In the age of ATMs and internet banking, there are few reasons for me to drop by my bank branch, but talking to a manager about a line of credit and mortgages is still -- thankfully -- a high-touch "face-to-face" kind of thing.

While flipping through The Economist (the issue with oil as the cover story) in an easy chair in the waiting area, I overheard two suits by the ATMs:

Suit 1: "I gotta stop watching porn, man. If I keep watching it, I'll never be able to have normal sex again."

Suit 2: "Yeah. I know what you mean."


I was reminded of the old article from The Onion titled Romantic Comedy Behavior Gets Real-Life Man Arrested and I wondered: do people who watch too many "chick flicks" and "romantic comedies" get turned off normal dating?


Here's a recent posting from MetaFilter that's related:
(all links safe for work) Some once hypothesized that as pornography became more accessible and more mainstream, men in turn would become uncontrollable, ravenous sexual beasts. I always thought this myself: a man will see something in porn that a real woman won't give him—Internet porn now caters in a click to every fetish you can imagine—and he will find a way to get it.
 
My ex-girlfriend, observant and intelligent beyond her years, always used to tell me the opposite: it wouldn't turn men into beasts, having their way with every woman they saw. No, it would turn them away from women completely, libidos and their ability to connect with real females weakened by the hardcore acts and impossible bodies that only porn stars could give them. The porn would crave some intrinsic desire, but leave both people in the couple lonelier and less fulfulled.
 
Now I think she was absolutely right.