There’s no escaping the media buzz surrounding the US election. It’s everywhere and endless , and I can easily believe that people are getting hooked. With up-to-the-minute news updates, fever-pitch blogging and fierce online debates, it’s strong stuff indeed.

So I read Mike Elgan’s observations at Datamation.com with interest. He lists the striking parallels between Election Addiction and Porn Addiction, and brings some intriguing insights to the whole topic.

For people struggling with porn, some of Mike’s observations are right on target. Let me explain…

“Election Addiction is justifiable in part because it’s rare and temporary”

We often find ourselves using similar justifications for porn habits. This is particularly applicable when we’re getting the stuff for free: shared P2P downloads and torrents, rare passwords, hacked paysites and videos posted on non-pornographic sites that will surely be taken down at any moment.

Many addicts will recognise the internal reasoning: “Yeah I’m cutting down on porn, but this file/site/download is RARE! It’ll never be available again… if I don’t download it now… just this one file and then I’ll quit…”

Nothing stirs up our gotta-have-it instinct more than access to rare or ’special stuff’. In recovery, we really start to wonder what all the excitement was about. It’s embarrassing really.

“Like Online Porn Addiction, Election Addiction is fueled by skilled professionals”

Hollywood produces 400 feature films a year. According to Adult Video News, the porn industry churns out 11,000. That’s big, lucrative business.

The porn industry drives technical innovation. Porn drove the VHS video market and it also drove broadband internet; it now looks likely to influence the next generation of movie format, which it has chosen as HD-DVD.

So we’re talking about a sophisticated and savvy industry that continues to expand. Compulsive consumers are repeat customers, to put it mildly.

“We’re unprepared for it because some of the Internet applications are so new to us. New Web 2.0 tools like Digg, YouTube and Facebook are enabling Election Addiction like nothing the world has ever seen”

And for every Digg, YouTube or Facebook, there’s is now a porn equivalent with many thousands of participants.

Porn video sharing, webcamming communities, porn bookmarking, porn blogging. There’s no shortage of web 2.0 porn resources to feed our habits.

Which leads us to the next observation…

“It feeds off of the Election Addiction of other people. It’s viral”

Many of us remember the old, pre-internet days of feeding those porn urges. Seedy bookstores and sticky cinemas, often operating on the fringes of the law. Awkwardly shuffling past other customers was the only contact we had with fellow porn enthusiasts.

Things are different today, of course. The slick and socially connected sites put porn in a very different light and on the whole, that’s probably no bad thing. But for people struggling with porn, it provides additional, deluded justification.

“Camming… homemade porn… DVD-ripping… everybody’s into it.” Bored with vanilla porn sites and movies, more and more people are making their own. Filming themselves or their (often unaware) partners, they contribute to sharing and voyeur communities.

For the compulsive porn user, this means an endless source of fresh porn, and some regrettable experiments with their own cameras. Again, recovering addicts look back with cringing embarrassment.

I’ll wrap this up with a final quote from Mike Elgan:

The Internet is simply the Mother of All Enablers, providing a medium through which addicts can indulge real addictions, including porn, gambling, news, video games and socializing (a.k.a. social media addiction).

At least in a few weeks time, the election fever will die down and avid watchers will get on with their lives. For porn addiction, there’s no such end in sight.

In response to the phenomenal rise of ‘Web 2.0′ social networking sites, it’s clear that internet porn is taking a new direction. Both the established porn industry and amateur start-ups are leaping onto the social media bandwagon, and it’s interesting to consider the implications for those of us already struggling with internet porn issues.

Pornographic equivalents of YouTube have been around for some time now, and adult versions of social news sites like Digg are rapidly catching on. As more major players in the porn industry recognise this powerful shift in surfing behaviour and networking, more ’social’ porn sites will inevitably enter the arena.

I’m not going to spend time bemoaning or bashing the porn industry entrepreneurs - it’s a simple fact that this highly lucrative industry is here to stay. What concerns me is the increased perception of acceptability and coolness that these developments will bring.

Most porn addicts will have experienced the phase of struggling to come to terms with the fact that they just might have a serious problem in their lives. This isn’t a pleasant realisation, and the mind reaches for reasoning and justification that ‘everyone is doing it’ and ‘porn is modern culture blah blah’. This is cognitive dissonance - “a driving force that compels the mind to acquire or invent new thoughts or beliefs” to avoid facing a potential problem. We’ve all done it.

It’s easier to deduce that a solitary porn habit (watching DVDs with the curtains drawn, mags under the mattress, all night sessions staring at streaming video) is not a healthy use of time. But what about ’social’ porn sharing? This is fine and cool, non?

Actually, the ’social’ justification for doing too much porn is nothing new - adult chatrooms and webcams have been around for ages. The misnomer of ’social porn’ applies to Web 2.0 just as it did to adult chatrooms - compulsive usage is still an anti-social, draining and lonely activity. Despite the advanced technology, there’s no social connection of any value. It’s deluded fantasy sex life en masse. Yucky.

On a much more positive note, let’s focus on the the advice and support potential for social networking sites. I’m thinking ReallyWorried, 43things, Zaadz and the wealth of other forums for facing up to personal issues and moving up in life.