Have you ever wondered how big is the adult content industry in this time of the internet? It is estimated that it is worth between 6 and 15 billion dollars whose business model can be reduced to the sale of monthly subscriptions or the sale of advertising space. Hence, this industry is not so far from Netflix itself, which generated 31 billion in revenue last year.
According to the scientific work “Pornography Statistics and Facts”, about 35% of the total content downloaded from the Internet is pornography. That’s how huge it is.
Problematic use of such content affects 3 to 6% of the population, and 65% of young adult men and 18% of young women stated that they watch pornography at least once a week, on one of the websites listed on Best Porn.
This means that a person, regardless of its age can access and enjoy adult content whenever and wherever they feel like it. The average age of first exposure to pornography is only 14 years, and as many as 93.2% of boys and 62.1% of girls come into contact with pornography for the first time before they turn 18. Here are some more interesting facts:
- 40 million adult US citizens regularly visit porn sites;
- 10% of US adults admit to an addiction to pornographic content;
- 17% of women in the world struggle with addiction to pornographic content;
- 20% of men and 13% of women admit that they watched pornography during working hours.
If you enjoy erotic themes and unconventional romance depicted in “50 Shades of Grey,” you might be interested in checking out these 15 movies recommended in this article.
Pornography and Ethics
For pornography to be ethically produced at all, it must be filmed and distributed legally, cast members and set directors must respect the boundaries and rights of performers, and instead of fetishizing content, it should celebrate diversity.
When explaining “ethics” and “pornography” in the same sentence, many are completely shocked that this concept is not the norm, but the fact is that pornography is usually stolen and distributed without permission, and performers do not always have regulated contracts or rights. The whole situation is not helped by the fact that watching pornography, especially for women, is a highly stigmatized act.
What is so attractive about pornography that most people indulge in it so easily? There are three factors that contribute the most to this, and all three are the benefits of easy access to the Internet: anonymity, free of charge, and accessibility.
There are many “arguments” made in favor of pornography, the ways in which it can seemingly improve one’s life: it provides pleasure, teaches about sex, removes mental barriers related to sexuality, shows openness to sexual minorities, encourages exploration of one’s own sexuality, offers inspiration for real relationships, relieves stress, allows you to get away from problems and deal with life more easily…
And there is the most important and most often used sentence: “It does not harm anyone!” But, is this really the case? Apparently, there has been some detailed research about how it affects people’s brains, which showed that its effect is similar to that of gambling. The part of the brain in charge of addiction was very much developed, the same as in those addicted to gambling.
A Couple of Historic Facts…
There is something in human nature that makes people need to create and absorb erotic content. The Venus of Willendorf was created approximately 25,000 years ago, and the Babylonians, Greeks, and Romans, who are much closer to us, created erotic frescoes, statues and ceramics, and even some works of fiction such as poems and the novel the Satyricon.
After a century of perfecting the art of painting, photorealistic works also began to appear, and eroticism did not bypass the very beginnings of the publishing industry, so we got erotic fiction in the West in the 17th century, pioneered by Edmund Curll.
The next big change was made by Auguste and Louis Lumière who in 1896 presented their invention the Cinématographe, a projector that showed films at 16 frames per second. It didn’t even take a year to create one of the first pornographic films, Le Coucher de la Mariée. Of course, the next evolutionary step was the invention of the Internet, which made pornographic content available worldwide. That’s why today a person can see more naked people in one hour than a pre-Internet person could in a lifetime.
And here we are in 2024, on the threshold of a new innovation that has the potential to change the already well-established pornographic industry. Artificial intelligence entered the field of pornography and began to provide new opportunities to its users, or rather, to fulfill certain wishes.
How Will It Affect Human Relationships?
In order for a person to create a parasocial relationship, he must at least be able to create some kind of relationship, which requires empathy. However, we have reached the stage of technology development when we have the possibility of choosing an artificially generated image that fulfills all imagined desires, as opposed to a real person…
Artificial intelligence thus removes empathy, that is, the need to create any kind of emotional feedback loop with another person, be it real or not – which actually reinforces the dehumanization of the user himself. In addition, this objectification of man as a means to fulfill fantasies, especially of the female gender, only strengthens.
As the appearance of a new medium has never led to the non-use of the previous medium (the invention of television did not abolish the radio), it is likely that new forms of pornography will not suppress the old ones, but the question is what consequences these new forms of pornography will have on the human psyche.
It is not surprising if in the future any of us will be able to create a pornographic work at will, which will be written, directed, filmed, and edited by AI. But does a person need that?
