Note: I apologize if this post is more of a rant than anything else. Sometimes I just have to share my frustrations and the things I’m struggling with.
Porn is everywhere. It invades everything. Before the invention of the movie camera there were romance novels, pamphlets, comics, and magazines. Every new medium that arises is soon flooded by porn and inappropriate content. It’s a natural progression that reflects the depravity of humankind: give us a shiny new platform, and we’ll try to sexualize it as soon as we can.
Porn is like the trendiest celebrity in the world; she’s available anywhere you want to find her. She’s on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Reddit, SnapChat and Tumblr. She’s on DeviantArt and Pinterest. She’s on YouTube and Twitch, and all the major streaming providers. She adapts to her environment and, surprisingly, never gets old. People of all ages find her entertaining and desirable.
Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Hulu are filled with soft-core porn flicks, or at least, the next thing to them. Maybe these movies don’t show much of the lower male or female anatomy in the frame, but they have the same effect. You hear the panting, see the grinding, and you’re just as easily turned on as when you’re looking at hardcore pornography. It’s really deceptive, because our culture often praises some of the smuttiest films ever made as being “high art” or “groundbreaking” pieces. Actors who “bear it all” are often lauded as being brave or self confident.
Let’s take a look at my favorite platform, YouTube. I’ve gained a wealth of knowledge from watching YouTube videos. It’s a resource like no other! If you need to know how to fix something, build something, cook something, learn a new skill, or just waste a few minutes (or hours), YouTube has everything you need. Unfortunately, it’s also filled with just as much garbage as every other platform, if that’s what you’re looking for. You don’t have to search very far at all to find something that gets your sexual engine running.
Now, I know you might be thinking “Dude, you are way too uptight. You need to stop labeling everything as ‘porn’. Your definition of porn is overly broad.” Ok, let’s exclude the Bible or anything religious from the equation. Let’s just go to the good old dictionary:
Porn: Sometimes por·no [pawr-noh]. pornography; sexually explicit videos, photographs, writings, or the like, produced to elicit sexual arousal…
Obviously, you can find content “produced to elicit sexual arousal” pretty much anywhere, even if it’s not visually explicit. The troubling part of this is how inescapable it is these days. Don’t misunderstand; as I mentioned at the outset, there has always been access to porn. From ancient paintings and sculptures that were publicly displayed, to dads leaving magazines around the house, to kids sharing pictures at school, to college roommates hearing the sounds of sex in the next room. When I was growing up in small town America, porn was found on specific premium cable channels, at the local strip club, and in a back room of the local gas station. Aside from sex scenes in movies, that was really the extent of my access to porn. I longingly think back to those simpler times.
In the 2020s, technology has allowed sex to permeate absolutely everything. “Triggering” content can be found everywhere. Literally.
As a Christian, I’m extremely frustrated right now. I’ve always been the creative type. I like to build things, produce videos, make music, share artwork and be funny. I also like to create tutorials and teach others. For these reasons, having multiple social media accounts is a great idea. You can share your work with the world, but also be inspired by the content that others produce. For example, I can point to numerous creators on Instagram whose work has inspired me to be a better graphic designer, a more skilled woodworker, or just to get in better shape. The unfortunate thing is, after knowing myself for 34 years, I cannot trust myself to even have Instagram constantly installed on my phone.
A few weeks ago, I tried out TikTok — for entirely wholesome reasons — or at least that’s what I told myself. This may have been a mistake, as it is definitely dangerous territory, but I can see why it appeals to kids and teems. I have to admit that it’s a really creative platform based on some of the content I found. Yes, there are a lot of pointless dance videos, but there is a lot of humor, creativity, and inspiration on the platform as well. I even found churches and pastors sharing wonderful content, targeted at the younger demographic and brilliantly executed. I found apologists and defenders of the faith. One of the most amazing people I stumbled onto was a young transgender individual who came to Christ and was utterly transformed. People like this are reaching a generation that may never attend a church, and I was greatly encouraged.
But amid all of this positivity, after swiping through posts for a few days I rapidly found a stream of sexually-charged videos, without even looking for them. I soon realized what was happening. It became clear that, in addition to the “influencers” who just want to promote themselves and sell products, I also found adult sex workers whose clear intention was to share just enough of themselves on the platform to lure people over to their websites or streaming platforms. They can’t show nudity without getting banned, but as I’ve mentioned, getting a guy turned on doesn’t require nudity. So in the end, even though I thought the platform had great value, I thought it was best to delete the app.
This leads me to the really dangerous aspect of these platforms that I haven’t mentioned yet:
The algorithm.
Stay tuned. I’ll be talking about this in the next post.