Suspension of Disbelief

It appears that the Twitter account through which I was sharing my blog has been suspended.

I have appealed this with Twitter, and until I know the facts I probably shouldn’t comment; however, it seems quite possible that the account was suspended because I was sharing ‘porn’. If that’s the case, the whole thing would be laughable. I have never seen what I am doing here as ‘sharing porn’, more that I am sharing information about how porn can damage you, your relationships and your life, and that people should know what they are doing before they continue with using porn and the potential risks involved.

The idea that my account can be suspended for sharing my story and my thoughts, but that other Twitter accounts can continue sharing images and posts that are pretty close to being actual porn would be laughable if it didn’t have such potentially tragic consequences. The sort of posts I have found with just a quickly assembled search are the sort which invite people down the route whereby porn becomes normalised. Once that takes place, and I have to confess that I believe we are already there, then it becomes easier for those who sell and promote porn as a product to increase the stimulus, aware that people are creatures of habit and will keep returning. That might be just to “see what’s new”, a phrase I can recall using on any number of occasions; each return visit reveals new content, just added, which uses an algorithm to ‘tune in’ to your tastes based on your last visit so that you find things which appealed to you last time, and which invite you to look at more of the same. However, it won’t be quite the same; after looking at the same sort of content for a while, your brain starts to get bored and can’t get the same satisfaction, it starts to crave something just a little bit ‘more’ and, hey, what do you know? The site has the very thing you are seeking, increasing the stimulus to get the same effect by exaggerating the behaviours and the bodies seen on screen, until you get to the point where your mind and body won’t respond to anything but a ‘Super Stimulus’.

When that happens, then you are probably addicted. Your search for the ‘perfect’ image, scenario or body to bring you to an orgasm can go on for hours, eating into your time, ruining your plans to be doing something constructive with your life and instead convincing you edging for hours before jerking off is the way forward.

You’ll come to regard being able to suspend yourself in a state of almost-but-not-quite is something to aspire to, that the sensations you build up in your penis, making it almost so sensitive that to just to touch it would make you cum, are a good thing. Delayed gratification is, in general, a good thing in life. Understanding that you are building towards something, accepting that your reward may be some way off along the track is not an easy way to be in our modern world. When you can now have your favourite takeaway food delivered by using a smartphone, why should you have to wait for anything you want?

An exception to the rule of delayed gratification is masturbating to porn. When you edge, keeping yourself on the point of orgasm for so long that it almost hurts, waiting to find the exact combination of factors that will bring you to orgasm, you are causing untold harm within your brain. Kept in such a state artificially, your brain begins to get used to being that way, and an ordinary orgasm becomes, well, an anti-climax. Needing more and more stimulus to achieve the same reward becomes the norm, so much so that ordinary orgasms won’t do it for you, or being with another human being alone won’t do it for you. Desiring an additional stimulus, whether that’s watching porn as you have sex, broadcasting yourself having sex, wanting to be watched having sex, it all adds up to the same thing:

You have lost sight of sex as both an emotional and physical experience and turned it into something mechanical.

After a while, it doesn’t even produce something that makes you feel good. The pleasurable part of the addiction disappears and it simply becomes about meeting a need, an urge, and nothing else. The shame, the unhappiness and the damage to your own self-esteem that this causes becomes a cycle, one which you can’t snap out of, and all because you were tempted in by those ‘standard’ porn images you saw on social media.

If that doesn’t help to explain why I feel annoyed that my account is suspended whilst those who peddle misery remain, then I can’t help you…