The internet is a pretty big place, and its dynamic nature means it is getting bigger all the time. In 2012 alone there were 51,000,000 new websites added. The burning question is, how much of this wonderful, globe-spanning phenomenon of information exchange is used to look at pictures and videos of people having sex?
After searching around (read: the first page of Google results for ‘How much of the internet is porn’) I learned that there are no solid numbers/data from the porn side of the web. This BuzzFeed article leans in the direction of business and competitiveness to explain this lack of info, porn advertisers and entrepreneurs unwilling to share data that might affect their income and growth as a company.
In addition, major online analytics providers like comScore and Akamai told BuzzFeed they do not track or make public any information with regard to adult sites
The article makes a few calculations from the estimates that the author was able to get and comes up with the figure of 220,000,000 or so unique visitors per day for major video/tube sites alone. This is compared to Facebook at around 600-700,000,000 per day.
What it comes down to, though, is the fact that there is no consensus on how much of the internet is porn. To understand that, we have to look at porn.
As a concept, I mean.
The Sex Talk
How it’s done right – awesomesuperpowers.com
In the West – whatever the fuck that means these days, good job on keeping up with the times and maps there, World – we pat ourselves on the back for a lot of things. Being modern in our attitude towards people of different ethnicity, gender and physical ability. Our charitable nature and position to give and give back to the less fortunate. The way we tangle ourselves up over the ethical dilemma of the environmental problems we face as a price for our development. And sex. Oh how far we’ve come.
Back in the black and white TV days, Oliver J. Flanagan famously claimed that ‘there was no sex in Ireland before television’. Obviously this is a stretch of the truth – Irish people were dropped off by aliens back at the end of the last ice age without the need for sex as procreation, preferring instead to engage in coitus as a way to keep our minds off the fact that the pub was yet to be invented and then kept doing it – but it displays an attitude that was pretty prevalent at the time around the ‘civilised’ world. Sex was something to be done behind closed doors, with the lights off, and only to swell the ranks of your personal army family. It was between a man and his wife, no exceptions. Puritanism and shame were the key ideas of the time, backed by a highly restrictive and dogmatic church, especially in Ireland.
Thankfully, this has been broken down and pushed out of the national psyche, as well as a lot of other countries (some of those were quicker to do it though) and even though there are major hurdles to overcome regarding same-sex coupling and gender inequalities, we have pulled out of the musty dark ages and thrust ourselves to the hilt into 21st century ways of thinking about sex. Most of us, anyway. A cursory trip around the stations of the cross in your local church will maybe bring you into contact with people who might not be of the same mindset, especially older generations.
Does anyone want a bit more Irish in them? – Phil Lynott
However, as modern and open-minded we like to think we are, there is still an aversion to speaking about sex among a lot of people, apart from the jokes and crass observations we like to make between friends. I guess it’s a kind of defense mechanism, using humour to avoid feeling uncomfortable about a subject, something that comedians understand very well. Real conversation is to be evaded at all costs (except maybe with your partner, or partners), claiming an invasion of privacy or a perverse fascination with something that, in reality, we all either do or want to do. Just ask any teenager, and watch for the inner conflict of fantasy and fear. Why do they feel this way about something that is, by definition, natural?
Pornography, motherfucker, do you speak it?
pornography pɔːˈnɒɡrəfi/ noun: pornography printed or visual material containing the explicit description or display of sexual organs or activity, intended to stimulate sexual excitement. synonyms: erotica, pornographic material, pornographic literature/films/videos, hard-core pornography, soft-core pornography, dirty books Origin mid 19th century: from Greek pornographos ‘writing about prostitutes’, from pornē‘prostitute’ + graphein ‘write’.
Have a look at the definitions above that I swiped from the Google machine, and pay attention to the highlighted phrases. Immediately you can see that something is untoward about porn, with its associations of dirt and criminal activity (check out this article from Slate on the separate yet linked question of the illegality of prostitution).
Sex workers refusing to work in protest
Yet from the numbers at the head of this article, and the search history of the computer or tablet you’re using to read this, it’s a popular pastime, not only for the consumers, but also for the people taking part. The following is a quote from a limited study in the USA that was reported in the International Journal of Sexual Health in 2012:
Sixty-nine percent of porn actresses ranked their enjoyment of sex as 10 out of 10, a rating given by only 32.8 percent of non-performers – James Griffith, a psychologist at Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania
I watch porn, you watch porn, a lot of other people watch it, and a lot of people make it. So what is the craic here? Why isn’t there more available info about this massively popular pastime? Why is it so vilified and derided when it depicts (mostly) people engaging in (mostly) natural acts?
Things that didn’t make the final draft:
Who said porn couldn’t be fun?
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