• Pastaguini [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Pornography is one of the areas that you see capitalism in its most pure, unfettered form. I don’t want to sound like one of these r/nofap freaks, but there is an entire industry dedicated to highjacking people’s natural sex drives to steer them toward websites where they’re absolutely assaulted with advertisements. I think this is a bigger issue than a lot of people give it credit for because the people who are talking about it are either insane, completely puritanical, totally credulous when it comes to pseudoscience, or some combination, but we’re looking at a generation of young people whose concept of sex will be impacted by this phenomenon.

    • hypercube [she/her]
      ·
      edit-2
      2 years ago

      you don't need porn to get off! theater of the mind, turns mindless consumption into a creative exercise. alternatively you can go the accelerationist route and check out weird furry porn, since that's all made by freaks still somewhat outside the grasp of the technofeudalist era of the net

    • HornyOnMain
      ·
      2 years ago

      my imagination >> porn sites that are trying to steal my bank details

      • GreenTeaRedFlag [any]
        ·
        2 years ago

        Good for you, I have intrusive thoughts very often and do NOT like having to deal with them while self-pleasuring.

    • GreenTeaRedFlag [any]
      ·
      2 years ago

      You also see a push towards more messed up content over time, such as the prevelance of incest porn in very common online spaces, and some truly bizarre fetishes appearing and becoming common in fringe groups. Things like the Ugly Bastard trope or NTR seem to just be extensions of misogyny and removal of women's choice in sex, but more out there stuff like scat fetishists or medical gore porn seems to be cultivating a captive market by destroying their natural sense of decency(or preying on a lack their of) and creating a fetish I really have a hard time believing occurred naturally or healthily. There's also the capitalist idea of a zero sum game because someone always has sex either pushed onto them or they are overwhelmed by desire for it, either way making the other (usually masculine) party in control of the situation.

      • hypercube [she/her]
        ·
        2 years ago

        "natural sense of decency" lmao what the fuck do you think men have been up to these past few millenia. Maybe that's all the result of distortion of "natural" impulses as a result of various hierarchical societies but either way it's certainly not new or unique

        • GreenTeaRedFlag [any]
          ·
          edit-2
          2 years ago

          Looking at stuff like neck extensions or feet binding or "English roses" or the weird fixation on sick and dying women or the modern mainstream suicide or drug addiction fetish some people seem to have. Considering most people outside of the cultural context which found these hot find them disturbing, I think there's a certain level of decency in most people stamped out of them by the culture they live in objectifying women. When they see a woman objectified in a different way they clock it as wrong many times.

          Edit: yeah I see your point, I just think the newer forms of porn maybe have further reach

          • hypercube [she/her]
            ·
            2 years ago

            yeah, like, you're right that exploitative pornography sucks, that it exists at the intersection of capital and misogyny and exacerbates both. But the first two things you listed were, as far as I know, normal cultural practices for millions of people for thousands of years. I find the appeal to nature stuff real sus because it's pretty much unfalsifyable, and typically deployed against queer people. Like, "people must Naturally find this disgusting due to its misogynistic nature" is something that's frequently argued against against my existence as a trans woman. I don't think for a second that's what you believe + and you're basically right about algorithmically driven mass market porn, just think that it's better to make the materialist argument against it, rather than the reactionary one

            • GreenTeaRedFlag [any]
              ·
              2 years ago

              They were normal cultural practices, but also incredibly painful and damaging to the people they were enacted on. If there is any basic human nature, it's tied to our ability to work together and take care of each other in a community, and the evil things we do run counter to that. It takes a lot.of programming to get people on board with these things, which is why I think it is against our nature to a certain extent.

    • Diogenes_Barrel [love/loves]
      ·
      2 years ago

      because the people who are talking about it are either insane, completely puritanical, totally credulous

      why won't people take the tentpole issue of the worst people on the internet seriously?

      seriously though the way to get away from their type of rhetoric is to step away from totalising 'porn-bad' (which often dovetails with swerf shit) and just go to personal diagnostic: "you can't get aroused by your partner? it may be because of excessive porn use".

      • StolenStalin [comrade/them,they/them]
        ·
        2 years ago

        I mean, under capitalism, porn-bad. Ofc it's not inherent but the industry is rife with exploitation in both production and consumption. Even with independent solo stuff or drawn art it's impossible to tell who's producing content because they actually enjoy it vs who's producing because they need the money.

    • LeninWalksTheWorld [any]
      ·
      2 years ago

      reject commodified pornography, embrace the limitless universe of free internet erotica.