to be smooth, and develop a magnetism for female attention.
Other men have no idea what it is that makes them so annoying to the other gender. Some of these men have latched on to the incel label [2], which seems to feed on itself in a downward spiral.
I suspect many of the redditors who build the subreddits featured in this "tree of reddit sex life" would much rather have partners, than to spend their free hours cultivating collections of pixelated women.
I noted a comment here recently -- one of you fellas told about secretly fantasizing about a coworker (iirc), and that the coworker[s] wouldn't know about the fella's inner fantasies about her/them.
If only 1/50 is an aphantasiac, that's still millions of men who don't fantasize. It's easy for them to turn to the pixelated women to get themselves off when they get horny. But I know men who have a fully-functional imagination, who use porn anyways.
My question for the gallery: imagination is better than porn, is it not? Why do some men put so much effort into their collection of pixelated women? Perhaps it's a compulsion, not so different from heroin?
> I suspect many of the redditors who build the subreddits featured in this "tree of reddit sex life" would much rather have partners, than to spend their free hours cultivating collections of pixelated women.
You're projecting your own reasons for turning to porn onto others. Many people with partners still enjoy porn.
> imagination is better than porn, is it not?
Why limit yourself when you can have both? Imagination works better when it has more to source from.
Not that there can't be other reasons for avoiding porn, of course.
> Why do some men put so much effort into their collection of pixelated women? Perhaps it's a compulsion, not so different from heroin?
People put (often immense) effort into collecting all kinds of stuff that they are pleased to see, not sure what makes this different or comparable to heroin addiction.
I don't need visualization to fantasize. I guess what's happening in in mind is just different from how the rest of the people do see/feel/perceive it.
The interesting thing though, is that I never fantasize about real people, but I'm unsure whether or not it's related to aphansasia. If I fantasize about my girlfriend (regardless of if I have one or not in the moment), I'll focus only on the "concept" of the girlfriend.
Like in my dreams, people in my fantasies have no defined face or body. They're just bodies that I identifies as concepts (random person, colleague of type X, brother/sister, girlfriend, cute girl at the bar, etc.)
Since I use those concepts without any actual "implementation" (pardon the programming metaphor), and since I can only focus on the emotions or sentiments I have from the (fantasized or not) relations I have with those conceptual human beings, I have no use to associate them to real people.
> Perhaps it's a compulsion, not so different from heroin?
You're not far off as it is often referenced much like any addition. It's also stated that men are more visual so seeing might what helps them use their imaginations.
I agree that the mind has the biggest part in sexuality and imagination has a bigger role.
> It's also stated that men are more visual so seeing might what helps them use their imaginations.
As further evidence of this, look at the fanfiction community, a community with a large focus on literary depiction of romance and sex that's dominated by women (at least on the author side, where stats are easy to get).
My ex-wife and I got along fine when we first met. But it wasn't a match made in heaven. We didn't kick boots [1] very often after getting legally hitched. In the dry months I went back to using the internet porn, which i despised/despise, but horny is horny. I would have rather have an imagination [3] or a partner, than 2-dimensional pixels on a screen.
Reddit has vastly more subreddits of pictures of naked women than of naked men. Mostly this is a scarcity thing: penises are a dime a dozen; $$$ is enough to motivate some women to show skin for men who they otherwise have no interest in.
Many young women have vast amounts of interest from men. One of my female friends, who isn't particularly attached to her partners, has a string of ex-boyfriends who obsess over her. She's said something about her fitting the 'wild-woman' archetype, whatever that means.
When women get pregnant they have a long-term project on their hands, so evolution has decided that women get to decide who to father their likely children. (not all human societies respect womens' desires -- arranged marriages, etc. most societies don't help girls appreciate that boys' attraction is entirely different). Feudal societies disposed of excess men with conscription and pointless wars.
Women whose best assets don't show up on the pixels sometimes have to put more effort into fishing for males than those with looks, but they still find partners. A friend of mine, who did not reciprocate my attraction for her, hooked me up with her not-particularly-choosy friend. I did not find the friend particularly attractive, but it was complicated at the time. It was traumatic, and completely unsatisfying.
Men who have money get more attention from women who market their looks. But money is not required for female attention. Some men have figured out how to be smooth, and develop a magnetism for female attention.
Other men have no idea what it is that makes them so annoying to the other gender. Some of these men have latched on to the incel label [2], which seems to feed on itself in a downward spiral.
I suspect many of the redditors who build the subreddits featured in this "tree of reddit sex life" would much rather have partners, than to spend their free hours cultivating collections of pixelated women.
I noted a comment here recently -- one of you fellas told about secretly fantasizing about a coworker (iirc), and that the coworker[s] wouldn't know about the fella's inner fantasies about her/them.
If only 1/50 is an aphantasiac, that's still millions of men who don't fantasize. It's easy for them to turn to the pixelated women to get themselves off when they get horny. But I know men who have a fully-functional imagination, who use porn anyways.
My question for the gallery: imagination is better than porn, is it not? Why do some men put so much effort into their collection of pixelated women? Perhaps it's a compulsion, not so different from heroin?
[0] submission from 2 days ago about aphantasia: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19618927
[1] kick boots -- https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=kickin%27%20...
[2] a woman coined the term 'involuntarily celebate', then she figured herself out and was no longer celibate. The term was taken over by lonely men. https://www.elle.com/culture/news/a34512/woman-who-started-i...
[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15176547