
Pornography and the Butterfly Effect - DmenshunlAnlsis
https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/27/pornography-and-the-butterfly-effect/
======
pjc50
Two 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.

------
damagednoob
> 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
There’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.

~~~
throwawaymath
_> There’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_

How can that be? Why would it be empowering for one gender but not the other?
What would the underlying reason be to explain that kind of social phenomenon?

 _> I see my male friends really struggle and I see my female friends have
unlimited options._

I can counter your anecdata with my own...many of the women I know are having
great difficulty finding men online because, in their experience, they're very
picky. Speaking as a man, I would say I've also become more picky over time,
not less. Here we're trading localized experience, but I think that there
should be an accountable cause that would explain only men being adversely
impacted.

I don't see an obvious reason why online dating would make things harder for
men but not harder for women and vice versa. I think the broader trend in
online dating is that it's harder for _unattractive people_ to find partners,
regardless of sexual identity or preference; conversely it seems to be getting
progressively easier for attractive people to find partners. People are
presented with significantly more options, which makes me hypothesize that
they're willing to say no to many people they would otherwise settle for. I
don't think that's particularly harder on men than it is on women.

~~~
andriesm
>>I don't see an obvious reason why online dating would make things harder for
men but not harder for women and vice versa. I think the broader trend in
online dating is that it's harder for unattractive people to find partners,
regardless of sexual identity...

On dating sites, men rate 50 percent of women as below average (in line with
the statistical expectation), while women rate 80 percent of men as below
average.

It is a fact that women are pickier than men on average, and that women are
less willing to marry down and to settle for less, than men are.

This is why there is gender assymetry in how increased information efficiency
in the dating market affects SMV (sexual market value) of men and women.

------
mjfl
I 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.

~~~
bitL
Video games are now more interesting than Hollywood productions; most TV
shows/movies are borefests comparing to what you can experience in some
advanced videogame with almost photorealistic graphics. Soon we will be able
to deploy more AI-based goodies like completely replacing NPCs with people we
know by providing single photos, realistically synthesizing their voices etc.
At some point we will be able to directly stimulate brain's pleasure centers
which might kill off drugs, porn, art and as a side effect, civilization. Our
present time is already looking like a badly directed reality show; I believe
it is going to be a lot worse, Kafkaesque and artificial.

------
rayiner
These 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.

------
hfdgiutdryg
_" 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
> 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
> 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.

------
hrktb
Is 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.

------
silveira
I 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
It’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).

------
elorant
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?

~~~
kinsomo
> 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.

------
ikeboy
>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
I only counted three; what five were you seeing.

(Yes, blatantly tangential).

~~~
ikeboy
disingenuous, pretend, doesn’t, dubious, negative

If you count the "but" as negative then it's 6

~~~
zbentley
That's fair. I interpreted "dubious trending negative" as a subject rather
than a negative qualification of one.

------
vinayms
I 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.

~~~
Roritharr
In Germany MyDirtyHobby has been active for a very long time and has, from my
pov, spearheaded Online User Content Monetization.

~~~
vinayms
I 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.

------
bambax
I'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.

------
temp-dude-87844
The 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.

~~~
te_chris
> 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.

Is this more Jordan Peterson, “woe is men” shit?

Seriously, if these sovereign individuals can’t forge social relationships
with others, especially women, and use that to further their understanding and
connection with the real world, then that is their problem, as individuals.
It’s not society’s fault that these individuals choose to not engage with
society on society’s terms. It’s certainly not women’s fault and very much not
their responsibility to fix.

~~~
natalyarostova
Political and social institutions are systems that require system level
solutions.

A call for individual impetus or responsibility to fix system issues isn't
necessarily wrong, but it's usually futile.

Consider: some set of features that identify an individual, over time, begin
to predict a worse or less ideal state. Is the cause and solution most likely
to be a collective individual moral failure, requiring a collective individual
improvement? It's possible. But is it likely?

Or perhaps a better question, is this proposed solution likely to improve the
state of the world to one we all like? "Be better, it's not our responsibility
to fix your issues." If this is repeated enough does the trend reverse? Or if
it doesn't reverse, do we simply not care? If we don't think this will reverse
the trend, and if we do care, then this seems like a poor strategy.

You don't have to care or not care about any individual, and you don't have to
take any individuals belief or claim at face value. That's the difference
between trying to divide up lines and attribute moral defect to society or
individual, and trying to map out a complex system at understand solutions
that aren't about assigning blame or worth, but rather improving society for
all.

Still, an ability to have empathy for those who suffer, whether they are part
of your side of the culture war or not, is (only in my opinion) a beautiful
trait.

~~~
te_chris
I really appreciate this comment.

I agree and this has made me rethink my comment and the angle I took.

The suicide of famous artists such as Chris Cornell and Scott Hutchison -
particularly Hutchison - has really shocked me and made me think more widely
about what it means to live happily as a man these days. I think we need more
people thinking about it positively. And more people need to embrace and
encourage civility as you've done.

It's so easy to fling rocks in the culture wars, and satisfying too, but in a
junk food way.

As you say, there's a bigger picture.

Thank you.

I like the war and peace reference too ;)

------
iuguy
From 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.

~~~
eilyra
Wait, 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
Yeah, 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.

~~~
dasil003
It's crazy where the Overton window is that no one gives a shit about privacy
issues unless they tie into politics somehow, and government trying to protect
citizens' privacy by means of laws with actual teeth (read: fines) is equated
to physical violence.

Ad tech has taken full carte blanche for long enough. If you actually dig into
GDPR you find that it's quite reasonable, far better than the cookie law and
other earlier iterations that fundamentally misunderstood technology.

~~~
superkuh
Oh, I care a lot about privacy. Because of that I made many choices to never
even start using services like Facebook or carry a cell phone with me. I also
run white-list only javascript in browser and host all my own services
(web/mail/voice chat/etc). These things have made it harder to stay involved
with friends, harder to use the web, but it was my choice and the right one.

The idea that people have to be protected from themselves and their choices is
at the heart of GDPR. It prevents people from making the correct choice of not
using services you disagree with and keeps those services profiting and ever
more centralized.

But digging even deeper, there's this delusion that your usage patterns of
someone elses' property are _yours_ and to me it seems crazy. You wouldn't say
that physical grocery stores cannot keep track of who enters their premises
and what they bought (or how long their phone SSID was in range of $x aisle).
Or that they should be fined, and have those fined backed up with government
violence, if someone demanded the grocer delete the data.

~~~
iuguy
> Because of that I made many choices to never even start using services like
> Facebook or carry a cell phone with me.

Yet services like Facebook will have a shadow profile for you from data built
up through abusing access to other peoples' systems.

------
emsy
>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?

~~~
erric
>”enforced monogamy” from e.g. blowhard academics

Are academics advocating wholesale monogamy? That’s usually the field of
organized religion.

~~~
redka
Jordan Peterson, whose being referenced here explained what he meant[0] and it
doesn't seem unreasonable. It's uncharitable to jump to a conclusion here
without going beyond our presuppositions.

[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yn60-8Ql_44](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yn60-8Ql_44)

~~~
da_chicken
Peterson seems to have a knack for not explaining himself well and expecting
people to just understand where he's coming from. He's also really bad at
phrasing. He constantly seems to get into hot water for what he says, and then
if you try to figure out what he says he actually said it's never for what
we're told he says.

I think he'd do much better if he wrote more books and had a _really good
editor_.

~~~
jstarfish
This is the hallmark of cult (or any organized religion's) literature. Also
how therapists operate. Be vague, and let your customers project the meanings
onto your words that they most want to hear.

If you actually _gave_ people answers, their quest for meaning would be
complete and they wont come back next week. You lose engagement.

~~~
deno
How do you manage to put the blame on the person cited out of context instead
of on the journalists, whose _job_ it actually was to verify such things?

I don’t know the exact context for the original statement, but the linked
explanation video[1], which is only three minutes long, is very
straightforward and exhaustive, and not at all vague as you claim.

Mostly it just irks me, as I have seen many people I respect given this
treatment, but it has always been by the intellectually dishonest, including
in fact in cult literature, with which I unfortunately have some personal
experience.

The fact that this is now the new norm in mainstream press is very concerning.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yn60-8Ql_44](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yn60-8Ql_44)

------
frenchpress123
For 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-...](https://jordanbpeterson.com/media/on-the-new-york-times-and-enforced-
monogamy/)

~~~
k__
This doesn't make any sense.

Monogamous relationships remove 2 people from the dating marked, non-
monogamous ones remove none.

~~~
dragonwriter
Exclusive 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__
"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.

------
mmjaa
Maybe porn isn't the butterfly. Maybe sexism is the butterfly, and porn just
the wind ..

------
PKop
Here'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/)

~~~
wavefunction
NoFap is of course the pseudo-scientific movement promoted by "Proud Boy"
Gavin McInnes. When I consider the constellation of associated movements and
groups with these sorts of things I have to step back and say "no."

You have to be careful about what people you associate yourself with and also
with the subcultures and thought-forms you submerge yourself in.

~~~
deno
> You have to be careful about what people you associate yourself with and
> also with the subcultures and thought-forms you submerge yourself in.

Do you think you’ll catch wrongthink by even accidentally interacting with
people that have different political views than your own?

I don’t have a dog in this fight but this just struck me as such small-minded
thing to say…

No Fap is self-evidently apolitical. Though it’s true it is
“pseudoscientific,” but really that should be obvious—it was started around a
meme.

There’s also Porn Free[1] which evolved independently alongside the website
Your Brain On Porn[2], that is very much evidence-based.

[1] [https://reddit.com/r/pornfree](https://reddit.com/r/pornfree)

[2] [https://yourbrainonporn.com/](https://yourbrainonporn.com/)

