Porn Beats Search Engines in Internet Traffic

zamboni1138 writes "A just published Reuters story claims almost 20% of all U.S. web traffic is categorized as 'adult'. While some of it is just of an adult nature, most of it is probably porn. Search engines get about 5.5%, Google being about half of that. This should surprise no one given the bandwidth intensive nature of online porn. Of course this is only the research of one company over a one week period. Is this one of the reasons why the US DOJ recently announced it is going to be taking a closer look at the porn industry?"

Comments

Endlessly opening windows

[SilentChris]

I'm sure it has nothing to do with the fact that everytime a porn site is visited (even accidentally) it opens 20-some-odd popup windows...

Catharsis theory isn't true

[autopr0n]

Actually, if you could really stop all porn, people's sex drives would simply go down. You wouldn't have people out raping anyone. Really all you'd end up with is a bunch of bored masturbators fantasizing about a hot chick they saw at the mall or something.

Of course, while spankin' it will reduce the desire to have sex immediately afterwards, porn just makes it more fun. If you watched less porn, you'd think about sex less.

The same is true of violence and violent media. Watch violent media, and you're more likely to be aggressive. If you do something like punch a pillow or whatnot when you're pissed off, you'll just get more pissed off (but maybe fell a little better).

Some studies have been done on porn and rape, and according to the findings men who looked at violent pornography did change their attitudes towards rape (more likely to say they'd do if they knew they would get away with it, more likely to say it wasn't that bad) after watching tons of porn. But a lot of the "affects of porn" research is done with violent pornography, while the vast majority of porn out there is "normal" stuff, you know naked women hopefully making out with each other. It's totally obvious that "violent" porn would make people have "violent" sexual fantasies, but most people aren't interested in that sort of thing anyway.

Ultimately, each individual is responsible for their own actions, and trying to control speech, and artistic expression in order to keep "bad thoughts" out of peoples heads might work somewhat, but that doesn't mean it will prevent "bad actions". And a censored world like that isn't one I'd want to live in.