A reclusive tribe in the Amazon finally got hooked up to the internet, thanks to Elon Musk — only to be torn apart by social media and pornography addiction, elders complain.
Brazil’s 2,000-member Marubo tribe has been left bitterly divided by the arrival of the Tesla founder’s Starlink service nine months ago, which connected the remote rainforest community along the Ituí River to the web for the first time.
“When it arrived, everyone was happy,” Tsainama Marubo, 73, told The New York Times.
“But now, things have gotten worse. Young people have gotten lazy because of the internet, they’re learning the ways of the white people.”
The Marubo are a chaste tribe, who even frown upon kissing in public — but Alfredo Marubo (all Marubo use the same last name) said he is anxious that the arrival of the service, which delivers super-fast internet to far-flung corners of the planet and has been billed as a game-changer by Musk, could upend standards of decorum.
Alfredo said many young Marubo men have been sharing porn videos in group chats and he has already observed more “aggressive sexual behavior” in some of them.
“We’re worried young people are going to want to try it,” he said of the kinky sex acts they’ve suddenly been exposed to on screen.
It’s curtains once they find e621. Might as well break out the programming socks and IT jobs now, lol
Eh, we’re all human.
Relatable.
Surprisingly not the onion.
And now all the 30 year old guys are gonna have dick problems. Jesus Christ.
Elon Musk: my work here is done.
Did their women get diagnosed with hysteria too?
First of all, “porn addiction” is not a thing. Clickbait news organizations use it to drive traffic. Religious zealous use the term to demonize those who differ from their own worldview. Licensed medical professionals do not use it.
The quotes in the article are from a 73 year old man complaining that the youth these days are weird, immoral, and lazy. Old people have been documented saying that for hundreds, thousands of years.
Whether something is “a thing” depends on what “a thing” is.
If you’re saying it isn’t a mental disorder, you’re correct, depending on the diagnostic manual, like the DSM-5.
However, any addiction can be a clinically significant mental illness if it is impacting a persons ability to function.
If someone is habitually neglecting their health, finances, or social bonds (especially relationships), then porn addiction is definitely “a thing” (mental illness).
Do you not see any problem with allowing the media to make up mental illnesses? What’s next, protesting? Voting for another party? Refusing to worship the right god, the right way?
If someone is habitually neglecting their health that’s already a recognized mental disorder. Ascribing that to the subject of their fixation when there is no evidence that the subject caused that is, at best, irresponsible, and at worst pushing a religious or political agenda.
You misunderstand, the definition of a mental illness is a significant impediment to normal and healthy behaviour. It’s not defined by the media.
Take for example, anxiety. It may or may not cause mental illness, depending on whether the anxiety is clinically significant.
Everyone gets anxious at times, but excessive anxiety is detrimental, and therefore, a mental illness.
Oh no I perfectly understand that. In various comments around this article I’ve said that the people with mental illnesses that compel them to overuse anything are valid and should be helped.
But throwing around the word “porn addiction” as the article is doing is irresponsible and misleading.
And it’s possible I missed this, but I haven’t found any evidence that any members of this tribe have been diagnosed by any medical professionals with any sort of mental illness. It’s just a 73 year old complaining about the world around him changing. And even then, none of his actual quotes from the original NY times interview mention pornography addiction- that seems to have been entirely added by the editors of the various new outlets that have picked this story up. They are trying to sensationalize this story and rile up evangelicals.
Ah okay, I see what you’re saying now.
I was less interested in the context and more on the clinical criteria.
Porn addiction is a very real thing that people suffer from.
It has been continuously been reviewed and rejected by the APA due to lack of scientific evidence supporting it’s existence.
There are people out there with compulsive disorders that can be associated with any activity, including consuming pornography. I will not deny that there are people suffering from such conditions that should be helped. There is no evidence that pornography is itself addictive.
This case is just an old man yelling at a cloud. It’s just like the satanic panic of the 1980’s. It’s just like the false (and somewhat racist) claims against MSG. It’s propaganda masquerading as science. It’s morality masquerading as medicine.
By that logic, alcohol addiction isn’t a thing
Except that there is plenty of evidence that alcohol is physically addictive and causes withdrawal symptoms. So, by my logic, alcohol addiction is a thing.
Because it’s not just my logic. I’m leaning on the history of years and years of medical professionals and scientists doing research. And their conclusions are that alcohol addiction is a thing porn addiction is not.
Porn is like alcohol. Under moderation, consuming it is usually okay (although not explicitly healthy) but heavy consumption can lead to real problems.
I understand where you’re coming from, but there’s some significant differences between the two.
The biggest being: alcohol is physiologically addictive. If you’re addicted to alcohol and try to stop, you very likely will suffer from a variety of physical symptoms of withdrawal. Alcohol use itself inhibits brain function and cognition that can lead to a downward spiral of bad decisions that is far beyond anything porn can do.
Any amount of alcohol is bad for you, even a small amount. There are some argued health benefits- the argument for reducing stress, for example, but it’s pretty close to scientific consensus that alcohol is not worth the benefits.
Porn on the other hand… It’s controversial and difficult to find great research because of the history of social, political, and religious stigma and the reliance on self-reporting for studies. However, pretty much every claim that it’s bad has been debunked, except in those rare cases involving compulsive disorders. The one solid physiological affect I can find it that it probably lowers blood pressure. There are some possible social affects that are much trickier to study and isolate- empowering women and de-stigmatizing sex.
You can definitely get addicted to porn. Just like anything else.
If I’m understanding correctly, it’s not the porn itself that’s addictive. Some people have a personality disorder that results in a compulsion to fixate on something to the point that it interferes with living their lives normally. Their mental illness would have forced them to fixate on something eventually, for some people it just happened to be porn.
Ok coomer
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Shouldn’t you be listening to a Jordan Peterson podcast?
🙄
Porn addiction is “a thing.” And correlates with increasing rates of sexual violence towards women.
And your source is… Some religious leader? An “alpha male” podcaster peddling supplements? Some conservative politician who is trying to keep women barefoot and pregnant?
Turns out people want to reenact what they see.
Anecdotally, it’s true. Many guys I’ve known have talked about what they’ve done in the bedroom. Everything from “surprise anal” to ignoring obvious struggling during blowjobs.
This is coming from guys who would otherwise never hurt a fly, but become absolute shitheads when their caveman brain takes over.
That study is pretty outdated. Here’s a more recent meta-analysis finding the opposite.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1524838020942754
The Andamanese would probably be feeling pretty pleased with the isolation, if only they knew. Perhaps there is some technology that could assist in this…
