Porn Consumption and Twelve (or so) Alarming Trends, Pt. 2
Did you know that 4,599,000,000 hours of porn were watched last year alone.
That number is four billion, five hundred and ninety-nine million hours of porn viewed last year.
Let’s reflect on that number for a few minutes.
There are a total of 8,760 hours in a year. That’s less than ten thousand. If one person were to watch that much porn, over a life time, they would require a life expectancy of somewhere in the five century range.
Another way to reflect on this statistic is to consider just how many videos per person this number represents.
This info graphic give us an impression of that stat:
Yes, that’s twelve and a half videos per person.
Now, if we reflect further on the type of porn that is most popular, these statistics become even more alarming.
Consider for a moment the top ten searches of 2016:
- Step mom
- Lesbian
- Step sister
- MILF
- Cartoon
- Ebony
- Lesbian Scissoring
- Teen
- Black
- Mom
The tops three of these ten?
- Lesbian
- Ebony
- Teen
It doesn’t take long to deduce that the majority of our nation’s porn consumption is vile to the core.
If we were honest, we’d relabel these along the following lines:
- Pedophilia
- Incest (sadly, a porn theme that’s on the rise)
- Sexism
- Racism
- Ageism
So, an industry whose annual global revenue exceeds One hundred billion dollars receives the majority of that revenue by selling a product that encourages, embraces, and seeks to normalize things like pedophilia, incest, sexism, racism and ageism.
Oddly, these are all systemic injustices that we fight against every day. Yet we allow a prolific industry to continually sabotage our efforts. And, worse yet – when we do fight, we fight with words – the porn industry uses images.
Images always win the day!
Every.
Single.
Time.
I’ve been paying close attention to statistics like these for the past eight to ten years. As a result, I’ve drawn the conclusion that we are dealing with, daily, a dozen or so alarming trends that are directly related to Pornography distribution and the consumption and addiction it encourages.
Today, I will offer my first two. I will not go into great detail (hope to do that in book form, one day), but I will offer a quick introduction to each and invite your feedback!
A Dozen (or so) Alarming Trends Directly Related to Porn Consumption
- While not everyone is addicted to porn, we are all porn addicts now! I get it. Everyone isn’t hooked to pornography. We must, however, wake up and recognize that we are now a nation of porn addicts. There is simply no way to deny this reality. If we were eating this amount of Big Macs or junk food, representatives from the FDA would be jumping up and down, shouting, “we are eating ourselves to death.” Yet very few voices are screaming, the more real danger, that “we are watching ourselves to death.” In later posts I’ll share how porn is shaping the youngest of our culture as further evidence that we are all porn addicts now!
- There is no such thing as safe or acceptable porn. I hear drivel like, “it’s not hurting anyone, so what’s the problem?” all the time. Again and again, men who justify their behavior behind the belief that porn is okay, especially since it’s typically viewed in the privacy of one’s home by a consenting adult, argue that viewing porn is acceptable. It’s a rationale that’s as ignorant as it is dangerous. The top ten searches I noted above ought to be enough to prove this. Sadly, we cling to our delusions. In later posts, I’ll draw a connection between subjugation, trafficking, and rape and porn consumption that will be difficult to deny. Yet, for this post, I am going to leave you with a message from Gail Dines Culture Reframed. Her words alone ought to send a chill through your bones. They clearly indicate the goal of the industry and should wake us up to their utter lack of regard for the weakest among us:
“Just so you know how predatory the porn industry is, their lobbying organization, The Free Speech Coalition (how 1984) is back in court on September 28th trying to overturn 2257. And what is 2257? It is a Federal law requiring producers of a “visual depiction of an actual human being engaged in actual sexually explicit conduct to keep records showing the ages of the models”. It is one way, however meager, to protect children from being used in porn. Porn industry has been fighting this since 1988. Now why would they spend millions trying to fight such a law?
ANSWER: They want to use kids in porn.”
The threat is real. While we should not be alarmist (over reacting), we should certainly be alarmed.
Disrupting to Renew!
Biz
