No Mercy / No Malice
Porn
Pornography is the McDonald’s of sex — fast, convenient, and utterly divorced from nutrition. — Anonymous
I was at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona earlier this month. A young man, married with two kids, who founded a tech firm, approached me and asked if I’d mentor him.
“Boss, you should mentor me. I mentor young men who are struggling, and you are clearly thriving,” I told him.
“I have an addiction,” he said.
“What’s the addiction?”
“Porn.”
As soon as the words left his mouth, I sensed shame — within 15 seconds he couldn’t look me in the eye, and within 60 seconds he’d fled.
All addictions are wrapped in some shame, but not in equal amounts. Tell someone you’re sober from pills or booze, and you’ll get praise and admiration. The same is not true for people with a porn addiction. In the past six months a half-dozen men have told me their drug of choice is porn. I suspect they aren’t outliers, but canaries sounding an alarm from the most opaque sector of the addiction economy.
Research Wanted
At the turn of the millennium, there were no social media platforms, there wasn’t enough bandwidth to run video, and Amazon was a bookstore. But online porn dates back to 1995. By 2004 online porn was so ubiquitous that Avenue Q won six Tony Awards, including Best Musical, with a song called — wait for it — “The Internet Is for Porn.” Nobody doubted that claim then, and nobody doubts it now. But how much of today’s internet is porn? A: We’re not sure. Some estimates put porn-related traffic as high as one-third of all internet traffic. Pornhub, the leading distributor of free, ad-supported porn, ranks in the top 20 websites globally; 10 of its competitors rank in the top 100.
Sizing a Market
Porn addiction isn’t listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. But in a study of 2,000 American adults, 11% of men and 3% of women reported some agreement with the statement “I am addicted to pornography.” Fewer people than report alcohol abuse, but more than admit to a problem with gaming or gambling. On my podcast, Dr. Anna Lembke, a professor of psychiatry at Stanford and the author of Dopamine Nation, said that, beginning in the early 2000s, she saw warning signs in male patients who self-described as “porn addicts,” and cited the internet as the culprit. Since then there’s been an escalation in people presenting with digital addictions. Porn addiction may be difficult to isolate within the broader and more diffuse internet addiction, but compared to other internet-enabled compulsions, there’s relatively little peer-reviewed research. My thesis: Few academics want to be known as The Porn Professor (see above: shame).
Arbitrage
Humans came off the savanna hard-wired for addiction. The dopamine rush a hunter felt when taking down a mammoth is neurologically the same feeling a gambler gets when betting. Our instinct to gorge whenever we see food was honed during millenia of scarcity, and it’s that same instinct the food industrial complex leverages to keep people eating long past the point of being satiated. Ours is an addiction economy: The most valuable companies arbitrage the disparity between our instincts and industrial production.
Mrs. Dopa
On the internet, everyone has access to everyone, and the digitization of a market results in a winner-take-most ecosystem. Dating apps sort potential partners into a small group of haves and a titanic group of have-nots. On Hinge, the top 10% of men receive 60% of the “likes” — the comparable figure for women is 45%. Online porn exploits the lack of mating opportunities for men. The most recent figures for Aylo, the company behind Pornhub, Brazzers, Redtube, Youporn, and Xtube, showed 2018 revenue of $460 million, with a profit margin of 50%.
Meanwhile, OnlyFans generated $6.6 billion in revenue in 2023. The firm has more than 300 million registered accounts, of which 70% are male. On the other end of that internet connection are 4.1 million creators, 84% of them women. While OnlyFans is known for its subscription model, one-off transactions are driving 88% of the revenue growth. These “tips” are an arbitrage on the disparity between the biological impulse to mate and the lack of mating opportunities; there are fewer economically and emotionally viable men, and too few venues where a man can develop the skills to express romantic interest while making a woman feel safe. Pro tip: Research shows women are attracted to men who signal three primary attributes: resources, intellect, and kindness.
OnlyFans
In the VHS and DVD eras, porn consumption was a wealth transfer from men to the adult entertainment industry and mom & pop video store owners. In the OnlyFans era, it’s a wealth transfer from hundreds of millions of men to a handful of platforms and tens of thousands of women. During its peak growth, OnlyFans was adding the population of Atlanta to its registered user base every day.
The average OnlyFans creator grosses roughly $1,800 annually; one analysis found that creators in the top 0.1% collect 100x what those in the top 10% bring in. One OnlyFans earner grossed $43 million in a single year. A common query I receive at speaking gigs is who is most vulnerable to AI? Easy — OnlyFans is ground zero for disruption from AI bots. This is not a good thing, as there will be less friction to becoming less social, less mammalian.
Men Behaving Badly
We are what we pay attention to. More research is needed (see above), but one study found that porn consumption explained 9% of the variation in men’s sexual objectification of women. Among men who prefer degrading pornography, the variance increased to 20%. A longitudinal survey of 962 Dutch adolescents found exposure to porn among males was a strong predictor of objectifying attitudes toward females.
Homo Solo
We pathologize males attracted to misogynistic communities as incels, potential mass shooters, and sex criminals, but these men are statistical outliers. However, we may be evolving a new species of asocial, asexual male: Homo solo. Homo solo’s inability to develop romantic skills means he’s primarily a danger to himself, as he’s likely to be less happy, earn less money, and die sooner. Homo solo’s AI girlfriend never says no, is never tired, busy, or in a bad mood. In other words, she’s not human, and that obviates the risk of rejection and the other complexities of real-life relationships.
The skills developed, or not, in the pursuit of organic love are key skills that serve men well in a variety of environments for the rest of their lives. We’ve been taught to believe that the menace to society was the fraternity alpha male. It isn’t. Society is being subjected to the sociopathy of a bunch of tech CEOs who, in my view, did not get laid enough as young men.
Most leaders, however, honed skills from mating that have been key to their success. Show me a guy who is competent in a bar, and I’ll show you someone who can be reasonable in a boardroom. Show me a guy who objectifies women, building an app that pits women against one another, based solely on their physical attributes, and I’ll show you Mark Zuckerberg, and an app whose algorithms encourage girls to sexualize themselves and young people to generally feel shittier about themselves.
Fire
Sexual desire is fire. Without this fire, our species goes out of business. Unfortunately, we’ve built a fire-retardant generation. Zoomers prefer staying home and scrolling to going out, and when they do venture out they’re less likely to visit a bar, reducing the chances they’ll make a series of bad decisions that might pay off. BTW, I believe the anti-alcohol movement is second only to remote work in the damage it’s doing to young people. The risk to a 25-year-old liver is dwarfed by the social isolation and loneliness epidemic plaguing America’s youth. Think of the most important things in your life: who you decided to have kids with and the friends you still count on. Then ask, did alcohol lubricate the often awkward formation and cementing of those bonds?
Despite the risk to our one and only god, shareholder value, one-third of workers say they’ve had a workplace romance. This is verboten, but it shouldn’t be — work is a great place to find a mate. The rules don’t apply, however, if you’re the founder of a tech firm. (See above: men who didn’t get laid in college.) The culture wars are another fire retardant. Richard Reeves, the president of the American Institute for Boys and Men, recently told Vox that men know what not to do on a date — “don’t mansplain, don’t be toxic, don’t be a predator … don’t be a creep” — but they’re clueless about what to do on a date. We’ve pathologized the pursuit of sex (i.e., dating) and made porn the path of exponentially less resistance.
In news that won’t surprise anyone, dampening the fire that fuels casual sex and dating has coincided with the U.S. birth rate hitting an all-time low; global birth rates are also plummeting. According to Pew, 63% of men under 30 are single, compared with 34% of women (i.e., the women are dating older guys). More than half of single Americans say they’re not currently looking for a relationship or casual dates. Another study found the percentage of sexually inactive men ages 18 to 24 increased from 19% in 2002 to 31% in 2018; the percentage of sexually inactive young women increased from 15% to 19% over the same period.
2.27
I graduated (barely) from UCLA with a 2.27 GPA. I did, however, go on campus almost every day. Specifically, I left my fraternity to venture on campus as UCLA in the eighties was like a Cinemax film set in Brentwood. I would hang at North Campus with friends and, to be blunt, hope to meet someone I might (note: “might” is doing a lot of work) have sex and establish a relationship with. If I’d had on-demand porn on my phone and computer, I’m not sure I would have graduated, as I would have lost some of the incentive to venture on campus. I just read the previous sentence, and it sounds crass and shallow — but it’s also accurate. And that’s the rub, so to speak. Porn can reduce your ambition to take risks, become a better person, and build a better life. The best thing in my life is raising two men with a competent, loving partner. The catalyst for me risking humiliation, approaching her at the Raleigh Hotel pool, and introducing myself wasn’t a desire to someday qualify for lower car insurance rates, but the desire / hope to have sex. BTW, our oldest son’s middle name is Raleigh, and I’m taking him on a college tour next week.
Getting to No
The key to success isn’t getting an investor, employer, or woman to say yes, it’s putting yourself in situations where you take risks, get a no … and realize you’re fine, i.e., build resilience. And while it’s great that social norms have helped more women feel comfortable asking men out, the default setting, the expectation continues to be that men make the first move. Among Zoomers, one study found men paid for all or most of a couples’ dates 90% of the time. On first dates, 80% of men expect to pay, and 55% of women expect him to pay. I’ve told my boys that whenever they are in the company of women, they pay. (Can’t wait for the shit on that one.)
Moderate
I coach a number of young men. It’s unrealistic to tell them to abstain from porn. And there is evidence that porn consumption is fine in moderation. The problem is losing the fire, the sexual desire that inspires you to be a better man: to have a plan for economic viability; to be fit; to demonstrate kindness, intelligence, and a willingness to take risks; to build resilience and develop the ability to express romantic interest while making someone feel safe.
The Enemy
We have companies with infinite resources and command of godlike technology all attempting to convince young men they can have a reasonable facsimile of life on a screen with an algorithm. The most frightening data I’ve seen recently is that 51% of men aged 18 to 24 have never asked a woman out in person. I find this so fucking depressing.
Romantic comedies are two hours, not 15 minutes, for a reason. Relationships and mating are hard … and worth it. We need more venues (national service, third places, freshman seats, the office) where young people can meet. And men need to recognize there’s a profit motive in dampening the flames of desire and motivation to become better men. In sum, as I said on Bill Maher’s show: Young men need to get out of the house, take risks, and demonstrate excellence so they can make their own bad porn.
Life is so rich,
P.S. This week on the Prof G pod, I spoke with Dr. Fiona Hill, a senior fellow at Brookings, chancellor of Durham University, and a former U.S. National Security Council official specializing in Russian and European affairs about the war in Ukraine, the future of U.S.-Russia relations, and the broader geopolitical effects of the conflict. Listen here on Apple, Spotify, or YouTube.
