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Comment by -__---____-ZXyw | Hacker News Reader

I think "society shapes porn" was totally true up until the point where it no longer was.

Porn shapes society the exact moment when the majority of young people get the majority of their beliefs and views on sexuality, romance, relationships, gender roles, sensuality, etc, from porn. This isn't true of all groups of humans everywhere, but it's definitely true of many societies right now already, and I would say obviously so.

None of this is meant as a "moral panic" type point. I'm just saying, there's no point hiding from the reality that young people get their views on sex from online porn, and that has major effects on them and the whole of society.

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There is so much porn that people watch what they want to watch rather than what they are fed, whatever you want to find you can find. So the only way it shapes society is that now people are aware of everything you can do in sex and what their preferences are, it doesn't create those preferences it just makes them known.

Just like they listen to the music they want, watch the movies they want, buy the products they want, and go to the websites they want..?

I don't think it's true for porn or for any of the above things that people "do what they want" in any serious sense of the term.

It might be true in some sort of world without advertising, where media is presented neutrally, and barriers to creating and sharing (porn, music, plays, books, etc) are low, and we all explore and pick what we liked from these media sources in a deliberate, thoughtful way.

But that is so very, very far from the world we're in, surely?

Or a different way to make the point, just compare a pre-internet and post-internet kid. What did pre-internet kids know of sex when they were 14 or 15? And post-internet? This is a quick and easy example, but surely it's a major shift?

> Just like they listen to the music they want, watch the movies they want, buy the products they want, and go to the websites they want..?

Yes, people listen to a wider range of music and watch a wider range of videos than ever before today, because there is a wider range available.

Most people are drawn to the same kind of content though so many people consume very similar things.

> the majority of young people get the majority of their beliefs and views on sexuality, romance, relationships, gender roles, sensuality, etc, from porn

You state this casually, but it is one hell of a thing to claim.

In my experience this is not true at all. Porn shaped my opinion on sexuality and relationships like GTA informed my social norms and my stance on the use of violence. Sometimes things just are .. relief and don’t mean anything. It’s an escape not an education.

Ironically it is the organized religions that are by and large the most dominant factor in all types of dysfunction surrounding relationships and female rights. Porn is 1,5% of the problem compared to what those guys are doing.

Your 125 IQ mother being a stay at home mom while your deadbeat barely literate dad gets to work and rule “the household”. Now that’s a potent toxin to mess up youth. Funny how those guys tend to focus on porn, but now I’m just ranting. Excuse me.

I appreciate the sincere engagement.

I wasn't saying that statement you quote is true for all groups everywhere, I was explicit about that, if you reread. I was saying that if that threshold is met in a specific society at a given time, maybe then at that stage we could say that porn was "shaping society" there more than society was shaping porn. As in, it could be a threshold we could look at.

While I agree that it's a large claim by itself, and that it's going to be hard (or impossible) to measure, I think having an idea of a threshold like that can be useful for thinking about where we are. And I do think that "where we are" with porn and its influence is a lot more serious than people are comfortable admitting.

So yes, while I very much agree that religion is maybe the single other huge thing, the effect porn is likely having on human sexuality is something I think we vastly underestimate.

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