Inspired by this thread on the potential effects of kids viewing internet porn, it made me start thinking about my own experiences with porn, and more specifically internet porn.
When I was about 14 or 15, the internet finally became affordable and practical in NZ- ie, a 56K Dial-up connection didn’t cost $100 a month- and after the inital novelty of playing games online and chatting to people had worn off, I started looking pictures of nekkid women, on the theory that it had to be easier than going through the whole “Pretending to be 18 even though everyone knows you aren’t” thing with the Singh family at the local dairy in order to buy a Penthouse magazine.
Anyhoo, it turned out that yes, there were indeed pictures of naked women on the internet (Giggity Giggity Giggity!, to quote the yet-to-be-created Glenn Quagmire :D)
Most of them were pretty tame- nude poses, and not really any more unconventional than anything available in magazines available at the corner store.
Naturally, swapping 3.5" disks with naughty pics on them was quite a popular pastime amongst the computer owners at high school. 
I finally got some bootleg VHS cassettes a year or so later, and while they were a step up from naked pictures, they weren’t anything “unusual”- just attractive people screwing. Nothing especially nasty, just fairly straightforward action (with the usual girl/girl, threeway, and orgy scenes you find in porn films, of course)
But lately, I’ve noticed that porn seems to have gotten quite a bit… nastier, for want of a better word. Especially Internet Porn.
Where the net’s always had a reputation for having Albino Lesbian Midget Clown Goat Porn and so on, it’s been the sort of thing you really had to look for- it wasn’t there for all and sundry to see.
Nowadays though, it seems a look at most porn sites- especially those with content from Russia- reveals some rather unorthodox and nasty porn, involving things like the women being described as “bitches” and “sluts” who are being tied up and having baseball bats shoved up their ass as “punishment” for some reason or another, or women being make to perform fellatio until they choke, or screw some guy old enough to be their grandfather- amongst other things.
The thing is, it’s obvious that the women involved aren’t enjoying it- and not just in a “tuning out” way that everyone does at work, but they’re obviously just waiting for the shoot to be over so they can get their fistful of roubles and maybe buy something to eat (or another bottle of vodka or whatever).
And I’ll say it’s had the very interesting effect of convincing me to return to DVD porn, with better production values, better sex scenes (in general), and the knowledge that, by and large, the people involved are doing it because they want to. (Sure, there’s always exceptions, but I’m talking about the sort of stuff you can buy from any semi-reputable Adult Shop here).
In general, I’m seeing a lowering in quality of 'net porn, and IMO, it’s becoming a lot more misogynistic and, dare I say it, degrading.
Sure, porn’s never exactly been a bastion of equal treatment of all (“It exploits men by exploiting women, hence it exploits… people!”, as Ron Jeremy said in Orgazmo), but I’ve noticed that whereas the stuff you got on the net used to be (more or less) the same sort of stuff you got in videos and magazines, it seems nowadys net porn is a lot nastier, and not really the sort of thing you’d want impressionable people getting exposed to without the necessary background “talks” first.
It just seems easier to find the nasty stuff these days, too. Time was, looking for anything really unusual required a dedicated effort on the searchee’s part. Nowadays, someone just has to type a keyword into a search engine and they’ll get umpteen million results for all sorts of things ranging from the tame to the “My eyes! the goggles, they do nothing!” level of Naughty Pictures. I’m not convinced that’s a good thing- certainly, sex needs to be discussed openly without hangups IMO, but a 12yo probably doesn’t need to know that it can also involve midgets, goats, and dominatrixes- at least not until they’re old enough to realise that porn isn’t reality and that a healthy human sexual relationship doesn’t need to involve Lara Croft, Japanese Tentacle Monsters, and an Alsatian…
Anyway, anyone else out there noticed this trend? Thoughts?
) evidence, just a general feeling (hah! again 
