Although the “The Internet is for Porn” video shown by Professor Chung in class was obviously made for comedic purposes, I think it’s worth discussing why it seems so funny to us. Porn has become an accepted phenomenon of the online community, although it is rarely discussed when we partake in conversations about the web. It seems that even as the online world releases thousands and thousands of more pornography videos and images on a daily basis, it remains taboo from a societal perspective. This seems contradictory: How can we accept and laugh at the fact that people are watching porn on a daily basis, while also condemning it?
The answer to this question is not simple, and in fact, I’m not sure it is answerable at all. Instead, I think it is worth keeping in mind that humanity itself has not undergone fantastic changes due to the rise of the internet– the internet has simply exposed aspects of humanity that were otherwise more subtle. Our culture has always had this weird, inexplicable relationship with porn and morality; however, with browser histories and free videos, it has become much harder to ignore. The conversation surrounding internet porn seems to be a merely enhanced discussion of an already existing cultural push and pull.
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