All men watch porn, scientists find.

[Peregrine]

yet again, I'm taking issue with the 'she looks like she's really enjoying it' excuse/reason/idea/bullshit* - pick a word I can't. That's usually a subjective opinion based on next to no information about how any given image was shot, who the people on camera are, why they are there doing what they're doing for your enjoyment and money.

I can understand this point of view, because, unfortunately in the sex trade industry, there is going to be exploitation. I personally find a lot of pornography distasteful, because although the gals in it appear to be enjoying it, it is obvious they are not & it is an act. But the entire industry is not all like that.

As someone who does work in the industry, I can tell you right now I've never once felt exploited by the folks I worked with. I've also posed for pornographic & fetish pictures & by golly, I must say, I enjoyed it.

[Stephen Morgan]

I'm a man in his twenties and I also have seen porn, although I don't make a habit of it. There was a scout hall/church hall near my house when I was young, in the yard of which was a shed stuffed with lingerie catalogues, page threes and other soft porn.

"If I don't pay for it, it's okay" -- David Mitchell, "Peep Show"

I don't make a habit of consuming porn, though, for starters there's not much that meets by tastes. Not an option for that in the poll though.

[norton ash]

You'd probably get a different result 30 years ago. Many guys would balk at buying a skin book or renting a video, if there were other people in the store or a woman at the till. Our local strip joint, when non-smoking rules came into play, built a large enclosure with a high wooden fence for their patrons who smoked, so they couldn't be seen from the busy street... many of the patrons also park across the street in a mall lot, so their vehicles won't be recognized in a strip bar parking lot.

My point? The interwebs changed everything. Now there's practically no reason not to look, other than being busted by the boss or a family member... or someone who wants to cause you trouble with same. That same someone could also COMPLETELY frame you as a criminal, if they're skilled and that's their wish.

[Nordic]

You'd probably get a different result 30 years ago. Many guys would balk at buying a skin book or renting a video, if there were other people in the store or a woman at the till. Our local strip joint, when non-smoking rules came into play, built a large enclosure with a high wooden fence for their patrons who smoked, so they couldn't be seen from the busy street... many of the patrons also park across the street in a mall lot, so their vehicles won't be recognized in a strip bar parking lot.

My point? The interwebs changed everything. Now there's practically no reason not to look, other than being busted by the boss or a family member... or someone who wants to cause you trouble with same. That same someone could also COMPLETELY frame you as a criminal, if they're skilled and that's their wish.

That's absolutely true.

Which, I have to say, worries me on one level -- my son, who is now only 7 and doesn't seem to give a rats ass about females of the species, will in a few years change his views and will want to see pictures of naked women.

I cannot imagine what it would have been like to have the internet at say, age 13. It was bad enough just with what little I could find (and finding my Dad's collection was quite the coup).

My point being that porn to an eighth grade boy is like cocaine to a monkey.

And the internet is a place where the drug is available in literally an endless, limitless stream.

It's also very difficult to avoid. Hell, with my stepdaughter one night we image-searched the actress Kristin Davis one night there on google images, one of the very first pictures, was a shot of her giving a blowjob! Apparently this picture got loose into teh internets and, well, there I was with my stepdaughter with our eyes suddenly BURNED with this image. I think we both screamed.

[justdrew]

many of the patrons also park across the street in a mall lot, so their vehicles won't be recognized in a strip bar parking lot.

I advise everyone to never park in any bar's parking lot, in fact two blocks or more away is much better

[Seamus OBlimey]

I love it.

Click [Click here for slideshow] for slideshow.

[AhabsOtherLeg]

You, Ahab, had a name that I thought was funny ONLY IN THE CONTEXT of this thread coupled with my posts therein insofar as being one of the only people that find pornography disagreeable.

Hehe, no worries, I was joking too. I was trying to be clever while drinking and reading Moby Dick - I had the whole trifecta going on. Don't worry, I never thought for a moment that you were secretly insulting me by the use of esoteric worm emoticons or anything. It never crossed my mind.

To say I find porn disagreeable would be true as well - so long as we are talking about the industry itself - but I must admit I have been known to indulge from time to time. Heavily, if I'm being honest (and, God help me, it seems I am).

In the bit from Moby Dick I posted, I was meaning to say that Ishmael is talking about his younger days, when in tandem with the other men he got his first masthead. His third leg, if you will. It might not have been the symbolism Melville intended, but in a book with that much symbolism he should be content with whatever he gets. I thought it fitted the thread. In this day and age a man's first "sexual" experience will often begin with porn. In those days the right-of-passage to manhood might be ... well, it might be almost anything - for Ishmael it was being trusted to keep watch from the mast. Which I chose to make into a dick joke.

Nowadays, in my more Daily Mail moods, it seems like the rite-of-passage into manhood for these damned youngsters is being able to sit imperturbably through 2girls1cup or 1man1jar, or, god forbid, 3men1hammer. Do not google these terms.

I'm not sure I see an advancement there. I'm not sure what I mean, either. In the old rites, the dangers were always ritualised and symbolic - is the internet fulfilling that role now...? No. No, it's not.

But my main point was that in the old days guys like Saint Simeon of Stylites would isolate themselves completely, regardless of the social and physical consequences (sitting on a pillar for years won;t do your back any good, and that cold stone can give you piles) in order to contemplate the nature of God.

Nowadays the world is full of equally stringent self-isolators and hermits-by-choice (myself sometimes among them) - but rather than isolating ourselves in order to reach a greater understanding of ourselves or our surroundings we just seem to be maniacally jacking off (one way or another) to whatever commercialized exploitation is placed in front of us. Then we feel liberated and rebellious if we have to click twice to get to it. Lab rats face more challenges, and probably enjoy their rewards more.

The food that was hoisted up to St. Simeon by his followers could be likened nowadays to pizza delivery, as Barracuda said. You'll eat it at first because it's there and it's easy, or because it's all that's available - but after a while you'll start calling out for it. Another self-isolating convenience.

There's a streaming porn site called BoysFood - it doesn't feature boys, thankfully, except among it's viewers no doubt, but the message is clear: This is food. Your daily bread. A tonic for the troops.

That story about the Korean couple who let their own flesh-and-blood baby starve while they devoted their time to raising a virtual child in an online game was on my mind. Transhumanism's here - and it's human after all... still selfish, lazy, and evil only in the most boring and inactive ways possible.

And the slightly older story of the Chinese WoW obsessive (one of many) who died in an internet cafe in an adult nappy because he wouldn't move away from the screen... He was a young man, 28, if I recall right. Voluntarily wearing a nappy in order to grind another couple of levels... died of heart failure at the exertion of moving from his seat to the toilet.

Christ. ..."who was not to be driven from his place by fogs or frosts, rain, hail, or sleet; but valiantly facing everything out to the last, literally died at his post..."

Most of this doesn't have much to do with porn, I suppose, except it does.

It honestly did all make sense at the time. I need to stop making posts that only make sense to me, though.

Anyways, no offence taken 82_28.

[AhabsOtherLeg]

Apparently this picture got loose into teh internets and, well, there I was with my stepdaughter with our eyes suddenly BURNED with this image. I think we both screamed.

I once left my nieces alone for two minutes, thinking they'd be safe to play around on Youtube - and when I came back the youngest of them had somehow managed to get the video of Saddam Hussein's execution playing. On Youtube.

I closed it before the actual hanging, but only by luck.

Like most sensible people, though, they didn't know what it was anyway, and had gone back to fighting amongst themselves by then. Which is how it should be.

They were looking for Avril Lavigne!

[Penguin]

Lemme guess... The hanging video had Lavigne playing in the background?

[AhabsOtherLeg]

Hehe. No, thankfully. A chaotic and kind of farcical execution to the tune of Avril Lavigne's "I Could Be Your Girlfriend" would've probably damaged me more than them!

It had the real sounds, but as far as they were concerned it was just a video of a bunch of bearded men shouting and jostling each other in a dark room. They probably thought it was somebody's New Year's Eve party. I asked them how they got on to Saddam Hussein's execution video, but they didn't even know who he was, which I thought was very clever of them.

[Pele'sDaughter]

When my son was 13-14 or so I saw that he had some old Playboys stashed but I said nothing. Later he told me about them and informed me "it's a guy thing". Like I wasn't previously familiar with the concept, lol. I never worried about it, and he never seemed overly obssessed.

[Maddy]

I think porn, and the sex industry in general, is fine and acceptable when its concenting adults. When its any kind of abusive, however, (thinking about Linda Lovelace, etc. type of manipulation/abuse even, not to mention worse), then I am utterly, violently opposed.

I can't stand watching the movies though. Really. Just nothing there. And they remind me of this theatre I worked in when I was younger, and had to clean up the booths after the men. No really - want to be turned off? Work in a porn shop. That's enough to turn you off porn forever. Quick cure.

On the other hand, I love a good book!

[Peregrine]

I think porn, and the sex industry in general, is fine and acceptable when its concenting adults. When its any kind of abusive, however, (thinking about Linda Lovelace, etc. type of manipulation/abuse even, not to mention worse), then I am utterly, violently opposed.

Wholeheartedly agree with ya there, lady.

On the other hand, I love a good book!

I've always found having the imagination fired by some erotic literature much more satiating than anything visual, so I must say I enjoy a good book as well!

[brekin]

I've worked at a few libraries and I think for me what has been so surprising is how much porn is moved into the mainstream of everyday public life. I remember the first day working at one large downtown public library on being given a tour of each room there was at least one person viewing hard core pornography acts. This was even before bandwidth had improved significantly.

Each computer had a privacy screen that makes viewing the screen dim at 45 degrees but are useless if you are looking directly at it even from across the room. As I continued to work there I got use to this and didn't even bat an eye after awhile. At one point though they started to have print jobs routed to a printer that library staff had to charge patrons for and you were again confronted with it there. (I think this stopped sometime after I left because someone filed a claim about hostile work environment or something.)

The rationale for not interfering with a patron's "session" was you wouldn't go up behind someone reading a book and start reading over their shoulder and object to what they were reading would you? Why then do that with a computer? This made initial sense at the time, I mean who is to differentiate from an Egon Schiele or Hustler spread? But it was ironic considering how aggressive libraries have been in the past with keeping a certain level of quiet in a library, for some reason a person watching The Best of Fisting videos viewable by all falls into a whole other realm.

Some libraries have adopted different strategies. I noticed Vancouver B.C.'s awesome public library has the monitors inlaid into the table so your actually looking down at the screen and its not as noticeable but still fairly noticeable especially if the patron is drooling over it.

Of course viewing such matter lead quite a few patrons to want to "engage with the subject matter" and the sheriff's deputies who provided security for the library often had to bust someone with busy hands.

It is really remarkable as others have noted the proliferation and ubiquitous of such material over the last couple of decades. I think libraries have really mirrored this. From having the one copy of playboy on reserve always going missing and needing to be put on reserve to having certain art books missing pages to becoming basically an adult penny arcade it's been a huge shift. I think some pornography is necessary, even healthy, and I know some will pull out how wonderful libraries are and remember the time they found that special book that help them deal with their fledgling awakening sexuality, but just imagine discovering that book now sitting down to read it and glancing over at the man with his hands down his pants streaming the beastiality vids next to you.

[Simulist]

Thanks, brekin. I had no idea that some public libraries were like that. Our public library outright censors such sites from access. (My only initial problem with that was, "What other sites are also being censored?" But when I decided to look, everything but porn seems available.)

Although I see pornography as a free speech issue, and think that those who want access to it should be free to view it on their own as they choose, I also think that public libraries (and taxpayers) have positively no obligation to supply the material.

(And anyone who wants to look at that stuff in a public library needs his head examined.)