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The Internet Is for Porn

themargins.substack.com

201–210 of 460 posts

Re: The Internet Is for Porn

#201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is now disputed. It’s likely it was a self-portrait, it matches the posture of a woman looking down at her own reflection.

Can you please provide a reputable source?

They may be confusing it with other Venuses like the Venus of Willendorf - there has been some discussion around the possibility https://www.jstor.org/stable/2744349 - but the Venus of Hohle Fels has no head so the argument is more difficult to make for it.

I also think being a self-portrait doesn't preclude the possibility it was pornographic or the more conventional (but imo also nearly equivalent) interpretation of them as fertility fetishes, as the original reply implied.

Re: The Internet Is for Porn

#202
post #198
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As an asexual person, I wish this wasn’t the case, and I find it extremely triggering how hard it is to completely avoid adult content online. By "extremely triggering", I assume you mean "somewhat annoying"? Why does it annoy you that "adult content" is difficult to avoid completely? Should a homosexual person be annoyed (or "triggered") that depictions of heterosexual behavior can't be avoided completely? Or vice…

" Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith. " " Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive. " https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."

I'm sorry if I violated the site rules, but I don't see how? At the time of my post, there was no hint or indication of lostgame being a victim of sexual assault [1].

I'm familiar with the concept of "steelmanning" an argument, but I don't think we should be expected to treat an argument as stronger than a reasonable interpretation warrants, given the information available at the time (sometimes called "supermanning").

[1] And I'm truly sorry for being insensitive, albeit unknowingly and unintentionally so.

Re: The Internet Is for Porn

#204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As an asexual person, (...) I find it extremely triggering how hard it is to completely avoid adult content online. I would have guessed that if I were asexual, then adult content would leave me completely indifferent, wouldn't it? If I am annoyed by adult content it's precisely because it's extremely distracting; sometimes, when I have work to do, I would prefer to be asexual (at least for a few hours).

I am asexual by choice due to several instances of violent sexual assault.

> I am asexual by choice due to several instances of violent sexual assault.

I am sorry for what you had to endure. However, I think you're using the term "asexual" in a non-standard way, and I believe that has led me and others to misinterpret your original post. One cannot "choose" to be asexual, the same way as one cannot choose to be homosexual or heterosexual. One can, however, choose to be sexually abstinent or inactive. Would you agree that this is a better description of your lifestyle?

Re: The Internet Is for Porn

#205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose that's technically true, but in the same sense you could say that YouTube pimps its content creators, Hollywood pimps its actors, record labels pimp their artists, etc. Do you honestly think every entertainer and content creator should build and run their own company? Most people don't have the skills and ambition to be entrepeneurs, and content creators need to spend their time focussing on, you know, crea…

Personally, I would love this conversation to move more toward an issue with capitalism in and of itself, which is a much more worthy debate than talking about if the facilitation of sex work is morally justifiable. If anyone actually has problems with "People exploiting their bodies to functionally exist in society", then please, let me introduce you to this guy called Karl Marx.

> let me introduce you to this guy called Karl Marx.

Despite his feminist leanings Marx himself had a terrible attitude towards sex work and seemed completely incapable of applying his own theories to it.

I would usually direct people towards Silvia Federici's work with some introduction, but I don't believe most people in this thread are engaging in good faith and worth the time.

Re: The Internet Is for Porn

#206
post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are literal pimps doing literal pimp work: recruiting young girls, connecting them with clients, and taking a cut of the profit, while keeping control of the whole business. It is not my fault you are offended. I would have no problem if these sex workers setup their own site and did their own business directly with their clients. No pimp would be involved then. There would be no recruiting, which is also where…

You seem to have missed a staggeringly huge piece of the picture here: Clients aren't paying to actually have sex with OF creators!! I say seem to because I think you're arguing in bad faith. You've already made up your mind and continue to press on hoping you can say "pimp" enough times to draw attention away from the absence of actual prostitution.

This is a bad argument because it tries to divide sex work into "not really sex work" and "really sex work" and then move all moral objection the latter case. Sex work is work and deserves a safe environment and fair compensation whether or not it involves intercourse with clients.

Re: The Internet Is for Porn

#207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Without context The song from the musical is embedded as a video in the article.

I was using Firefox's reader view

Perhaps not a great idea to complain about missing context when using software specifically designed to decontextualize something.

Re: The Internet Is for Porn

#208
post #29

Porn always reminds me of other classical debates that have no end like guns and abortion. The camps of folks in the middle who are cognitively capable of making a difference can't because the outsized voices on either side of them are screaming for either total freedom or total shutdown. They actively fear monger people out of action so no real progress is made. It prevents the best coders and business people from w…

> Porn always reminds me of other classical debates that have no end like guns and abortion. The camps of folks in the middle who are cognitively capable of making a difference can't because the outsized voices on either side of them are screaming for either total freedom or total shutdown. Conservatives and progressives/liberals have completely different world views: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_Politics_(b…

> Especially in the US, where it seems the Right has moved further over than the Left:

As of 2014, when that Atlantic piece was written, that may have been true. As of 2020, the left has also radicalized itself:

* https://twitter.com/Noahpinion/status/1339984166935359488?s=...

* https://www.thenation.com/article/society/black-votes-repara...

* https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2020/08/27/906642178...

Re: The Internet Is for Porn

#209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Men are expected to sell their bodies in manual labor. Women are not. Seems a double standard.

One type of work is called "the oldest profession". Not sure how that is consolidated with a double standard view.

Also, this isn't historically true; women were and are a historically significant part of the industrial labor force, and before that did a good share of agricultural work as well. Certainly industrial labor had gender divides, but it's not a strange fluke that, say, most of the people who died in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire were women.

Re: The Internet Is for Porn

#210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SV is not going to disrupt the sex industry because the part that needs disrupting is the unethical nature of it. Profit is not optimised to do that.

OnlyFans seems to have disrupted the porn industry in an ethical way I think. Profit obviously isn't always closely aligned with ethics, but being ethical is usually a good idea all other things being equal. People are more likely to support your company if they think you behave ethically (it helps if they believe in your mission), and if you have a history of acting honestly you can maybe derive gains from the fact…

Has it? It seems to me that OnlyFans is going to quickly create a winner-takes-most environment, where much like in music most people put in a lot of work for not a lot of pay. Atop that, there's a toxic parasocial aspect to it where consumers pay for semblance of an emotional connection.

I don't know if an system that's so exploitative by design can really be called ethical. Or if a company that does it can be called so. You can claim it increases the agency of producers and that's true as far as it goes, but you have to ignore that the music industry also gives a lot of agency to broke wannabes in garage bands.

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