Common misconception - Games Developers play their own games.
Reality: Beyond testing this is rarely true.
Developers rarely play their own games, even when they do they won't play them nearly as much as any of their fans. The thing is developing a game is rather like writing a novel. When you spend so much time working on it and fine tuning the details of the story and the events that occur etc the "map" of the story becomes second nature. When you spend that much time on something it becomes rather like riding a bicycle, something which you don't really forget. Going back to things you did years ago, looking at the code it may seem like it is written in another language but the moment you start playing the game the storyline comes back to you. No matter how much depth you add, the reality is that once you know the inner workings and how it ends there's little enjoyment to be found.
The fun and the challenge for a developer is perpetuated by the development process. For a Game developer playing the product is not the game, coding the product is the real game, the source of all challenges and obstacles to be overcome. Looking back at code and adapting it, adding in new features and changing the world of a game, that is where the fun is to be had as a developer when it comes to old games. Consumers for a long time never got to experience this but more and more there are titles that open up development albeit in and incredibly simplified manner through editors and tools like the steam workshop etc - these store the potential to turn a gamer into a developer and in my view they should be encouraged.
Now there will be those that will argue, citing the "Myspace effect" where essentially people who really shouldn't venture into these fields will do so, resulting in some sub standard games being produced, akin to the wannabe web designers aplenty that pimped out their profiles when Myspace decided to allow full HTML. To them I argue that this is a necessary evil. If youtube was a closed platform we would not have half of the quality content that it contains today. Youtube does have a lot of crap on it and finding the gold can be a challenge in itself, if you will youtube is the modern day equivalent of prospecting, you set out to find something worthwhile in a myriad of garbage.
The problem here is not the fact that people can try, the problem is the way we rank their efforts and if you can find a solution to that problem then you will be worth a fortune, you will be the next Google, which in many ways achieved this with their search engine for finding websites, but even Google can't tell you what is interesting and what is crap. Google relies on many things but it has not achieved the ability to judge quality. Google+ and a number of other services run by Google have been aimed at finding ways to achieve this but they rely on people and their collective judgement and the sad reality is that we can be victims of our judgement. Popularity often ends up succumbing to a positive feedback loop and many websites over the years have become popular simply for being popular. Facebook is a prime example, it was once a useful service, but today the validity of its popularity is questionable.
I don't say this as a desire to appear in any way a hipster I simply state the truth that a lot of people have realised: when you step back and look at the services we use, are they really the best of what is on offer or are we using them simply because they are what is popular? A social network by its nature has to be popular to be successful if it's not popular you can't really use it, which makes it incredibly hard, almost impossible to choose an alternative.
Active and Passive Vegetarianism
To my knowledge these terms don't exist, if they do then ho hum. I'd like to coin these terms if they don't and I would like to define them as follows.
If you are presented meat on a plate that no-one else is going to consume, and you reject it, everything you protest as the grounds against meat consumption becomes senseless as a direct consequence of your rejection. If you reject the meat of an animal that is already dead and has already been processed then you make that the animal died for nothing. By rejecting meat on what is essentially a political motivation you are being incredibly selfish. Rejecting meat in a situation where you were not the person with purchasing power will not make the animal come back to life and it will not result in a reduction of worldwide meat consumption as you weren't the person that bought it and therefore have absolutely no effect on the purchasing habit of whoever did.
A passive vegetarian should abstain from buying meat therefore reducing the amount of money spent buying meat and the amount of meat that is purchased consequently reducing demand. In situations where you do not have purchasing power your abstention has absolutely no effect on the purchasing habits of the person who did.
An active vegetarian is one that outright rejects meat completely in all situations. This I see as pointless. If an animal is already dead, and someone has already bought it and cooked it, whether I eat it or not will have no effect on whether or not more will die - it will however determine whether the food is wasted. Active vegetarianism is a first world political choice that is incredibly selfish.
An active vegetarian does not eat meat at all, they object to the consumption of meat for whatever grounds they may.The difference here is that a passive vegetarian may consume meat. Now the reason I think these terms need to exist is basically down to the mentality of the vulture which I have discussed before. In a nutshell my argument is this: I accept that you object to the cultivation of animals for consumption but if you are a guest in someone's home or if you are offered meat and you reject it, if that food is not consumed by someone else it will be wasted and wastage of meat to someone who truly objects to the cultivation of animals should be a higher priority than your abstention.
A passive vegetarian does not purchase meat at all, they object to the cultivation of animals for consumption.
If you are presented meat on a plate that no-one else is going to consume, and you reject it, everything you protest as the grounds against meat consumption becomes senseless as a direct consequence of your rejection. If you reject the meat of an animal that is already dead and has already been processed then you make that the animal died for nothing. By rejecting meat on what is essentially a political motivation you are being incredibly selfish. Rejecting meat in a situation where you were not the person with purchasing power will not make the animal come back to life and it will not result in a reduction of worldwide meat consumption as you weren't the person that bought it and therefore have absolutely no effect on the purchasing habit of whoever did.
A passive vegetarian should abstain from buying meat therefore reducing the amount of money spent buying meat and the amount of meat that is purchased consequently reducing demand. In situations where you do not have purchasing power your abstention has absolutely no effect on the purchasing habits of the person who did.
An active vegetarian is one that outright rejects meat completely in all situations. This I see as pointless. If an animal is already dead, and someone has already bought it and cooked it, whether I eat it or not will have no effect on whether or not more will die - it will however determine whether the food is wasted. Active vegetarianism is a first world political choice that is incredibly selfish.
The Illusion of Wealth
If you are poor or have been in the past then you will already know everything I am going to say here. This post is for the benefit of people who "think" they have money and have never experienced what it is to be poor.
Wealth is an illusion and one of the easiest to pull off. Making your life look more successful or more comfortable than it is, in itself is an art form.
If you have money you will believe that you should live "within your means" because you are deluded into this belief that you should deny yourself what you want because you haven't "earned it" and need to save for it. The reality is this is a dead end, you can spend your life saving, be my guest but you will never become rich through saving money it doesn't work like that. If you want to become rich you need to spend your money, in particular you need to spend it in things that will give you a return - investments. You won't become rich by simply putting every penny in a bank and if you think you can then you are in for a bad time.
If you don't have much money then there is one thing that will become apparent very quickly - it is not possible to live within your means. Now there will be people that argue with me here and quite frankly I don't care what you think because I know this to be true from experience, not just my own but the experience of countless others, from all income levels. The fact is if you have to work to be able to live, then you will never be able to live within your means, you will always have to resort to using financial services to help you through life. You'll need a loan for a big purchase, you'll need a mortgage to buy your house, you'll need a credit card to budget you outgoings and pay for things while you wait for your pay-check to come in.
Personal debt in the UK levels over 1.4 trillion pounds. [£1,400,000,000,000]
That averages £21,212 per person given the UK's population of 66 million people. We live in debt.
If you are poor then you will know all about the options you have to buy things you don't have the money for, the various pathways to credit that exist. And if you are poor then you will use them. Your "neighbour with a 42 inch TV" will not have paid for it outright they will be using credit to get it, and with catalogues offering a £1,000 TV for less than £10 a week with an initial 12 month payment holiday I would hardly consider that TV to be any indication of their wealth.
This is the problem with this country and perceived wealth, if you "think" you have any degree of wealth you immediately begin to judge other people by your own standards and think that people are living life in the lap of luxury at your expense. I have often seen people say "people on benefits are better off than people in work" - that's bullshit and you know it so shut the fuck up, if you actually believed it you'd quit your job and live the high life. You don't believe it though you just want to complain and you want to be smiled upon by those above you for victimising those below you.
This childish shit was meant to stop when we left school and started behaving like adults but it seems that some people didn't get the message.
With the level of animosity in this country towards those on benefits I actually want this country to crumble, if it means that people actually learn some humility then I am willing to accept the austerity to achieve it. Unemployment in the UK is continuing to rise if you look at the real unemployment counts rather than the ones the papers cite which only account for those who have been unemployed for less than 6 months. The long term unemployed figure in the UK is continuing to rise. There has not been significant investment and there has not been enough done to provide a viable economic future. So bring on the triple dip recession I embrace it with open arms, bring on 25% unemployment levels like those in Spain, bring the UK back into the 1980s.
The number of young people aged 16-24 without a job rose to 993,000 over the last three months, taking the youth unemployment rate to 21.2%. In a month and a half I will turn 25 and drop out of these figures, as will thousands of others. I owe Student Loans Company £30,000+ in debt that's from before the fees increased, had I studied today I would owe £50,000+ by now. I have not been able to get a graduate job since graduating University. I graduated 4 years ago and I have applied for over 1,200 jobs since then, of these applications less than 1% even bothered to reply, both of their own accord and to enquiries made in follow-up. There are millions of people in this country who need to experience what it is to be unemployed and claim benefits because there are millions of people who really have no idea what it is really like and I think it's time you found out.
Wealth is an illusion and one of the easiest to pull off. Making your life look more successful or more comfortable than it is, in itself is an art form.
If you have money you will believe that you should live "within your means" because you are deluded into this belief that you should deny yourself what you want because you haven't "earned it" and need to save for it. The reality is this is a dead end, you can spend your life saving, be my guest but you will never become rich through saving money it doesn't work like that. If you want to become rich you need to spend your money, in particular you need to spend it in things that will give you a return - investments. You won't become rich by simply putting every penny in a bank and if you think you can then you are in for a bad time.
If you don't have much money then there is one thing that will become apparent very quickly - it is not possible to live within your means. Now there will be people that argue with me here and quite frankly I don't care what you think because I know this to be true from experience, not just my own but the experience of countless others, from all income levels. The fact is if you have to work to be able to live, then you will never be able to live within your means, you will always have to resort to using financial services to help you through life. You'll need a loan for a big purchase, you'll need a mortgage to buy your house, you'll need a credit card to budget you outgoings and pay for things while you wait for your pay-check to come in.
Personal debt in the UK levels over 1.4 trillion pounds. [£1,400,000,000,000]
That averages £21,212 per person given the UK's population of 66 million people. We live in debt.
If you are poor then you will know all about the options you have to buy things you don't have the money for, the various pathways to credit that exist. And if you are poor then you will use them. Your "neighbour with a 42 inch TV" will not have paid for it outright they will be using credit to get it, and with catalogues offering a £1,000 TV for less than £10 a week with an initial 12 month payment holiday I would hardly consider that TV to be any indication of their wealth.
This is the problem with this country and perceived wealth, if you "think" you have any degree of wealth you immediately begin to judge other people by your own standards and think that people are living life in the lap of luxury at your expense. I have often seen people say "people on benefits are better off than people in work" - that's bullshit and you know it so shut the fuck up, if you actually believed it you'd quit your job and live the high life. You don't believe it though you just want to complain and you want to be smiled upon by those above you for victimising those below you.
This childish shit was meant to stop when we left school and started behaving like adults but it seems that some people didn't get the message.
With the level of animosity in this country towards those on benefits I actually want this country to crumble, if it means that people actually learn some humility then I am willing to accept the austerity to achieve it. Unemployment in the UK is continuing to rise if you look at the real unemployment counts rather than the ones the papers cite which only account for those who have been unemployed for less than 6 months. The long term unemployed figure in the UK is continuing to rise. There has not been significant investment and there has not been enough done to provide a viable economic future. So bring on the triple dip recession I embrace it with open arms, bring on 25% unemployment levels like those in Spain, bring the UK back into the 1980s.
The number of young people aged 16-24 without a job rose to 993,000 over the last three months, taking the youth unemployment rate to 21.2%. In a month and a half I will turn 25 and drop out of these figures, as will thousands of others. I owe Student Loans Company £30,000+ in debt that's from before the fees increased, had I studied today I would owe £50,000+ by now. I have not been able to get a graduate job since graduating University. I graduated 4 years ago and I have applied for over 1,200 jobs since then, of these applications less than 1% even bothered to reply, both of their own accord and to enquiries made in follow-up. There are millions of people in this country who need to experience what it is to be unemployed and claim benefits because there are millions of people who really have no idea what it is really like and I think it's time you found out.
Another rant . . .
I really don't know why I read comments on news sites or on youtube etc they often make my blood boil and they leave me annoyed wondering how people can be so ignorant. Today I read this article on BBC News:
Prince's Trust: Poor IT skills hurt youth job chances
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-21747206
I agree with the article and I find the statistics that it has unearthed to be something of a concern. That's not what annoyed me. I read the comments and an Editor's pick, not just any comment in the list but one actually picked by a moderator to be a top comment said:
Most programming jobs in the UK ask for 2 years industry experience, some ask for 3, some ask for 5 and yes I have even seen some that ask for 10 years experience in an industrial setting. This is what is wrong with the technology industry in the UK and the Government is completely ignorant of this fact and is not doing anything to persuade or motivate employers to take on graduates without experience.
Now you can use the training argument, or the settlement argument that says a company would have to train a graduate or settle them into a new way of doing things - this argument is bullshit. Every company is different, Company A will not operate the same way as Company B, having years of industrial experience means nothing, all candidates once employed will have to adapt to their new surroundings and the argument that those who have done this before will be better able to cope is invalid. Simple Psychology can tell you that people learn and develop bad habits, if anything the more experience you have the more bad habits you will have. The longer you have worked in the industry the more adamant you will be of wanting to use "my way of doing it" as opposed to the company's way. A graduate is a blank slate they haven't developed any of these habits and they are still open to learning new ways of doing things, what you are asking for when you ask for years of experience in reality is a candidate that will be reluctant to do things differently.
There are countless government schemes that have been developed to help people into work that have all failed. There are even scheme now in the UK which are abysmal in they record but are still championed by the idiots who decide policy that affects industry they have never dared to enter. Sit the current Secretary of State for Work and Pensions Iain Duncan Smith down in front of a computer and ask him to write a Hello World program in C++ and I guarantee you he will not have a clue how to do it and he is the one that is in charge of these policies. While we are at it I'd like you to read the Education section of Iain's Wikipedia article, Equally the current Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills Vince Cable equally as culpable in these matters would neither likely be able to complete the task.
Prince's Trust: Poor IT skills hurt youth job chances
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-21747206
I agree with the article and I find the statistics that it has unearthed to be something of a concern. That's not what annoyed me. I read the comments and an Editor's pick, not just any comment in the list but one actually picked by a moderator to be a top comment said:
We desperately need more computer programming graduates in this country...This pissed me off so much because it is completely uninformed and it is in fact a fallacy. The problem this country has when it comes to the technology industry is not a lack of graduates. We have thousands of unemployed graduates in this country and a lot of them are Computer Science graduates, the vast majority of which have academic experience of programming. The problem is not a shortage of graduates it is a shortage of companies that are willing to employ graduates.
Most programming jobs in the UK ask for 2 years industry experience, some ask for 3, some ask for 5 and yes I have even seen some that ask for 10 years experience in an industrial setting. This is what is wrong with the technology industry in the UK and the Government is completely ignorant of this fact and is not doing anything to persuade or motivate employers to take on graduates without experience.
Now you can use the training argument, or the settlement argument that says a company would have to train a graduate or settle them into a new way of doing things - this argument is bullshit. Every company is different, Company A will not operate the same way as Company B, having years of industrial experience means nothing, all candidates once employed will have to adapt to their new surroundings and the argument that those who have done this before will be better able to cope is invalid. Simple Psychology can tell you that people learn and develop bad habits, if anything the more experience you have the more bad habits you will have. The longer you have worked in the industry the more adamant you will be of wanting to use "my way of doing it" as opposed to the company's way. A graduate is a blank slate they haven't developed any of these habits and they are still open to learning new ways of doing things, what you are asking for when you ask for years of experience in reality is a candidate that will be reluctant to do things differently.
There are countless government schemes that have been developed to help people into work that have all failed. There are even scheme now in the UK which are abysmal in they record but are still championed by the idiots who decide policy that affects industry they have never dared to enter. Sit the current Secretary of State for Work and Pensions Iain Duncan Smith down in front of a computer and ask him to write a Hello World program in C++ and I guarantee you he will not have a clue how to do it and he is the one that is in charge of these policies. While we are at it I'd like you to read the Education section of Iain's Wikipedia article, Equally the current Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills Vince Cable equally as culpable in these matters would neither likely be able to complete the task.
How would democracy die?
I believe, that ethics and morals are matters of opinion and can not be considered to be fact nor can they be considered to be self-evident. 1000 years ago it was believed to be fair and right and true that men should be allowed a voice with which to vote while women were denied the same privilege. Today we think this unjust.
Whilst I agree with that assertion I disagree with any claim that this is self-evident. To claim self-evidence in this or any other matter concerning ethics or morals is to deny the fact that what is fair and right and true is defined by what the majority confer and agree to be fair and right and true. 1000 years ago people held the view that their state of affairs was just. They did not perceive any unfairness in their state. There will always be a minority who do not agree with the definition of the day, and perhaps once in every generation an individual or group will challenge these definitions and seek to redefine our perception of the world.
To look back and wonder how anyone could believe that this was fair can be unfathomable to generations of today; further, to think that there were women who believed this to be fair can escape the comprehension of many, but we know this is true. We know there were people who did not agree but we also know that the majority were complacent and accepted the definition of the day.
We think of voting today, in the western world the right to live in a democracy is one that is asserted with such vigour that many are willing to wage war and die in the name of defending it. They name those who challenge this view as opponents, would-be oppressors and the most common, terrorists. Whilst that definition might fit in some cases, the reality is that the definition of the day is not at risk from outside opponents, it is at risk from ourselves. We give up so much willingly when you stop and think about it, to hold such anger towards someone with an opposing view is quite laughable.
In 1000 years, perhaps 100 maybe less our world will change beyond our recognition, as it has throughout history. What we believe today will be ridiculed by future generations with the same vigour that the generation of the moment scorns those of millennia past. It may be quite unimaginable for people to think that they will give up democracy but the reality is that you relinquish the burden of responsibility and the right to make decisions everyday. We are surrounded by technology that is advancing, evolving much quicker than we are as a race. We delegate decision making to this technology. This is self-evident of that there is no question and no challenge from I as I make no judgement on the morality of this observation.
Every time you open your browser, visit google, type in a query and press enter, you relinquish the responsibility of having to look for yourself. You see a page of results, with millions found you choose from the first 5 results 99% of the time - why? "because it found what I wanted?" - yes, and no, it found an result to match your query, but most of the time what you see in those results is not what you wanted, you wanted an answer, and google gave you something that would satisfy that desire - the result is actually irrelevant. How is it irrelevant? If it is what you were looking for how can it be irrelevant? That's simple - if you knew what you were looking for you wouldn't have asked google in the first place. You asked google because you didn't want to do it yourself, you gave up the right to do it for yourself.
As technology becomes ever more intrusive in our lives we can see this process of relinquishing control become ever more intimate. On google play and on the Apple App store there are several "smart" alarm apps. These are apps you tell what time you want to be awake by, and then go to sleep. The app uses the accelerometer in your phone to monitor your movements in your sleep and determine when you are in an R.E.M. Cycle or deep sleep and when you are in a shallow sleep. The app attempts to wake you as close to your alarm time as it can whilst timing the alarm with a moment of shallow sleep to make you wake up relaxed and refreshed. One of these apps as an example claims to have over 30 million users. How many of those use it on a daily basis? How many people have relinquished control of their sleep pattern to a phone. Think about that for a moment. Their phone decides when they wake up - and for these people their phone will be the last thing they used just before going to sleep. We don't control technology anymore, technology controls us.
It is foreseeable that this may come to a point where say your waste is monitored by a computer, which communicated with a smart cooker that can print food comprised of the nutritional content you are lacking, in a form that looks visually pleasing and is deemed to be tasty to you based on past eating experiences. Imagine a world where you don't even decide what to eat anymore a computer does it for you. With all these things, people still adamantly protest to the idea that they will surrender democracy. It is not unreasonable to say that one day we could live in a society where people no longer control government, instead computers make the decisions. A world where political bias no longer influences policy, instead policy is decided purely on a results plus reward aggregation.
It may seem unfathomable now, and you may bark for such ideas biting on your beliefs but the reality is that any response to this position will equal in parallel the response that you would receive from someone in your position 1000 years ago if you were to describe to them the state of the world as it is today. My words are not fact, they are not intended to be prophecy they are merely intended to highlight the possibilities that lie in our future and the delusions we have of our present spurred on by our own arrogance.
Whilst I agree with that assertion I disagree with any claim that this is self-evident. To claim self-evidence in this or any other matter concerning ethics or morals is to deny the fact that what is fair and right and true is defined by what the majority confer and agree to be fair and right and true. 1000 years ago people held the view that their state of affairs was just. They did not perceive any unfairness in their state. There will always be a minority who do not agree with the definition of the day, and perhaps once in every generation an individual or group will challenge these definitions and seek to redefine our perception of the world.
To look back and wonder how anyone could believe that this was fair can be unfathomable to generations of today; further, to think that there were women who believed this to be fair can escape the comprehension of many, but we know this is true. We know there were people who did not agree but we also know that the majority were complacent and accepted the definition of the day.
We think of voting today, in the western world the right to live in a democracy is one that is asserted with such vigour that many are willing to wage war and die in the name of defending it. They name those who challenge this view as opponents, would-be oppressors and the most common, terrorists. Whilst that definition might fit in some cases, the reality is that the definition of the day is not at risk from outside opponents, it is at risk from ourselves. We give up so much willingly when you stop and think about it, to hold such anger towards someone with an opposing view is quite laughable.
In 1000 years, perhaps 100 maybe less our world will change beyond our recognition, as it has throughout history. What we believe today will be ridiculed by future generations with the same vigour that the generation of the moment scorns those of millennia past. It may be quite unimaginable for people to think that they will give up democracy but the reality is that you relinquish the burden of responsibility and the right to make decisions everyday. We are surrounded by technology that is advancing, evolving much quicker than we are as a race. We delegate decision making to this technology. This is self-evident of that there is no question and no challenge from I as I make no judgement on the morality of this observation.
Every time you open your browser, visit google, type in a query and press enter, you relinquish the responsibility of having to look for yourself. You see a page of results, with millions found you choose from the first 5 results 99% of the time - why? "because it found what I wanted?" - yes, and no, it found an result to match your query, but most of the time what you see in those results is not what you wanted, you wanted an answer, and google gave you something that would satisfy that desire - the result is actually irrelevant. How is it irrelevant? If it is what you were looking for how can it be irrelevant? That's simple - if you knew what you were looking for you wouldn't have asked google in the first place. You asked google because you didn't want to do it yourself, you gave up the right to do it for yourself.
As technology becomes ever more intrusive in our lives we can see this process of relinquishing control become ever more intimate. On google play and on the Apple App store there are several "smart" alarm apps. These are apps you tell what time you want to be awake by, and then go to sleep. The app uses the accelerometer in your phone to monitor your movements in your sleep and determine when you are in an R.E.M. Cycle or deep sleep and when you are in a shallow sleep. The app attempts to wake you as close to your alarm time as it can whilst timing the alarm with a moment of shallow sleep to make you wake up relaxed and refreshed. One of these apps as an example claims to have over 30 million users. How many of those use it on a daily basis? How many people have relinquished control of their sleep pattern to a phone. Think about that for a moment. Their phone decides when they wake up - and for these people their phone will be the last thing they used just before going to sleep. We don't control technology anymore, technology controls us.
It is foreseeable that this may come to a point where say your waste is monitored by a computer, which communicated with a smart cooker that can print food comprised of the nutritional content you are lacking, in a form that looks visually pleasing and is deemed to be tasty to you based on past eating experiences. Imagine a world where you don't even decide what to eat anymore a computer does it for you. With all these things, people still adamantly protest to the idea that they will surrender democracy. It is not unreasonable to say that one day we could live in a society where people no longer control government, instead computers make the decisions. A world where political bias no longer influences policy, instead policy is decided purely on a results plus reward aggregation.
It may seem unfathomable now, and you may bark for such ideas biting on your beliefs but the reality is that any response to this position will equal in parallel the response that you would receive from someone in your position 1000 years ago if you were to describe to them the state of the world as it is today. My words are not fact, they are not intended to be prophecy they are merely intended to highlight the possibilities that lie in our future and the delusions we have of our present spurred on by our own arrogance.
Gay Porn
Although this post is about gay porn, what I say here can be applied to any sexuality really.
I have never understood how people can follow porn with the same devotion as any other part of the entertainment industry. Now maybe that's down to my perception that you generally don't sit down and watch porn like you watch a normal movie, its not such a passive act - if you watch porn you're usually quite "active" masturbating. There's no point in being coy here let's be frank.
How anyone for example can name porn stars off the top of their head, and the titles of the movies they have been in - if we can call them that - is odd to me. What's even more odd to me when I was a young closeted gay man porn never entered my life, it wasn't until I was an adult. Now that's the age you're supposed to begin watching if you decide to, but let's be honest for most people that's not the case. To see gay guys now in their late teens and early 20s who know so much about gay porn it just seems so warped. I have nothing against porn, I admit I do watch it, but to these guys those porn stars are becoming their idols.
To base your perception of what you want to be; what you want to look like; what you want a guy to look like; perhaps most obviously as far as porn is concerned: what you want your sex life to be like; to base all of this on what you see in porn I think is incredibly warped.
Porn is incredibly unrealistic and when you start having sex and become sexually active that truth becomes self evident really fast.
In cinema in general, we watch movies with actors and actresses we come to love and follow their careers avidly. In this realm however it is a lot more obvious to us that what we see is fiction and the ideals these movies portray are methods of escape and indulgence - the way porn should actually be seen. You do not expect to be able to do most things you see in a regular movie. It is even becoming more prevalent that you should not expect the places you see in movies to actually exist or if they do, certainly not to expect them to look like they do on-screen.
With all this considered, my own prevailing mindset is one that reduces porn to the status of a utility - to be used in certain circumstances of need, not something to be considered a hobby or an interest.
Now I realise this post is sounding quite judgemental. I apologize for that, it's not what I intend. I have no problem with porn and I have no problem with people who follow it in this manner, I certainly don't want to judge you for it. This post is an expression of confusion. I don't understand what motivates people to "follow" porn - but "don't" and "can't" are two different things and maybe I'll come to understand this at some point.
I guess the only thing I can really add is to me sex is something intimate, whereas porn is something I have never viewn as intimate, maybe that's the reason I don't grasp this mentality, maybe people who "follow" porn see it as something intimate.
I have never understood how people can follow porn with the same devotion as any other part of the entertainment industry. Now maybe that's down to my perception that you generally don't sit down and watch porn like you watch a normal movie, its not such a passive act - if you watch porn you're usually quite "active" masturbating. There's no point in being coy here let's be frank.
How anyone for example can name porn stars off the top of their head, and the titles of the movies they have been in - if we can call them that - is odd to me. What's even more odd to me when I was a young closeted gay man porn never entered my life, it wasn't until I was an adult. Now that's the age you're supposed to begin watching if you decide to, but let's be honest for most people that's not the case. To see gay guys now in their late teens and early 20s who know so much about gay porn it just seems so warped. I have nothing against porn, I admit I do watch it, but to these guys those porn stars are becoming their idols.
To base your perception of what you want to be; what you want to look like; what you want a guy to look like; perhaps most obviously as far as porn is concerned: what you want your sex life to be like; to base all of this on what you see in porn I think is incredibly warped.
Porn is incredibly unrealistic and when you start having sex and become sexually active that truth becomes self evident really fast.
In cinema in general, we watch movies with actors and actresses we come to love and follow their careers avidly. In this realm however it is a lot more obvious to us that what we see is fiction and the ideals these movies portray are methods of escape and indulgence - the way porn should actually be seen. You do not expect to be able to do most things you see in a regular movie. It is even becoming more prevalent that you should not expect the places you see in movies to actually exist or if they do, certainly not to expect them to look like they do on-screen.
With all this considered, my own prevailing mindset is one that reduces porn to the status of a utility - to be used in certain circumstances of need, not something to be considered a hobby or an interest.
Now I realise this post is sounding quite judgemental. I apologize for that, it's not what I intend. I have no problem with porn and I have no problem with people who follow it in this manner, I certainly don't want to judge you for it. This post is an expression of confusion. I don't understand what motivates people to "follow" porn - but "don't" and "can't" are two different things and maybe I'll come to understand this at some point.
I guess the only thing I can really add is to me sex is something intimate, whereas porn is something I have never viewn as intimate, maybe that's the reason I don't grasp this mentality, maybe people who "follow" porn see it as something intimate.
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