# Pornographic memory **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 2, 2002, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pornographic-memory/101460 "2002-04-02T20:46:08Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Niobium\_Knight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/bc8723/32.png) [@Niobium\_Knight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Niobium_Knight)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2002, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pornographic-memory/101460/1 "2002-04-02T20:46:08Z")
How come f I look at porn for a long time, for the rest of the day when I close my eyes pornographic images appear in my vision? It’s scarey! ---
**Author:** ![Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/50afbb/32.png) [@Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duck_Duck_Goose)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2002, 5:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pornographic-memory/101460/2 "2002-04-03T05:23:35Z")
Um, for the same reason that if you’ve been driving a truck down the Interstate all day, when you close your eyes, you still see white lines? Why does the brain do that, anyway? I have no clue. But wouldn’t it be nice if we could re-program the brain so that when we close our eyes after driving a truck down the Interstate all day, it shows us porn instead of white lines… 😃 ---
**Author:** ![jb\_farley](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/9d8465/32.png) [@jb\_farley](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jb_farley)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2002, 5:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pornographic-memory/101460/3 "2002-04-03T05:46:11Z")
i used to play Bond so much (and quite shittily at first), that as i fell asleep, whatever images were before my closed eyes had bullets zipping around. i dunno the name for this phenomenon, maybe Tetris Vision (i am dead serious), but i remember reading about it. seems this particular persistence of vision was first noticed in army pilots, which pilots would train on jet simulators all day, and then get into a statistically unlikely number of car accidents thereafter. a peanut to whoever can refresh that memory- jb ---
**Author:** ![Ell](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e47774/32.png) [@Ell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ell)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2002, 8:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pornographic-memory/101460/4 "2002-04-03T08:51:34Z")
When I used to play freecell compulsively I used to walk around playing it with people. Male (black) on female (red) by height (card value). ---
**Author:** ![istara](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e79b87/32.png) [@istara](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/istara)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2002, 9:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pornographic-memory/101460/5 "2002-04-03T09:02:11Z")
God yeah I really suffered from Tetris vision at one point. Endless little blocks falling down in my head and before my eyes, with me sort of mentally arranging them into patterns. I get it a bit now with Reversi on my Nokia phone, but not nearly so badly. ---
**Author:** ![jb\_farley](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/9d8465/32.png) [@jb\_farley](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jb_farley)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2002, 9:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pornographic-memory/101460/6 "2002-04-03T09:17:09Z")
man oh man. have you all heard of the building at MIT where some ingenious engineers connected the lighting to a computer, such that one (and i don’t mean a theoretical ‘one’, but an actual _swear-to-god_ one-could-play-tetris-on-the-side-of-a-building-if-one-went-to-Boston ‘one’) can play Tetris using the room lights on the multiple stories? had i randomly seen that in the midst of my own tetris visions (about five years ago; goddamn gameboy!), i surely would have flipped a krunky lid. jb ---
**Author:** ![Grrr](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/grrr/32/146_2.png) [@Grrr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grrr)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2002, 11:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pornographic-memory/101460/7 "2002-04-03T11:16:53Z")
I just had to chime in and say I use to play **tetris** so much that those damn shapes would stay in my head all day; along with how I would put them together! ---
**Author:** ![Popup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/94ad74/32.png) [@Popup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Popup)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2002, 11:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pornographic-memory/101460/8 "2002-04-03T11:34:55Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by jb\_farley \* > \*\*man oh man. have you all heard of the building at MIT where some ingenious engineers connected the lighting to a computer, such that one (and i don’t mean a theoretical ‘one’, but an actual _swear-to-god_ one-could-play-tetris-on-the-side-of-a-building-if-one-went-to-Boston ‘one’) can play Tetris using the room lights on the multiple stories? > \*\* I must confess that I didn’t believe that when I first read it, so I went a-googling. Apparently it was not MIT but Brown university, where a library was turned into a tetris game for a week in 2000. ([cite](http://bastilleweb.techhouse.org)) ---
**Author:** ![Jeremy\_s\_Evil\_Twin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Jeremy\_s\_Evil\_Twin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jeremy_s_Evil_Twin)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2002, 11:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pornographic-memory/101460/9 "2002-04-03T11:45:01Z")
Dammit you guys, when I see a thread that has “pornography” in the title, I wanna read about PORNOGRAPHY, not Tetris!! Anyway, to continue the discussion in the way it’s going…ever try playing a smash-em-up racing game (such as Carmageddon) and take a drive on the freeway immediately afterwards? It’s soooo tempting… ---
**Author:** ![dogsbollocks](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/7bcc69/32.png) [@dogsbollocks](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dogsbollocks)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2002, 2:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pornographic-memory/101460/10 "2002-04-03T14:54:26Z")
Have you ever had sex but Imagined you were playing Tetris ---
**Author:** ![slortar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6bbea6/32.png) [@slortar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/slortar)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2002, 5:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pornographic-memory/101460/11 "2002-04-03T17:48:21Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Jeremy’s Evil Twin \* > \*\*Dammit you guys, when I see a thread that has “pornography” in the title, I wanna read about PORNOGRAPHY, not Tetris!! > > Anyway, to continue the discussion in the way it’s going…ever try playing a smash-em-up racing game (such as Carmageddon) and take a drive on the freeway immediately afterwards? It’s soooo tempting… \*\* God, yes. Especially after a few rounds of Crazy Taxi… ---
**Author:** ![Lagged2Death](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ac8455/32.png) [@Lagged2Death](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lagged2Death)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2002, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pornographic-memory/101460/12 "2002-04-03T18:06:34Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Niobium Knight \* > \*\*How come f I look at porn for a long time, for the rest of the day when I close my eyes pornographic images appear in my vision? It’s scarey! \*\* So that when you fianlly go blind, you’ll remember how you got that way :D.