At some point porn needs to come with a user's manual and some warning labels.

My number one suggested warning label is:

"Warning consuption may lead you to very much annoy a real live woman by trying to act out the porn you've seen with her... and that will stop you from actually have good sex."

But there are two things that I find interesting about porn.

First thing is that it exposes the wide variety of fascinations that are out there. For every imaginable fetish and many unimaginable ones there is a porn site devoted to it.

Second thing is that the actual number of women having REAL toe-curling orgasms in porn is like 1 in 10000 videos.

That seems kind of pathetic doesn't it? ... that's why I say the revolt is coming and its up to women to remind men that acting out their favorite porno is not remotely as much fun or as intimate as the range of activities that can be explored together as a couple.

Porn is like eating junk food when you could have the gourmet meal for the same price.

Seems like you're using porn as a link to the trends in society that you don't like. I would think the omnipresence of the internet is changing the way people interact, for the better or worse. You can draw parallels to the lack of reality in porn and in the commercialization of celebrities, but you would have to really stretch to find an actual connection between the two. I also don't understand how society is becoming "pornified" when no one talks about it and (most) people use it in private. The commenter above me seems to think that porn is pretending to be real, when it is really about experiencing a type of sex that doesn't happen in real life.

I wasn't saying porn was pretending to be real... altho if you haven't looked lately there are lots of couples filming themselves for amateur sites and some of that is indeed real.

I was saying that a lot of men like porn so much their fantasy life in sex BECOMES ACTING OUT THEIR FAVORITE PORN, and then when they get to the activity of real live sex itself they are thereby disconnected from their partner... which makes it no fun for the woman involved. Being a replacement standin for your date's favorite porn is distinctly degrading.

But I don't actually think we need to get rid of porn, I just think we need more accurate porn and more imaginative porn... because that has the potential of improving intimacy.

AN important part of this post most people are missing (I think) is the section about the comparison between art and schizophrenia. If i understand the author correctly, He's not neccessarily say there is a *causal* link between porn and the "pornification" of society, but rather that porn represents an extreme of (non?)social behavior that society in general is moving towards.

with this, I have to agree. Obviously a change is taking place, one I think few would argue is a good one. The danger is to blame it all on one devil, instead of addressing the dissolving of our social structure as a whole. Porn ain't great, but it's also been around forever (really, ever since pictures could be taken, there's been porn), and will never completely go away. The solution has to lie elsewhere.

** morality as prejudice

Let's look for healthy antidotes for the commonplace society-is-going-to-Hell-via-porn thesis. How limited in time and space this discussion is.

Erotic imagery? Altered erotic relationships? We must get outside the moralized world view common to the big-3 monotheisms.

Confining ourselves to the west -- we need to go back to a time period roughly from 600 BCE to 200 CE in Greece and Rome.

We only need to turn to classical studies and non-anglophone philosophy:

Garrison. Sexual culture in ancient Greece. 2000.

Johns. Sex or symbol? Erotic images of Greece and Rome. 1982

Onfray. Théorie du corps amoureux. 2000.
In Italian: Teoria del corpo amoroso. 2006.

The de-deification of western culture (including all the sciences) is our task for the next 200 years.

anti-supernaturalist

The popularization of depressive behavior is something the ethical and emotionally sound, must continually fight off. Sincerely,David

This is not a new concept. As far as I can tell, "porn creep", a term describing how porn's event horizon distorts and invades popular culture was coined years ago by people making the same observations.

It's self-evident to anyone willing to confess the truth that porn shapes everyone's lives. Porn is massive, super-massive, and like a black hole or singularity its effects on society will linger in terms of marketing, fashion, and our future generations' sensibilities.

I'd echo the earlier commenter's point about the hugely popular amateur porn sites. This genre (if you will) defies most of your list, in that the people are relating to each other (most of the time), are generally in a relationship, are not being directed according to anyone's script, are not surrounded by cameramen and guys holding lights and microphones, etc. It's a very counter-intuitive way for porn to have gone, in some ways, and may be an expression of something more positive about human nature and the possibilities of the modern world (or not).

Speaking totally selfishly here...porn has reduced the quality of my life. From the first time I bought a Playboy at age 14 to my current life at 38, married with kids.

Whatever fun and titillation it ignited has always been short lived, ephemeral, expensive, racist, and hollow only minutes later. Fake tans. Fake boobs. Fake hair. Fake subservience to men's lust.

I have passed up or abused good relationships (that would have provided me with plenty of sex mind you!) because of my attitudes shaped by porn. Shallow relationships. Unrealistic expectations. Broken hearts. Women who don't really exist.

I'm cruder because of porn. Diminished intellectually. More cynical.
I'm pissed off with porn. I was sold a bill of goods.

It is a Pavlovian disease. It is induced. It is hard-wired into my brain, and I have only in recent years begun to ask, "Who controls who? Doesn't the porn really control me?" I used to think it was victimless, but I suspect that many of the women in porn were abused.

Only in recent months have I become sickened by my own vice, like the character in A Clockwork Orange.

I had no idea there were amateur sites but what some of you say about them is interesting. They do sound a lot less blunted and formulaic. Real emotion, passion, etc.

Do you know why blondes always watch any porn movie to the end?
They want to see if the main characters get married.

Jeez. Where to begin here.

The first thing that strikes me is that you say you don't watch pornography. Which is interesting considering you seek to make a point about it. Does it not follow that your conclusion may be unsound, since your research is basically non-existent?

But I didn't read your whole article, so I wouldn't know.
Give me five minutes to read it...hold-up.

Ok. The moralizing is probably the greatest problem here. There really is an interesting connection between ideological structure of the society a person lives in and their choice of sexual fantasy. Not enough people explore that idea, imo.

But that's it though, pornography is more of a positive feedback mechanism than a force in itself. Its one of the purest forms of market exchange, in that if a particular pornographic work is not arousing to someone it simply will not succeed, cause the consumer is absolutely focused on their own gratification at the point of consumption.

Pornography is incredibly responsive to the needs of its consumers, especially in the age of the internet. So the point is well made that pornography will always reflect the underlying psychological desires of its greatest consumers, who we know to be men.

Like any market, there is plenty of room for diversity. This reflects the largely suppressed spectrum of human but more specifically male sexuality.

Pornography is one way in which culture addresses the problem of male sexuality. Now to be fair, there are many women who enjoy porn. But to be realistic, there are many many many more men who not only enjoy porn, they feel they NEED porn. Or more specifically, they feel they need the release of sexual tension that pornography facilitates.

Why is this so?

When people object to the psychological factors that make pornography appealing to the consumer, they are really objecting to the existence of those psychological constructs in the mind of a real human being, with unmet needs.

For instance, the themes of degradation and subservience which are so prevalent in pornography. The consumer demands that they be present in order to achieve sexual gratification. These ideas are a part of the psycho sexual makeup of the average man, and this is why we encounter them in works of pornography. This makes it difficult to ascertain where the root of the problem really lies, and whether or not this is a problem at all.

Now, many of us can agree that committed truly loving intimate relationships are both psychologically and morally superior to the shallower, more grossly physical relationships depicted in pornographic works. But can we realistically expect others to feel the same way?

It's also true however that when pornography becomes the primary source of sexual release, that it inevitably leads to psychological distress. This is because the desire for human connection simply cannot be fulfilled by fantasy.

When an individual cannot find a way to satisfy his/her psychological needs, one way to cope is to retreat into fantasy. Pornography provides an anchor point for these fantasies. Now, since the drive seeking to be fulfilled is the sexual drive, and sexuality is one of the basic components of individual identity, failures to satisfy the sexual drive may manifest as negative emotional states. This may be one of the reasons that much of the pornography available on the internet carries themes of subjugation, humiliation, and "objectification", which I put in little quote marks because I'm honestly not sure what this means. It seems to me the idea refers to some form of idealization.

Further, since the experience of deriving sexual pleasure from pornography is in its essential form...self centered, that is..affection during this experience can only be directed at ourselves or an idealization of some "other", which is in itself a psychological projection of our own needs...its not surprising that this type of behavior necessarily results in a sort of impotent sexuality where-in the porn devotee has difficulty becoming aroused unless he fixates on the particular sexual fantasy that he has conditioned himself to respond to. So the point about pornography being Pavlovian is well made.