Role of Porn in Masturbation

Okay, we established that guys wank.

My question is: is porn an essential part/aid ? I know males are more visual than females hence the use of alluring pics/videos, but can you do without?

Without porn, I would find it hard to masturbate. Don’t get me wrong, mental images help, but looking at pictures makes all the difference. And, as luck would have it, getting older doesn’t help.

I don’t need porn to get off, my mind’s wicked enough all by itself. One slow glide of my fingers and I’m already deep in my own private heat: the exact pressure, the slick rhythm, the building ache that makes my breath catch and my hips roll. No screen required.

When I do want that extra spark, homemade is what gets me, real couples or solo guys and girls, captured raw and unfiltered. Shaky angles, genuine gasps, tangled sheets, pure desire spilling out. It feels intimate, close enough to taste, and it sets my imagination on fire without stealing the lead. Toys can turn the heat up when I’m craving more, but the fire always starts and finishes with me.

I am with @Alexa1 about real amateur homemade. That will get me going every time, especially if the couple, or singles are really into it and totally uninhibited.

Photographs and or videos are extremely important for me; however, they have to be real.

I have a background in professional advertising and art photography but the technical quality is really irrelevant to me. I want to believe what people are doing and the best ones I've seen are probably shot with old iPhones.

I've really come to value authenticity and everything, including erotica. Anyone these days can create damn near anything with AI, but it takes real people to create convincing, erotic encounters and that includes spanking encounters.

also – I have been aware of a lot of women who have been "heterosexual" and then who have a female lover for sometime and then go back to male lovers. I know that men and women are very different in a lot of ways, but I think some women can go back-and-forth. Some men probably can too, just not me.

Erotic literature is very erotic for me --- both reading and writing.

Also, "aural sex" --- hearing people in the throes of sexual pleasure is a big turn-on; as well as "olfactory sex" --- sniffing & licking my wife's used panties is a huge turn-on!

I can go without but prefer not to.

I feel like porn creates new expectations; personally I find it harder to get excited doing the real thing after perusing porn.

For me, replaying a good experience or just creating a fantasy in my mind gives me a better orgasm and kindles interest in real sex... But it takes more effort to get there. A porn induced orgasm is easier to achieve.

Not really. Availability of such things came about with vhs tapes and currently at the tap of the finger on a cell phone. I’m fairly certain folks have been wanking for centuries with literal stimulation and the imagination of their minds…

I masturbate while watching porn maybe 1% of the time. Part of that is because I'm married and don't have many opportunities to jerk off in front of a screen. But mostly it's because my mind, imagination, and hand are all I really need. Sometimes I do watch porn to prime the engines and get turned on, but it's definitely not needed to finish the race.

Visual or literary porn is great for creating a mood, but the porn that runs in my own imagination is usually the most powerful.