Quote: (02-22-2015 12:09 PM)philosophical_recovery Wrote:
Then, I realized, Facebook has been around a decade. These girls have likely spent a significant proportion of their puberty being hard wired into attention getting via social media.
The other realization then dawned on me about my generation (older, but still with internet access) having high speed internet porn access during puberty. There's been the whole NoFap (very minor) rebound from that phenomenon, where men realize how bad it has been to have been stimulated by digital screens for so long. It's way, way more obvious to the blue-pilled society because masturbation usually has ejacuation, usually makes a mess, and has always had a stigma against it until very recently.
But, look at these girls. They're being stimulated by digital screens during the major developmental period of their young adulthood, fixing behavior patterns on what stimulates them. The backlash against it will probably never be even as strong as the pathetic NoFap movement, because the effects are less obvious and clearly misogynist . But will there start to be a No-iWhore movement? Or NoSelfie, NoLikeWhore, NoSnapChat, I don't know, some kind of movement to help counteract this? How can it get kicked off?
I'm glad you brought up NoFap, because that's exactly what I was thinking about after reading AB's insightful post. Pardon me while I continue the derailment.
...
Humans (like all animals) evolved to elicit certain responses to environmental stimuli. These instincts, ingrained into the human psyche, allowed us to navigate and survive in a harsh and unpredictable world.
Today's environment, however, is nothing like the world in which our brains developed. We now find ourselves surrounded by
supernormal stimuli, which are orders of magnitude more powerful than those to which we've been exposed throughout our evolutionary history.
These novel experiences elicit reactions far greater than our bodies are prepared to deal with. Junk food, for example, preys on our evolved tastes for salt, sugar and fat, overriding our usual satiety cues as our body attempts to "get while the gettin' is good".
Porn, as described
here, does something similar: it hijacks your brain's reward system, flooding it with dopamine. Dopamine is a neurochemical "motivator"; when your brain sees the possibility of a "reward," in the form of food, or money, or beautiful women, it releases pleasurable dopamine as a way of encouraging you to pursue that reward.
Porn tricks your brain into thinking that you have the option of mating with dozens of potential hotties, and the ensuing dopamine tsunami it releases is your brain's way of telling you, "Hey, here's a fantastic opportunity to pass your genes on to the next generation! I'll make sure you feel
really good about it so you're motivated to pursue it!"
The only problem is, your brain doesn't
want to be constantly overloaded with neurotransmitters, and it contains feedback mechanisms to prevent this from happening. After a large infusion of dopamine, your brain pares off some dopamine receptors, so that if it were to be exposed to a similar amount again in the future, it won't overload brain circuitry to the same extent.
This negative feedback loop, of reducing receptors after each large exposure, is the basis of
addiction. As the brain makes it harder for dopamine to have an effect, more dopamine is required to achieve past results.
This is why cocaine addicts have to use more and more each time to achieve the same high, why guys on testosterone have to cycle their injections, and why porn addicts find themselves escalating their viewing habits over time. Each "hit" makes it harder to achieve the same "high," as the brain reacts to the supernormal stimulus by reducing the ability of that neurotransmitter to affect its neurons.
I believe we're seeing a similar phenomenon occurring with the millennial generation's addiction to social media. Every time a person receives a "like", or a retweet, or a Tinder match, their brain rewards what it views as social success with a hit of dopamine. Over time, as the user becomes accustomed to a certain level of ego-boosting stimulation, they find themselves requiring more and more in order to achieve the same feelings of satisfaction.
As philosophical_recovery states above, today's young women have spent their formative years slowly becoming addicted (literally) to a variety of ego-validating, drama-inducing, dopamine-releasing social media technologies. Their developing brains have been exposed to thousands of hours' worth of stimulation that, as AB suggests, the average boyfriend probably doesn't even come close to matching. Just like many men today gladly eschew real sex for online pornography, I'm guessing many women will forgo "boring" dates and relationships in exchange for exciting alpha flings and the attention/emotional validation of social media.
I do expect to see a backlash eventually, just as we've seen with men and the NoFap/NoPorn movements. Unfortunately, I also expect it will take much longer, as the millennials themselves will need to crash and burn before the masses recognize the damage being done.