Porn hoarders talk about consuming large amounts of porn and why it is almost impossible to quit

In 1987, 10-year-old Zed, not his real name, was helping his parents clean around the house when he came across a large cardboard box his father meant to throw away. Out of a fourth grader’s curiosity, he opened the box and found his heart racing as he browsed through the contents. 

Evolving mediums

The box was filled with piles of Playboy magazines, displaying almost-bare models in risqué poses on the covers. Feeling something unfamiliar with the stimulation from the magazines, he decided to sneak a couple of them into his room. It was his first encounter with pornographic material.

“Dad was a graphic designer, so he had access to a lot of printed material back then,” said Zed, 45, speaking to The Jakarta Post on Dec. 22, 2022. That printed material involved quite a heap of racy prints ranging from the pin-up inserts in art books and suggestive illustrations in architecture and design magazines to soft-core pornographic images.

However, his father had been getting rid of his stash of magazines that day because he felt it was somehow getting “obsolete”. “He then moved to stash Betamax videotapes,” said Zed, stored with pornographic films. “There were multiple large cupboards of them. All filled with porn Betamax [videotapes].” Zed, who somehow managed to gain the key to his father’s porn stash during high school, would often binge-watch through the collection with his friends. “Free flow [of porn],” said Zed.

Floppy no more: In an era where people exchange data in floppy disks in the 90s, Zed and his network exchange porn through docking 5GB hard drives onto each others' computers (Unsplash/SJ).jpg (Unsplash/SJ)

Zed followed his father’s tendency to collect pornographic materials. Zed, who now works as a graphic designer and illustrator in Bandung, has amassed around 5 terabytes of porn, which, according to him, is the crème-de-la-crème of his collection of pornographic material.

He is, however, looking to expand the collection and is now thinking of buying another external Solid State Drive (SSD) dedicated to storing his porn. “[Another] 8 [terabytes], maybe,” he chuckled. Zed shunned the size of his current collection as “meager”, however, “it’s relevant.” he said. 

When asked what he meant by relevant, Zed responded: “My main porn now is mostly of e-girls and internet content creators. [...] If I miss the old videos, I’d stream them online. Just personal preference, maybe, but I feel that porn these days is relevant, like how it references pop culture and its playfulness! It’s really ‘beyond’”.

Zed then contemplated how the landscape was changing and felt that he had been born too early. “Back when it was the ‘Starlet’ era, the models were designed to be as perfect as possible: enhanced breasts, they had their makeup done, they shot with top-of-the-line cameras. 

“Now, a GoPro does the job, indie e-girls can do their own makeup and they can create their content, their performances are good, too,” said Zed. He gathers the material from a wide array of porn forums on the internet hosting leaks from paid platforms such as OnlyFans or Manyvids. He then cross-references and finds strings of keywords applicable for specific models that he develops an interest in – a research-like activity that he consistently does to kill time.

Hoarders/addicts

“It was quite hard to collect porn back then. I didn’t fully try until I was in high school, in 1993,” said Zed, reflecting on his past before he leaped into the rabbit hole. Because of his upbringing, Zed only started building his own collection of porn outside of his parents’ visual supervision in digital form before the internet became ubiquitous. 

“We docked hard drives onto each other’s computers. I remember that we all shared this ‘walking hard drive’. A 3.5 inch, 2-gigabyte hard drive filled to the brim with porn, in 1994-1995. Back then, we needed a special graphics card to play the videos on our computers.”

However, Zed started his unrestrained bout of collecting porn in 1996 when he got acquainted with the internet through his university’s computer lab. “It was three months after I entered uni,” Zed mused. At that time, Zed was studying in the art department at one of Bandung’s public universities. At first, he collected images, before eventually ordering videos in the early 2000s.

Attachment: Some of the sources admitted to having fear of missing out moments they refer to as 'Godlike' of their favourite porn models (Unsplash/Denny Muller). (Unsplash/Denny Muller)

In the 2000s, Zed’s porn stash became quite famous and gained a following outside of his immediate circle. Ade (39, not his real name), a Bandung-based musician and tech executive now a long-time friend of Zed, noted that he and his friends copied most of their porn from Zed’s hard drive. “The guy was out there,” Ade claimed. “He’s always at the forefront [of enjoying porn]. Around 2000 and 2001, our main source of porn was Zed, but my first exposure was from the internet in 1993. My family was one of the few early users of the internet.”

Unlike Zed, who claimed that his views toward porn were “more practical,” in which he could stop his habit of consuming porn once another outlet to satiate his sexual needs arose, Ade had a darker experience with porn that hindered his life. “If we’re talking about how severe my porn consumption was, there was a time when I just felt that I needed to watch porn before doing anything. Anything at all, like simply going to work, I had this pressing need to consume porn. It was frustrating because it took me a lot of time, and I didn’t always masturbate when I did so.” Ade noted that the pattern of activities he developed back then was quite debilitating for him.

Ade’s obsession even spilled into his real life. “The tiniest stimulation could become a trigger for me. Maybe even an image on Instagram, or when I was going about my day and saw someone on the streets.” At some point, Ade even compared his friends to porn models, obsessing over the models, or the other way around.

“Then I came across NoFap,” said Ade, referring to a community-centered platform designed to overcome porn addiction through abstaining from watching porn and masturbation. “I felt the results, but I grew a bit, I don’t know, naughty?” Ade looked confused while his hands were clasped in front of him.

His attitude changed after NoFap. He became more aggressive toward women in terms of having the will and the courage to approach them. Ade, who noted that he was naturally a docile person, actively tried to seduce women after he stopped consuming porn. “I became more manipulative.”

Ade now consumes porn in moderation. “There are times when I don’t feel like getting intimate with my wife and watch porn and masturbate, but then I would find my way back to her, and, in the end, conclude that masturbating could not fulfill my needs as a whole. Both emotionally and physically.” Psychologist and sexologist Zoya Amirin, however, begged to differ. 

Escaping addiction

Unlike what Zed and Ade had claimed before, regarding themselves as being in control of the situation, Amirin’s take on both was that they showed signs of an almost classic case of addiction. “Don’t all addicts say that? Not strictly for porn, but all addicts would always say that,” said Amirin, speaking to the Post on Jan. 13. 

“It’s [an addict’s] first form of rationalization,” Amirin continued. “Once you rationalize something, you’re on that stage [where you’re dependent], refusing to admit [the problem]. Once you’re there, it could get worse.”

Amirin then referred to the 12-Steps program for overcoming addiction. “The first step is to admit that you’re powerless over your addiction. [...] That you can’t overcome it alone,” said Amirin.

She also slammed Zed’s logical fallacy, where he claimed that he could stop consuming porn whenever an outlet that could satiate his sexual needs arose. One of the options, according to Zed, was him getting a female partner. Amirin explained that the desire to engage in a sexual relationship and pornography are two entirely different things.

All in the mind: Amirin admitted that the act of masturbation is the healthiest sexual behaviour given that it is conducted without pornography and purely involving ones own fantasy (Unsplash/Charles Deluvio) (Unsplash/Charles Deluvio)

“Pornography is not organic. Sexual desire is not being expressed organically, not with other human beings. This will then make the individuals who often watch porn become more used to the 2-dimensional nature: the screen,” Amirin said.

“With real human beings, there’d be effort involved. They’d need to get their partners aroused first. There are stages to it. In Masters & Johnson’s sexual response cycle, there’s the ‘excitement’ stage, ‘plateau’, ‘orgasm’ and ‘resolution’,” said Amirin. “People used to pornography would feel burdened and just be concerned with the ‘orgasm’ stage.”

Porn addicts tend to find feelings of safety, or security in the medium, as engaging in a sexual relationship with other human beings would ultimately lead people to expose their vulnerable side. “[Sexual performance] will be rated, their manhood will be judged. In porn, there’s no such process. Therefore they feel safer in it,” said Amirin.

These processes are vital to our well-being as humans, to the point where taking shortcuts through pornography could eventually, after around 20 years, leave us with brain damage comparable to cocaine addiction. “[Consuming porn] once a week. In 20-25 years,” said Amirin. 

“Because they don’t go through the process. People who don’t go through the process would be stressed. Take a promotion, for example, or a change in job description. Toxic positivity, even,” said Amirin. “Problems must be embraced. Life is hard and we need to embrace it. We need to go through the process and learn to face life. That’s human.”

Amirin also reacted to Ade’s so-called ‘moderation’ in consuming porn after NoFap. The aggressive stage that Ade went through, according to Amirin, would be a very familiar example of a withdrawal. “It’s not masturbation that needs to be addressed, it’s the consumption of pornography.”

The act of masturbation, according to Amirin, is the healthiest sexual behavior, given that it does not need to involve any medium of pornography. “We release sexual tension, but no one’s being impregnated. Everyone now is under the assumption that [masturbating] would require pornography, but [we can do it] using organic stimulation. “

Although Amirin recommends addicts dig further into the NoFap movement, she still encouraged addicts to stay in the counsel of sexologists and also to consult a psychiatrist. “To find the source of what it is that you are looking for in sex, pornography or what sort of comfort that you get from it. How to face realities as a human being, and you’d feel healthier when interacting, connecting sexually and just be vulnerable,” Amirin closed.