# Internet and Porn **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [December 31, 2002, 6:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/internet-and-porn/145830 "2002-12-31T06:09:15Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![apotheosis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ba8739/32.png) [@apotheosis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/apotheosis)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2003, 4:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/internet-and-porn/145830/61 "2003-01-02T04:39:02Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Evil Captor \* > **His interest … video of women sneezing. Yes, we are talking a sneeze fetish. She didn’t say if it was sneezing whle in bondage or just sneezing, but it was definitely … sneezing.** That’s a new one on me, and I thought I’d heard of most of them. Still, I guess in at least one way it sorta makes sense; speaking as a man, if you’ve ever had a lady sneeze…umm, during the act…it results in a body-wide muscular contraction whose effects are nothing short of mind-boggling. Picture a blood-pressure cuff with the inflation characteristics of a driver’s-side airbag, pressed into service as a prophylactic. ---
**Author:** ![Netbrian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/71e660/32.png) [@Netbrian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Netbrian)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2003, 4:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/internet-and-porn/145830/62 "2003-01-02T04:47:24Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by NoClueBoy \* > \*\*I was gonna be mundane and ask for a cite. > > But, then I thought, “What \*is[i/] the primary use of the internet?” Because I vaugely remember reading something else, that business sites outnumbered porn sites by about the year 1999. And that the most popular single use of the internet was e-mail. > > But, no matter how I worded the search, I couldn’t come up with anything specific. I can usually find anything I think of asking, so I’m probably not thinking too clearly this morning. Understandable, considering the quantity of wine I consumed at that little party last night. (A friend dropped me off at home, I had walked the three blocks to the party.) > > But, I digress… > > Can anyone help me find the actual composition of the net and it most popular uses? 'Cause I’m stuck. Maybe I’ll ask in IMHO… > > As for the rest of the OP: I realize it was probably tongue-in-cheek, but if it wasn’t… Get mommy’s credit card and buy a membership into one of those sites that are spamming daily. And for God’s sake! Wash your hands! \*\* I’d like to mention, while ignoring entirely the creator of the thread, that the likely origin of the statistic was maybe 80% of the people on the internet use it for pornography, not necessairly the primary use? Even then, I’m not sure if that sounds at all realistic, but moreso than the earlier figure. ---
**Author:** ![Angel\_of\_the\_Lord](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/angel_of_the_lord/32/2949_2.png) [@Angel\_of\_the\_Lord](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Angel_of_the_Lord)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2003, 5:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/internet-and-porn/145830/63 "2003-01-02T17:46:26Z")
> [@](#): > > _Originally posted by EhhMon_ > **Would you choose to view a pic of a naked fat chick over a nude pic of Pamela Anderson or Jenny McCarthy…** Yes. ---
**Author:** ![ed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/c77e96/32.png) [@ed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ed)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2003, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/internet-and-porn/145830/64 "2003-01-02T22:36:56Z")
[piling on the hijack] I don’t have a cite, but having worked for both a [dot.com](http://dot.com) and a large scale institution’s internet division, I can say that the “common wisdom” is that porn was the only type of business that made any substantial money for a long time using the internet. In other words, a very large portion of the revenue going to the major ISP’s (thereby funding expansion) was generated by porn, so you could say that the early growth of the internet was funded by porn. Also, it was a pioneer in bandwidth necessity. Think about it: porn was the first high-demand, high-bandwidth application for the internet. Before webcams and VOIP and streaming and MP3’s and warez and whatnot, there were kids downloading hundreds of megs of porn JPG’s from a shell account. (Not me, nuh uh. Right.) This put demand on networks moreso than many other applications, which motivated ISP’s to expand their networks faster to accomodate. So it might not be statistically true, but it’s possible to view the massive expanse of the Internet throughout the past 20 years as being largely motivated and funded by porn. It’s a little sad, huh? I’d say that 80% now is too high; from experience I can say that gaming traffic, MP3’s, and streaming crap account for a _lot_ of bandwidth as well, and are usually the worst offenders on managed networks. But most people “in the business” don’t like to think about what might happen if porn were stripped from the internet entirely, and not just because more of us would be bored after work. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/internet-and-porn/145830.md?page=3)