"Be a Real Man; Stick a Baseball Bat Up Your Ass," Or: Ruminations on Pornography, Part the First

1. Internet pornography is the driving force behind technology; it has made connection speeds, etc. what they are today. If the Internet were used only for sharing scientific findings and communicating with friends, we might not be sitting on a vast, brand-spankin' new network of high-speed cables. {Insert various estimates of percentage of Internet that is porn}

2. This widespread availability of porn allows all the sad, lonely fuckers that would otherwise never see another person naked (present company included) some solace, thus somewhat alleviating the alienation caused by modern "wired" life. Don't think wired life is alienating? Consider Japan, one of the most wired nations on the planet. {Insert Japanese alienation/fertility rates and birth rates connection articles}

3. The ubiquity of porn is useful for another reason: it is a way of sharing sexual norms (and oddities), practices, and techniques- a sort of freely-available, omniscient Sexual How-To manual. It makes the people that actually get to have sex better at sex by providing them with precise information on every sexual act that the human species has so far thought up, and allowing them to take their pick. It's sexual evolution, baby.

Much is made of the reduction of people (the actors in the porn) to mere sexual images. Is this exploitative? As with any entertainment industry, or really, any industry at all, there is undoubtedly some exploitation going on somewhere; where and when there is something to exploit, exploiters invariably come along to exploit it. But does this make the actual pornography, particularly the abstracting action that transforms human beings into "mere slabs of meat," exploitative? It would be interesting to see what the actors thought. {Insert porn industry worker writings}

If porn is inherently exploitative, why are there Shitloads of communities of people online who do it for free, for fun? {Insert a couple of links to- no, you can find them yourself. It is easy.}
The answer is that it is not; it merely can be, when people are forced into it against their will.
Let the people that want to do porn do porn (there seem to be plenty). The people that do not want to can go do other stuff. Everyone wins!