The internet is for porn

Much is said about internet and porn these days. Actually, much is always said about internet and porn, both individually and in various combinations of the two. It's in the nature of things: the internet is by its nature feminine (why else would so many young men swarm so longingly around it?), and porn - well, that goes without saying.

All too often, discussions about porn tend to get caught up in the negative connotations associated with the word. All it takes is for one (or two) persons to storm into the conversation, and suddenly it's all about decency and dignity and cultural qualities and other such what have yous - anything that diverts from the subject matter of sexually active images and pictures.

This is, of course, not the most optimal way to go about talking about it. It's not even that interesting, after the nth variation on theme. It's way more interesting to look at it it through the lens of history - in particular if we combine the porn with the internet and get internet porn. Did you, for example, know that porn sites had figured out how to monetize online content years and years before more conservative businesses started to wrap their heads around how to pronounce "www."?

If you want to insist on being a puritan about it, do consider that the systems you use to pay for things online more often than not were developed by entrepreneurial porn distributors.

All too often, discussions about startups, market creation and market innovation tends to ignore such embarrassing details. It ain't kosher, and moreover it's a drag when one wants to project an image of serious business. One would much rather retouch this aspect of one's ethos.

The thing - the inescapable thing - is of course that this isn't specific to the internet. It goes for any and all new media. First someone invents it, and the very next thing that happens it that someone uses it to make porn. And a short moment later, the wheels of porn monetization are rolling.

About ten years later, the notion that maybe the porn distributors shouldn't be given a monopoly on this here new media thingy slowly starts to take root. Kind of like the notion of trickle-down economics, only in reverse: when the unmentionable dregs of society invents something profitable, it slowly emerges as a benefit to society as a whole over time.

Eventually. When the news that the media is not the message has done its eternal recurrence. Again.

Originally published June 17, 2011