For me I was never going to add my ID or bother with other ways to find p*rn so I simply haven’t viewed any since then – haven’t missed it or particularly noticed. I was an occasional visitor to the hub.

What I learned was that viewing adult videos is just an impulse thing and as soon as it’s inaccessible, I can’t act on it so it simply passes. It just doesn’t matter that it’s not accessible and as a result I’ve not seen any.

I’m not supporting or debating the internet ID issue here – merely commenting on the effect.

I think if social media was subject to the same barrier I’d easily not bother with that too – which would be great for me personally. Just interesting to notice that these ‘luxuries’ for want of a better term are so easily forgettable. A bit like having a tin of biscuits in the office, if they’re there I’ll end up having one just ‘cause… but if not it doesn’t occur to me. Or liking an occasional smoke in a pub but once the ban came in not being bothered enough to go outside.

But how have you found it? for those with a regular ‘habit’ how’s that been going? And has is it had a knock on (/off) effect in your life in any way?

(I don’t know if I need to star out the word p*rn but I did)

Oh – apologies for narrowing this question to men, of course the same barrier exists for women! I can’t edit the title but women are also welcome to comment and sorry for my sexist blunder.

PPS:
I’m aware VPNs easily solve the barrier. But the minor hassle of setting one up is enough friction for me not to bother. Having a w*nk is not worth the few minutes it’d take to enter an email address and do a download for. Some may be more serious about their masturbation life and no judgement


46 comments

  1. Wait till you find about VPN!

    EDIT: I try to not watch it anyway, but tbf those ID’s didn’t make a difference.

  2. I’m 34 didn’t really bother with porn before the ban so it’s not made any real difference to me.

    Since I was about 17 years old I’ve either been in a relationship or had something casual going give or take a week or two here and there.

    I got married in May, been with my wife for almost ten years now.

    I sometimes look something up to show my wife, normally to help illustrate an outfit I want her to wear or something like that.

    It doesn’t seem to affect google image searches at all.

  5. Hilarious that almost every answer is just people raging at you for not using a VPN.

  6. God I’d never watch porn, awful.

    Unrelated but I now pay £7.99 a month to Surfshark and do lots of working from home in Andorra.

  7. If you’re desperate for that sort of content and don’t want to muck about with VPNs fortunately the UK Govt have provided a list of sites which do not currently have age verification in place. If you search for “Ofcom investigations” and visit their site and filter by “Online Safety Act” you’ll find a neat list of sites (incl. their URLs) which are currently being reviewed for not applying age verification. Then you can happily browse away without worrying about age verification, at least until enforcement action is taken which can take months and months. Plenty to choose from too.

  8. I’m a woman, used it a couple of times a month before and I’ve had exactly the same experience as you. It’s whatever honestly.

    My partner made an account to watch and it didn’t need a photo of his face or anything, it just did an analysis on how old his email address is.

  9. I don’t bother but I never really did before anyway. If I do wank I normally read erotica which isn’t blocked at all so 🤷‍♀️

  10. Free porn has always given me the ick, bring back dirty mags!

    Not a dude and never really watched porn, haven’t signed up to the age verification nor have I needed to download a VPN. Maybe I’m too vanilla and boring.

  12. I am female, no VPN and haven’t found it has changed my habits dramatically as I only used visual porn occasionally but I find I miss the ease of accessing it when I want to. Porn for me was a simple way to decompress and a way to keep things interesting as I get bored of the same methods to get off (audio porn/erotica).

    Will I use it again either via VPN or age verification? Maybe. I figure my info is out there anyway in most forms, but first now I can manage no issue. The world won’t end if I can’t play to visual porn!!

  14. Since the vast majority of sites still don’t ask for the checks, it has been nothing more than a very minor inconvenience and hasn’t affected my habits at all.

  15. Occasionally I click on a reddit profile to be nosy, and I find that I can’t. I shrug and forget about it 10 seconds later.

    My boyfriend says he doesn’t watch porn (I know reddit will say he’s lying) because he has sex with me or uses his wank bank.

    My daughter occasionally picks up a device that doesn’t have ‘family link’ and I’m quite glad she can’t Google anything adult (I’m sure she could if she was smart, but she’s not).

  18. I was actually intrigued about the responses to this interesting and well thought out question..

    But t’s just a bunch of replies from people thinking they’re dead witty for bringing up vpns, when actually they completely missed the point of the question and the fact that “wot, no vpn?” as an answer, has been given dozens of times already….

    Lame

  21. At first it was a bit tricky.

    Then after a day or so this woman kept talking to me.

    Anyway we spoke a bit more and more as each day went on.

    Turns out, she was my wife….

  22. How are things so bad that grown adults, on a site used by grown adults, cannot type out the word “pornography”?

  23. I didn’t actually change straight away I just flicked on my VPN. However, at the start of September I stopped watching p*rn for personal reasons and I completely agree about it being an impulse thing, I would get kinda bored or see something on Reddit or instagram vaguely sexual and then go look at some. Now I’ve cancelled my VPN so that I can’t access it and as you say now it’s not actually available to me I just don’t look at it and I’m out of the habit of doing so and don’t miss it.

  24. I wasn’t really watching porn prior I’m a bit of a whore and I had a vivid imagination if I’m on my own When I did watch porn I was either uncontrollable with it or took me ages to find a nice Lass who didn’t look to over made

    But that’s just me being honest It bothers me on this when I go to check someone and I have to do the whole age thing I’m not doing it again I’ll be disappointed anyway

  25. OP is some weird incel/nofap person and I don’t know why so many people are engaging with it

  27. People keep saying to use a VPN but I don’t really find them arousing at all. What’s so sexy about Surfshark?

  29. No; it just means I have to travel to Ireland every time I want to visit a site. Or, my own fucking Reddit Profile. Fucking stupid. It’s amazing how quickly it became customary, though.

  30. I recently learned you can just google porn and some of the top hits don’t have verification set up so no need. Good thing too my prostate was the size of a grapefruit.

  33. I fully agree, I have noticed that the slight barrier to watching it has made me watch it a lot less because like you I was watching randomly on impulse without anything to stop me.

    It’s the same principle as keeping chocolates in a drawer in the kitchen as opposed to at your desk, if they’re at your desk it’s very easy to binge chocolate through the work day, but if you have to get up and go to the kitchen every time (and you only get one each time) you will just eat a lot less overall.

    It’s good to build healthy habits and not overindulge in luxuries

  34. It has had 0 effect besides teaching kids how to access unsafe sites online and infect their devices with malware.

  35. Am a woman, but was a more the occasional porn user, not quite an expert but a skilled amateur maybe, and I find that I learned my main use for it was to shut the noise of my brain off as I have a hard time getting lost in the moment without the idea of something I need to do for work or that awful episode of criminal minds I just watched or what my nan would think if she could see me. Porn used to provide a distraction but I neither want to tie my info to it or get a vpn so its the good old erotica collection for me like a 1950s housewife.

    I have found that online discourse glamorising sexual violence against women and children getting nonced has not seemed to decrease but time will tell. To be honest the Internet is a toxic place for those two things and this id check will not affect that. As long as young lads can still see comments and videos talking about SAing women as if its a hobby and children still get chatted to on roblox by nonces, we wont fix the problem.

  36. im female but i didnt access it after the law came into place for about 5 weeks and managed ok. but then one day i was so, ahem, needy… that i just did age verification anyway on 1 site and now its always available to me so Ive gone back to old ways. i’m quite okay with my decision before anyone lectures me 😂

  37. Honestly the world would be so much better if they did this for social media too although come to think of it then only the most intensely addicted social media lovers would still bother jumping through the hoops so they can read their conspiracy theories so it probably wouldn’t make much difference in the end.

  38. Unless I’ve forgotten, Ao3 never asked/asks for verification, and thus my reading habits haven’t changed. Similarly kindle/kindle unlimited remains

  40. What’s annoying is that porn wasn’t the issue, but what Reddit deems nsfw is requiring it, even if it’s just a benign thread with no pictures.

  41. What annoys me the most currently is being unable to access imgur.

    That’s just fucking stupid.

  42. What I found out is that I can no longer access various Reddit subs because they might have sexual content but my son can be sent the Charlie Kirk assassination video to watch without so much as a fuck being given by these id stealing government cock suckers.

  43. Back in my day, when we wanted a cheeky wank we used something called “imagination”.

    And It helped you truly understand what kind of horny pervert you really were. 

    Lost art. 

  44. Unfortunately, this ban is not a porn ban but a ‘mature content’ ban.

    So in order to see the non-kids version of reddit, I’m forced to now use a VPN, giving away even more data to random companies.

    I find your musing on the benefits of consoring social media without ID checks dangerous and depressing. We will truly sleepwalk our rights away while people debate wanking methods.

    I also think its very ironic that I can’t view your profile without using my VPN. I guess the government deems your uncensored thoughts a danger to children.

  45. as an obedeient government drone i toiled away under zero pornography exactly as my betters wanted now lets all have a talk about how big brother has helped us be better people 🙂

  46. I have tried quitting porn for 25 years since a teen and never could for more than a week. This time round has been really easy so I’m grateful for the ban.

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