“If something is free, you’re the product.” - Richard Serra, 1973
Every now and then, although less often these days, I’ll see a right-wing blog post or article about the wonders of “nofap” - i.e., abstaining from masturbation and online pornography in the hope of self-improvement so that one can land a high-value mate. The argument is that nofap greatly increases one’s energy and mental clarity, as well as it’s the religiously correct thing to do, and these articles offer advice on how you can improve your life in a similar way. There are websites and communities for “nofappers” and which has a negatively-biased Wiki entry here. The nofap advice articles are similar to diet and exercise advice from the right, of which I bandwagoned a post about (and blamed vegetable oils and the end of mass smoking for spiking obesity rates;
also touts some of the benefits of nicotine use here).I’m not really interested in debating the merits of fap or nofap; pornography has been around for thousands of years (see the graffiti at Pompeii, which included some funny messages), although nothing like how intense and graphic it is in it’s current form. Mainstream pornography began with Playboy in 1953 and then evolved into the more explicit Hustler in 1974, but these were pay-magazines that made money from subscriptions and advertising. I attribute their success in a still-religious society to ever-increasing decadence resulting from unprecedented material prosperity.
The difference between porn magazines versus what we have today is that online pornography is video based, search-enabled and addicting, triggering the same dopamine hits that social media triggers, as
points out:It is a…easily distributed drug - read addiction. The reason porn addiction is harder to kick than heroin, is because you carry the two necessary items with you at all times. Your phone (the dealer) and your brain (the onboard 24/7 lab producing the dopamine hits).
The demoralization and addiction effectively sidelines and controls large swaths of the population and then [negative societal effects] naturally flow from that top tier capture.
There is also a book on this topic by Gary Wilson called Your Brain on Porn: Internet Pornography and the Emerging Science of Addiction, which looks interesting but I have not read it at this time.
The reason for this post is pondering a basic question about the ubiquity of free online porn: if
online pornography is ubiquitous (there are estimates that 30% of internet activity relates to porn, and that 90%+ of American male teenagers have viewed online pornography), and
if most online pornography is streaming free video, and
if streaming video is very expensive to host, and
if there are very few advertisements for online porn (and most advertisements that are used simply link to other porn sites), then
How the hell are these free streaming porn sites making money? And why is no one asking this basic question?
I looked online for answers and found very little, because people in this age are incurious and there’s no globohomo funding to research it or report on it. I can’t seem to find, for example, what the operational costs would be to run 30% of the internet’s traffic. Here and here are two pretty low quality articles which ask that question and give what seem to me to offer weak answers: they argue that free porn is a sales funnel to paid porn; that they sell sex toys, link to websites for adult dating sites, online adult stores, enhancement drug stores, adult gaming sites; they reference special paid events and pay-for-porn at hotel chains, and less visible advertising like pop-unders, email marketing, up-sells, cross-sells, etc. And sure, all these things make these websites and the adult film industry in general some money, but it hardly seems to come close to carrying the costs of up to 30% of the internet’s traffic.
The theory
The theory to be advanced here is this: just as social media companies like Twitter and Facebook are heavily subsided by the federal government through complicated, opaque backchannels, as well as supporting their stock prices (while Twitter was public, anyway) in return for providing data to the government and censoring on their behalf, including utilizing lots of FBI and CIA employees embedded within these companies (which are in all these social media companies, including Musk-owned Twitter), the federal government is secretly subsidizing these free porn sites, many which are owned by one company called Mindgeek (the parent company of Pornhub, YouPorn, Brazzers) in return for both providing data on it’s users, installing spyware on it’s users computers, and to maximize pornography viewing which has certain societal effects that globohomo really wants to push. Mindgeek and other free porn streaming companies are likely much more reliant on these secret government deals than the social media companies because at least the social media companies have an advertising based model which generates real revenue, unlike with porn.
The benefits of ubiquitous free online pornography to globohomo may include:
Masturbation lowers testosterone and demotivates men for action;
It’s religiously considered Satanic and our overlords are Satanic;
It gives globohomo blackmail over viewers because they can view your porn history and habits;
The porn websites secretly install keyloggers on your computer/phone when you view the “free” content, backed up by a Harvard study. See this informative video by John McAfee who explains how it works (thanks
) and who may have been murdered by globohomo:It interferes with proper relations to the opposite sex / objectifies women / increases divorce rates (covered previously here and here);
It weakens societal norms and encourages prostitution (see Chaturbate and OnlyFans, but at least those have actual revenue models);
It negatively shapes sexuality of the masses by pushing deviant sex acts/topics;
It keeps us reliant on screens and the technology system generally, as
points out;It provides bread and circuses for the masses so globohomo can distract people as it rapes them financially;
It serves as a societal stabilization tool because there are too many unwanted men for mating purposes1, and pornography gives them something to partially satisfy their sex drive (the topic of inceldom was covered here); and
It’s overwhelmingly Jewish funded/directed as revenge against the goyim.2
You can find some other interesting answers in the comments to this Note.
Ted Kaczynski blames technological society itself for these globohomo objectives in Industrial Society and Its Future. His argument isn’t necessarily that technological society is maliciously trying to destroy people — rather, it coldly and impersonally shapes people’s will to make them compliant with technical necessity. Because free online pornography makes people passive, that means they also become more malleable for whatever the system wants them to do. If you have a raging hard-on, can’t get laid and have no easy outlet for your sex drive, it’s possible your energies would instead be directed at changing the system, which would be antithetical to the system’s interests. This way is much more sophisticated in that it encourages pure passivity, accomplished without resorting to outright coercion or violence. Here is Kaczynski’s argument (quoted at length), where argues that the system must regulate human behavior closely in order to function:
The system HAS TO force people to behave in ways that are increasingly remote from the natural pattern of human behavior. For example, the system needs scientists, mathematicians and engineers. It can’t function without them. So heavy pressure is put on children to excel in these fields. It isn’t natural for an adolescent human being to spend the bulk of his time sitting at a desk absorbed in study. A normal adolescent wants to spend his time in active contact with the real world. Among primitive peoples the things that children are trained to do tend to be in reasonable harmony with natural human impulses. Among the American Indians, for example, boys were trained in active outdoor pursuits — just the sort of thing that boys like. But in our society children are pushed into studying technical subjects, which most do grudgingly.
Because of the constant pressure that the system exerts to modify human behavior, there is a gradual increase in the number of people who cannot or will not adjust to society’s requirements: welfare leeches, youth gang members, cultists, anti-government rebels, radical environmentalist saboteurs, dropouts and resisters of various kinds.
In any technologically advanced society the individual’s fate must depend on decisions that he personally cannot influence to any great extent. A technological society cannot be broken down into small, autonomous communities, because production depends on the cooperation of very large numbers of people and machines. Such a society MUST be highly organized and decisions HAVE TO be made that affect very large numbers of people. When a decision affects, say, a million people, then each of the affected individuals has, on the average, only a one-millionth share in making the decision. What usually happens in practice is that decisions are made by public officials or corporation executives, or by technical specialists, but even when the public votes on a decision the number of voters ordinarily is too large for the vote of any one individual to be significant. Thus most individuals are unable to influence the major decisions that affect their lives. There is no conceivable way to remedy this in a technologically advanced society. The system tries to “solve” this problem by using propaganda to make people WANT the decisions that have been made for them, but even if this “solution” were completely successful in making people feel better, it would be demeaning.
Conservatives and some others advocate more “local autonomy.” Local communities once did have autonomy, but such autonomy becomes less and less possible as local communities become more enmeshed with and dependent on large-scale systems like public utilities, computer networks, highway systems, the mass communications media, the modern health care system. Also operating against autonomy is the fact that technology applied in one location often affects people at other locations far away. Thus pesticide or chemical use near a creek may contaminate the water supply hundreds of miles downstream, and the greenhouse effect affects the whole world.
The system does not and cannot exist to satisfy human needs. Instead, it is human behavior that has to be modified to fit the needs of the system. This has nothing to do with the political or social ideology that may pretend to guide the technological system. It is not the fault of capitalism and it is not the fault of socialism. It is the fault of technology, because the system is guided not by ideology but by technical necessity. Of course the system does satisfy many human needs, but generally speaking it does this only to the extend that it is to the advantage of the system to do it. It is the needs of the system that are paramount, not those of the human being. For example, the system provides people with food because the system couldn’t function if everyone starved; it attends to people’s psychological needs whenever it can CONVENIENTLY do so, because it couldn’t function if too many people became depressed or rebellious. But the system, for good, solid, practical reasons, must exert constant pressure on people to mold their behavior to the needs of the system. Too much waste accumulating? The government, the media, the educational system, environmentalists, everyone inundates us with a mass of propaganda about recycling. Need more technical personnel? A chorus of voices exhorts kids to study science. No one stops to ask whether it is inhumane to force adolescents to spend the bulk of their time studying subjects most of them hate. When skilled workers are put out of a job by technical advances and have to undergo “retraining,” no one asks whether it is humiliating for them to be pushed around in this way. It is simply taken for granted that everyone must bow to technical necessity. and for good reason: If human needs were put before technical necessity there would be economic problems, unemployment, shortages or worse. The concept of “mental health” in our society is defined by the extent to which an individual behaves in accord with the needs of the system and does so without showing signs of stress.
Industrial society has taken on a mind of its own. The needs of the system will take precedence and result in tyranny, forcing extreme population modification in order to meet its requirements:
Whereas formerly the limits of human endurance have imposed limits on the development of societies, industrial-technological society will be able to pass those limits by modifying human beings, whether by psychological methods or biological methods or both. In the future, social systems will not be adjusted to suit the needs of human beings. Instead, human being will be adjusted to suit the needs of the system.
Generally speaking, technological control over human behavior will probably not be introduced with a totalitarian intention or even through a conscious desire to restrict human freedom. Each new step in the assertion of control over the human mind will be taken as a rational response to a problem that faces society, such as curing alcoholism, reducing the crime rate or inducing young people to study science and engineering. In many cases there will be a humanitarian justification….
Assuming that industrial society survives, it is likely that technology will eventually acquire something approaching complete control over human behavior. It has been established beyond any rational doubt that human thought and behavior have a largely biological basis. As experimenters have demonstrated, feelings such as hunger, pleasure, anger and fear can be turned on and off by electrical stimulation of appropriate parts of the brain. Memories can be destroyed by damaging parts of the brain or they can be brought to the surface by electrical stimulation. Hallucinations can be induced or moods changed by drugs. There may or may not be an immaterial human soul, but if there is one it clearly is less powerful that the biological mechanisms of human behavior. For if that were not the case then researchers would not be able so easily to manipulate human feelings and behavior with drugs and electrical currents….
Will public resistance prevent the introduction of technological control of human behavior? It certainly would if an attempt were made to introduce such control all at once. But since technological control will be introduced through a long sequence of small advances, there will be no rational and effective public resistance.
Similar to Kaczynski’s take is Rene Guenon’s, who believed that we are approaching the end of a time cycle and that the “solidification” of the world would continue to get worse until it’s not possible to get further degraded, after which a new cycle will begin.
Anyway I hope you found this discussion of the hidden costs of so-called “free” streaming internet pornography helpful. This may or may not change anyone’s mind to watch it - it is as addictive as heroin as Connecting the Dots stated above - but you should at least be aware of the negative effects it has on you and society at large. A good rule of thumb is: if globohomo wants you to do something and offers it to you for free, it’s going to be really, really bad for you.
Thanks for reading.
In his book XXX-Communicated: A Rebel Without a Shul, [Jewish pornographer] Luke Ford wrote about a conversation with [famous Jewish pornographer Al] Goldstein, in which Ford asked Goldstein why Jews were dramatically overrepresented in the porn industry. He answered, "The only reason that Jews are in pornography is that we think that Christ sucks. Catholicism sucks. We don't believe in authoritarianism. Pornography thus becomes a way of defiling Christian culture and, as it penetrates to the very heart of the American mainstream (and is no doubt consumed by those very same WASPs), its subversive character becomes more charged." Ford then asked, "What does it mean to you to be a Jew?" To which Goldstein responded, "It doesn't mean anything. It means that I'm called a kike." Ford also asked, "Do you believe in God?" Goldstein said, "I believe in me. I'm God. Screw God. God is your need to believe in some super being. I am the super being. I am your God, admit it. We're random. We're the flea on the butt of the dog.”
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.
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.