PMO and Gaming

It might have more to do with how long your gaming sessions are. I play for about an hour a day; I don't find that this negatively affects me at all.

 

Video games are also extremely similar to the PMO experience. You are usually bored and alone staring at a digital screen in a state of tension and novelty seeking.

The difference is not holding your junk in your hand and the content you are viewing. Although you're interacting with the computer, video games are basically a passive, spectator experience. You are physically inert and sitting in a chair or couch for hours. You are only moving your eyes and fingers.

You are building up a tremendous tension but only dissipating that energy through your fingers and eye movement. Compare this to sports where you dissipate the tension through full body movement.

This is also like PMO versus sex. One is using your hand. The other is using your entire body.

Video games are calling upon the activity of your fingers and eyes to do a really intense and usually competitive sequence of movements. You would be better off doing physical movements in real life, such as sports, training, lifting, hunting, whatever.

Staring at screens - no matter what the content is - is going to have a similar physiological response and its going to distort your perception of reality over time. It desensitizes you to the ordinary experience of being alive and resensitizes you to vicariously enjoying simulations of reality presented through digital screens like a voyeur.

 

I am glad someone else has the same idea. I've also gave up memes, video compilations, tv series, movies, music and I'm feeling a lot better.
I really don't know if even for non addicts if it's fine for the brain to release dopamine continuously for a few hours, while listening to music for example. People didn't evolve with such an activity, music was rare. What we didn't evolve with we are bad at, biologically.
Another thing bothering me is the lack of input while consuming these things. I just do nothing yet my mind doesn't relax. It's unpleasant yet I haven't noticed it until trying noPMO.

 

It's a really good point about music. It's a passive activity that exposes you to emotional influence and puts you in a vulnerable receptive state. Music was traditionally performed for special occasions that were tribally significant, like a wedding, funeral, celebration, going to war, etc.

Some people nowadays have earbuds plugged in or speakers playing for hours every day. It is difficult to say exactly what effect this is having, but there are many speculations about it. I tend to agree that it has a very large potential downside. I think music is being degraded, its losing its traditional significance, and its having undiagnosed / under-researched side effects on people.

And this is discussing music objectively. The content of music is a completely different story and is indubitably negative: pornographication, glorification of violence, hedonism, nihilism, Satanism, etc. etc.

My advice is to reserve music for appropriate contexts that add meaning to the moment. And not just absorb it passively for the emotional / dopamine / whatever high it induces.

Playing music during sex? No, it destroys the intimacy. Some people have never had sex without music, and that's really pathetic.

In the end, you have to investigate for yourself. It is worthwhile to fast from music (and most other parts of modern life) and re-evaluate your relationship with it. Music - like many other activities - easily becomes a coping mechanism to avoid spending time with yourself.