Something I wonder about is ... if people can commonly imagine in a "minds eye" [0], why would they use porn?

My ex-wife and I got along fine when we first met. But it wasn't a match made in heaven. We didn't kick boots [1] very often after getting legally hitched. In the dry months I went back to using the internet porn, which i despised/despise, but horny is horny. I would have rather have an imagination [3] or a partner, than 2-dimensional pixels on a screen.

Reddit has vastly more subreddits of pictures of naked women than of naked men. Mostly this is a scarcity thing: penises are a dime a dozen; $$$ is enough to motivate some women to show skin for men who they otherwise have no interest in.

Many young women have vast amounts of interest from men. One of my female friends, who isn't particularly attached to her partners, has a string of ex-boyfriends who obsess over her. She's said something about her fitting the 'wild-woman' archetype, whatever that means.

When women get pregnant they have a long-term project on their hands, so evolution has decided that women get to decide who to father their likely children. (not all human societies respect womens' desires -- arranged marriages, etc. most societies don't help girls appreciate that boys' attraction is entirely different). Feudal societies disposed of excess men with conscription and pointless wars.

Women whose best assets don't show up on the pixels sometimes have to put more effort into fishing for males than those with looks, but they still find partners. A friend of mine, who did not reciprocate my attraction for her, hooked me up with her not-particularly-choosy friend. I did not find the friend particularly attractive, but it was complicated at the time. It was traumatic, and completely unsatisfying.

Men who have money get more attention from women who market their looks. But money is not required for female attention. Some men have figured out how to be smooth, and develop a magnetism for female attention.

Other men have no idea what it is that makes them so annoying to the other gender. Some of these men have latched on to the incel label [2], which seems to feed on itself in a downward spiral.

I suspect many of the redditors who build the subreddits featured in this "tree of reddit sex life" would much rather have partners, than to spend their free hours cultivating collections of pixelated women.

I noted a comment here recently -- one of you fellas told about secretly fantasizing about a coworker (iirc), and that the coworker[s] wouldn't know about the fella's inner fantasies about her/them.

If only 1/50 is an aphantasiac, that's still millions of men who don't fantasize. It's easy for them to turn to the pixelated women to get themselves off when they get horny. But I know men who have a fully-functional imagination, who use porn anyways.

My question for the gallery: imagination is better than porn, is it not? Why do some men put so much effort into their collection of pixelated women? Perhaps it's a compulsion, not so different from heroin?

[0] submission from 2 days ago about aphantasia: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19618927

[1] kick boots -- https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=kickin%27%20...

[2] a woman coined the term 'involuntarily celebate', then she figured herself out and was no longer celibate. The term was taken over by lonely men. https://www.elle.com/culture/news/a34512/woman-who-started-i...

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15176547