Micro-targeted digital porn is changing human sexuality
aeon.co
aeon.co
>The pursuit of the most rabidly loyal audience has already driven political websites and talk radio to polarising extremes, with vast societal implications. Fearing similar outcomes in the world of pornography and sexuality is not entirely outlandish.
Is it people which were without the Internet unable to develop their character fully, or is it the Internet that changes the people?
Were Otherkin a normal phenomenon, or is it something that exposure to the Internet does to some people? Same with all kinds of fetishes, especially Haskell.
All these things are old.
Those people would just become shamans or go into religion and that would manifest itself in a different context.
Very few things about human nature or condition are actually new.
If that's how you define otherkin then it's pretty obvious it's been around forever, but "otherkin" also refers to the tribe that has formed around that idea online. It refers to the interpretation of what that animal connection means, and to the dogma around it. Otherkin frame their condition in much the same way as transgender people do, and that's a very contemporary way of understanding psychology, and also a way that many people a disturbed by. The question is: would otherkin have arrived at that same interpretation, and the same dogma, without the interent. I think probably not, because it would take so long for those ideas to spread that they would be outdated long before they achieved universality.
So, was transgenderkin a thing 50 years ago? I guess, but at least they knew it was a joke, most of the time, when they weren't send to therapy.
> The question is: would otherkin have arrived at that same interpretation, and the same dogma, without the interent
That's like asking if multiplayer games would have arrived at the same popularity without the internet
More plausible situation: people who were kinky-but-didn't-know-it or kinky-but-too-ashamed-to-tell-anyone are becoming plain kinky thanks to exposure to their kinks on the internet.
> Meanwhile, behavioural experts vocally doubt whether targeted pornography will really affect us, given how rarely people change their established preferences, to which they flock regardless of what’s being flung at them. The rise of porn data, some of them argue, just makes it easier for people to locate and talk about their sexual happy places.
I don't think this is a problem exactly, and I'd guess it's a small effect, but I think there certainly is _some_ effect.
Instead we're seeing this fetish obsession, which fills tops with videos which cater only to a subset and are still boring.
What most videos lack is passion and talent. Fetishes are an attempt to substitute passion and talent.
> No adult online content provider is going to go belly-up showing young women having sex
Actually, no. This stuff never gets old if done right. Anything else does.