Do you know what% of global traffic is pornography and how much is equivalent in US dollars per year? What tricks do porn sites come up with and what types of projects are there to attract their audience? Is porn harmful or beneficial?
We will devote separate sections of our story to the âGreat Porn Experimentâ and present scientific facts and data that show both the benefits and dangers of porn. Endless novelty! The effect of Coolidge and the consequences of exposure to an unstable psyche, or vice versa help in the formation of a stable and more strengthened psyche? Using online porn, a guy can see more hot girls in 10 minutes than his ancestors could in a few lifetimes. The problem is that the guy has the brain of a hunter-gatherer.
Over the past 20 years, dramatic changes have occurred in this industry, projects with the effect of presence and even augmented reality have appeared that interact with users online using various devices. The video has become not only HD, but also Ultra HD (4k, 8k), 3D, 360. We will not say that all technological innovations should thank the porn industry, but in part it is.
The Netherlands is the mecca of Internet porn and thatâs why customers come to host adult sites here or in the extreme case in the USA. In particular, to us - the hosting provider ua-hosting.company, which, due to the rudimentary laws of Ukraine, has long been forced to transfer its activities to the Netherlands, received a European jur. person and provides infrastructure solutions of varying complexity, including for large and well-known adult websites that are completely legal in the Netherlands, the USA and the rest of the civilized world. And the only thing that connects us with our homeland at the moment is history. Because of what, the same Netherlands gained development, having gained a quarter terabit of traffic growth per second (30+ gigabytes per second) only thanks to us and our customers back in 2014: âua-hosting.companyâ or how to become a hosting provider from scratch and generate more traffic than the whole of Belarus , which is somewhat offensive.
But not only our customers have evolved, but also the largest resources. Let's look at the evolution of the 9 most popular porno resources of the network over the past 10 years.
This video reflects the whole life in dynamics, you can see both the general increase in traffic due to the increase in the number of users, and the redistribution of the audience between resources. Growth and sometimes oblivion, and then growth with renewed vigor, depending on the changing preferences of users, and they are very variable and sometimes addictive, and a good material here can be a speech by Gary Wilson on TED, the thoughts of which we kindly framed for you as part this article.
In response to a speech by Philip Zimbardo, âGuys give up?â (Formerly on TED), Gary Wilson in his report on TED wondered if our brains can withstand the hyper-impact of modern temptations on the Internet. He also discusses the troubling symptoms experienced by avid internet users and their surprising disappearance, as well as factors contributing to the emergence of these 21st-century phenomena.
Boys have been looking for porn since ten years
The high popularity of watching Internet porn is one of the fastest-growing worldwide experiment ever made unconsciously. Almost every guy with Internet access becomes a test subject.
Canadian researcher Simon Lugeness found out that most boys begin to search for pornography at the age of ten, and encourages them to this mind, suddenly fascinated by sex.
Novelty factor in porn, Coolidge effect
Now users find internet porn much more exciting than porn of the past. Why is that? Endless novelty!
In this Australian experiment, not just nudity, but also novelty causes a rapid increase in arousal. Subjects watched 22 porn videos. See this sharp ledge? It happened when researchers included a new porn for guys. What happened? Excitement flashed in their brains. And why did it arise there?
Mother Nature wants the man to continue to fertilize women who are ready for this until a new one appears nearby. On this upper curve, the lamb needs more and more time to finish with the same female. But if you constantly change the females, the bottom line changes. The lamb can finish in two minutes and continue to be excited until complete exhaustion. This phenomenon is known as the Coolidge effect - without it there would be no Internet porn.
Porn is addictive
Men, like all mammals, are programmed to see each new woman as a chance to continue their own kind. So that the guy continues to fertilize what he saw on the monitor, his brain releases the hormone dopamine every time the guy sees a new image. At some point, the excitement subsides, but as long as the guy can continue to click, he can continue to be excited thanks to a new influx of dopamine. Using online porn, a guy can see more hot girls in 10 minutes than his ancestors could in a few lifetimes. The problem is that the guy has the brain of a hunter-gatherer.
The brain of an avid user sits on this genetic cornucopia, that is, a strong dependence on pornography is established. Behaviors such as loneliness, spying on nudes, clicking, searching, opening many tabs, fast-forward, constant shock, and surprise at the novelty are all closely connected with this. As one guy once asked, does this mean that we are the first generation, masturbating with our left hand?
On the contrary, real sex is courtship, touching, feeling of touch, smells, pheromones, emotional connection - interaction with a living person. Now let's see what happens when our guys finally meet real girls.
Lugness Research and Zimbardo Symptoms
Researchers do not know much about the consequences of watching pornography on the Internet for several reasons. In 2009, when Lugeness tried to study the influence of porn, he could not find a single male student who would not watch porn. That is, the first serious dilemma is that there are no control groups for the study. This is a huge gap. Imagine if all the boys started smoking at the age of ten, there wouldnât be anyone who wouldnât start. We would consider lung cancer to be the norm for all guys.
Not surrendering, Ludgense nevertheless interviewed 20 male students about whether watching porn on the Internet or their attitude towards women affects them. And the answer was no, I donât think so. But these guys watched porn on the Internet for almost 10 years without a break. Equally ask the fish what she thinks about the water.
This leads us to the second problem. Researchers did not ask porn lovers about the symptoms described by Zimbardo. Do guys give in?
The symptoms of porn addiction are mistaken for ADHD, fear of society, depression, problems of concentration, fear of the public, OCD and many others. Health professionals often suggest that these symptoms are a possible cause of addiction, but not a consequence. As a result, they often treat guys without finding out if the latter have Internet addiction. The guys themselves cannot realize that they could overcome these symptoms simply by changing their behavior.
A third problem is the difficulty in believing that sexual activity can be addictive, as sex itself is beneficial. But internet porn is not sex. Porn on the Internet is different from real sex in the same way that modern video games are different from checkers. Viewing naked bodies on the screen does not protect anyone from addiction.
The nature of porn addiction
In the course of the next Dutch study, it was found that in fact, among all kinds of activities on the Internet, watching porn has the greatest potential to be addictive. And that's why.
There is a very ancient reward system in our brain. It arose to lead us to the satisfaction of natural needs, such as sex, food, and the development of relationships. As a result, the extreme manifestation of the satisfaction of such abilities has a unique ability to captivate us. For example, high-calorie foods or new hot girls are a source of additional dopamine. Excess dopamine can rebuild our natural saturation mechanism.
For example, give rats unlimited access to fatty foods, and almost every one of them will overeat. For the same reason, four out of five Americans are overweight, and half are obese, which means they are addicted to food. In contrast, drugs such as cocaine or alcohol will captivate about 10% - no matter humans or rats.
This mechanism of abuse of food or sex was once important from the point of view of evolution, and its essence is to stock up as long as possible. An example is the wolves who eat 10 kilograms of meat on a successful hunt. Or the behavior of an alpha male wolf during the mating season.
Chemistry of porn addiction
What if the mating season never ends? All these dopamine flashes can tell the brain only two things. First, they say: âMan, you won the evolutionary jackpot!â Second, they cause a change in the molecules of the delta-fosB protein. I know this is a scientific word, but dopamine causes changes in delta-fosB, which begins to accumulate in the brain's promotion system.
Excessive chronic drug use or satisfying natural needs causes changes in the brain through the accumulation of delta fosB and contributes to even greater abuse and increasing desire.
If the abuse continues, delta-fosB builds up and leads to brain changes observed in all addicts. That is, the chain is as follows: abuse - excess dopamine - delta-fosB - change in the brain. One of the first changes is a decrease in pleasure. This is manifested in the fact that ordinary joys do not satisfy a porn addict. At the same time, other physical changes in the brain enhance his response to porn. Everything else in the addictâs life becomes boring, and pornography becomes super-attractive.
His willpower is suppressed as changes in the frontal cortex. Pay special attention to this: all the dependencies are similar in that they are all turned on using the same molecular switch - delta-fosB.
Scientists have already scanned the brain to measure these changes in drug addicts. Scanning showed a decrease in their sensitive threshold for pleasure. This and several other changes have also been discovered by avid gamers, consumers and, more recently, video game addicts and internet addicts.
I apologize for the difficult slide. Just pay attention to the dates. I want you to know about their existence. So far, brain research has been conducted in only one direction. A constant novelty with every click can be addictive. We know this because when scientists examined former internet addicts, they found that these changes in the brain were reversible. Unfortunately, none of these studies studied porn addicts individually. But they were included in the test group.
Do guys give in?
And now - something that changes everything! Finally, we have a group of guys who no longer watch pornography on the Internet. It's true! Inveterate porn lovers began to tie up with watching it. These guys are the missing control group in this major porn experiment. They show experts what a change in just one variable is capable of. I call this the âresurrection of guysâ (the counterweight is âguys surrenderâ).
Before I continue, you probably want to know why any sensible porn lover wants to tie him up? Two words - erectile dysfunction.
Internet porn kills libido in young guys. Zimbardo said young boys are losing out on a girlfriend. This study by Italian urologists confirms our observations over the past few years.
Potency enhancers often stop working for these guys, if they worked at all, because the problem is not lower than the waist (where Viagra works). This is not a psychological problem. Everything happens due to physical changes in the brain - these addiction-related changes. A numbed brain sends weaker signals to the bananas of guys.
Dr. Foresta says: âIt all starts with a reduced response to porn sites. What follows is a decrease in libido. And in the end, an erection becomes impossible. " Three conclusions follow from this:
- First. Foresta describes as a classic process of falling into dependence, a gradual decrease in sensitivity.
- The second one. Porn on the Internet is qualitatively different from real sex. The widespread prevalence of erectile dysfunction in men did not previously exist.
- And finally, erectile dysfunction attracts the attention of guys. The question is what secondary symptoms they do not pay attention to. Most do not understand until they are tied.
First-hand: the story of a man who quit watching porn
An almost 30 year old guy says:
- I went to psychologists and psychiatrists for the past eight years. He was diagnosed with depression, severe social anxiety, severe memory impairment and other ailments. I tried many antidepressants, dropped out at two different colleges, was fired twice, smoked weed to reduce my social anxiety. Some women met me, it seems to me, because of my appearance and social status, but they quickly left me because of my incredible strangeness - I had a heavy dependence on porn, starting from the age of 14. For the past two years I have experimented and finally realized that pornography was the cause.
I completely got involved with porn two months ago. It was very difficult, but it was worth it. Since then I quit taking my medications. My anxiety has passed. My memory and attention are better than ever. I feel like a big magnet for girls, and my impotence has passed. I seriously believe that I was born again, got a second chance to live life. "
That's why guys talk about it: bodybuilder sites, sports sites, pickup sites - wherever men gather. In fact, they crave a neurochemical rebirth.
Abandonment Movement
Here is a group on reddit.com that calls itself âfapstronauts.â Fapping is the slang name for masturbation. But what they really mean is giving up porn. Two thousand people joined them after I took this photo a month ago.
The movement for abandoning porn is growing rapidly. Groups are growing all over the internet, as well as in Europe. But there is a fly in the ointment: 20-year-old boys are more difficult to get rid of erectile dysfunction than older guys. How can a 50-year-old regain his potency faster than a 20-year-old? Answer: even if older men watched porn much longer, they did not start with modern porn. Now we know that this is a key variable. Because older men did not begin sexual problems before they set themselves high-speed Internet.
Modern teens already have high-speed internet when their brains are still plastic and at the peak of dopamine production. This also happens at the time of their greatest vulnerability. But there is another risk.
You can return to normal sensitivity
By growing up in the adolescent's brain, the most used connections are strengthened, and not used ones are reduced, that is, by the age of 22 a certain sexual addiction is formed. Panic can occur if a guy starts watching extreme porn, or porn that no longer matches his sexual orientation. Fortunately, the brain is plastic, and the guyâs previous taste can come back if he stops watching porn.
When a guy returns to normal sensitivity, his brain looks at all the promotions that he was initially tuned for - such as friendships and, of course, real partners.
Here is another example of what we hear every day: âI feel like Sir Isaac Newton or Leonardo da Vinci. Since I started (a month ago), I literally started a business, started learning to play the piano, learn French every day, program, draw, write, started managing my finances ... I have more cool ideas than knowing how to apply them . My self-confidence soared to heaven. I feel like I can talk to any girl. Iâm the same guy who took an extra two and a half years to graduate from college because of being put off and depressed. â
Nevertheless, the facts
The global Internet porn market is estimated today at more than $ 100 billion a year, more than the cost of the largest corporations. Only 10% of this amount is in the United States. The main sites where pornography is stored and processed are Europe (the Netherlands, Germany - only in some lands it is allowed to store in the public domain) and the USA. The rest of the world, waging a âfightâ against porn at the legislative level, is just watching, and is bringing billions in revenue to IT companies from countries where adult content is legal. Yes, it is thanks to porn that the Netherlands has become the world's largest Internet site, and not only due to its good geographical position.
Interestingly, the peak traffic of porn sites falls not only in the evening, but also on working hours. When people spend time watching porn at work, at lunch breaks and not only, including in the ministries of those countries where such content is prohibited at the legislative level. For example, in Ukraine, some of the deputies managed to watch porn directly at meetings of the Verkhovna Rada, thereby creating âhot newsâ. Sometimes technical incidents happened when pornography was launched instead of presentations.
Today in the world there are over 25 million porn sites and they make up 12% of the global number of sites and generate over 30% of global traffic. Over 11,000 porn movies are produced annually in California alone. Most users have moved to a new level and become their own studios. As a result, sites appeared that made it possible to establish a connection between models and the audience, providing the infrastructure and software and taking up to half the turnover. You can find out how the market has changed today from the video of the editorial channel about how this market works .
But how do porn sites earn? It can be either subscriptions or typical CJ ââprojects that redirect visitors to another paid or even free website that displays content in exchange for advertising / installation of applications or a project trying to attract users to interact via a webcam with models where the currency is â tokens â, and the user uses them to perform certain actions or interacts with remote devices. Large hotel chains such as Hilton, Mariott and others also organize meetings with industry stars. But among other things, there is an active collection of user data (not always legal) and these statistics are resold to various companies that use it for advertising purposes and increase the conversion of advertising companies that acquire this data.
By the way, not only porn sites collect data about you. Google, Oracle and Facebook do it. Moreover, they are interested in what kind of porn sites you visit and hiding from this surveillance is very difficult, if almost impossible, since your patterns on the Internet remain and are easily comparable.
Despite the privacy policies that are âwritten so that they can take two years of college to understand,â and the false sense of security that private browsing can bring, âthis only ensures that the browsing history is not stored on the computer,â researchers found that Google and its âecosystemâ track nearly 75% of all porn sites, Oracle 25% and Facebook about 10%.
The report talks about tracking users on 93% of pages that were recognized as allowing third-party data leakage; they do this from seven different areas. In addition, 79% of the pages contained a âthird-party cookie (often used for tracking).â In total, the researchers âidentified 230 different companies and services that track usersâ on all the sites they tested.
Let's remember the scale. Pornhub market leader said that as of 2017, they had about 30 billion visits and about 50,000 requests per second. According to some estimates, porn traffic accounts for almost a third of all traffic, âmore than Netflix, Amazon and Twitter together, âandâ YouPorn uses six times more traffic than Hulu. â
Interestingly, Google and Facebook both ignored the researchers' reports, the only thing Google told the New York Times, which wrote about it, âwe do not allow Google ads on websites with adult content and prohibit personalized ads and advertising profiles based on sexual interests of the user or related activities on the Internet. â Facebook added that the principles of its community prohibit the advertising of trackers on sex sites, and such sites are blocked from data collection processes. Oracle generally did not want to give any comments when asked.
In addition to Google, Oracle and Facebook, trackers for Cloudflare, Yadro 7%, New Relic and Lotame 6% were also discovered. There were also âporn-specific trackers,â in particular exoClick, JuicyAds and EroAdvertising. Sites and pages within sites contain URLs that âstrongly suggest that the siteâs content includes or targets one or more specific gender or sexual identities or orientations and / or topics of interest / focus.â
Let's face it, for more than half of adults, watching porn is not what they want to share, but it was and will be an integral part of their lives.
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