Algorithms + Porn = Inevitable Black Hole For Men's Health On Social Media

What used to be the innocent exploration of sexuality has morphed into something we can't escape.

Softcore pornography has slunk its way into every corner of the Internet, providing a gateway to something worse that slowly erodes our social fabric.

This is a real problem. I know that I’ve watched it grow over the years and maybe you have, too.

In this article you and I will explore what this problem is, then why it’s bad for men and women. We’ll get started by defining what exactly “soft porn” is with this entry from Wikipedia:

Softcore pornography or softcore porn is commercial still photography, film, or art that has a pornographic or erotic component but is less sexually graphic and intrusive than hardcore pornography, defined by a lack of visual sexual penetration. It typically contains nude or semi-nude actors involved in love scenes and is intended to be sexually arousing and aesthetically beautiful.

Now that’s out of the way, what we will look at next is what the actual issue is. A good way to paint the overall picture is our existing relationship with drinking.

A good analogy to describe the problem at hand is the enjoyment of alcohol. Booze is fine. There’s nothing wrong with drinking. Just like porn. But drinking all the time will be bad for you. Just like porn. Alcohol is often organized into its own little section in grocery stores and requires an ID to purchase. But not like porn.

That’s because alcohol isn’t displayed amongst the soft drinks, meat, fruit and bread aisles. It stays in its place: the alcohol aisle. This was also once the case for pornography, especially before the Internet. But not anymore. Digital pornography now enjoys a longer reach and wider availability. What happened?

Now is a good time to let me close the door on any possible misunderstanding: there isn’t anything wrong with porn. People have explored their sexuality for as long as there have been people. Just look at this Incan pottery art.

Imagine having a huge ass molded onto your Blender Bottle.

Before that, cavemen probably drew porn on their cave walls. Or they jerked off to mountains that resembled a giant pair of tits. Maybe not, but I do know that as soon as cameras were invented, people were shooting porn. That people create and consume porn isn’t anything new or bad. But what’s changed is how, when, where and why we get it, as well as its quality and novelty. We’ll compare what your grandpa spanked off to to what’s available today:

Used to, porn was only found in a seedy store with a neon sign out front. You went in and bought whatever VHS tape or DVD you liked and that was it.

The early days of Internet porn were just as unimpressive. You’d mostly get text links, still images and clips that were only seconds long. It just wasn’t that great and it was relatively easy to lose interest and find something better to do.

Popular adult website in 2003. As you can see, it’s nowhere as appealing as modern pornography platforms on the Internet.

So, the point here is that, in the past, there was an amount of friction to gain access to porn. But today it’s available wherever you carry your smart phone. No friction. Access could not be easier.

Going back to pre-smartphone porn: for the most part, you were stuck with pretty vanilla stuff and that was enough. I don’t remember anyone ever picking up a copy of Playboy and say, “You know what? I would love to see this chick get blasted by a donkey.” It just didn’t register in our minds. But today you can find pretty much whatever you can imagine.

Our primate brains love novel things and thanks to modern porn there’s an infinite menu of variety encouraging horny — but unsuspecting — men to keep exploring and discovering. In the past, the quality and variety of traditional porn were naturally limited by their physical constraints. Modern porn blows past these barriers. But it also does something new with how we are prompted.

Before the Internet, the prompts to consume porn didn’t exist, or at least were rare. A casual stroll through visual content such as television or printed media didn’t yield a whole lot in the way of sexually suggestive content with the call-to-action to consume more of it.

Additionally, this content was moderated by the Federal Communications Commission. If you saw a scantily clad woman in a music video on MTV, then that was it. You couldn’t replay it, she was anonymous and there was no recourse. You just watched the next music video. But today the dynamic has changed. Pornography is available on the same device through which you consume all other media. However, that doesn’t fully explain why one would think to watch porn at all, especially with the completely unasked for prompting of porn found in the modern Internet.

For example, if you’re not prompted to watch videos of pickle jars, then I don’t think there’s any chance of you watching videos of pickle jars. Biological priming notwithstanding, I feel that’s the same case for porn. If it wasn’t brought to our attention, then we wouldn’t watch as much of it.

But it is brought to our attention. It’s everywhere. When you consider that the Internet is a place we spend a good deal of our time, you can see how encountering a “horny prompt” is inevitable, spurring a look at actual porn via smart phone. The most insidious aspect of modern pornography are the little seductive doorways planted all over YouTube, Facebook, and more that lead you to a bottomless pit of super hot porn.

These doorways are softcore porn that flirt with the platform’s content policies — by being as sexually stimulating as possible without getting deleted or banned — in order to snag the attention of unsuspecting men who never intended to encounter porn, have it arouse their reproductive drive, then defeat their inhibitions, then funnel them to a pay wall granting access to premium content.

This is easily done at scale, reaching hundreds of thousands of millions of men. Without this technology, none of this would be possible. Platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, TikTok and more enable the reach of modern pornography with their algorithmically curated content feeds.

When a man sees that perfect booty, he cannot help but look a second longer, cuing the algorithm to deliver more of that content in order to increase time on service so he can be served an ad. In turn, that content is shown to more users, it gets more “likes” and the original creator is encouraged to produce more.

So, you pull up YouTube to get instructions on how to change your truck’s oil only to find yourself doing something completely different thirty minutes later. It’s a vicious cycle.

Now you see how porn went from being something harmless and natural to something that’s alarming and worth discussing.

Imagine a recovering alcoholic navigating his day-to-day life as he is continuously offered free samples of novel craft beer, and he can drink alcohol anywhere at anytime. He’d never make it to sobriety.

So why do we do this with our sexuality? Does the world really need another e-girl Why doesn’t softcore porn stay in the softcore porn section of the Internet, like alcohol does in grocery stores? Why do we find it next to the content we enjoy on virtually every platform ranging from Facebook to YouTube, whereas in the past it was segregated from the content we sought out?

I’ll leave you to ponder those questions. For now, I’ll explain why the porn monster has become so awful for men and women:

Men and women are meant to be together, not apart. Modern pornography drives us apart. Modern pornography activates a deep-seated biological drive in men but does not satisfy it. Pornography portrays women as objects in unrealistic settings. This portrayal damages actual relationships in the real world or prevents them altogether. It hurts our ability to socialize and connect in a way that’s meaningful and lasts.

The time men spend watching porn is time that can be spent doing something more productive for themselves or society, like working out, planning a mission to Mars or having sex with an actual woman.

Finally, pornography is fine and its use should be moderated, as with all things, but its modern ubiquity, and leveraging of men’s reproductive drive to its advantage is just as insidious as the men who leverage their physical power or social status to take advantage of women.

The first thing we can do to address this problem is talk about it. Bring this beast out of the dark and into the light. Then, you should use this as an opportunity to examine your relationship with technology. How does it serve your best interest? What are your values and does it align with those?

Going back to the oil-changing example works well here: Instead of using YouTube as a resource for everything, consider using topic-specific resources. A good example would be Guzzle7pt3’s website, a Hayne’s repair manual, or RepairBuddy, an app built for automotive maintenance work. This avoids the porn issue altogether, because there is no porn in those resources. They’re not geared for porn. They’re geared for…gears. Which is the point.

After that, if you’d like to learn more about porn addiction and what it does to our brains, then I recommend reading Your Brain On Porn.

Right now I need to wipe my browser history then take a cold shower.

But, before I do, if you have anything to add, please do so in the comments below. I am open to new ideas and welcome criticism.

What do you think? Is modern porn really that big of a deal?

Whatever your stance, I appreciate you taking time to visit and hopefully you consider your relationship with technology. If you’d like to learn more about the topic, then please consider subscribing.