What is mental masturbation?

[sat2493]

What actually is mental masturbation and how one recognize when they are engaging in it? What is the difference between mental masturbation and genuinely exploring an idea using one’s mind? Does that distinction actually exist?

It’s very hard for me to recognize myself as I’m doing it. I feel a sense of fantasy when it comes to mental masturbation. Playing around with ideas, blowing them up and exaggerating them in my head. It feels like pleasure. I only recognize I’ve been in fantasy after the fact.

But sometimes I feel a similar kind pleasure when exploring new ideas, and testing them out or tweaking them in the kinds of diagrams I draw.