Here at PornHelp, we know the frustration of trying to explain a porn binge to those who haven’t struggled with addiction. No esoteric explanation we’ve tried (“trapped in a bubble” “falling into a deep hole”) ever succeeds in describing that simultaneously intense, detached, and hellish experience.
Which is why our ears perked up when we first heard the term “ludic loop.” That’s the phrase coined by NYU professor and researcher Natasha Dow Schüll to describe the trance-like state video slot machine users enter for hours on end while their money ticks away on losing bets. In a recent interview with Medium, Dr. Dow Schüll described a “ludic loop” as the experience of being “hooked into doing something that has no real reward, and the feeling of being trapped in that state of empty limbo becomes the reward in and of itself.” Or, as one of Dr. Dow Schüll’s interviewees for her 2015 book examining the rise of video slot machines, Addiction by Design, put it: It’s like being in the eye of a storm … Your vision is clear on the machine in front of you but the whole world is spinning around you, and you can’t really hear anything. You aren’t really there – you’re with the machine and that’s all you’re with. Sound familiar? It sure does to us. Specifically, it sounds like what happens when a person struggling with porn addiction sits down with his laptop at bedtime and heads over to PornTube, and the next thing he knows it’s 4 a.m. It also sounds like what happens when you scroll through an Instagram feed for an hour without stopping, or when you fire up a gaming app during your morning commute and miss your stop by miles. Our brain’s ability to enter a trance state is not necessarily problematic in-and-of-itself. In the Medium interview, Dr. Dow Schüll observes ludic loops can occur when you drive a car: you stay functional but achieve a pleasant, zoned out state at the same time. Dr. Dow Schüll describes this state as mildly problematic if you do nothing but drive in circles to achieve a blissful, detached high. But, as anyone who’s ever taken a long road trip knows, that same trance state occurs even when you do have a destination. Do you remember every stretch of the 100 miles you just drove? Of course not. That’s because we humans have an innate capacity to dial-in and tune-out simultaneously while performing complex, goal-oriented functions. It’s a useful evolutionary adaptation, really. Behind the wheel, you feel detached and protected from the unpleasant boredom of driving long distance, but you also flawlessly execute the relatively complex tasks of monitoring your speed, changing lanes, keeping track of other drivers, and avoiding hazards to arrive at your destination. Hunters describe a similar experience while tracking their quarry. Researchers refer to this as a “flow state”. Athletes often call it “the zone.” Whatever you call it, our ability to focus and detach all at once can help us achieve seemingly super-human ends. But what if you arrive at your destination and you don’t want to stop? Or you feel you’d rather just stalk a deer forever instead of pulling the trigger? Dr. Dow Schüll’s theory, paraphrased, is that when the bliss of the “zone” feels better than achieving the goal, you end up stuck in the zone’s evil cousin, a “ludic loop.” Of course, most people don’t drive in circles forever, stalk deer forever, or (to borrow a canard porn addiction skeptics often peddle) watch cute cat videos forever. They do, however, lose themselves in video slots and internet porn and social media. Why is that? What makes some ludic loops so much more likely than others to arise, persist, and become problematic? To answer those questions, we’ve taken a stab at modeling the factors we believe contribute to the existence and durability of ludic loops. This model isn’t particularly scientific (not even in the “dismal science” sense), but we hope our readers will see it as a reasonably constructive first pass at bringing some order to the complex origins of porn binges and other internet black holes that resemble the ludic loops Dr. Dow Schüll describes. For starters, let’s go back to Dr. Dow Schüll’s explanation of a ludic loop as being “hooked into doing something that has no real reward, and the feeling of being trapped in that state of empty limbo becomes the reward in and of itself.” A simple inequality reflecting that explanation might look like this: LV > AV Where LV (“Loop Value”) stands for the value to the user of staying in a ludic loop, and AV (“Actual Value”) stands for the value to the user of achieving the “goal,” if any, of the underlying behavior. To add precision to this inequality, based on personal experience, we suggest inserting a second variable such that a ludic loop forms and endures when: LV > AV + PC where PC (“Perceived Cost”) stands for the user’s immediate perception of the cost of staying in the ludic loop. In our experience, when PC is obvious, immediate, and tangible to a user – “If I keep scrolling I’ll be late for work” – the loop can break. Even if there is no value (or “reward”) in the underlying behavior, if the user clearly perceives the cost of entering and staying in a ludic loop as greater than the value of doing so, the loop won’t occur or persist for long. Digging deeper on the left side of the inequality, we further propose LV consists of the sum of two variables:
LV = PV + SV Plugging that equivalence into our original inequality suggests a ludic loop will arise and endure when: PV + SV > AV + PC Finally, we propose that SV and PC are inversely related. The more salient the looping behavior for the user, the less likely the user is to perceive the cost of remaining in a loop involving that behavior. Users will instead tend to discount the cost of staying in a ludic loop as salience increases. This relationship might be thought of as reflecting degrees of impulsivity displayed by the user. To summarize, according to our proposed model, a ludic loop will form and endure when the self-regulating (PV) and attention-holding (SV) attributes of the loop together exceed the value of the “goal,” if any, of the underlying behavior (AV) and the perceived costs (PC) of staying in the loop. The greater the difference between the left and right sides of the formula, the more or less likely it is that a ludic loop will form and endure. Also, because salience and perceived cost have an inverse relationship, high salience (through any combination of its primal importance to the user, its ease of access, or its engineered design) is a reasonably good predictor of the likelihood that a ludic loop will form and become problematic. Let’s put our model to the test with a real world example. As we noted above, Dr. Dow Schüll’s description of a “ludic loop” matches the experience of a “porn binge.” Under our model, a ludic loop based around consuming internet pornography might therefore arise because PV is high (the user has a need to self-regulate) and SV is high (sexual arousal is a deep primal mechanism and internet porn is freely accessible and infinitely variable), and though AV (achieving orgasm) may also be high, PC, as it is inversely related to SV, tends to be low (or at least lower than it would be outside of the loop). As another example, take social media consumption. Under our model, a ludic loop based around Instagram use may especially arise in teens because PV tends to be high in that population (the need to regulate the hellish angst of adolescence) and SV is usually also high (the extreme desire for social approval and knowing what’s going on), whereas AV tends to be relatively low (there’s little genuine social connection in social media interactions), as is PC (perception of cost tends to be low in teens generally). Through this model, we might also tease out why it’s rare (albeit not impossible) for a ludic loop to arise and become problematic around, say, looking at cute cat videos. While the PV of a ludic loop involving looking at cat videos may be high (since it doesn’t depend on the content but rather the condition the user seeks to escape), the SV of cat videos is relatively low and declines over time (because cat videos tend not to be particularly variable in their content). On the other side of the equation, the AV of looking at cat videos (getting a giggle and some warm fuzzies) isn’t especially high and also declines over time, while PC can be high (“ugh, I’m such a loser looking at another cat video”). Likewise, a ludic loop consisting of driving endlessly in circles is comparatively unlikely because even if PV is high (it’s nice to zone out and just drive) and AV is zero (there’s no destination), SV is minimal (driving the same route over and over isn’t so interesting) and, thus, PC tends to be high (fatigue and gas expense). The model seems to fit real world examples. So, what’s its point? First, as we said at the outset, the proposed model is our attempt to bring a little order to the topic of porn binges by sketching out variables that affect the likelihood and durability of a ludic loop generally. All too often, we’ve heard arguments about porn addiction bog down in the inherent complexities of compulsivity and sexuality. We hope this model might spur discussion about what specific factors come into play when a person struggling with porn/internet addiction disappears into yet another self-destructive binge. Second, porn addiction skeptics often reject the “addiction model” by saying “it’s not the porn” that’s the problem, but rather an underlying mental illness or personal moral conflict in the user. Dr. Dow Schüll observed a similar strain of “lopsided” reasoning in critics of gambling addiction. “The problem,” they say, “is not in the products [players] abuse, but within the individuals” themselves. We don’t discount the possibility that a portion of people trapped in porn addiction also suffer from other mental illnesses or feel moral conflict with their behavior. With this model, however, we resist the idea that inherent nature of porn-as-porn has “nothing to do with” why people binge on it. We propose that it is the porn that, at least in part, contributes to the existence, durability, and addictive nature of a ludic loop focused on internet porn consumption. Porn is highly salient. It taps into the sex drive, is easy to access, and features infinite variety in a way that attracts and holds attention – and, we propose, blunts a user’s immediate perception of cost – in a way that no cat video or drive around the block ever will. Third and finally, we hope this attempt at modeling porn binges and other internet-based ludic loops might help clarify the origins of problematic pornography-related behaviors. Taking a lead from Dr. Dow Schüll, we wonder whether certain porn use behaviors become addictions not simply because of the content of internet porn, or because of the particularities of the user, but because of the interaction between the two. To be more blunt, we wonder whether a “ludic loop” may best be thought of as a “drug of addiction” that delivers a sought-after “high” for problem porn and internet users. It may not be the only “high” those users pursue, and other problem porn users may ignore its availability altogether in favor of the euphoria of reaching orgasm. But, in our experience, for many struggling with porn addiction a primary purpose of using porn is – like Dr. Dow Schüll’s video slot players – “to climb into the screen and get lost,” only to emerge when an (unwanted) orgasm or exhaustion breaks the loop and returns them to an increasingly dismal reality. As always, we encourage constructive feedback and polite discussion in the comments section.
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AuthorLonger-form writing from the PornHelp team on current topics relating to problem porn use and recovery. Archives
June 2020
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