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Martin Grady's avatar

There's an aspect to this that I think is so significant and strangely never mentioned: the hyper-proliferation of incest-themed pornography, starting about seven years ago.

If you go to any of these free porn sites, the front page is dominated by porn that plays out sex between step-siblings, or step-children and step-parents, and the titles and excerpts seem carefully worded sometimes to imply blood relatives having sex, with maybe one reference to 'step-' something thrown in.

Incest is illegal in all 50 states, and I'm guessing an explicit depiction claiming to be such an act creates legal problems for these porn sites, hence the careful language. A lot of these videos seem to be completely generic sex videos with 'stepmother' added to the description for no apparent reason.

I can't find it now, but one of these Mindgeek executives did an AMA on Reddit years back and one of the questions was from a student and MIT, who said he figured out that the algorithm was pushing these themes on people despite lack of interest—in other words, the (step-)incest content wasn't becoming popular based on consumer demand but were being artificially promoted. The guy at Mindgeek just accused the student of antisemitism and didn't answer the question. If I can find the thread I'll post it.

I try not to look at these sites ever, and this might not be a meaningful observation, but it did seem to me that as soon as Trump took office in 2017 there was a hyper-proliferation of incest porn on the internet—that and porn featuring women with prolapsed rectums. The promotion of the latter seems to have subsided, and I'm guessing this backfired and the content was so repulsive that it made people stop visiting the sites, and so they removed it. I'm guessing a lot of people still watch the former because they know it's play acting, but you have to wonder how many adolescents see this stuff as their first pornographic content and how that imprints on them.

A lot of kids grow up in homes with remarried parents, and for all I know these step-relatives already wreak havoc on their hormones and impulses. I don't know, but the step-relative content is the most obvious example of porn as a weapon to inflict on society.

Note also that these sites can absolutely sequester content if they want to. I'm a middle-aged man, and I've seen plenty of porn in my life. I've accidentally seen man-on-man gay porn probably less than five times in my entire life. This tells me that these porn sites know straight men never want to see gay porn and know how to hide it—which means they could hide all the other repulsive content on these sites and they don't. Quite the contrary.

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Connecting The Dots's avatar

Very good post and thanks for the mention.

I have no doubt that porn in general, but then it's inevitable move online, was and is the legacy of MK Ultra.

Stepping back, as you have, you can see that it is a refined version of the chemical control models (recreational/illicit drugs). It initially carries none of the stigma of the drug culture - the porn product has been glamourized for decades in print form and many a popular actress has graced the pages and centerfolds of magazines in the past. It was the longed for evolution of the suggestive necklines or short skirts of the hollywood bombshells. It also was not debilitating in it's early years. Men would probably spend 20 extra minutes in the bathroom fingering pages and stroking one out or go to the garage to tinker with something, but on the whole they still had no problem functioning at their jobs and being productive - where as a drug addict, while controllable, was not useful. And as you pointed out, it is free, so the addict isn't going into financial ruin to feed his habit - that is a game changer.

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