***Warning: this is keyboard jockeying at it's finest. You may find this fucking boring.***

As the size of the industry shows and the high amount of revenue it pulls in indicates, porn is watched by a lot of people. Indeed, with the proliferation of porn on the internet, it is more easier than ever (or so i've heard) for people to access porn. This has lead to a lot of people asking what the effects of porn on it's viewers are. Most of these people are worried about the alleged links between porn and violence/rape.

However, I think they're flipped it a little here. Porn may incite the odd psycho into violence, but I think really porn is a sedative. Porn is a means of escape- to the nerd who's been rejected by women all his life, he can escape by watching girls who resemble the girls he rejected being fucked. The man trapped in a loveless marriage can jerk off to the girls he can now never fuck (and probably couldn't fuck before he was married, but his fat, balding head won't accept that.) The kids who've grown up in this celebrity culture but deep down believe they'll never make anything of their lives jerk off to beautiful women- the dream that died when they awoke. For all these scenarios, and the many more left unsaid, the degradation of girls which is often found may be part of the revenge, but really that's irrelevant.

What is relevant is the fact these people, rather than trying to improve their lives- to actually chase after what they dream about- just settle to watching that dream being came on by a Knox/Longshot equivalent. This is not an anti-porn post, far from it, just look at where your motivations are. Is porn adding something to your life, or are you just numbing the pain of your empty existence? Their is a psychological theory, my personal favourite, known as cognitive dissonance, and it says that if you keep widening the gap between your ideal self- who you want to be- and your actual self, you will feel increasing levels of depression, and will seek out something that can help you close this gap. Whether what this thing is is reality or some escape to fool your mind doesn't matter. And so for a lot of people, porn is closing the gap. As you jerk off to some hot bitch, you body doesn't know this isn't reality- and so you feel good. But in the long run, if you are relying on escapes, you're fucked.

Ask yourself: is porn enriching my life? If not, do something about it. Cos i'm sick of some depressed motherfucker causing trouble in this world to try to feel good. Grow some fucking balls...

Porn is how I watch suffering on a mass scale.

Ok, I'll bite...
I think you make a good argument. But I don't wholly agree with your conclusion that the desire to watch porn comes necessarily from unfulfilled needs in one's real life.
I think the attraction to pornography and sexually graphic material often comes from the need to play out fantasies that one wouldn't actually want to play out in reality. Not because they're too timid or don't "have the balls"... but for the simple reason that in the real world, actions have consequences. Even if the only consequence is another person knowing.
Many men enjoy watching bukkake videos, but that doesn't necessarily mean they want to stand in a room with 70 other naked men and jackoff on a stranger's face. Similarly many people enjoy simulated rape videos ( and rape fantasies are relatively common... among men AND women ), but again that doesn't mean that any of these people would actually commit such a cruel and violent act. Rather, in both these cases, the image on the screen allows the viewer to do something that would otherwise be impossible. That is to enjoy the elation of actions without realworld consequences.
Obviously that wouldn't apply in every case. But I believe that many times, porn's disconnect from reality that allows the viewer to be a ghost... totally free to indulge their darkest fantasies without fear or self-consciousness... provides a certain pleasure that isn't always fulfilled by sexual intercourse.
In other words, I don't think that porn and masturbation should be viewed as just a poor substitute for sex, but rather as an enjoyable compliment to a vital, healthy sex life.

Yeah, porn is cheaper than an escort.

-Chuck, Vegetarian fanboy

Porn has given me ideas to try things with a woman I would have NEVER come up with on my own. I'm just not that creative NOR that brave around the fairer sex. But watching something like fisting a woman's ass on the plasma and I feel like it's my own personal, deviant instruction guide. To hell with straight sex, let me shove this up your tailpipe baby!

Thank you Porn!