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In less than a decade, millions of Americans went from (1) not knowing what the Internet was, to (2) knowing what is was but not using it, to (3) having an e-mail address, to (4) using e-mail pretty much every day, to (5) being unable to exist professionally or socially without it. For 98 percent of the world, the speed and sweep of that evolution was too great to fathom. Consequently, we learned how to use tools most of us don’t understand. This has always been the case with technology, but not quite to this extent. I mean, I drive a car that I can’t fix and that I could certainly never build, but I still understand how it works in a way that goes (slightly) beyond the theoretical. I could explain how a car works to a ten-year-old. Conversely, I don’t understand anything about the construction of the Internet, beyond those conventional Newsweek factoids that everyone knows (and which still seem borderline impossible). I have no practical knowledge of the “information superhighway.”[43] And I’m not interested in how it works; I just want to feel like I vaguely grasp its potential and vaguely understand how to use that potential to my advantage.

This is why amateur pornography became so integral to the adoption of Internet technology: It not only made people excited about using the Web (because sex is prurient and arousing), but it also made people comfortable with using the Web (because it’s organic and unsophisticated). Sex is so undeniably visceral that anyone can relate to it, assuming what they’re seeing does not appear to be an untouchable, unworldly fantasy. Imperfect, unpaid nudity tightened the parameters of the virtual world; it’s proof that this futuristic electronic network is still operated by humankind. This is not a pixeled construction of some Never Neverland character from Tron; this is some girl you saw at Pizza Hut. Amateur pornography grounds us in our reality.

Of course, it should go without saying that our reality is profoundly fucked-up. Twenty minutes on the Internet cum trade is all it takes to realize that the sexual peccadilloes of modern people are clichéd, sad, incomprehensible, and/or a combination of all three. If you are to take “real” porn at face value, you would be forced to conclude that women rarely have pubic hair, except for those who are advertising as having more pubic hair than normal. There seems to be an unabated demand for naked teenage girls, although there also seems to be a tacit understanding that any moderately small-breasted thirty-one-year-old woman can pass for a teenager if she has pigtails and a lollipop. There is an inordinate amount of bandwidth focused on girls urinating on themselves and/or licking their own nipples (is this fun?), and there’s a big demand for interracial sex, first-time anal sex, public flashing, and the ham-fisted implication of incest. What’s most disturbing is the amount of Internet porn that has absolutely nothing to do with sexual desire and everything to do with cartoonish misogyny, most notably the endless sites showing men ejaculating on women’s faces while the recipients pretend to enjoy it; this has about as much to do with sex as hitting someone in the face with a frying pan.

And—of course—there is also a pocket of men who masturbate to images of women getting hit in the face with frying pans. I guess there’s no accounting for taste. But there’s really no purpose in complaining about pornography, either. Yes, it’s socially negative; no, it’s not nearly as negative as Ted Bundy claimed before his execution. The tangible effect of pornography is roughly the same as the tangible effect of Ozzy Osbourne’s music on stoned Midwestern teenagers: It prompts a small faction of idiots to consider idiotic impulses, which is why we have the word idiocy. Arguing about the psychological merits (or lack thereof) of watching intercourse on a Presario 700Z doesn’t interest me. What interests me is how that habit changes the way people think about their own existence—and that brings me back to that second type of image porn surfers want to see: naked celebrities.

You’d think naked Hollywood actresses and naked West Virginia hairdressers would exist on opposite poles, but they’re closer than you think. They’re closer because—in a technical, physiological sense—they’re identical. There are certainly differences between the nipples of Alyssa Milano and the nipples of an Olive Garden waitress in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, but the similarities of those nipples greatly outweigh the disparities. Here again, Internet pornography provides a bizarre sense of stability; it reminds us that we’re working in a hard reality; naked from the neck down, your wife and Gwen Stefani have a lot in common. What people want to see with nude celebrities is proof that these superstars are not gods. Web surfers are robbing celebrities of their privacy and—in effect—stealing back power. Psychologically, the Internet is very Marxist: Everyone with a modem has access to the same information, so we all get jammed into a technological middle class. You don’t need to be Lenny Kravitz to know what Lisa Bonet looks like when she steps out of the shower. You don’t even need to wear hemp pants. All you need is a modem and a phone jack.

Now, is aspiring to be as sexually informed as Lenny Kravitz a sad commentary on modern ambition? Perhaps.[44] But that’s not the issue. The issue is that something that’s probably bad (i.e., porn) is helping us achieve something that’s probably good (i.e., delivering a technological notion to the common man).

Yet one question remains:

Why don’t women need this?

If this theory is all true, why are 99 percent of porn sites directed toward heterosexual men? Wouldn’t this imply that females can’t fathom the difference between the real and the virtual, even though they all obviously do? Why can women comprehend the power of the Internet without masturbating to JPEG images of dehumanizing sex acts? And why would no intelligent woman ever feel the need to rationalize her own weakness by arguing that her perversion actually expands her mind?

I can only assume it has something to do with licking your own nipples.

(“kitty cat as terrorist” interlude)

I’m pretty careful when it comes to my socks. Certain philosophers (Emilio Estevez in St. Elmo’s Fire, for example) have speculated as to why socks so often get lost whenever people do laundry, but—until recently—that had never happened to me. In the span of fourteen years, I never lost a single sock. But then I lost a sock in October of 2001. And then I lost another two weeks later, and then a third around Thanksgiving. And it slowly dawned on me that something was afoot. “What in the name of Andrew W.K. is going on?” I asked aloud while sorting my freshly cleaned garments. Why were my socks suddenly disappearing like Chinese panda bears? What had changed?

The answer: Mr. Smokey.

It occurred to me that the only aspect of my laundering that had changed in recent weeks was my newfound affinity for petting a feline of unknown origin. Accessing the public laundry room in my apartment complex required that I briefly walk outside of my building’s back door, where I consistently encountered a large gray cat I liked to call “Mr. Smokey.” Despite our initial differences, I struck up an amicable relationship with Mr. Smokey; whenever I saw him, I would scratch his kitty ears and his kitty tummy, much to his kitty delight.

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4. Are people (besides Al Gore) still using this term? Probably not.

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5. Well, actually, “yes.”