Most of that community appears to be based on woo and bad analysis of science/biology, so I imagine they'd likely dismiss this study out of hand regardless.
But also, we shouldn't forget this:
> The studies from the United States and Australia do little to answer these critical questions — but they do open a new avenue for research
This isn't a fully understood area of research yet.
I don’t need research to listen to my own body and notice that I have a lot more energy, confidence, and enthusiasm for life with nofap. The difference is night and day. I noticed this on my own before ever hearing about nofap, and so have numerous cultures and religions. The dismissive attitude you have is one I have seen a lot, and only makes sense to me if your body works differently from mine.
Is there is some slightly increased cancer risk necessary to enjoy life, so be it.
Exactly, research has its place, but sometimes people put way too much importance on it. The research that matters the most is your own personal experience and trial and error. Do it for a few months and see what it's like. That's all there is to it, and this applies to a lot of things too: a new workout regimen, a diet, cold showers, productivity hacks, biohacking, etc. Stop arguing over whether there's scientific evidence for something, and just try it yourself
Absolutely, this “scientism” attitude that elevates peer reviewed research as the only way of learning anything, and calls everything else “woo” is silly. I mostly see it among non scientists that have made science a sort of religion. As an academic PI, I see how the sausage is made and don’t have so much faith. Moreover, direct observation, personal experimentation, and hunches are how good scientists come up with the ideas for studies in the first place.
With human sexuality in particular there are so many cultural taboos that very little research has been done. Limiting your understanding of your own sexuality to peer reviewed research is just silly, you will miss millions of obvious things, and also miss the fact that people are individuals and experience and respond differently to the same things.
Except “nofap” itself uses a core misunderstanding of biology and neuroscience to justify itself to prospective new recruits to the “community”. It’s only when that is called out that your group then retreats into “science doesn’t matter”.
I just find it really weird that a kink I had was made into something mainstream. Now every time I want to talk about my favorite activities with dominant women I am going to come across as some weirdo who browses reddit.
Nofap is just secular Puritanism with its canon replaced with biotruths, poor interpretations of evolutionary biology and the ramblings of people driven insane by celibacy.
I haven't been there in a while so unless something recently changed, I don't know where you're getting this from. Care to link any such material being posted and supported by others in the community?
I don't have a desire to go through that community again. I'm basing this off of what I saw ~5 years ago and on the people in my life who were part of that community. Your experience could be different.
> Yet it would be naive to ignore that there’s significant overlap between the general ideology behind NoFap — and, to a degree, No Nut November — and that of the far right, which has increasingly coopted the principles of masturbation abstinence. Because the challenge is associated with abstaining from porn, some people associated with the movement have taken the extra step of harassing adult performers on social media, giving it an additional layer of troubling implications. “In the past [No Nut November] has always been like, ‘Oh, look at this ridiculous thing some people are participating in,'” says adult performer and director Casey Calvert. “This year, people [in the industry] are talking about, ‘Oh, actually this is connected to the far right and maybe we shouldn’t just be saying hahaha, No Nut November.'”
> Like the incel groups, online discussions of ways to stop masturbating or cease watching pornography have also been identified as groups filled with hatred towards women, homophobia, antisemitism, and threats of violence. In 2019, I appeared on The Daily Show, describing how these groups radicalize young men by teaching them to fear masturbation.
> Since that appearance, I've regularly received threats, death threats, and intimidating emails, including troubling messages from Gavin McInnes, founder of The Proud Boys. Recent research examining the discussions in these anti-porn and anti-masturbation groups has repeatedly documented that they thrive on the rejection of science and embrace extremely conservative, highly religious themes. These groups promote abstinence from pornography and masturbation as ways for men to become more masculine and successfully attract mates. As you might imagine, there is a significant overlap between the incel and these anti-porn/anti-masturbation groups.
...and oil companies were among the first to predict global warming and might have coined CO2 budgets. Who came up with something doesn't really matter for the thing's merit, especially when it lives a life of its own. People fill in nonutnovember as they want, not per whatever extremist views. I don't really see the point of sidetracking the conversation into a political corner.
The one point they have is that internet porn can be a problem for some people, but there's a difference between having to use your imagination and abstaining entirely.
When I'm in the mood of reading a bunch of smug nerds pontificating and preaching, I click on any popsci or diet-related article on HN. Never fails to entertain.
Nofap like many things has been turned into a brand, and even politicised to the point some idiots attack it saying it's far right ideology. On the other hand there are teenagers with serious porn-related issues that think nofap will turn them into superhumans. But the smug nerd on the internet doesn't stop to consider the nofap movement that's become a caricature of its former self, still is a major indicator of the emotional and physical problems porn is causing to many men and women. It's an epidemic.
Go crank all you want because a popsci article said so, but if you haven't seen how widespread and destructive porn addiction is, this must be your first day on the Internet. I already imagine the retort "well, just don't watch porn then." Because only idiots and weak-willed people get addicted.
Sorry, I'm in a cranky mood because I've struggled with porn addiction myself, I have had someone confess they suffer from it just a few hours ago, and I'm bitter how what was a porn addiction support group like nofap managed to turn itself into a joke—and they have themselves to blame, yet porn still is something people laugh about for internet karma.
Please don't post in the flamewar style to HN, please don't fulminate, and please don't post sneers at the rest of the community. If you're posting here, you're as much "HN" as anyone else is.
All of this is in the site guidelines, so if you'd please review them and stick to them in the future, we'd appreciate it.
Yeah I agree, the frustration is real. You can't really joke about "serious" addictions like heroin or binge eating like you can with porn, and it results in your concerns being taken less seriously. Sexual humor is validated everywhere and it entraps those with less self control
And one thing I haven't seen mentioned a whole lot, the release of Stable Diffusion has made my problem way, way worse. I've been magnetized to the screen for weeks on end reading up on machine learning concepts and training on dozens of datasets, just to fuel my addiction and the inner weaknesses that prop it up
I sometimes wonder if this is the future, if this kind of irresistible, infinite ultra-personalization is here to stay, and the paper writers will continue to keep their "Ethics" sections to a maximum of five sentences each buried in the back
It's not far-right, it's just religious folks. I grew up in the church, and while I didn't take it seriously, many of my friends in our religious school did. We were made to believe that masturbation was really not good for you, and neither was pornography, which might seem reasonable to some folks. However, when you step back and see humans as just some primates that learned math, well it seems kind of ridiculous to expect adolescent boys full of testosterone to not masturbate regularly, and consume pornography.
Dealing with that cognitive dissonance is extremely difficult for some, and seeking a place where not engaging in it is "cool." It's a place for the group to exist with in-group loyalty and mutual reassurance. I feel bad for the folks in nofap, but religious folks will always be with us.
whenever groups of young men engage in sexual self-repression that almost always has a political component. And pay attention to the "men" part, because nofap is almost exclusively a male phenomenon. Religious sexual repression is not, if anything the opposite. Also religious sexual repression is compliance with religious law, not necessarily an act of voluntary discipline.
"nofap" in contrast is essentially an extremely online version of Fight Club, and the political undertones are pretty obvious. It's mostly disaffected guys deciding to undertake some Yukio Mishima-esque training to combat their low self-esteem.
I'm atheist from birth. My family is atheist and I live in Europe. You'd have a hard time finding someone so far removed from religion.
Yet I believe porn is one of the worst addictions, and masturbation, even without porn, should be moderated, but these days the two things work in concert.
It's not a religious book that told me that, it's real life experience.
I understand that you may have a different perspective, but being passive-aggressive in your comments doesn't help communicate your thoughts effectively. It's better to be direct and clear in your statements so that everyone can understand your perspective.
It's also bc having a high libido/being horny all the time is still very stigmatised. As a gay man this is one of the many major differences I see between the gay & hetero communities; in the gay community we generally celebrate libido & sexual freedom.
If you Google it you will find there is. There are some people who cannot get an erection no matter what, they need to get a "bionic penis" implant.
It has nothing to do with porn consumption and is physiological.
I read somewhere some people have "performance anxiety" after watching a lot of porn and lose their boner before penetration, but that's completely different to "never getting a boner".
I only ever heard cult used in the sense of an organised group that is lead to believe harmful and untrue things, but checking the dictionary, it can also just be "great devotion to [e.g., an] idea" (merriam webster) which could be said of nearly any subreddit. In what way do you mean it? Besides the correlation in this study, is there anything particularly harmful in the same way that a more stereotypical cult (KKK is the first that comes to mind, probably a relatively extreme example but I don't know that many) is typically considered harmful?
People in the nofap community claim that abstaining from masturbation gives them "super powers".
From Google, a cult is "a system of religious veneration and devotion directed toward a particular figure or object."
They venerate non-masturbation as if it were a deity able to grant them divine powers if they worship it enough. Or at least that's how it sounds like when you hear them talk about it.
That's not at all the impression I got. Never masturbating ever might be seen as good by some there, but for most it's a temporary means to an end than the end goal. Helping get past porn addictions (by stopping cold turkey for a while), improving the relationship with your partner (by reducing or stopping to masturbate and see how that affects it), and being supportive of whatever people's goals are is what the community seemed like to me (but that's admittedly going off years-old memories). Hence I'm quite confused by all the outright hate here.
Hate to weird niche communities is pretty much like hate to Linkedin: because it full of cringe, poor quality marketing and just pure BS. Even if you registered on there you won't be using it 99% of time until you need to find a new job. Or unless Linkedin is part of your actual job because you're HR / sales person.
It's great that it might help someone, but it doesn't mean we all should accept everything this community produce is something good and normal.
They only believe it gives them “super powers” in the same way getting free from a heroin addiction would feel like gaining super powers. Normal health feels super when you previously lacked it.
> in the same way getting free from a heroin addiction would feel like gaining super powers
As someone who has done exactly that and is involved heavily in recovery communities, no one would describe sobriety as "gaining super powers", and I'm sick of people conflating porn addiction and heroin addiction as if they have anything in common. They really do not, and anyone who does has obviously never experienced opioid dependence. "But but but dopamine pathways" -- if you don't understand the difference in orders of magnitude between exogenous chemicals that directly operate on those pathways, and that which your body and brain can create on their own, I don't know what to tell you.
You're correct, but that doesn't take anything away from the fact that porn addiction can be serious enough to cause massive damage to a persons well being, causing them to lose jobs, relationships, or even kill themselves. Porn addiction can be incredibly powerful, it fully hijacks our strongest instinctual drive.
If someone was shot in the head with a 22 would you dismiss this as insignificant, because some people get their heads blown off with rocket launchers? That seems like the same logic you're applying here.
