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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   24133 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 10, 2024

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No, a Remote Amazon Tribe Did Not Get Addicted to Porn

A Times story about the arrival of high-speed internet in a remote Amazon tribe spiraled into its own cautionary tale on the dark side of the web.

Ok, which one of you chuds posted harmful misinformation?

During a weeklong visit, I saw how they used the internet to communicate between villages, chat with faraway loved ones and call for help in emergencies. Many Marubo also told me they were deeply concerned that the connection with the outside world would upend their culture, which they had preserved for generations by living deep in the forest. Some elders complained of teenagers glued to phones, group chats full of gossip and minors who watched pornography

As a result, the story we published June 2 was in part about the Marubo people’s introduction to the ills of the internet.

But after publication, that angle took on a whole different dimension.

Over the past week, more than 100 websites around the world have published headlines that falsely claim the Marubo have become addicted to porn. Alongside those headlines, the sites published images of the Marubo people in their villages.

The New York Post was among the first, saying last week that the Marubo people was “hooked on porn.” Dozens quickly followed that take. TMZ’s headline was perhaps the most blunt: “TRIBE’S STARLINK HOOKUP RESULTS IN PORN ADDICTION!!!”

Ok, what am I missing? This is a paragraph from the original article:

After only nine months with Starlink, the Marubo are already grappling with the same challenges that have racked American households for years: teenagers glued to phones; group chats full of gossip; addictive social networks; online strangers; violent video games; scams; misinformation; and minors watching pornography

There is no "some elders complained" here, it's a straightforward portrayal of the Marubo as a collective being afflicted with, among other things, minors watching porn. "Amazon tribe hooked on porn" is a decently accurate headline-length summary. Sure, shit got sensationalized, but that's a far cry from "falsely claim".

I've had a longstanding gripe with the NYT, Vox, and other supposedly higher-quality outlets, where they essentially prime their audience to read their content a certain way, while maintaining plausible deniability if anyone calls them out, but this is the first time I saw them go after someone for going with the intended reading.

What happened here, did the wrong people agree with them, so the story has to be called off?

Is anyone else getting the impression that since the start of the Great Awokening it has become standard practice in the mainstream media to portray the porn industry and its consequences in a categorically negative light, even if it's done in passing, like in this case? This wasn't always the case, as far as I can tell.

It's schizophrenic. It's always going to be seen as tawdy and low-brow, and earnest arguments that its consumption is sexually healthy ring hollow to most ears. At the same time, my weekly news feed seems to regularly drop an article or two about 'empowered porn stars and all their money' or 'a porn star was invited for a school book reading and incels can't handle it'. Few people want to be porn stars or would recommend it as a career, but there's a reflexive defensiveness against anybody who might ask 'what special qualifications does this whore have to read to my 5th grader?'. There's also 'former porn star, despite being forewarned, has trouble getting a normie job after exiting and isn't that so unfair'.

Hardcore straight porn is ugh the worst, but exploring your mommy kink with roleplay and bizarre anal insertions for the viewing pleasure of strangers is both normal and an exotic frontier you should explore assuming you're not close-minded. No, there is no sense to be made from this.

There's also 'former porn star, despite being forewarned, has trouble getting a normie job after exiting and isn't that so unfair'.

This makes me wonder if there ever was a male porn actor who got a normie job anywhere, for that matter.

My intuition is that no guy watching (straight) porn -- which is the overwhelming majority of its market, from what I can tell -- actually pays any attention to the male actors. I'd bet eye tracking would show a big lack of interest in that part of the screen, and I'd bet relatively few viewers could pick such a guy out of a lineup even an hour later if not prompted to pay attention beforehand. So I'd bet getting outed for that is much less of a concern, although probably not unheard of.

But I would be curious if there are any data or anecdotes the other direction.

There's also plenty of straight porn where the only parts of the male's body that's ever visible on screen are parts that are normally not visible except in extremely private/intimate settings. Even if someone paid maximal attention to the male in the porn, there simply isn't enough information in the video for the viewer to identify the male in non-intimate settings. And even in those, our brains are very well developed for distinguishing between and identifying individuals based on things like the shape of their face and, AFAIK, not very well developed for doing so based on things like the shape of their penis.

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