I’m so goddamn tired of pretending this is normal.
[Marvelous blog post about how manipulated we are by profit-seeking companies]
… I’m tired of watching friends disappear mid-conversation into screens, tired of seeing twelve-year-olds with candy-flavored nicotine clouds, tired of needing three different apps just to order dinner. But most of all, I’m tired of being told this is progress when it’s clearly killing us. …
[Segment on porn]
… Porn addiction gets worse every year, but nobody wants to talk about it. The average age of first exposure to pornography is now 11 years old. Eleven. These kids’ brains are being rewired before they’ve even hit puberty. Porn sites get more traffic than Netflix, Amazon, and X combined. PornHub alone had 42 billion visits last year – that’s 5.8 visits for every person on Earth.
The term “gooning” – spending hours in masturbation marathons, often while high, lost in an endless cycle of edging and browsing – has become normalized in online communities. People joke about it, but it’s describing a dissociative state where users lose hours or even entire days. Erectile dysfunction in men under 30 has increased [radically] in the last decade.
AI-generated porn and OnlyFans parasocial relationships are creating a generation of men who prefer digital stimulation (mostly with degrading aspects towards women) to actual human connection. They’re not just consuming content; they’re replacing real relationships with algorithmic fantasies. The implications for actual intimacy, for birth rates, for the basic ability to connect with another human being, are catastrophic. …