Are porn users more intelligent ?

[ecchi]

I run both adult and non-adult businesses online, and in both cases I deal with a lot of newbies. As you would expect, this means I deal with a lot of stupid questions, and even stupider people. However I get a lot more really stupid emails from the non-adult side than from the adult side (EG. I am currently dealing with a customer who has purchased banner advertising on a non-adult site. He refuses point blank to send me a banner or a banner URL, but keeps sending me angry emails asking why I do not display his banner. When I reply asking for the banner his replies boil down to "I am not going to send you the banner, now please will you display it on your site like I paid you for").

I have long been puzzled by this and wondered why people who surf for porn seem to be less stupid than people who do not (I mean on average, you get idiots in both groups, just a lot less of them in the porn business). I think I have at last worked it out.

A long time ago I was unemployed and the DSS sent me on a computer course (this is relevant, bear with me). At the time I used a computer and knew a little about them, but it was only a small amount (this was before I started running websites). I found I was doing a lot better than anyone else, which I first put down to the fact that knew a little about computers and no one else on the course did. However as I got to know other people on the course I found that some of them had a greater basic knowledge than me, but were still doing nowhere near as well as I was.

One evening I was discussing this with my second cousin and asked "Am I a genius ?" His reply was that the reason I was doing better was (unfortunately) not because I was a genius, but because the sort of pastimes I followed were mostly ones which meant I kept in the habit of using my brain. Most other people come home from a non-intellectual challenging job, sit down in front of the TV and "blob out". The most difficult intellectual challenge they are likely to face is how to set the video recorder, or what microwave setting their instant dinner needs. So when it came to "learning" or "thinking" I was already in practise, but other people on the course were not.

Now think about your average porn surfer. We tend to think of it as a "blob out" pastime, requiring about the same intellectual challenge as watching paint dry. But is it ?

A guy looks at a picture of a naked women, or whatever turns him on, and gets horny. Eventually he will masturbate. A monkey could do it (monkeys do do it), so why am I claiming this is an intellectual pastime?

Simply because it is not as mentally passive as you imagine at first glance. The man is not simply looking at the picture, he is imagining something. Possibly something as simple as the woman in the picture being his. If it is a hardcore picture he may be replacing the man in it with himself, or at least subconsciously imagining what it would be like if he was in that man's place. I said "subconsciously", because most of us do not realise we are doing it.

And that is where the "thinking" comes it. If you are looking at porn for sexual gratification you are exercising your brain. And like your muscles, the more exercise your brain gets, the better it works. Which explains why more of the "non-porn" customers act like they are educationally subnormal than the people who use porn a lot.

And as I type this I have just remembered of some research I read about in the early 90's (or perhaps late 80's) that corroborates this. Some group did a sort of more scientific version of what Kinsey did, looking deeply into people's fantasies and what sort of person was into what. One thing they found was that people who were into bdsm were on average more intelligent that those who were not. The way they worked out who was the most intelligent was to give all subjects an IQ test. And IQ tests calculate your intelligence by seeing how good you are at working things out (i.e. how good you are at thinking). And if you think about the bdsm scene, it requires a greater degree of fantasy than vanilla sex (i.e. you have to "imagine" more, even if you have a real partner you are imagining them as your slave or master or mistress or whatever). So you are exercising your brain more, which explains why, on average, you are more intelligent than the vanilla sex people.

Now I know why "perverts" are cleverer than "non-pervert", and I have known that they are clever for some time. To make my life easier I need to spend more time working on the sex side and less on the clean side. So will someone please either impeach George W. or assassinate him, and replace him with someone who is not trying to keep the dollar in the toilet. Then I can actually start making most of my money in the porn business again (most porn transactions take place in $, which are worth about their own weight in toilet paper at the moment).

Thanks.

[Head Boy]

Well I read through your post and had a couple of thoughts.

High IQ people apparently use visual images less, they prefer a story.

Porn surfers have to use their brains more because they accept the challenge of hunting for free porn which many w/ms try to hide from them.

[Mishi]

Interesting post, ecchi. I'd have more to say, but I'm in blob out mode at the moment.

Seriously, I'd like to hear more people's thoughts about the "average" or "typical" internet porn consumer.