I really, really wish there was a space on the internet for people like me to vent their frustrations with porn addiction. In theory, /christian/ sounds like a wonderful place, but it pains me to see how poisoned the tenants of this board are, not only by a very clear lack of social interaction, but by these sick perversions of what a Christian is, by people who don't read the bible. White supremacist/Nazis, weeb nerd fetishists, it's so depressing.
The worst part of being here is that this is the only place that I could reconcile my years of absorbing internet and chan culture with my desire to grow as a Christian. The idea of going back and forth with people in the same pit I am in sounds like it could have some rehabilitative qualities, but like I said, in reality it's so poisoned that it's beyond anything helpful. I come here crossing my fingers that there might be a post or two that's made by a sensible person, who isn't completely far-gone and lost, or at the very least possesses a shred of self-awareness.
Another demotivating thing is that I'm not really "in" chan culture. I started browsing /b/ in 2013/4 or so because I was a kid (adult now, no bans please) and because my unsupervised internet use led me to it. Passing mentions and internet legends of "4chan" from the normie web led me to start browsing, and I got suckered in. It was fairly innocent at the time, I went there because it was funny. I posted and participated in silly, sorta-wholesome threads where I'd roll and do silly things like make a sandwich out of grapefruit peels and a stick of butter. We would stay up late and create image collages for a dude who had a sad-looking Facebook profile after we saw nobody came to his birthday party. I actually, seriously have a few very fond, fun, and unironically sorta wholesome memories just being silly on 4chan. But once I got comfy doing the silly stuff, then came the exploration. Whoa, you mean there's an entire board dedicated to looking at boobies? How could I say no to that? Then it became a habit as I continued to divide my internet time between porn boards and hobby boards. /k/, /g/, /v/, /vr/, /tv/ became boards i would rotate between, slowly adopting the collective board culture. The thing is, if I really look at it as a whole, I really only ever used 4chan for humor, hobby info, and porn. I've personally never really been into anime, or Japanese/weeb culture. In fact, besides the porn, anime stuff is my limit. I find weebism/anime culture completely pathetic. I not only find the surface-level normie weebs who go into cons embarrassing, but also the turbo-wizard autists who deride those surface-level normies and talk and talk about whatever stupid, obscure, contrarian anime they watch that isn't "with" the normies.
As a legit aspie it seriously upsets me that there are people in the same situation I'm in that are completely devoid of any self-awareness, or have no earthly idea of how to interact with a human being. I consider myself very, very lucky, because although there are some things about my brain and the way I think that I'm completely unable to change, I grew up with normal friends and parents that somehow, in a massive stroke of luck, did not fuck up and guided me towards social interaction with normal people. I also had a bit of help from social workers and such when I was young, and that probably helped a little too. I'm young, and I still have room to improve, and trust me when I say I am reaching out and overextending myself because it is very, very important to me that I don't grow up to be without the proper social skills to navigate the world like a real person.
That has to be one of my biggest fears, that I'll forever be crippled by this affliction, I'll never be able to hold a job, I'll be one of those pathetic, sad people that manages a Dairy Queen at 40 years old. But the progress I've personally made by buckling down and just doing it has proven to me that that doesn't have to be the case. All I know is that it (being a pathetic, failed man in my later years) is still a possibility if I don't work hard to re-wire my brain.
Fuck being "unique". There's nothing positive about having a predisposition to isolated behavior. There is not a single benefit to being antisocial. It sucks that I can be born this way, but at the end of the day, I am so thankful that I can see a way out of this. It's still unfair and demoralizing knowing that I have to work harder than everyone else to achieve normalcy, though, but the light at the end of that tunnel is all I need.
But, this is all to say I hate the fact that I don't fit in anywhere, that there is no solution for me. I can't find any solace on chan-like communities, because at heart I really am an outsider, an outlier, a black sheep. I sorta, kinda belong here, I sorta, kinda don't at the same time. And, at the same time, I could never imagine going on Reddit for the same reasons. I completely abhor the community, the culture, everything about the samey-same hivemind mentality Reddit has. Maybe that's because I’ve been conditioned by being here, who knows. I do realize what i just said applies to chan communities. a hivemind of a different sort, but I hate that too. I'm in between this wholesome, non-offending Redditor normie kind of person, and a nuanced, autist chan-dweller. I don't fit in either place, but out of the two sorts of communities, the chans are my home, because I don't have a choice.
So in theory, the solution to this sounds like I just need to get off the chans, and get outside. but it's always the porn that gets me back. Even if it's not on 4chan, even if it's on some other site, the kinds of pornography I'm into always lead me back here, because this place is probably where I grew into those types of porn anyway. Video game hentai, traps/gay stuff, etc. You all know the drill. I think being in this internet environment is conditioning me to stay here, to live on the internet. i'm convinced that's simply what keeps us here. we're vulnerable people with no outlet, and we're corralled into an anonymous group, but we treat it like a real group, and it slowly turns our worldview, our thoughts and perceptions, into a sick perversion of real social interaction. It's just like a sickness that compounds and gets exponentially worse, until it's too much to even bother measuring. No point in finding out how deep the hole is, you're never getting out, right?
I can safely say i have been "addicted" to pornography since i was 11-12 years old. It started with looking at things on my PSP/3DS, then hiding things on the computer, then the phone, etc. I'm in my early-mid 20's now.
To give you reference, I’m as much of a degenerate coomer as you could probably assume. Traps, loli, hentai, gay stuff, real porn, any combination of any of these things, really. Ever since about 12 years old, it's been a gradual increase into degeneracy. Being a 12 year old discovering sexuality was a very fun, new thing to do. Everyone probably remembers being that way, but it grew into something I didn't really want to control, if I ever had the will to in the first place. What used to be looking up hentai pics of Princess Peach on my 3ds, very, very quickly turned into spending 12 hours at a desk edging, ejaculating, deleting everything, and then doing the same thing 2 days later. I would download 10s of gigabytes of INDIVIDUALLY SELECTED pornographic images (probably a few MB each at the most) in a night, delete it, then start the cycle again. I'd download file managers for my collection, keep it for a few months, delete it, and then start again.
I’m a sick degenerate, right? I've been masturbating at the very least once a day (sometimes 2, sometimes 6, sometimes 8, etc) for about 7 or 8 years. Not an exaggeration, I'm sure there were a few off-days, but you get it.
Now, I have a girlfriend. I enjoy her company, and being with her is a big highlight of my week since, as it stands currently, I don't have too many friends. We're usually together 2/3 days of the week, usually midweek, or on weekends. I’ve also had various girlfriends ever since I was 16 or so. Like I said, I’m in my 20’s now.
This is all to say, not ONCE have I had trouble getting it up for a girlfriend(except for my first few times, stage fright, we all get it), or having sex. Me and current gf have wilds amounts of sex (as 20somethings do). My point? Nofap, PIED, all of that shit? It is ENTIRELY mental. Not to say porn is good or not harmful, but this is to serve a larger point, that cop-out methods like nofap and the culture surrounding it are also harmful. I've been on the nofap board and it is full of desperate losers, not unlike the personality types I mentioned before, clinging onto an escapist fantasy that misses the point. There are truly people that believe it will make you more social, give you "normie powers", etc, etc, which still proves my point, that it's all mental. But the solution that lies in nofap is "fake it til you make it, placebo yourself, find a solution that SOUNDS LIKE it makes sense, and trick yourself into going through with it." Wanna know why it doesn't work? Because it's the wrong fucking solution. It's made up. A concoction by chanvirgins, for chanvirgins. The problem with that, is that the people who perpetuate the nofap stuff are in the same camp as the people who want to believe in it. Therefore, everyone is participating in a cyclical, delusional, self-serving fantasy that sounds appealing, but everyone is too stuck to realize it will never work.
In short, what's worked with me is brute-forcing social interaction and most of all, self-discipline through genuine means.
When I'm with my girlfriend, I talk to her and interact with her. I talk and interact with her family, her friends, her family's friends, etc. I'm connected to a lot of people because of her, and I have unique interactions with all of them that benefit my social ability.
When I go out with my girlfriend, say I go to some event with her family, and socialize and actually talk to people for the weekend, and actually be a person instead of sitting in my room, and when I have (admittedly kind of vanilla) sex with the girl I love and cherish, spend time with her, watch movies and eat together... When I spend part of the week and most of the weekend doing that (which I do quite a lot now, since it's helping), I will, without fail, come back on my computer and be absolutely and utterly disgusted with what's in my downloads folder from the previous week of loneliness. Yet, there's a 50/50 chance that within the hour, I'll have my curiosity piqued, and almost as if some sort of routine, I'll masturbate. because that's what it is. Routine. I have begun the process of fixing my brain by being outgoing and social, interacting with someone I love, and talking to people, learning what it means to be normal and slowly shifting towards that. There is hope. But a roadblock in that is habit. I swear it's written into my brain, I don't know how much of that sort of stuff is pseudoscience, but I genuinely don't believe masturbating to porn for the last 8 years nearly every day HASN'T had some effect on my brain.
I really, seriously figured it out though. I know how to quit this shit. There is a light at the end of MY tunnel, I've seen it, and it's a matter of doing it. But every time I try to help anyone else here I'm brought down. I want to shape places like this into real havens of support for the black sheep who have been altered by antisocial behavior and internet use, but those same people I want to help are ironically keeping me from helping. It's very very difficult for people like us, because sometimes we lack self-awareness and open-mindedness. At the end of the day, as much as I whine, I won't be able to change you if you don't accept that. That is why an open mind is a great first step. You are a person. You can be and think anything you want, and changing your mind in the grand scheme of things is completely arbitrary. I'm not talking about core personal tenets like Christianity, but I'm talking about things like "I'd never give up video games/anime!" You would be better off being someone who can change. Sticking yourself in a corner for the rest of your life is a pathetic, hellish existence.
But, who knows. maybe I'm a glowie, or Jewish, or a psy-op, right? No. I truly have only good in my heart when I say everything I’ve said. These things have been in my head and my heart for a very long time, because I've seen how the internet transforms vulnerable people into sad reflections of what they could have been. It fills me with great sadness seeing that, and I would never wish that sort of life on anyone.
You can fix your own life. there is an end to the seemingly never-ending descent into this sickness. That's what it is. I truly believe it. It's induced. Everyone has the same story. Got into porn at a young age, poor impulse control leads to more extreme and extreme content, usually ending with homosexual stuff/actual child pornography. There is no way that this same exact path is a coincidence. There is a pattern, maybe only among certain people, maybe not, but there is a pattern. I don't claim to know everything about the psychology of it like the nofap people do, and this is all anecdotal, but I seriously believe I have a good handle on how it works and affects, at the very least, a certain group of people.
With all of that said, I want to sum it up, TL;DR, whatever. The thing I want YOU, yes, YOU READING THIS, to know, brother, is that there is an end. You can take radical action, right now, to preserve your precious, valuable time and life, and change it for the better. That action is getting outside. Talking to people, and failing, and being a weirdo sometimes. Staying out of your room, and going to a local Bible study, or creating one, even. Be a part of your church community. Help that old lady out. Go up to that guy drinking coffee alone. Ask him if he watches any movies, or plays any games, or what he likes to do. Go up to that cute girl, and chat about something. Get a girlfriend. Go to family reunions. Shed your old personality. The internet is gone. Anime is gone. Shed these things from your memory pool, and keep them away from any talk or discussion with anybody else, these are products of the internet, these are products of sitting inside your room all day, talking to nobody but strangers.
I am a measurably better, more confident, outgoing, and successful person, not because of Nofap, not because I’m a Christian (it pains me [or maybe it doesn’t, I don’t know]to say I’m not one right now, I’ve been struggling for a long time), but because I have engaged in the real world, and I have seen how fulfilling it can be. Life on the internet is being stuck on a raft, with nobody on the Earth left to help you. It is fake, it’s a facade, it’s false happiness. It perverts your worldview. There is so much benefit to be had that will last you the rest of your life by connecting with people, and connecting with the world. I love talking to friends and family about how much I love looking at my telescope, or my love of nature. It’s easy to talk to people about it, because it’s such a universally wonderful thing to look up at a clear, blue sky on a warm summer day and just be in awe. To look at blowing, vibrantly-colored trees shedding their leaves. Take your interest pool out of this wolf’s den. There are some people who are able to handle the internet. We need to accept that maybe we aren’t able to.
Detox. Whatever that means to you. Just do it, and don’t ever, ever look back. You are NOT here forever. There IS light at the end, and you CAN move towards it. You will be a much happier and fulfilled person by doing this. We are not designed to sit alone and trick our brains with fake interaction. That is damaging.
I truly believe everything I said can co-exist with even strictest, strangest stretches of Christian thought. Universalist Unitarians (yes they are heretics) could agree with this, Catholics could agree with this.
There is so much more I want to say about my personal troubles, beliefs, etc. but I don’t want to make this blogpost any longer than it needs to be. But, I’ll say that even though this is a huge post, it is EXACTLY as long as it needs to be. This post is riddled with curse words, a seemingly lackadaisical attitude towards Christianity, but like I said, I think we could all benefit from this. I believe I’m in a position to say something about this issue, because I understand it deeply, I’ve personally been through it, and I relate to the effects and symptoms other men like myself have told of. Remember, you are a fellow man. You are not an anon. An important thing to change about the way you see the internet, before you leave it for good, is that every post you interact with is another being that deserves respect and consideration. It’s also safe to assume we’re all men. That’s a good thing. We have commonality. We share experiences. We should never forget that when we talk to each other in this place. But, some of you might be ready. What do I say to YOU guys, then?
Leave this place, once and for all. Stop enabling yourself to fall. Smash your computer. Give it away. Downsize. Don’t fall into the trap of living a limited, minimalist hermit life in the woods or in a van, but take out the cancer that is the internet, and don’t pretend like you can handle it until you know you don’t need it. If your right hand offends you, cut it off.
Change everything about yourself, and never, ever look back. I’ll be waiting for you guys out there, and I’ll be welcoming you with open arms.