Part one of C'Lick Me: A Netporn Studies Reader — an anthology devoted to the phenomenon of internet pornography, published by the prolific Institute of Network Culture in the Netherlands — bears the ironic title “The Rise of the Netporn Society”, an obvious reference to the classic title by Manuel Castells, The Rise of the Network Society, which deals with the fundamentals of thinking about our society as a network. Let’s consider this joke seriously for a moment and think about what online porn tells us about new culture. While Polish internet users may have felt offended by Jarosław Kaczyński’s remark about them allegedly “sitting in front of their computers, sipping beer and looking at porn”, there’s no denying the fact that there is plenty of porn on the internet. A recently published study conducted by Zbigniew Izdebski shows that out of 10 thousand surveyed internet users, 96% of men and 78% of women had used the web to search for pornography. That’s a lot, to put it mildly.
Keep in mind that although the internet, with its relatively greater degree of anonymity, is particularly conducive to activity of this variety, it is by no means unique in doing so. The popularity of nearly every medium has hinged on three factors: political propaganda, religious propaganda (in the case of the internet, that faith is primarily Scientism), and sex. The latter two were not always as distant as one would believe, as illustrated by the history of cinema: among the pioneers of erotic film was Albert Kirchner, who — just a few months after the Lumière brothers’ famous demonstration — offered his viewers a type of attraction that had little to do with a train arriving at a station. Yet he has gone down in the history of film not as a pornographer, but as the author of the first film about Christ (Passion du Christ, 1897). The content of Enthusiasts, a series of amateur, communist-era Polish films presented a few years ago at the Centre for Contemporary Art in Warsaw, was just as surprising as it was predictable. As it turns out, the same filmmakers who shot marches, speeches, and other official events would often use the same cameras to film sex scenes.
Internet porn is a delicate subject, but let’s try to examine it from an “outside the box” perspective. The filtering of erotic content, for example, is often treated as an assault on the personal liberties of internet users. The web is a place where every marginalised minority is given a chance to have their voice heard. The ties between pornography and liberty affect more than just people’s sexual liberties, as the obscene content filters usually end up flagging sites that have nothing to do with porn. This can be an unintentional side-effect, but it can also be completely premeditated, as is probably the case with the so-called “Great Firewall of China”.
The topic of online porn can also be a springboard to discussions of how the internet preserves and materialises that which was elusive and imperceptible in activities unmediated by the internet. This is illustrated by an interesting story from Florida, where state law recognises content as obscene if it violates community standards. In 2008 the defence lawyers of a company accused of disseminating obscene content online attempted to take advantage of this law using Google search data. By demonstrating the scale of porn-related activities among Florida internet users, the statistic were expected to prove that pornography did not in fact offend their sensibilities. This case may be regarded as an example of the struggle against hypocrisy, but it can also symbolise the “Googlification” of yet another part of our lives. Can our ethical standards really be measured by Google Trends plots?
For those who do look at it, porn is an area in which the key trends of culture 2.0 can be plainly seen. Amateur productions: check. Individuals competing with commercial productions: check. Blurring the boundaries between public and private: yet again, check.
What’s also important is the fact that the adult content industry is a crucial part of the media sector, and has been at the forefront of technological innovation for years. It is in this aspect that porn resembles piracy: if we set aside ethical issues, it turns out that adult entertainment companies are based on solid business models and make highly effective use of new technology. The porn industry has always been an early adopter of media. It is even said to have been responsible for the success of VHS tapes, cable TV, and the DVD format. In the online world, the porn industry spurred the development of streaming video (long before the days of YouTube), electronic payment systems, copy protection, and effective payment and subscription models. You could say that commercial Web 2.0 sites, a key part of today’s internet culture, are largely run on technology pioneered by the pornographic industry. Just as it does with piracy, this observation forces us to consider all the pros and cons.
The widespread interest in internet porn shows us that contrary to what many theoreticians predicted up to little over a decade ago, we remain flesh and blood humans even when we go online. It’s also proof that in the online world, we’re driven by our emotional sides as well as our rational sides; there is a physical underpinning to our activities in the digital world. In his book Animal Spirits. A Bestiary of Commons, author Matteo Pasquinelli draws some interesting conclusions from these seemingly banal observations. He provocatively questions the concept of the internet as a commons. The titular “animal spirits” (a phrase borrowed from Keynes, whose theories have seen a resurgence of popularity in the wake of the financial crisis) are the passions that drive us — the good as well as the bad. They make it difficult for us to act rationally for the good of the community, and — in the case of their most direct manifestation, pornography — may serve as a means of exploiting other internet users.
But unlike Pasquinelli, not all authors inspired by the Italian Marxist tradition have such a pessimistic outlook on the internet. Antonio Negri, a writer frequently cited by Pasquinelli, sees the internet as a powerful means of emancipation, suggesting that his contemporaries follow the example of St. Francis of Assisi. If late capitalism appeals to our emotions in its attempts to assume control over us, then we ought to reach inside ourselves and fight the “poverty of power” with the “joy of being”. After all, sex is also about joy and love. Even hugs sent via emoticons can be XXX.
translated by Arthur Barys
