Intimacy has become shallow, driven by apps and the fear of loneliness. We use bodies rather than connect with people, leading to empty encounters.
We perform our lives online for validation, curating profiles to the point that we lose touch with our true selves. This performance is exhausting and ultimately unfulfilling.
Life, especially in micro cosmos, can be suffocating. People feel judged and unseen, leading to quiet despair and a feeling that personal unhappiness is their own fault.
Many people are too afraid of being hurt to express their true feelings, resulting in unspoken words, missed connections, and a deep-seated emotional fatigue.
Our political and social systems often feel like a show, offering the illusion of choice while discouraging real dissent. Justice becomes more of a slogan than a reality.
We look to AI to solve our problems, but without careful, ethical programming, it will only reflect and amplify human flaws like greed and bias.
True goodness isn't found in grand gestures, but in small, everyday decisions: being honest, listening, and continuing to try even when no one is watching.
If you believe that people's sexual preferences, fantasies, and behaviors have not been shaped by porn, then I'd love to hear your answers to these questions:
1. Imagine an alternative timeline for humanity in which the internet and porn are never created. Do you believe people would have the same preferences, fantasies, and behaviors?
2. Porn popularizes and normalizes certain acts, some that are dangerous, risky, or extreme, such as strangulation during sex or bondage. Do you believe that women in remote tribes have the same fantasy to dress up in a leather suit, to be tied down by a man, call him "daddy", and have him strangle her until she's about to faint? If preferences are innate and the internet does not change or create them, we should see the same percentage of women choosing this, right?
They’re both great questions, and I’ll answer them both at once.
I agree that the porn—including porn that preceded the internet, such as erotic novels—does play a small role in shifting sexual desire. My view on this is that people have a space of things (part universal, part idiosyncratic) that they find erotic, and porn works within that space, focusing on some alternatives over others. For instance, men have long fantasized about sex with attractive women who are around them. In erotic novels from the 1700s, the target of fantasy was often maids; twenty years ago, it was secretaries; now it’s stepsisters. In the future, I dunno, it’ll be hot robot repairwomen. But it’s all variants on the same theme.
I don’t think people in remote tribes are into leather (maybe they don’t ever have leather!), but fantasies (particularly female fantasies) about domination and bondage and choking have been around for a very long time. It’s not that nobody was interested until the Internet was invented. (ChatGPT just told me more than I wanted to know about 17th-century Japanese bondage erotica.)
So while I think porn can shift sexual desires a bit (less secretary fantasy, more real-estate agent fantasy, etc.), I don’t think it creates whole categories out of nothing. To take your own example of choking, an extensive 2017 survey found that about 20-25% of women fantasize about “breath play” during sex. I bet that if there’s data from before the internet, those numbers won’t have changed that much. If you have data, I’d be interested in being proven wrong!
Thank you for your comment. I appreciate the chance to exchange ideas on this interesting topic. I think I understand your perspective, but I still have some questions to ask and information to add to this conversation. It makes sense that we see some common preferences like men fantasizing about other women but the different versions of this matter. You put secretaries and stepsisters in the same category, but they are very different. To test this, just tell different groups of people that you slept with your secretary or your sister. You’ll get very different reactions which show that those two are not the same at all. Same for robots vs secretaries. Although most people may struggle to explain why they have different reactions to these different scenarios…
The fact that the sexual practices mentioned here (domination, bondage, choking) have been documented in the past does not prove that they were popular, especially not that they were as popular as they are now. I can find evidence that, say, at some point, some people have practiced cannibalism or human sacrifice. But I would never use this argument to claim that such past accounts indicate anything about the prevalence of such habits in the past or the present. And while we can say that a significant degree of women like men who are dominant during sex, the term dominant can mean anything and different things for different people - it can be anything from a certain attitude to behaviors that qualify as abuse and torture and anything in between. While a preference for domination may be common in some women (based on the data I found in the past, it seems quite/very common, depending on source and the specific questions asked) the way this is practiced now can still be shaped by porn consumption.
Let’s say that the data you cite here would represent a baseline for how many women fantasized about “breath play” or strangulation during sex in 2017 which was 20-25% of women. Since this is just fantasy, we don’t know how many of those women engaged in that behavior. It could be more, it could be less. Either way, checking one study from 2025, we learn that among a group of young Australians (18-35 years old), 60% of women have been strangled in the past, with 34% of them during the last time they had sex. If we would take the percentage you cited as a baseline, how would you explain the fact that strangulation is now much more common than it was fantasized about just a few years ago? And it seems that porn is the most common source from which people discover strangulation during sex (conversations with friends and partners are a less common source). A higher percentage of men saw strangulation in porn than women (71% vs 25%). If strangulation has become much more common - as it would seem if we compare the numbers you cite and the ones I mentioned - what would explain this trend?
One more interesting data point is the fact that even Aella’s data shows an association between the age of first exposure to porn/erotica, frequency of porn consumption, consumption of violent pornography and a desire to be strangled during sex. I know, I know, “correlation does not imply causation”, but I don’t think we should ignore this possibility so easily. To be honest, I don’t even know how we could discover or test if porn is a causal factor here, but I don’t think it’s clear that it isn’t one either… Assuming we just want to find the truth about this, whatever that truth may be, what would be the best way to do that? Thank you for the conversation!
I recently wrote an article titled "How Unusual Are 'Unusual' Sexual Fantasies?" In it, I conducted a literature review, which included a reanalysis of Aella's Big Kink study. While the article didn't directly address whether the internet has reprogrammed sexual desire, I noticed that the survey numbers for BDSM and other extreme interests remained consistent over time, suggesting that the internet hasn't made people more perverted: https://thehumanconditionrevisited.substack.com/p/how-unusual-are-unusual-fantasies
That’s great. Your gorillas seem sad, though. You took the hardest end of the debate: Are you a full nativist, or concede that the environment can have major impacts on sexual desire, just it’s not clear the internet is uniquely powerful here? No significant cultural or historical variation?
What you've indicated is that you're not really talking with young adults about the influence of porn on their relationships. I think you're right that your friend's son is going to enjoy his first time in that primordial way. But that's not where to look for porn's influence. It's a year later when he's demanding that she barks or he can't finish.
Marriage and family counselors--to pick one group that's positioned to hear about this influence--would tell you that porn often emerges as a problematic force now. Divorce attorneys also.
Even premarital counselors, who are serving couples in their most romantic stage, often feel compelled now to raise the topic, to flag problematic cases for discussion.
And the influence is so ubiquitous at this point, the signal has shaped the noise, which means that empirical studies focused on individual differences aren't really capturing these systematic effects.
Intimacy has become shallow, driven by apps and the fear of loneliness. We use bodies rather than connect with people, leading to empty encounters.
We perform our lives online for validation, curating profiles to the point that we lose touch with our true selves. This performance is exhausting and ultimately unfulfilling.
Life, especially in micro cosmos, can be suffocating. People feel judged and unseen, leading to quiet despair and a feeling that personal unhappiness is their own fault.
Many people are too afraid of being hurt to express their true feelings, resulting in unspoken words, missed connections, and a deep-seated emotional fatigue.
Our political and social systems often feel like a show, offering the illusion of choice while discouraging real dissent. Justice becomes more of a slogan than a reality.
We look to AI to solve our problems, but without careful, ethical programming, it will only reflect and amplify human flaws like greed and bias.
True goodness isn't found in grand gestures, but in small, everyday decisions: being honest, listening, and continuing to try even when no one is watching.
If you believe that people's sexual preferences, fantasies, and behaviors have not been shaped by porn, then I'd love to hear your answers to these questions:
1. Imagine an alternative timeline for humanity in which the internet and porn are never created. Do you believe people would have the same preferences, fantasies, and behaviors?
2. Porn popularizes and normalizes certain acts, some that are dangerous, risky, or extreme, such as strangulation during sex or bondage. Do you believe that women in remote tribes have the same fantasy to dress up in a leather suit, to be tied down by a man, call him "daddy", and have him strangle her until she's about to faint? If preferences are innate and the internet does not change or create them, we should see the same percentage of women choosing this, right?
They’re both great questions, and I’ll answer them both at once.
I agree that the porn—including porn that preceded the internet, such as erotic novels—does play a small role in shifting sexual desire. My view on this is that people have a space of things (part universal, part idiosyncratic) that they find erotic, and porn works within that space, focusing on some alternatives over others. For instance, men have long fantasized about sex with attractive women who are around them. In erotic novels from the 1700s, the target of fantasy was often maids; twenty years ago, it was secretaries; now it’s stepsisters. In the future, I dunno, it’ll be hot robot repairwomen. But it’s all variants on the same theme.
I don’t think people in remote tribes are into leather (maybe they don’t ever have leather!), but fantasies (particularly female fantasies) about domination and bondage and choking have been around for a very long time. It’s not that nobody was interested until the Internet was invented. (ChatGPT just told me more than I wanted to know about 17th-century Japanese bondage erotica.)
So while I think porn can shift sexual desires a bit (less secretary fantasy, more real-estate agent fantasy, etc.), I don’t think it creates whole categories out of nothing. To take your own example of choking, an extensive 2017 survey found that about 20-25% of women fantasize about “breath play” during sex. I bet that if there’s data from before the internet, those numbers won’t have changed that much. If you have data, I’d be interested in being proven wrong!
Thank you for your comment. I appreciate the chance to exchange ideas on this interesting topic. I think I understand your perspective, but I still have some questions to ask and information to add to this conversation. It makes sense that we see some common preferences like men fantasizing about other women but the different versions of this matter. You put secretaries and stepsisters in the same category, but they are very different. To test this, just tell different groups of people that you slept with your secretary or your sister. You’ll get very different reactions which show that those two are not the same at all. Same for robots vs secretaries. Although most people may struggle to explain why they have different reactions to these different scenarios…
The fact that the sexual practices mentioned here (domination, bondage, choking) have been documented in the past does not prove that they were popular, especially not that they were as popular as they are now. I can find evidence that, say, at some point, some people have practiced cannibalism or human sacrifice. But I would never use this argument to claim that such past accounts indicate anything about the prevalence of such habits in the past or the present. And while we can say that a significant degree of women like men who are dominant during sex, the term dominant can mean anything and different things for different people - it can be anything from a certain attitude to behaviors that qualify as abuse and torture and anything in between. While a preference for domination may be common in some women (based on the data I found in the past, it seems quite/very common, depending on source and the specific questions asked) the way this is practiced now can still be shaped by porn consumption.
Let’s say that the data you cite here would represent a baseline for how many women fantasized about “breath play” or strangulation during sex in 2017 which was 20-25% of women. Since this is just fantasy, we don’t know how many of those women engaged in that behavior. It could be more, it could be less. Either way, checking one study from 2025, we learn that among a group of young Australians (18-35 years old), 60% of women have been strangled in the past, with 34% of them during the last time they had sex. If we would take the percentage you cited as a baseline, how would you explain the fact that strangulation is now much more common than it was fantasized about just a few years ago? And it seems that porn is the most common source from which people discover strangulation during sex (conversations with friends and partners are a less common source). A higher percentage of men saw strangulation in porn than women (71% vs 25%). If strangulation has become much more common - as it would seem if we compare the numbers you cite and the ones I mentioned - what would explain this trend?
One more interesting data point is the fact that even Aella’s data shows an association between the age of first exposure to porn/erotica, frequency of porn consumption, consumption of violent pornography and a desire to be strangled during sex. I know, I know, “correlation does not imply causation”, but I don’t think we should ignore this possibility so easily. To be honest, I don’t even know how we could discover or test if porn is a causal factor here, but I don’t think it’s clear that it isn’t one either… Assuming we just want to find the truth about this, whatever that truth may be, what would be the best way to do that? Thank you for the conversation!
The study I referenced here (one I was aware of before this exchange) can be found here: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-024-02937-y
I recently wrote an article titled "How Unusual Are 'Unusual' Sexual Fantasies?" In it, I conducted a literature review, which included a reanalysis of Aella's Big Kink study. While the article didn't directly address whether the internet has reprogrammed sexual desire, I noticed that the survey numbers for BDSM and other extreme interests remained consistent over time, suggesting that the internet hasn't made people more perverted: https://thehumanconditionrevisited.substack.com/p/how-unusual-are-unusual-fantasies
That’s great. Your gorillas seem sad, though. You took the hardest end of the debate: Are you a full nativist, or concede that the environment can have major impacts on sexual desire, just it’s not clear the internet is uniquely powerful here? No significant cultural or historical variation?
What you've indicated is that you're not really talking with young adults about the influence of porn on their relationships. I think you're right that your friend's son is going to enjoy his first time in that primordial way. But that's not where to look for porn's influence. It's a year later when he's demanding that she barks or he can't finish.
Marriage and family counselors--to pick one group that's positioned to hear about this influence--would tell you that porn often emerges as a problematic force now. Divorce attorneys also.
Even premarital counselors, who are serving couples in their most romantic stage, often feel compelled now to raise the topic, to flag problematic cases for discussion.
And the influence is so ubiquitous at this point, the signal has shaped the noise, which means that empirical studies focused on individual differences aren't really capturing these systematic effects.
Aella and ME.