That is a very strange way of putting it.
In general, people love simple solutions. Simple solutions are easy to articulate and drum up popular support for, especially when the solution happens to look identical to what people want to do (drop the AoC down to whatever the lower bounds of one’s AoA is or decriminalize specific acts that one individual may be into) or what society wants them to do (get rid of the thoughts), but with a fresh layer of paint over it.
My stance is ever-shifting, but in general, if someone is going to consume generally harmless content of real people, then they shouldn’t make their presence very painfully obvious (like in the case of the YT paedophiles where they went from video to video making inappropriate comments). This doesn’t really help anyone. It doesn’t help them, it doesn’t help the uploaders (it likely makes them very uncomfortable at-least later on!), and it is another excuse for society to get very mad.
That could also be argued to be partly society’s fault, but there are certain actions which make one more culpable than they otherwise would have been.
And people get lonely. They just simply do. Perhaps, they’re not lonely one day and subscribe to the whole status quo, but give it a few years, perhaps give it a few decades, and sometimes their views will flip. I have seen it in my all but six months that I have been in this “world”. They don’t necessarily commit crimes, a political belief isn’t a crime, but it isn’t too difficult to see why someone would follow those views.
There is also the view that stigma causes the views which in turn causes the crime, rather I might say that stigma causes the heightened sexual desire and feeling of dire loss) which partially causes the crime (but there are a lot of reasons someone might commit a crime!). That said, there are people who are more rational and pragmatic, along with people who are more… chaotic, I would say that a lot of it depends on their personality, although it could very well be a very good justification to themselves.
Figuring out other factors would be extremely difficult, but engaging in self-destructive behavior in which one suppresses their desires (despite being given the opportunity to vent them) due to social pressures to the point that it erupts is one big theory I have. Experimenting on oneself would seem to point to that as-well.
This is also one reason I don’t quite subscribe to hard-line anti-contact ideology as it were, as I follow the view that it is better to commit a lesser crime (what even is a crime anymore with everything being illegal?) than it is to commit a greater one, although it would be even better, if safe outlets are able to help people to commit no crime at all, if possible.
I generally don’t talk to “hands on” offenders as I deeply, deeply loath them for a variety of reasons, not least that I believe they very well could have avoided it with an outlet (I have sympathy for addictions, but not for things that look self-inflicted), but they did seem to be very remorseful for their actions and they didn’t seem like they did it out of some sort of ideology.
I could be wrong in some areas, I am a tad naive, but maybe this could be useful… slightly. I will have to do further research to figure out exactly how wrong I am.
I do encourage people who identify as pro-contact to not commit “hands on” offenses whenever possible. I don’t know if that does anything, but I hope it does, especially since the more crimes that are committed, the worse my own reputation becomes. There is somewhat of a consensus that it is a terrible idea, but I would hope I don’t hear of them getting dragged away by the police for that.