I spent half my life looking for the perfect porn video

Hunter S. Thompson’s daily routine at the top of his writing career allegedly included two cups of coffee, half a dozen cigarettes, a few glasses of Chivas, some weed, and multiple bumps of cocaine — just to get to lunch.

Desensitization is merciless. It’s the engine of growth for substance and behavioral addictions alike — what lies behind an addict’s accelerating spiral into despair.

Porn addiction is no exception to this rule. Typically, desensitization is what makes porn addicts escalate into longer binges as well as into more extreme content. Categories that would shock a novice watcher — things like BDSM or gangbangs— are a regular porn user’s bread and butter. From there, it only gets worse, as there are virtually no limits to the kind of porn that you can find on the Internet.

My addiction to porn, however, evolved differently. I never really developed a taste for all that kinky stuff (I never even liked anal, and it’s all over the place). My obsession was always with quality, and raising the standard was the way my addiction escalated. I gradually became more and more picky, the proportion of videos that could satisfy me growing shorter — and the time spent to find them irreversibly longer.

In those relentless sessions, I felt like a forty-niner panning for gold in a Californian river — mountains of gravel piling up behind my back as I desperately look for that one shiny nugget that makes it all worth it.

In a way, my porn addiction was nothing but an endless search for the perfect porn video…

…which can naturally only lead us to one question: Exactly what in the hell makes a porn video perfect?

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WARNING!!

This story attempts to describe some of the aspects that I would like and dislike in porn videos. In the end, the idea is to show just how pointless the whole process was, but in order to get there I must first be specific enough in my description.

As a consequence, the story might be a bit triggering for those of you that are actively trying to quit porn. If that’s your case, you might want to skim some parts. If you think you can handle it, go ahead. Either way, I think there’s something valuable to be learned from this if you stick with me until the end.

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Ok, so what was it that made a porn video perfect for me then? What criteria guided this insane search?

Well, porn websites have been using the concept of category for ages to describe their videos, so maybe that’s a good place for me to start.

It’s not easy, though. Some categories are unquestionable: my perfect porn video would be in the hardcore category, for example. Most likely under young as well. Natural tits and orgasm can also be added safely, but the certainties pretty much end up there.

Couple or threesome? Amateur or pornstar? That’s where my preferences blur. Casting, squirting, POV? Sure, they were personal favorites at one time or another, but I wouldn’t consider them a requirement.

Using categories might not be such a good idea after all. I can come up with some broad criteria, but overall I’m left with more questions than answers. Perhaps focusing on the mother of all these category questions should be my next step.

So… what is it going to be: white, latina, asian, or ebony?

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Porn videos are — like campaigning politicians — all about the people.
Everything else in a video is contingent upon the performers and their physical attractiveness, which is why defining the perfect person might be the key to narrowing this search down.

Let’s start with the male performer (it might come as a surprise, but this is where my preferences are most clear). I want a handsome, muscular, young white man in my video, with a dick that’s big without being monstrous. Essentially, I just want an upgraded version of myself — not for my own pleasure (in fact, I’m going to avoid looking at him as best as I can), it’s just that I need to believe that this guy could be me, as much as I need to believe that the girl in the video is really into him.

The problem comes with the female performer. Other than the regular beauty standards and a preference for natural bodies, there’s not much more that I can add. I don’t really care whether she is white, asian, latina, black… you name it. My taste for porn is so inclusive that Netflix could make a show out of it.

Without an archetype for the perfect female body, I’m still lost in a torrent of options. We are going to need a different strategy.

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Peace can be best defined as the absence of war, and death as the end of life. I guess what I’m trying to say is that, sometimes, the best way to describe something is by listing all the things that it is not. Maybe that can help me out here.

My perfect porn video doesn’t have a plot. There is no visiting plumber, no pizza delivery guy, and no lemon stealing persons. It doesn’t take place in a cheaply-built cliché set. There is no high school classroom and no manager’s office.

My perfect porn video doesn’t have a soundtrack. It doesn’t look like it’s been recorded with a Nokia 6085 or by a paparazzo hiding behind a bush half a mile away. It doesn’t overuse scene cuts nor is it crowded with close-up camera angles.

What follows is a list of Academy Awards that my perfect porn video would never aspire to win: Best Costume Design, Best Film Editing, Best Original Score, Best Production Design, Best Makeup and Hairstyling, Best Visual Effects.

My perfect porn video, in short, doesn’t look like a porn video. There are no cringey articulations of pleasure, no constant calls to God, no scheduled orgasms. There are no fake tits and no fake butts. No Cirque du Soleil positions.

These are all things that my video is not, and by force of opposition I’ve finally completed my forensic sketch of pornographic perfection.

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Time to summarize it all.

My perfect porn video stars two attractive, young people with natural bodies. There is no ridiculous plot bringing them together, only a genuine and intense attraction for each other.

Sex is vanilla but passionate. Orgasms are real, not limited to the guy or in number. The camera doesn’t get in the way and captures everything in just the necessary level of detail.

The video, in essence, feels authentic.
This might not sound like much, but in an industry where everything — from the big networks to the supposedly amateur videos— feels extremely rehearsed and distant, it should prove to be quite the requirement.

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Alright, I now have a clear mental picture of what this video is supposed to look like. With these criteria in mind, I turn to my browser and start my diligent search.

After hours of browsing through a myriad of candidates — some are close, others very, very long shots — I seem to find a promising aspirant. As I watch it, I note with growing excitement how the video ticks all the right boxes while avoiding all the red flags. By the time I’m halfway through, I already know.

This is it, I’ve found it: the one. The perfect porn video.

It’s everything I had imagined and more, and watching it seems to pay off generously for all the effort that went into finding it.

Then it ends.

An empty feeling starts to grow in my stomach as I stare at my reflection on the black screen.

I stay there in silence and let the emptiness sink in.

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Defining my perfect porn video is hard for the same reason that finding it would leave me utterly unsatisfied.

There is no perfect porn video. The perfect porn video is always the next one.
Porn addiction is an addiction to novelty.

No matter how ideal a video might seem, watching it will always remove the element of surprise that made it so appealing in the first place. In fact, even if I could come up with a detailed step-by-step description of my perfect porn video, the very same exercise of describing it would rob the video of its perfection.

Once the novelty wears off, the spell comes to an abrupt end — the gold carriage turns back into a pumpkin and beautiful Cinderella emerges as a pauper in ragged clothes, leaving no glass shoe behind. This is the reason I would never go back to any of the perfect videos I hoarded through the years. All those files ever did was collect dust in my hard drive while I was busy browsing for new videos to add to the collection.

I was addicted to the search. To the strenuous process of wading through hours and hours of imperfect content to find perfection — and to the incredible rush of dopamine that came with it.

In the process, I was not just wasting my time: I was hurting myself. Those endless sessions depleted my energy, destroyed my self-esteem, and physically and mentally conditioned my sex life in ways that would later take me years to overcome.

And yet, the pointlessness of it all wasn’t always obvious to me. It took me a long time to detach from porn enough to realize the absurdity of my search and the banality of all those perfect videos that I so strived for. Quitting it helped me see porn for what it really is: nothing more than crafted content to satisfy an urge.

Some videos might be better, some might be worse, but none of them is perfect. Such a quest for perfection only reveals either a search for something else (a true intimate experience with someone, for example) or an escape from other issues in your life (such as stress, anxiety, or depression). Whatever that is for you, one thing is clear: you will never find it in a stream of porn.

Once I understood that, perfection lost its appeal. After more than fifteen years, the time had come for me to hang up the gold pan.

The search had finally concluded.

 

Well, I hope that at least put an end to the search

 

Thank you.

It's important to recognize what works for you and what doesn't.
If you find yourself repeating things over and over again and obtaining the same results, as in the ritual you describe, that's a sign that you're stuck and not making progress.
As you said, don't stick to rituals that are not working for you, figure out what does instead, and jump into action!

 

Thank you very much!

Our addictions don't always escalate in the exact same way, but the more I read about other people's experiences and reflect on mine, the more I see how the mechanisms are essentially the same across the board.
Good news is, that means that what we each learn that helps us overcome this problem, others can use too

 

Thank you very much guys!
I'm glad you liked it and thank you for giving me such positive feedback, it keeps me motivated to keep sharing my experience

I think we can all learn a lot from reflecting on our issues with porn, and everything we learn will bring us closer to overcoming them

 

I can relate to every word you said.
I used to have a very similar routine, especially when it comes to the tabs sprouting like mushrooms.
I call this the pornographic hydra, because two or more tabs pop up for every one you close.
God knows it's pretty damn hard to kill the hydra, so your best bet as an addict is to never invoke it ever again