Once an adult content honeypot, Tumblr has cleaned up its act - to the dismay of many observers. How exhilarating it was to log on to the information superhighway as it was idealistically called at first, a quarter century ago.
The name of the browser that popularized the new libertarian highway, Mosaic, reflected the variety of content it served up. Plus, the first oddly offbeat porn sites, including Wasteland and GameLink surfaced untrammeled. In prim, politically correct style, the only remaining content with any remotely sensual vibe that merits toleration is that which is seen as valuable to the cause of social justice. When someone views porn, their brain only resembles that of a person afflicted by a recognized addiction up to a point.
Then divergence arises. By contrast, with porn, the magnitude of response is far more limited. The evidence suggests that porn addiction is not a genuine phenomenon; nor does it appear to fuel sexual assault. Porn has become widely available in large part due to the internet, but rape rates have dipped sharply, just as violence has dropped despite violent video games being more available than ever.
In fact, in another mighty irony, it may even deter sexual violence. Amusingly, in , it emerged that University of Montreal scientists who embarked on a quest for men who had never seen porn failed to find a single abstainer. The Canadian researchers had planned to contrast the outlook of men in their 20s who had never seen porno with that of routine consumers. His findings raise the question of how, if a case existed for doing so, porn could be stopped when its viewership is so widespread.
Stopping it would be a tremendous waste of resources for law enforcement officers who may feel that their time could be better used catching thieves rather than hunting down habitual porn viewers. Despite the strong case for letting porn be , censorship is rife and surprisingly stringent.
