The following is from Rob Henderson’s newsletter and if it is of any interest to you, you can click on the link at the bottom to view his twitter and subscribe.

In 1983, biologists found that the number of Australian jewel beetles was declining. They discovered that this was because male beetles were copulating with empty beer bottles left behind by beer drinkers.

The ridges of the beer bottles were highly attractive to male beetles. The bottom of the bottles had tiny ridges which looked like the bumps on a female beetle. The biologists who discovered this put some empty bottles on the ground and watched male beetles crawl out of the woodwork to mount them.

The bottles were easier to mount than female beetles, and more attractive as they were a type of “supernormal stimulus.”

The researchers in their paper concluded, “improperly disposed of beer bottles not only present a physical and ‘visual’ hazard in the environment, but also could potentially cause great interference with the mating system of a beetle species.”

More guys have been asking me about porn.

The other day I was on a podcast and the host asked me if I thought porn was harmful. He described an online challenge in which a large group of men and women agreed to not watch porn for 90 days. He said only a few men and zero women completed the challenge.

This reminded me of how strange porn is. Some years ago, I was at Cobb’s Comedy Club in San Francisco and watched Marc Maron do a great bit. He said that he was getting “porn brain.” He said to imagine walking down a long hotel hallway with all of the room doors open. In each room different people are performing different sex acts. Maron said porn is like walking down this hallway and peeking his head into different rooms while jerking off.

Then he recalled that the last time he was getting ready to have sex with a woman, he was confused that he had to partake in the interaction. As the woman was getting undressed, Maron said he was thinking “ok, so where’s the guy?”

I told the podcast host that porn might have unintended effects. One of which could be that it is teaching men to associate pleasure with watching other people have sex rather than engaging in the interaction. My friend’s younger brother told me he has had difficulties with partners because he spent most of his sexual experience in front of a screen.

Some guys say they’ve lost interest in women because of porn.

I sympathize. If I’d had access to streaming websites when I was 13, I don’t think I would’ve left my bedroom. Fortunately, back then we had one computer in the house with dial-up. It took 45 seconds to download a Dragon ball Z thumbnail.

On the other hand, research suggests there is a positive correlation between porn viewing and sex. In a systematic review of ten studies, researchers found that “overall results suggested that there is a robust association between pornography use and a higher number of sexual partners.” This may be because men who watch lots of porn generally have a high libido, and seek satisfaction in a variety of ways. It seems to overturn the idea that guys resort to porn because they can’t find a partner.

Similar to the disconcerting finding that men who use sexual coercion have more partners than men who do not. A popular idea is that men who are desperate or deprived of chances for sex will be more likely to use coercion. This is known as the “mate deprivation hypothesis.” However, research suggests the opposite is the case. Men who have more partners actually report higher levels of sexual aggression compared to men with fewer partners. Furthermore, men who predict that their future earnings will be high also report greater levels of sexual aggression relative to men who predict that their future earnings will be low.

So in the systematic review of porn use, the researchers found that viewing porn is related to having more sex partners, not fewer.

But in the very next sentence the authors write, “No studies specifically examined Internet pornography in relation to this variable.” These ten studies did not look at digital porn. Their participants weren’t walking down a hotel hallway. Just hanging out in the concierge flipping through magazines.

At some point technology will reach a level where VR will be indistinguishable from, or even superior to, real sex. At that stage, many of the young men in our lives will straight up disappear. They’ll vanish into the machine.

A clever name for this future VR device might be the “Jewel Beetle.”

Recommended Articles:

Psychopathy, Antisocial Personality Disorder, and Narcissism by The Last Psychiatrist

The Green New Deal by Zero HP Lovecraft

Thanks for reading, and stay safe

-Rob Twitter.com/robkhenderson