Indeed! I'm slightly shocked by the casual implication that our masturbatory world is the same as that of our ancestors -- excluding my Dad, who can indeed use the internet, I think that the argument could be made that I have seen more boobs than nearly all my ancestors put together. Further, access to this infinite-boob parade is trivial, requiring neither the acquisition of a new skin-mag nor spending resources on wining and dining a lady. People have been masturbating since time immemorial, but I don't think it's unreasonable to see the rise of internet porn as a new development. Nor is it unreasonable to cast porn in the role of refined sugar or mindless TV -- an exploitation of our natural drives, a concentration of 'value' impossible on the savannah.
> I have seen more boobs than nearly all my ancestors put together
> an exploitation of our natural drives
It's too bad we can't go back and ask any of your ancestors from, say 100K years ago to a few hundred years ago, because I think you might find that being super obsessed with boobs isn't actually a natural thing. It might, in fact, be a product of the same Victorian culture the original article was about.
Eh, an interesting comment. I assume you merely skimmed mine, because I was only using the term 'boobs' to refer to getting to see a naked lady without any of the usual cultural impediments (wooing, dating, even tracking down and negotiating for the services of a hooker). It seemed very clear in context. I'm well aware that fixation on breasts isn't natural in the context of human anthropological development, yet the fetishization of boobs is common enough today that I thought it an appropriate metaphor for 'faux sexual contact that's good enough for the lizard-brain yet functionally "free"'.
The thrust (if you will) of your comment is either an extended triumphant riff on my poor choice of the concept 'boobs' (and possibly trying to shame those who do fetishize boobs), or it's an attempt to distract from my comment's thesis -- namely, that the profusion of modern free porno might actually be having an effect on us. I don't think that's ridiculous. I'm well aware that many a society has had pornographic materials under varying aegises, but many were furtive and socially, if not legally, prohibited.
I don't think it's unreasonable to claim that our society has the lowest barrier to access, the highest quality, and the largest diversity of pornographic materials in the history of humanity. Further, this profusion of porno is comparatively recent. Are we supposed to believe that this can't be having an effect on us? I presume you have a stronger argument than merely implying that I'm super obsessed with boobs (and that some Victorian aspect of my maturbatory habits are to blame).
Maybe, but what effect, and is it "harm"? The NPR thing was quick to pivot on the idea that being overfed on porn is making teenagers impotent, but that's been a mainstay of propaganda campaigns for time immemorial. Off the top of my head, I can recall seeing PSAs in my youth that marijuana causes low sperm count, steroids make your testicles shrink, and smoking and drinking cause impotence. Maybe they do, but the reason they're calling it out versus, say, increased risk of heart disease, is that it's a scare campaign.
