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Pornography and the Butterfly Effect
- emsy 8y ago>Perhaps the most volatile question: does widely available free porn encourage “incels,” the latest boogeymen from the Internet, and the calls for “enforced monogamy” from e.g. blowhard academics who people inexplicably take serious? In a world where objective journalism doesn’t pay, does every site become Vice?
- danharaj 8y agoDo you want to elaborate?
- unethical_ban 8y agoRarely would a non-op-ed refer to a group holding an opinion has blowhards that some people inexplicably take seriously. The New York Times does profiles on White Supremacists that have more respectful tones than this.
- cm2012 8y agoIt's refreshing. Call a spade a spade.
- jaredklewis 8y agohttps://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/09/19/224183763/is-it-racist-to-call-a-spade-a-spade https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/09/19/224183763...
- cm2012 8y agoNo one but etymologists would think of the phrase that way, so the origin doesn't really matter.
- azhu 8y agoDid you look at the linked article? The point is that it reinforces a potential implicit bias. "Rather than taking the chance of unintentionally offending someone or of being misunderstood, it is best to relinquish the old innocuous proverbial expression all together." No one is attacking you and there is no need to defend.
- jaredklewis 8y agoPerhaps I should have clarified that I wasn’t accusing the parent of being racist, but I do think it is an incidentally racist phrase we can probably do without. Maybe just because I am from the south and old enough to remember older relatives using the word spade in an overtly racist way (“Dennis Rodman is as black as a spade,” and such), but I don’t think the etymology is particularly academic. Anyways, sorry for the off topic tangent.
- cm2012 8y agoFair, I've never heard of that and will drop the expression.
- maxerickson 8y agoThat's a reference to a particular person not a group.
- knuththetruth 8y ago>The New York Times does profiles on White Supremacists that have more respectful tones than this. And that’s why America is where it is today!
- dang 8y agoMaybe so, but could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait to Hacker News? You've done it a fair bit and we're trying for better than that here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- dragonwriter 8y ago> Rarely would a non-op-ed refer to a group holding an opinion has blowhards that some people inexplicably take seriously. While you are correct that this was (and is) rare in a news rather than opinion piece, this does not at all pretend to be a news rather than an opinion piece. It's overtly framed as a review, which is a class of opinion piece, and is written with first person references and other structural features typical of opinion pieces. > The New York Times does profiles on White Supremacists that have more respectful tones than this. The New York Times has been widely criticized for normalizing white supremacy for those profiles, but in any case, that's an overtly different class of article.
- barkingtoad 8y agoEnforced monogamy, i.e., marriage
- cm2012 8y agoThat would just be monogamy. The thing people are calling stupid is the idea that low status men should be assigned wives forcefully to prevent them from being sad, which is what some people have actually proposed.
- crdoconnor 8y agoIsn't that essentially what laws against bigamy are for?
- mundo 8y ago> the idea that low status men should be assigned wives forcefully to prevent them from being sad, which is what some people have actually proposed. Who proposed that?
- acqq 8y agoSome articles that explain the background: https://www.macleans.ca/opinion/the-context-of-jordan-petersons-thoughts-on-enforced-monogamy/ https://www.macleans.ca/opinion/the-context-of-jordan-peters... also http://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/incel-meaning-explained http://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/incel-meaning-explained
- lixtra 8y agoGP may refer to poor sources such as https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EkMNXGvzdLw https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EkMNXGvzdLw
- emsy 8y agoIt's pretty clear that TC is alluding to Jordan Peterson. When I read the enforced monogamy headline I thought that's an incredibly stupid thing for him to say, only to find out that (surprise, surprise) it was taken out of context. What he actually said can still be criticized, but isn't even worth a headline.
- erric 8y ago>”enforced monogamy” from e.g. blowhard academics Are academics advocating wholesale monogamy? That’s usually the field of organized religion.
- jjevanoorschot 8y agoJordan Peterson said this in a recent interview.
- knuththetruth 8y agoJordan Peterson did in a recent interview. Although he’s a university professor, it’s probably unfair to paint him as an academic when he’s devolved into a transparent charlatan.
- hh3k0 8y agoThey are referring to Jordan Peterson. He said something along those lines in a recent interview. I haven't read the interview, though, so I don't know the context.
- ChristianBundy 8y agoJordan Peterson is a blowhard conservative who's had more success wooing impressionable edgy teenagers than any actual academic pursuits. I don't understand how anyone takes him or his ideas seriously.
- dragonwriter 8y agoMost of the people I've seen praising and recommending him have pointed mainly to videos on YouTube; video is, in communicating ideas, very poor for informing and very powerful for emotional engagement. This isn't widely recognized (it's not something AFAICT well covered in regular education on source evaluation, critical thinking, etc.), which was mildly bad when TV news was becoming dominant, but there was still a pretty strong production and distribution barrier. In the age where every crank with a crackpot idea can, at basically no marginal upfront cost, produce videos and distribute them globally, it's one of the most important things to understand in approaching media.
- oooommm 8y agoGod I could use a blowhard right now
- PKop 8y agoHere's an enlightening video on the detrimental effects of porn on the brain. Porn addiction shows similar effects as opiates. https://youtu.be/wSF82AwSDiU https://youtu.be/wSF82AwSDiU Related: "NoFap" https://www.reddit.com/r/NoFap/ https://www.reddit.com/r/NoFap/
- StavrosK 8y ago"the detrimental effects of addiction on the brain", you mean.
- erric 8y agoRight. Everything is fine in moderation.
- ovao 8y agoNot everything is fine in moderation. Mainlining sulfuric acid, for example. Whether porn consumption is fine in moderation is a subject of fair debate. Unfortunately, the science on this is not sufficiently clear.
- erric 8y ago>Not everything is fine in moderation. Mainlining sulfuric acid, for example Extremophiles (Snottite) will be quite happy in sulfuric acid
- ozim 8y agoI am not following that absurdity reduction. In the context of discussion you could compare it with alcohol not sulfuric acid. Alcohol creates concrete bad outcomes when for instance driving. I think there is a lot less people watching porn while driving than driving under influence. Alcohol makes you prone to some kinds of cancers, porn not much. Watching porn is at least order of magnitude safer than drinking alcohol. There is no way you can use sulfuric acid injections as comparison for porn watching.
- silveira 8y agoI listened to this series. At the end I was surprised that the author was not blaming 9/11 on porn, because he was blaming pretty much everything on porn.
- ggg9990 8y agoIt’s interesting that you mention 9/11 because one theory I’ve heard is that polygynous societies where there is a surplus of unmarried men breed violent young men (both married and unmarried).
- hrktb 8y agoIs it still a butterfly effect when it’s a first level effect of the phenomenon ? Otherwise there seem to be a lot of pushing of that Montreal company, when the coming of free sex to the net must have been a more decentralized and varied phenomenon. In particular there is a dynamic between pro and amateur pornographic content that is completely ignored to focus on the “incel” concept I am not sure is even correctly discussed in the article.
- damagednoob 8y ago> Did you know that teens are having substantially less sex than the previous few generations? It’s true! And generally interpreted as a good thing. But Ronson suggests that this is in large part because porn is replacing sex, and, in fact, making real sex with real woman seem alienating and difficult. Further down the author specifically mentions the correlation/causality fallacy but there are surely other explanations for this. The rise of cheap entertainment in the form of online gaming or Netflix come readily to mind.
- ronnier 8y agoThere’s also been a shift due to online and apps that give women an unlimited choice of men while giving the majority of men nearly no choice — the dating world for most men has become a lot more difficult over the last couple of years. I see my male friends really struggle and I see my female friends have unlimited options.
- digi_owl 8y agoAnother element that i have noticed locally is that many more men pick up vocational work locally (because many vocational schools were established with support from local industry), while women leave for cities and such for education. And by the time they have finished that they have found a man that is also in that city for work or education.
- oliveshell 8y agoHas there really, though? It doesn’t seem like that’s the case where I am.
- matte_black 8y agoFemales only have the upperhand until their 30s, when the pool of suitable men begins to dry up. After this point they must become increasingly attractive and prurient to maintain the same level of options as the average young 20 something.
- te_chris 8y ago
- iuguy 8y agoFrom the site here in GDPR-land: "Select 'OK' to continue using our products, otherwise, you will not be able to access our sites and apps." Looks like I'm not reading this then.
- elorant 8y agoWith uMatrix installed there's no redirection. You should give it a try, makes surfing the web a lot easier.
- eilyra 8y agoWait, weren't dialogues that force you to give consent for non core parts of the experience forbidden under the GDPR? As in, you can't force people to consent by witholding service if they don't?
- superkuh 8y agoYeah, and it's by far the worst part of the GDPR. It's based on the implicit premise that you don't own your company and can be compelled to provide services to random people by the government at the point of a gun.
- eilyra 8y agoAnd I find it the best part, just because I want to use a service from you doesn't give you the right to muck about with my data for other reasons than to provide that service and the GDPR makes that explicit.
- mmjaa 8y agoMaybe porn isn't the butterfly. Maybe sexism is the butterfly, and porn just the wind ..
- pjc50 8y agoTwo threads here: one is that copyright in porn has largely broken down, resulting in a single giant company making a lot of money from recordings without paying the performers. The second is: what is the effect of production and distribution of porn, on those producing it, consuming it, and third parties? This was a huge issue for feminism in the late 70s and early 80s, with Camille Paglia on the pro side and Andrea Dworkin on the anti side. It has still not been resolved. It's a huge and complex question, and the answer almost certainly depends on the details of the content.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- vinayms 8y agoI wonder if there is a user content monetization scheme in porn industry. By that I mean whether all those people, regular people and not porn actors, who voluntarily upload videos where they have sex, bathe, undress etc get paid. I think a large portion of such videos are really private but are leaked by bitter exes, or stolen from lost mobiles etc, but there is a portion that is indeed voluntary. I wonder about that. This would be an interesting sociological development when (or if?) it happens.
- the-dude 8y agoThere is ( heard it from a friend ).
- Roritharr 8y agoIn Germany MyDirtyHobby has been active for a very long time and has, from my pov, spearheaded Online User Content Monetization.
- vinayms 8y agoI found only German Wikipedia page and had to translate to English. It says the same Fabian from the article owns this company, didn't expect that! It seems the users are actors and not regular people. The page even uses 'so called amateurs' to describe the users. I guess people are not yet ready to tread this path of moneymaking. Seems at least some societal mores are valued/feared/respected.
- yosito 8y agoThe article mentions makelovenotporn.tv (NSFW). Seems similar to what you're describing.
- elorant 8y agoWhat about web cams? I don't know if it qualifies as content in the same context as online porn, but pretty much everyone involved in it are amateurs.
- 8y ago
- elorant 8y agoI was under the impression that the size of the online porn industry is in the billions. And yet, the article states that Thylmann bought pretty much every competitor with just $362 million. That doesn't add-up. What am I missing? Are the rumors for the industry's size overstated?
- nhumrich 8y agoThis was back in 1990 before it was such a big industry.
- kinsomo 8y ago> I was under the impression that the size of the online porn industry is in the billions. And yet, the article states that Thylmann bought pretty much every competitor with just $362 million. That doesn't add-up. What am I missing? Are the rumors for the industry's size overstated? Maybe he just bought up the competing free content sites for $362 million. Maybe the production companies made billions in the past when the industry was more profitable, who knows what they make now.
- frenchpress123 8y agoFor posterity, here is Jordan Peterson responding to the numerous articles that misinterpretation his usage of the phrase "enforced monogamy": https://jordanbpeterson.com/media/on-the-new-york-times-and-enforced-monogamy/ https://jordanbpeterson.com/media/on-the-new-york-times-and-...
- digi_owl 8y agoSo it is yet another example of "context insensitivity" from readers/critiques...
- k__ 8y agoThis doesn't make any sense. Monogamous relationships remove 2 people from the dating marked, non-monogamous ones remove none.
- dragonwriter 8y agoExclusive relationships remove 2 or more whether they are committed monogamy, committed polygamy (polygyny or polyandry), or committed two-sided polyamory (the last seems the most rarely attested, if it is a thing at all outside of fiction, and is included only for the same of excessive completeness.) Committed polygamy does so asymmetrically with regard to gender, particularly, a committed polygynous relationship removes more women from the pool than men, and thus can be seen (from a numbers-game perspective) as disadvantaging not-yet-attached men more than monogamous commitments.
- k__ 8y ago"committed two-sided polyamory" That's the one I'm talking about. I'm living it for 10 years now and know many living it too. The public awareness doesn't seem to be high in that case, but I have the impression most monogamy-proponents simply leave it out because it falsifies their points entirely.
- temp-dude-87844 8y agoThe widespread availability of pornography probably does drive home several extra layers of resentment in someone whose personal track record with courting, dating, and sex has been unsatisfying. At a surface level, it seems to demonstrate that sex -- and not just fruits of performances thereof -- is a transaction, and that the attributes that they bring to the marketplace (appearance, aesthetic, attitude, interests, personality, attainment) are unpopular among the potential pool. Amateur pornography exacerbates this, because it appears to suggest that sex, and the mood of sexual adventurousness required to film it, is extremely common, and taking place between average, everyday people. This can further their fears of inferiority. This skirts a taboo that you can barely talk about: that personal preferences in dating are not judged to the same standard, and that movements of empowerment and positivity are clashing with everyone's free will in pursuing -- and especially articulating -- what they do and don't like. Declining to date someone because they're fat is now firmly seen as a bullying tactic, but not dating someone because they're short is perfectly fine. The protocols around communicating preferences to others and getting them accepted by one's peers is a quagmire where social conventions haven't ventured, so everyone lies for self-preservation ("I like you as a friend", "I don't wanna be tied down"), and those left out are left to draw their own conclusions. This is all terribly unfortunate, but not really new; the incel movement, however, feeds not solely on rejection and obsessing over the base biological reasons thereof, but the implicit entitlement they they'd deserve otherwise.
- k__ 8y ago"Declining to date someone because they're fat is now firmly seen as a bullying tactic" What? Where I come from you're allowed to date who you deem to be attractive. Nobody cares if you don't date anyone because they're fat, dumb, small, poor or what not.
- quotemstr 8y agoRight. Personal dating preferences are sarosanct. There's been a tremendous effort over the past 50 years to replace freedom of association with egalitarian social engineering, and it's at dating where society has drawn a firm line and said "This far! No further!". While there are activists out there attempting to use the standard social shaming toolkit to influence dating, their tactics won't work. Reproduction is too deep-seated a drive to tamper with that way. And fortunately, defeat here will blunt the entire array of tools. It's as if an entire generation is hearing this internal monologue: "You mean that if I want you to consider me a 'woke' and good person, I need to have sex with this person I don't consider attractive? To hell with you and your morality then."
- kindasadgenZ 8y agoThrowaway for obvious reasons. I'm a "gen Z" (born in the late 90s) and discovered porn early. I think it messed up my priors about sex because when I lost my virginity (I was 15/16) it was disappointing. Had a half-dozen partners since then, and it only got worse. I was always doing my best so that the girl had a good time but was extremely bored. Then I started watching porn a lot more and became further disinterested by sex. My life at University got rough, lost friends, anyway at this point I think I got addicted. I was masturbating 8/9 times a day to the point of my genitals hurting. I got ADHD meds which also helped fuck up my reward system. Then I realized I had ED. Told my physician and she gave me the "blue pills". Now I always have one in my wallet. I can't do anything without. I never have orgasms with girls. I just pretend to have a good time, try hard to please, and get on with it. I'm 100% certain that my ED is caused by some damage I did on myself when masturbating compulsively. Worst thing is that I can't talk about it to anyone. It's just so ridiculous and I'm pretty sure it's only downhill from there. I fucked up. I'm in my early twenties and rekt. It blows and honestly makes me sad. I'm not even sure if I'll be able to ever have kids. To the people with kids here: please protect them, seriously, I had too much freedom way too early... my parents were busy and they meant well but I wouldn't wish what I'm living on anyone. There is so much potential for harm out there
- rayiner 8y agoThese phenomena aren’t limited to porn. Content industries have several players competing for limited revenues. Customers don’t care who gets what, they’re willing to pay a certain amount for the content (even if that amount is in the form of advertising). The chief battle is between distributors and content producers. When copyright breaks down, as it has in porn, distributors get all the leverage and all the profits. Accordingly, distributors have huge incentives to push for weakening of copyright. The lobbying of middle-man companies like Google, etc., against copyright can be viewed through that lens. Distribution channels like YouTube, etc., are a lot more valuable when they can distribute other peoples’ content for free.
- mjfl 8y agoI think pornography is going to be a significant selection pressure on the human race, much more than we realize. We're basically running a global-scale experiment right now. Who knows what's going to happen in 10-15 years, when the first generation with firehoses of firehoses of HD porn just a click away their entire lives, comes of age to marry and have children. I think it's going to effect both men and women pretty badly. Men will be emasculated by the relative difference between the pornography they watch, the expectations porn creates, and the barren reality of their actual sex lives. I think this is going to disincentivize men even more from pursuing sexual relationships, even more than just having their desires pseudo-satisfied by the porn itself. Women are going to be stunned by the attenuation of men's desire for them, desire that came as an assumption to thousands of years of cultural norms (male-led courtship) and perhaps even instincts built into our genes. Porn may require/cause a genetic readjustment. We won't live long enough to see.
- apocalypstyx 8y agoI'm beginning to wonder if sex-related information has some affect of the 'universal acid' that dissolves too many of the fantasies we need to sustain ourselves. This seems to me one reasons society, as a whole, tends to hate sex workers so much: there's something about it that nakedly reveals the capitalist-market transactions we are all submerged in and can't escape from, and it reveals it in such way our only recourse is the instinctual reflexes of 'kill it with fire' and 'nuke it from orbit'. In regards to porn, or the discussions we have around porn, it often times seems as if we are on the verge of having to, or being forced to, articulate that not only can most people not tell the difference between reality and fantasy (how many people refer to an actor by a character's name, rather than at least, as 'the actor who played X'?). Instead, we come close to being forced to admit that not only is there no reality-fantasy divide, but that everything is fantasy, that everything is models in our heads, even our heads.
- guskel 8y agoI think social media and dating apps are going to have a much more deleterious effect.
- bitL 8y ago
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- bambax 8y agoI've read somewhere (but can't find now) that boys / men and girls / women reaction to porn is different in that for males, porn is a satisfactory substitute for sex, while it isn't for females. Don't exactly know what to make of that, but was disappointed with the article because it didn't seem to take gender in consideration at all.
- hfdgiutdryg 8y ago"Did you know that erectile dysfunction rates have risen tenfold among young men since the rise of free porn? Correlation does not prove causality but it’s hard to imagine that those two things aren’t somehow related." I'm extremely skeptical that it's caused by porn. More men are on Propecia than in the past. Probably more anti-depressants, too. And it seems to me that people have really ratcheted up the anxiety in general, over the last 20 years or so.
- bob_theslob646 8y ago> I'm extremely skeptical that it's caused by porn. More men are on Propecia than in the past. Probably more anti-depressants, too. And it seems to me that people have really ratcheted up the anxiety in general, over the last 20 years or so. That is also a little harsh, but I agree. Most likely they did not have the means to collect data on it rather than the means at which they do so today. It also could be that it was not considered manly to talk about your feelings 20 years ago... You also did not access to hundreds of thousands of naked men and woman within seconds with a simple google search 20 years ago, whereas you had to find yourself some "contraband" if you were under 18 ,back then.
- 0xcde4c3db 8y ago> Most likely they did not have the means to collect data on it rather than the means at which they do so today. Or what they're looking at is diagnoses of erectile dysfunction, which might have some connection to drugs being approved and heavily marketed for it.
- pbhjpbhj 8y agoNot with Google .. but 20 years ago internet porn was easy to find, eg via Usenet. But lower bandwidth would mean even images loaded slowly. I hypothesise oestrogen mimicking chemicals in toiletries, and maybe plastics?, probably have some part in this.
- ggg9990 8y agoWhy are you more skeptical of porn as a cause than anxiety? One is directly related to sex and one isn’t.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- ikeboy 8y ago>As for beneficial — well, as a good San Franciscan I am of course sex-positive, pro-sex-workers, and pro-porn as a concept … but it would be disingenuous to pretend that Ronson doesn’t show a lot of dubious-trending-negative emergent effects of essentially unlimited free pornography. That 5 negatives in a row? Impressive.
- zbentley 8y agoI only counted three; what five were you seeing. (Yes, blatantly tangential).