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Sex censorship killed the internet we love

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Re: Sex censorship killed the internet we love

#181

Post by thaumasiotes »

lou1306 wrote: post #153
marcus_holmes wrote: post #127

I find the US prudishness thing so fascinating. I'm travelling at the moment, and meeting lots of Americans (and Europeans for contrast). There's definitely a huge difference in tolerance for swearing and blasphemy. Also several well-educated and seemingly intelligent Americans who hold strong racist opinions. But that's another subject. I guess it all comes down to the religion. Americans do seem to be more religiou…

Italy is (was?) quite religious too, what with Vatican City and a very long Christian-Democratic dominance in national politics, but it is also the birthplace of commedia sexy [1], and erotic comics artists such as Milo Manara and Guido Crepax were quite famous back in their day (they still are). The US seem especially prudish when it comes the depiction of sex in arts and entertainment. [1]: https://it.wikipedia.org…

> it is also the birthplace of commedia sexy [1]

> [1]: https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commedia_sexy_all%27italiana

Sure enough, the Italian genre name is commedia sexy. I'm always interested in phrases like this -- sexy is obviously an English word. It's very common for foreign words to be borrowed when the speaker feels that the concept they express doesn't have a good match in his own language. I'm pretty confident that everything I understand by the word "sexy" can be idiomatically expressed in Italian that is not obviously foreign. Do you happen to know what the Italians mean by using "sexy" as opposed to a more natural-looking word?

Re: Sex censorship killed the internet we love

#182

Post by thaumasiotes »

tnolet wrote: post #144
ben_w wrote: post #78

The sex-bad-violence-good meme confused me at least since I became aware of its existence aged about 14. I was 16 when I got a letter published in a UK national newspaper on this topic, pointing out the absurdity that deliberate murder could be shown in a cartoon aimed specifically at young kids (i.e. BBFC rating Uc), but people “my own age”[1] couldn’t see pictures of uncensored sex even though we could legally[1] p…

Ah yes, the good old “Dildo King” ads always put a smile on my face and remind me that Germans (and Berliners even more) are not yet 100% sucked up into the US / SV stance on morality and censorship. I noticed in Berlin startups that this is sorta changing. Seems the exported “culture of being offended” is slowly taking hold of, surprisingly, mostly younger people.

Surprisingly? I'd expect any cultural shift to take place among young people. Older people already have their culture.

Re: Sex censorship killed the internet we love

#183

Post by belorn »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #127

I find the US prudishness thing so fascinating. I'm travelling at the moment, and meeting lots of Americans (and Europeans for contrast). There's definitely a huge difference in tolerance for swearing and blasphemy. Also several well-educated and seemingly intelligent Americans who hold strong racist opinions. But that's another subject. I guess it all comes down to the religion. Americans do seem to be more religiou…

I would also blame religion if not that here in Sweden we went from accepting sex and censoring violence to accepting violence and censoring sex, within about the span of almost just 10-20 years. The norm just changed and its very noticeable in movies if one compared those made before 1990 and those made after 2000.

There is no corresponding change in the religious demographic. If anything that demographic went down until 2015, where for other reasons it started to go up.

Re: Sex censorship killed the internet we love

#184

Post by avian »

bambax wrote: post #172

In general, superstitious behavior tends to win over non-superstitious behavior, even if it is a small minority . For example, say there are two communities in a given town; one of the community has decided that black doors were evil, and won't go through them. The other community doesn't care. Shops that have black doors lose the business of the superstitious community; even if that community is small, it simply mak…

I don't buy this argument. It works for things like "unlucky" numbers others mention, where there is basically no economic side effect (outside superstitious group no one cares about their seat number)

Shops that didn't sell black doors would be losing business from non-superstitious people looking to buy black doors, which might be a bigger factor if superstitious group is relatively small.

I think adult content is more similar to black doors than seat numbers.

Re: Sex censorship killed the internet we love

#185

Post by NeedMoreTea »

tnolet wrote: post #144
ben_w wrote: post #78

The sex-bad-violence-good meme confused me at least since I became aware of its existence aged about 14. I was 16 when I got a letter published in a UK national newspaper on this topic, pointing out the absurdity that deliberate murder could be shown in a cartoon aimed specifically at young kids (i.e. BBFC rating Uc), but people “my own age”[1] couldn’t see pictures of uncensored sex even though we could legally[1] p…

Ah yes, the good old “Dildo King” ads always put a smile on my face and remind me that Germans (and Berliners even more) are not yet 100% sucked up into the US / SV stance on morality and censorship. I noticed in Berlin startups that this is sorta changing. Seems the exported “culture of being offended” is slowly taking hold of, surprisingly, mostly younger people.

I think American attitudes are prevailing in a lot of things, hence comments about cultural imperialism. Not surprising really, nor Americans not really noticing it - it's hard to notice the idiosyncrasies of the place that inculcated you. It takes an American or other outsider to notice the strange habits or ideas that shaped me in Britain, and vice versa.

Just by seeing those mostly US views everywhere online my kids and their friends have a more American view, whether that's in social mores or simply not being aware that EU or UK have better consumer protections or other differences. It's rather sad to see everywhere slowly homogenising.

Re: Sex censorship killed the internet we love

#186

Post by ChrisSD »

belorn wrote: post #183
marcus_holmes wrote: post #127

I find the US prudishness thing so fascinating. I'm travelling at the moment, and meeting lots of Americans (and Europeans for contrast). There's definitely a huge difference in tolerance for swearing and blasphemy. Also several well-educated and seemingly intelligent Americans who hold strong racist opinions. But that's another subject. I guess it all comes down to the religion. Americans do seem to be more religiou…

I would also blame religion if not that here in Sweden we went from accepting sex and censoring violence to accepting violence and censoring sex, within about the span of almost just 10-20 years. The norm just changed and its very noticeable in movies if one compared those made before 1990 and those made after 2000. There is no corresponding change in the religious demographic. If anything that demographic went down…

Others in this thread think that's the influence the USA has had via their multinational tech companies.

Re: Sex censorship killed the internet we love

#187

Post by thaumasiotes »

dathinab wrote: post #165

Sometimes I wonder how (un-)realistic it is to fill a complain with the EU of google misusing it's quasi monopoly on search to actively discriminate against: - People with open opinions about sex (e.g. down ranking there blog posts etc.). - People which had been victims of sexual violence (and similar) by making it harder for them to inform them self/get help. - Sex workers. - etc. (note that this is a unordered list…

> if they operate in the EU then they will have to follow EU law and discrimination against people for _any_ reason is illegal

This is totally incoherent. Lack of discrimination is the problem that Google solves. Search results can't all be first; that would be the same thing as not having a search engine at all.

Re: Sex censorship killed the internet we love

#188

Post by jonnycomputer »

avian wrote: post #184
bambax wrote: post #172

In general, superstitious behavior tends to win over non-superstitious behavior, even if it is a small minority . For example, say there are two communities in a given town; one of the community has decided that black doors were evil, and won't go through them. The other community doesn't care. Shops that have black doors lose the business of the superstitious community; even if that community is small, it simply mak…

I don't buy this argument. It works for things like "unlucky" numbers others mention, where there is basically no economic side effect (outside superstitious group no one cares about their seat number) Shops that didn't sell black doors would be losing business from non-superstitious people looking to buy black doors, which might be a bigger factor if superstitious group is relatively small. I think adult content is…

I think the OP was not speaking about selling black doors, but having black doors in their shop, e.g. the entrance.

Re: Sex censorship killed the internet we love

#189

Post by scarejunba »

faissaloo wrote: post #150
taurath wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a religion thing primarily.

People use this explanation as a copout, have you considered why a religion would have such an attitude?

It's superstitious nonsense. Presumably it's historical and a means to control people.

Re: Sex censorship killed the internet we love

#190

Post by blablabla123 »

foolfoolz wrote: post #7

This doesnt make sense to me. Core internet community experiences to me have always been about smaller sites, message boards, mailing lists, chatrooms, voice chat groups, etc. Seeing large corporation websites like tumblr, reddit, facebook crack down on content doesn't stop any of that. it just means you need to get out of your internet bubble.

Yeah but many of the small communities get smaller and smaller until they die away.

For example in the pre-Facebook time there used to be a great amount of online chats to get to know people or just for chit-chatting. Then Facebook came, of course everybody was excited and many of the small websites closed down. Those that are left are usually packed with weirdos and fakes, it's a real pity. Although it was all pseudonymous I think back in the days there were less fakes than on Facebook. Not to talk about IRC or Newsgroups, which have become more niche then ever.

Well or HN... There used to be high quality content elsewhere, for instance Dr Dobbs was really nice. Now all that stuff is extremely centralized.

I don't really see this trend reversing at the moment. Despite people talking about decentralization since 3 years or so.

Probably it's Google's fault ;)

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