News The growth of internet porn tells us more about ourselves than technology

[AdultKing]

This is an opinion piece.

When the internet first entered public consciousness in the early 1990s, a prominent media entrepreneur described it as a “sit up” rather than a “lean back” medium. What she meant was that it was quite different from TV, which encouraged passive consumption by a species of human known universally as the couch potato. The internet, some of us fondly imagined, would be different; it would encourage/enable people to become creative generators of their own content.

Spool forward a couple of decades and we are sadder and wiser. On any given weekday evening in many parts of the world, more than half of the data traffic on the internet is accounted for by video streaming to couch potatoes worldwide. (Except that many of them may not be sitting on couches, but watching on their smartphones in a variety of locations and postures.) The internet has turned into billion-channel TV.

https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...han-technology

[SilentKnight]

"I'd really like to go join that activist movement and protest against the latest gov't policy change...but I can't this weekend...I'm watching Netflix and chillin' online"

GAIUS: Games! 150 days of games!
GRACCHUS: He's cleverer than I thought.
GAIUS: Clever. The whole of Rome would be laughing at him if they weren't in fear of his Praetorian.
GRACCHUS: Fear and wonder. A powerful combination.
GAIUS: Will the people really be seduced by that?
GRACCHUS: I think he knows what Rome is. Rome is the mob. He will conjure magic for them and they will be distracted. He will take away their freedom, and still they will roar. The beating heart of Rome is not the marble floor of the Senate, it is the sand of the Colosseum. He will give them death, and they will love him for it.

""ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED??!! ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED??!! Is this not why you are here??"

[AdultKing]

Originally Posted by SilentKnight

"I'd really like to go join that activist movement and protest against the latest gov't policy change...but I can't this weekend...I'm watching Netflix and chillin' online"

That's why Australia will never have a revolution, everyone would prefer to go to the beach

[SilentKnight]

Originally Posted by AdultKing

That's why Australia will never have a revolution, everyone would prefer to go to the beach

Exactly.

Often when I watch some mind-numbingly bad movie or show on Netflix, I can't help but think its all orchestrated to keep us complacent and distracted so we're not out on the streets as a lynch mob trying to tear down the corrupt governments.

[Bladewire]

Passify the masses with addictive video games, free porn, addictive cell phones, movies & more!

[AdultKing]

Originally Posted by SilentKnight

Exactly.

Often when I watch some mind-numbingly bad movie or show on Netflix, I can't help but think its all orchestrated to keep us complacent and distracted so we're not out on the streets as a lynch mob trying to tear down the corrupt governments.

Noam Chomsky called it 'Manufacturing Consent'.

Personally I don't think it's a big conspiracy, I think it's more simple than that.

Humans default to lazy mode, they accept things that the shouldn't.

There was no Netflix in early to late 1930s Germany.

[SilentKnight]

Originally Posted by AdultKing

Noam Chomsky called it 'Manufacturing Consent'.

Personally I don't think it's a big conspiracy, I think it's more simple than that.

Humans default to lazy mode, they accept things that the shouldn't.

There was no Netflix in early to late 1930s Germany.

Or during the Vietnam War protests.

[AdultKing]

Originally Posted by SilentKnight

Or during the Vietnam War protests.

Good point.

[MaDalton]

[Paul Markham]

The actual size of the sex industry online is difficult to estimate,

Estimating how much money the online porn industry makes is difficult, not least because of definitional problems. What counts as “adult content”, for example? And most of the dominant companies are privately held. Current revenue estimates for the US range from $9bn to $97bn a year. The latter figure looks excessive, but a conservative estimate is $15bn. That makes it bigger than not only Netflix ($11.7bn) but also Hollywood as a whole ($11.1bn) and Viacom ($13.3bn). In other words, online porn is huge.

Estimates because no one knows, except AK.

[SilentKnight]

Originally Posted by StefanG

Spot on

[DraX]

Originally Posted by Bladewire

Passify the masses with addictive video games, free porn, addictive cell phones, movies & more!

Oh how observant of you all of a sudden, but when they vote or engage themselves in topics you don't agree with they get labelled accordingly.