THE DEMISE OF GUYS

http://us.cnn.com/2012/05/23/health/living-well/demise-of-guys/index.html?iref=obnetwork

btw it took 7 paragraphs for Anders Behring Breivik to come up, which honestly shows remarkable restraint

http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/dam/assets/120523013536-zimbardo-nikita-story-body.jpg

argh he looks like someone else but i can't think who and it is driving me crazy

Won't someone please think of all the boys who don't know how to live among other human beings.

Video game and porn addictions are different. They are "arousal addictions," where the attraction is in the novelty, the variety or the surprise factor of the content. Sameness is soon habituated; newness heightens excitement. In traditional drug arousal, conversely, addicts want more of the same cocaine or heroin or favorite food.

agree re porn, but my Football Manager addiction is clearly druglike

de niro a little xxp

http://dcist.com/attachments/dcist_sommer/2009_0514_fiveguys3.jpg

tbh what's demising me is old-fashioned alcoholism and cigarettes

http://static.tvguide.com/MediaBin/Galleries/Imported/BioPix/Mi/bio16/rip-torn1.jpg

Guys are also totally out of sync in romantic relationships, which tend to build gradually and subtly, and require interaction, sharing, developing trust and suppression of lust at least until "the time is right."

good to know we are now blaming this on technology instead of patriarchy

Zimbardo is obviously a highly rated psychologist but the whole premise of this seems faulty - yes, the experiments are interesting in showing how stimulus-arousal can be addictive, but why apply that only to males? And how are they making the jump from that to romantic relationships? (The book probably at least tries to answer the latter question, but I bet its attempt at answering the former remains deficient.)

I think and have thought for a long time that there is probably something to the stimulus-arousal addiction as relating to the internet and video games. I think this article does a pretty bad job of making the case, and brining in Breivik and the guy who died playing WoW pretty much ruins the credibility. That's mostly CNN's fault though.

and also the male-specific thing. If there's some mechanism that makes males more susceptible to this, it's not mentioned.

this goofy title is presumably because the atlantic had already taken "the end of men"

Would like to see a follow-up on OTM/Excelsior addiction

because only men watch porn and play video games, right?

I am just a man
I am watching porn and playing
Video games

the postlude of dudes

the woes of bros

the failure of male-ure

(this requires a mispronunciation but)

requiems for my broheems

This new kind of human addictive arousal traps users into an expanded present hedonistic time zone.

I'm on EPH, what time is it there?

that casts "spring forward, fall back" in a whole new light

Yeah, I'd like to hear the evidence that boys are out-of-sync romantically. How does one test for that?

isn't addiction to novelty like the basis of consumerism? how is this new or at all particular to men?

How does one test for that?

http://www.funny-games.biz/dating-simulator.html

isn't addiction to novelty like the basis of consumerism? how is this new or at all particular to men?

― karl...arlk...rlka...lkar..., Wednesday, May 30, 2012 12:44 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I think there's a pretty big categorical difference between the "novelty" of new products coming out every few months and the "novelty" of new pleasure center rewards coming every few seconds as you play a video game for hours on end. Not that that necessarily has anything to do with gender.

Er. They seem quite obviously closely linked to me?

mmm, not sure i agree with that. there are a lot of video games where the rewards come very slow and people just put in way more time.

xpost

Not being a scientist I couldn't say w certainty that the same region of the brain is stimulated by both at similar levels and etc etc, but it would be my assumption that it is so?

They are linked but one of them involves not going out of your house or talking to anyone because you are playing a video game for hours on end and the other does not

amazon.com

Er ahh...what does that have to do with anything? And how does ordering things you want but don't need--many things, anything--on the internet significantly differ from playing video games for chemical reward?

Haha xp

HSN
catalogs

basically, since the invention of the mail there's no pressing NEED for anyone to leave the house other than the inconvenient fact that most people's work takes them away from home

yeah the human race is pretty much doomed once we have VR porn

Eugene Matuzak: [after catching Ricky with virtual reality porn] Damn it, Ricky, I catch you fucking this machine again, I'll break your neck.
Ricky: Sorry, chief.
Max Walker: Looks like safe sex to me.

I count your smartphone as a videogame btw

I'm on EPH, what time is it there?

Time to get off me.

yes, take turns

I've been following an interesting debate about the nature of addiction, and the way that certain technological consumer products are designed to trigger addictive "sticky" behaviour and I was hoping that this article might delve into that, instead of this stereotypical sexist evopysch bullshit, but, erm, oh well.

This book looks somewhat better researched and doesn't seem to discount half the human race in its initial principles:

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-05/24/damian-thompson

linked through from here

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/may/30/alcoholics-anonymous-saved-my-life

(And interesting how he links to an article that talks about how other addictive behaviours such as compulsive shopping show a gender skew - it's weird how different brain based problems manifest differently across gender, like how addiction manifests. Sorry, I'm tired and I'm not explaining this well.)

That AA article is pretty intriguing. I'm skeptical of the disease model of addictive behavior.