CARCINIZATION PONOGRAPHICATION AKA UNCONSCIOUS CRAB WET DREAM
IT'S ONLY SMELLZ, BABY
THE UNCONSCIOUS
Back in the day you heard that 90% of the internet is porn. Turns out that’s kinda bullshit, numbers range from 4% to something like 30% depending on methodology and who’s counting. Regardless of the number (we’ll get back to that later) pornography to the internet is akin to the unconscious portion of the human mind. And again, depending on who you’re asking and how they’re counting, the unconscious accounts for something like 90% of brain activity.
Sigmund Freud tends to receive the most credit for establishing the importance of the unconscious in human psychology and even when contemporary psychologists and psychiatrists shit talk Freud as being unscientific they engage with their patients’ unconscious minds—cognitive behavioral therapy is typically considered one of the most scientifically robust (muh DATA) psychological treatment protocols and the goal of the treatment for some patients, to some degree, is the reduction of negative thought patterns—this begins with conscious engagement of the negative thoughts but the goal over time is to develop a healthy habit AKA something unconscious (I’ve seen some articles claiming this is actually like ultra heightened consciousness and usually these guys are selling a book).
There are multiple facets of the unconscious. A lot of Freud’s work focused on psychological repression—you have some thought pattern or behavior that’s anathema to your conscious mind so you repress it and this manifests in various negative ways depending on your personality, circumstances, etc. There are other more banal unconscious functions—automatic breathing, digestion, long term memory processing—these things happen without conscious input. Carl Jung, a disciple of Freud with his own (IMO more interesting) hypotheses of mind claimed that the integration of the Shadow was a requirement for a person’s individuation. The Shadow contains the aspects of our personality that we repress (they are unconscious) and we must integrate these repressed traits (at least shine the light of consciousness on them) into our personality if we are to be fulfilled psychologically.
Regardless of the particular school of psychology, a recurring thread that we find is that we have an unconscious mind and we require some sort of balance between it and our conscious experience if we are to be psychologically healthy. Freud wants you to dig into your repressed emotions, Jung wants you to integrate your shadow, and cognitive behavioral therapists want you to develop healthier habits (unconscious) through conscious behavior.
Have you ever read a book by a star athlete? I haven’t but David Foster Wallace has and he wrote in Consider the Lobster and Other Essays, “It may well be that we, spectators, who are not divinely gifted as athletes, are the only ones able truly to see, articulate, and animate the experience of the gift we are denied. And that those who receive and act out the gift of athletic genius must, perforce, be blind and dumb about it—and not because blindness and dumbness are the price of the gift, but because they are its essence.” This is in the essay where David is upset that sports stars are retards who can’t write about what’s going on in their heads when they briefly become more than human. They can’t describe what’s going on because they enter a flow state. One way to consider the flow state is ultra heightened consciousness: the athletes are so focused on the task at hand that they no longer have the cognitive processing power to even consider their own state of mind. I think it’s more the opposite,1 the athletes are automatically acting on instinct AKA unconsciously.2 I love David Foster Wallace and if you’ve read him then I think it’s clear that he is painfully conscious, so much so that he killed himself. Another man who is conscious, all too conscious, is Nietzsche, considered by many (myself included) to possess penetrating insight into his own psychology and he went fucking insane. I bring these two up to circuitously express what I think might be a spiritual or psychological truth—there is a limit to the utility of conscious penetration into the unconscious.3
PORN
What is pornography? I know it when I see it. Did you Google how much of the internet is porn to confirm my claim at the beginning of this blog post? It’s ok you didn’t have to, maybe you just trust me (because you are handsome and insightful) but one thing I noted when I was looking into finding this number was that many explications about why the 80-90% number is a wild exaggeration are because of social media and YouTube video streaming. Look at how much people use social media and YouTube, claim the debunkers, and there’s no way such a vast majority of internet traffic is for porn. I claim those things—social media, YouTube, anything “not porn” online—is increasingly becoming porn.
I told my girlfriend that Instagram is porn. She disagrees, of course, bless her heart, and she claims it’s just because that’s what I look at and the feed is a reflection of my own searches and interests.4 And sure I’ve noted that if I look at more women in bikinis (often difficult to resist) then I will see more of this.5 But that’s not my whole point, I’m not just talking about the algorithm feed of everything on Instagram, I’m talking about seeing my sister’s ass in my personal feed. The way that people use social media is increasingly pornographic.6 That 90% figure doesn’t seem so DEBOOKED now, huh.
Regardless of the actual number, pornography is analogous to the unconscious at least because, for many, it’s an aspect of the internet psyche or digital self or digital persona or digital experience which is largely repressed. Maybe you don’t look at porn, good for you I am legitimately envious, but increasingly I can’t help but see it at least sometimes.7 And so I am curious about what is the proper level of psychological integration of the unconscious.8
This is already getting icky isn’t it? I’ve got the ick. Talking about porn is like talking about your dreams—the person listening doesn’t give a fuck unless he’s your psychoanalyst, and it’s perverse. It’s too personal; it’s narcissistic, sadistic, and masochistic. Randy from Egg Report describes dreams10 as psychological digestion (I really like this model) AKA dreams are shit—dream analysis might be good to find blood in your stool but too much focus is nasty and unhealthy. So in my porn-as-the-internet’s-unconscious-model through the lens of Randy’s dreams-are-psychological-shit-model, talking too much about porn is like sending someone a picture of your shit.11
In meatspace, too much psychoanalysis12 (AKA vivisection of the unconscious) results in paralysis or death. Rumination on inner motivation makes it impossible to act (honestly, anyway). Psychoanalysis uncovers a psychological defense against a defense against a defense… (you can pay a man every week to keep digging). In the digital space, the result is the same. You go insane and die. You troon out. The story is the same for most troons these days AKA autistic men AKA left-brain dominant systemetizers. They see porn at a young age, the internet’s unconscious, they engage with it consciously too much and it destroys them. Imagine a ten year old seeing a psychoanalyst, imagine how much of a neurotic fuck he would become and how much it would take to overcome that.1314 John Money, I’m sure you know, the evil fuck godfather of much of the transgender movement (he’s largely responsible for current notions of a distinction between sex and gender) specifically encouraged that children should watch porn to explore their identities. What a smart doctor! There might be some conclusions you wish to draw from that.
AND IN CONCLUSION
The only way out is through. Navigating porn world requires judgement; I tend to think God is best at this, perhaps you think you can do it yourself. Godspeed. It’s knowing it when you see it. Without God, how will you know it when you see it? This is basically the perennial question of how will you value something. Nietzsche was trying to figure it out, he didn’t cross the finish line, and you aren’t Nietzsche, you don’t even speak a second language, proceed with caution. I used to try to do that too, establish value without God, obsessively, in fact. I didn’t figure it out either but I did figure out God is real.
In part I’m speaking from my own experience entering flow states, I paint and draw and when that’s going the best it feels the most unconscious, the least effortful, like being possessed by something (it even happens when I’m writing these lol)
Or they are possessed by a spirit
This limit might be what Christians call grace, it might be what someone finds in prayer (sustained conscious attention on God which helps attenuate the unconscious over time), maybe it’s achieved through proper sacrifice to benevolent gods
Oh shit the metaphor of the unconscious is getting juicier, maybe this guy is onto something
GF also says that this is fundamentally not porn, scantily clad women, videos of women in tights walking, AKA the stuff that’s acceptable to post on Instagram but I dunno it gets me hard and makes me wanna jack off, maybe this is an expression of a fundamental difference in male and female sexuality, maybe I’m just a pervert.
And so we return to my GF’s point, “that’s not porn.” Bitch, I know it when I see it.
And so is every person growing up now and in the future in the presence of the internet. I sympathize with the “just don’t look” bros but they’re like my RETVRN bros—you’ve got some good points and I value the perspective but IMO the only way out is through, dawg.
It’s a bit of a cop-out but the Real Answer is probably get offline, bro. I feel this all the time when writing about internet shit, the answer is touch grass, bro.
I wanted to add this footnote to the caption under Anna’s Tweet but apparently I can’t do that. Anyway, just FYI, I don’t listen to Red Scare because I would never use my limited free time to listen to women, that’s completely insane. I thought to myself “Twitter porn feed” and knew Anna would have something appropriate.
Dreams are important in most schools of psychoanalysis, all kinds of repressed shit coming out in symbols.
Ok when I wrote it out like that it sounds kinda funny
Arguably, too much psychoanalysis is any psychoanalysis at all. Touch grass, bro. Act, engage with the world, stop thinking. One time I started writing a review of the book Sadly, Porn (hardcore psychoanalysis, I enjoyed it but read with caution) and one of my questions was well what does all this psychoanalysis get you, what is the end result? And my conclusion was, well, you write the book Sadly, Porn. (Which is porn. You get too into psychoanalysis and you make porn. Nah, it’s 1000 pages or hardcore analysis, bro. The author LITERALLY calls the book porn (sadly).) Sidenote: I stopped writing my review because I stumbled across this review and I liked it so much and thought it was so good that I would rather recommend it than make my own.
Again, speaking from some personal experience :)
No you just needed better psychoanalysis, bro, that would’ve helped the neurosis, trust me, bro. This is the same as troons encouraging troons to look at the right kind of porn. (Very fucking common.) You’ll totally help manage your dysphoria (AKA troon harder) with this heckin’ wholesome trans porn, sista.
Porn is the internet’s unconscious, along with everything else taboo. Even writing this I’m reticent to address the porn race war that I know goes on online, because I don’t want to implicate myself in having ever engaged in that revolting space.
Great stuff man