Being talked about as a corrupting influence on American youth is bit like being accused of teaching sex-tricks to prostitutes. In a world where the most direct route to free sexual images is Google, that the press chose to get worked up about the ‘hot coffee’ mod - which requires a programming degree, and a desire to see pixilated virtua-fucking to access, is pretty funny.
That said I am SHOCKED! HORRIFIED! APPALED! to find that News Channel 5 in Ohio has chosen to make an example of me (when we lose Cleveland, where are all the free-thinkers going to live?). They have accused Podnography of being dangerous to children.
Aside from the fact that Podnography’s not for children (like cars, guns, food processors and sex in general), I’m surprised at how misguided their criticisms are.
The use of the phrase ‘all the rage’ in the opening, is a clue that these aren’t the hippest cats in town. By the time they state
“…Open Source Sex, Whorecast and Podnography are transmitted over the Internet through free Web sites…”
It’s obvious they don’t know what they’re talking about. Like a grandparent with a new computer asking ‘…how many internets does it have then?’ they’re obviously unaware podcast’s aren’t broadcast but downloaded. No one’s going to ‘accidentally’ download 180MB of podnography by pressing a button on their iPod and then accidentally watch it.
There are plenty of podcasts aimed at raw titillation but Podnography, Open Source Sex and the Whorecast are far too infected with me, debate and gender politics to be the first choice of a horny teenager. Moreover, why download a podcast when downloading a DVD Rip of ‘Jack’s Teen Playground’ using bittorrent is so much more rewarding?
Do kids get sexual material via the web? Of course they do but kids are horny. I got my porn out of the dictionary (’Look up fuck! Damn… Look up tits!) and I doubt today’s generation will be any less adept. Is this story a lot of crap designed to scare middle-America into a public iPod burning? Almost certainly.
Parents who want to control what their offspring consume shouldn’t expect adults to deny themselves adult pleasures so they don’t have to worry about being parents.
WOW. Dude, you’re totally infamous now.
Mia! You need to check you’re email, you’ve been MIA (uh-oh! I did a funny!)
Dear Concerned Citizens of Cleaveland (C^3),
I cannot thank you enough for your tireless efforts to keep the television sanitized and pure for my nonexistant children. When my 26-54 year old girlfriend and myself sit down to watch television, it is a great comfort to note that one day, there will be no chance that we might inadvertantly select a program that could endanger a child who might happen to wander in through our locked front door.
It is comforting to reflect on this future – we will be able to flip the dial at ease, completely safe from the possibility that a stray nipple might offend a passer by who is peering intently into our living room from the sidewalk outside. We will not have to worry about becoming accidentally aroused by a racy image, or cringing at the sight of blood (unless Fox News is talking about what a bad man Saddam was).
It is, in short, reassuring to know that you fight for a world in which my childfree household will be perfectly safe for children. Only by sacrificing our options as adults can we create a world that is fit for raising children - regardless of whether we have any children to raise!
Sincerely,
&tc
Trust me I think it will get worse i worry about the new so called christian conservatives who now control our government
Fight the good fight, Sam.
No one’s going to ‘accidentally’ download 180MB of podnography by pressing a button on their iPod and then accidentally watch it.
Ha ha! My friend’s uncle came up with a similar excuse. He was webbing where he shouldn’t and got caught. His claim: ‘I turn on the computer and the porn just appeared.’ Them pesky pornography, like those InternetS viruses, blame hackers!!!
Right.
Well, Sam, perhaps you’ll be remembered as a philosopher in 2 or 3 thousand years. In the meantime, be careful what you drink in Cleveland.
But gosh, do you think anyone at Channel 5 actually listened to the podcasts before they slammed them? Yeah, me neither. I think they got the story idea and just googled to see what the top podcasts were without actually listening to any of them.
It’s really sad, isn’t it, when people try to describe something they’re in complete ignorance of? Or maybe they have seen it, but play dumb to hide the shame of having gone and looked?
It’s hard to believe there’s an adult alive who hasn’t seen at least *some* internet porn; even harder to believe that they weren’t looking for it when they found it. I can’t remember a time when I ever saw porn on the web *by accident.*
I’ll never understand the desire to legislate what people can and can’t see (with a few exceptions, like child-porn or maybe pro-hate material). What I’d love to see though is a law that says you can’t have free speech till you’ve done a little frickin’ research into both sides of the story and viewed some primary source material. Now that might be an improvement.
For instance, I tracked down the article at channel 5 before I wrote this comment (okay, actually I wrote most of it and checked the article before posting it). They do demonize Sam and the others without giving me a sense that they’d actually listened to the shows; and they do use lame-ass phrasing that either means they don’t know what they’re talking about or are sure their readers don’t, but their point this time around seems to be more that there are new devices parents should check if they want to be responsible for what their kids can see. (good luck, mom + dad. heh. it’s too late.) They’re not really calling for an end to porn podcasts, they’re just saying parents should be as abjectly fearful of them as they should be of, well, you know, *everything*.
Fear is king in the land of cretins… No wonder the ignorant (but not necessarily stupid) rise to the top in this country.
There’s more hardcore sex on MySpace than on Podnography. Most of it’s posted by horny 14 year olds.
Last time I checked horny teenagers were perfectly capable of supplying each other with pages and pages of smut. Fanfic, anyone? Little Johnny (or Janie) isn’t going to stop writing about orc gangbangs or chatting up other teenagers on AIM if adult entertainment created by adults, for adults, goes away.
*Children* aren’t likely to be exposed to adult entertainment (as opposed to just inappropriate mainstream stuff) unless someone’s exposing it to them on purpose. Teenagers still have more to worry about from each other and from the unscrupulous adults in their daily lives than from an .mp3 containing orgasm noises.
But this is preaching to the choir. I’d preach to the masses, but they’d put me in handcuffs. Wait…
No one ever calls out Comstock Films as a threat to the foundations of our society. Color me jealous.
I always knew you were destroying society, Sam.
At least you’re in good company, with Violet Blue and Melissa Gira.
Tony - don’t fret. We all think you’re a scourge and will continue to buy your movies for research purposes…
There’s a billboard around the corner from my office that says, in black text on a white background, all caps, “1 IN 5 CHILDREN ARE SOLICITED FOR SEX ONLINE”.
One in five! People aren’t even trying anymore. Either they’re making that shit up out of whole cloth, or they’re using really shaky definitions of “solicitation”.
I think the real news is tat one in five children actually have internet access. The world economy is lookin’ up!
zero - that reminds me of that ‘1 in 4′ women are raped stat which used to be so popular. ‘1 in 5′ is just insane, how on earth do they know that anyway? I in 5 kids online is a middle-aged fed though so maybe they’re all horny for each other.
Zero, the same billboard is in my neck of the woods and I was trying last night to remember what their ratio was. Shit, when I was in high school, at least 3 in 5 kids had been molested, abused or raped in the real world (but then, this was an arts high school). Actually I’m guessing about the number, I just can’t think of a single person I talked to at that school who didn’t have a story about some kind of sexual issue.
1 in 5 seems pretty safe comparatively, especially when you consider that no one can actually physically fondle anyone over the web.
For that matter, the town where I’ve seen the billboard is the center of monetary and educational poverty in this region. A close relative was probate judge for the county, and I can report with somne authority that the number of kids within ten miles of that billboard who have had sexual experiences with adults (and/or family) is in excess of 3 in 5.
Maybe these are bigger concerns than the internet?
For realz, BadAss- A friend of mine works with abused kids and when he gets really, really drunk (every night- I believe the term is “self medicating”), he never seems to complain about the corruption of the internets. It’s always something much more visceral. And kinda Vietnam-y
Sam- 1 in 4? I always heard 1 in 3. I always used to play “who’s the rapist?” when I’d be at parties. Because by those stats, they’re more common than Christians.
zero - I AM SPARTICUS!
I think by restricting everything, or creating an oppressive atmosphere, it only increases a person’s resolve to obtain the very thing, and sometimes it can even be more extreme and/or negative - the result of high octane oppression.
I’m not the biggest fan of porn, but not due to the ‘morality’ - everyone fucks, everyone desires this - aspect, I just wish it could be more creative, but to go ape and encourage bans and things, that’s over the top.
I think the US has worse problems, like the latest defense budget exceeding 500 billion US dollars at the cost of health and elderly care. This is a worse issue than whether or not porn is the sole corruptor - which it isn’t.
Sounds just like “Sexual Transmitted Disease”. You know: I love DAUs
(DAU = Germam Admin slang for ‘most idiotic user’ = Dümmster Anzunehmender User = Worst Case Scenario).
cu, w0lf.