Broadly this is because of professionalization: a shift from amateur, Youtube-style porn to professional studios with an interest in the bottom line.
I don’t think content becoming more and more extreme has anything to do with them trying to maximize money, I believe the shift to more and more extreme content is because people need more stimulation to be satisfied. (Seeing a video of a guy giving away $10K at first might stimulate you enough to watch, but after a while seeing a video like that is no longer stimulating enough so you need to watch a video of a guy giving away $100K to feel stimulated enough to watch).
I’d imagine that porn videos will continue on this trajectory and get more and more extreme, like everything else in life as extreme=more stimulation and with the more and more stimulation we receive the more stimulation we require the next time.
As sadly, our brain constantly needs more and more stimulation to be happy (hedonic treadmill)
You’re correctly describing the underlying experience for a certain cohort of porn viewing individual. The mechanism through which it takes place at scale is what I’m interested in: high-spending, high-engagement consumers go through the process you describe and production companies, which rely on their spending, tailor their content accordingly. Assuming “we” and “our” here is wrong IMO—I don’t think this is a universal principle of porn viewers, it’s just that those viewers shift the market in their direction.
I’m probably wrong, but are you saying that the minority of users that want extreme content spend more money than the majority of users which than forces everyone else to watch extreme content?
I agree with that to an extent, but still believe that on average the majority of viewers over time crave more extreme content due to novelty purposes.
Point B: The data here demonstrates that porn has gotten more extreme in a quantifiable way. I would hesitate to ascribe a high degree of “agency” or “intentionality” to the trends. It seems to me you are reasoning backwards: porn has gotten more extreme, so that’s what people wanted. In the aggregate you are correct but my point is that market participants drive the market, and most porn viewers are not in fact market participants (or they are in a peripheral way).
I agree embedding the titles into a LLM’s latent space is a sound technique, and that it lets you measure shifts in title content in an objective way, but your conclusion that it’s becoming “extreme” seems like editorializing. In particular, you lumping in fauxcest with rape and torture as “sexual violence” strikes me as, … well, I’d say bizarre, but at the very least, subjective.
You could just as well conclude that a shift from “lonely housewife fucks handyman/delivery boy” to “help me, stepbro, I’m stuck in the washing machine” signifies a trend towards lighthearted whimsy.
Hi Shankar, I will concede it is editorializing: these are my conclusions based on the data. As to whether or not it is bizarre, I will repost my response to Tao Lin:
“”Incest is not a subcategory of sexual violence” is something of a loaded statement. Many “stepsister” videos highlight a certain kind of appearance and context: young, with a backpack, possibly braces, possibly in a setting in which they are still under the authority of a supervising adult (“mom and dad” etc). The implication, left unsaid, is that they are under the age of consent, which qualifies as statutory rape in America. IMO it’s sufficient justification to include it in the same category.”
You’re right that there are other, concurrent trends in tone and quality to measure. “Lighthearted whimsy”, which I might call more along the lines of “surreal”, is not necessarily in contradiction with violence.
I read the longer article you linked at the end. Never mind, I hadn’t realized this work is meant to make your case that “it’s time to put some brakes on the porn business.” Reposting my own comment about policy papers in a different context (bioterrorism from open AI[1]):
a “policy paper” is essentially a longer, LaTeXed version of a protest sign, intended to be something sympathetic congressmen can wave around while bloviating about “trusting the Science!” It’s not meant to be true.
I don’t think content becoming more and more extreme has anything to do with them trying to maximize money, I believe the shift to more and more extreme content is because people need more stimulation to be satisfied. (Seeing a video of a guy giving away $10K at first might stimulate you enough to watch, but after a while seeing a video like that is no longer stimulating enough so you need to watch a video of a guy giving away $100K to feel stimulated enough to watch).
I’d imagine that porn videos will continue on this trajectory and get more and more extreme, like everything else in life as extreme=more stimulation and with the more and more stimulation we receive the more stimulation we require the next time.
As sadly, our brain constantly needs more and more stimulation to be happy (hedonic treadmill)
You’re correctly describing the underlying experience for a certain cohort of porn viewing individual. The mechanism through which it takes place at scale is what I’m interested in: high-spending, high-engagement consumers go through the process you describe and production companies, which rely on their spending, tailor their content accordingly. Assuming “we” and “our” here is wrong IMO—I don’t think this is a universal principle of porn viewers, it’s just that those viewers shift the market in their direction.
I’m probably wrong, but are you saying that the minority of users that want extreme content spend more money than the majority of users which than forces everyone else to watch extreme content?
I agree with that to an extent, but still believe that on average the majority of viewers over time crave more extreme content due to novelty purposes.
Point A: Yes.
Point B: The data here demonstrates that porn has gotten more extreme in a quantifiable way. I would hesitate to ascribe a high degree of “agency” or “intentionality” to the trends. It seems to me you are reasoning backwards: porn has gotten more extreme, so that’s what people wanted. In the aggregate you are correct but my point is that market participants drive the market, and most porn viewers are not in fact market participants (or they are in a peripheral way).
I agree embedding the titles into a LLM’s latent space is a sound technique, and that it lets you measure shifts in title content in an objective way, but your conclusion that it’s becoming “extreme” seems like editorializing. In particular, you lumping in fauxcest with rape and torture as “sexual violence” strikes me as, … well, I’d say bizarre, but at the very least, subjective.
You could just as well conclude that a shift from “lonely housewife fucks handyman/delivery boy” to “help me, stepbro, I’m stuck in the washing machine” signifies a trend towards lighthearted whimsy.
Hi Shankar, I will concede it is editorializing: these are my conclusions based on the data. As to whether or not it is bizarre, I will repost my response to Tao Lin:
“”Incest is not a subcategory of sexual violence” is something of a loaded statement. Many “stepsister” videos highlight a certain kind of appearance and context: young, with a backpack, possibly braces, possibly in a setting in which they are still under the authority of a supervising adult (“mom and dad” etc). The implication, left unsaid, is that they are under the age of consent, which qualifies as statutory rape in America. IMO it’s sufficient justification to include it in the same category.”
You’re right that there are other, concurrent trends in tone and quality to measure. “Lighthearted whimsy”, which I might call more along the lines of “surreal”, is not necessarily in contradiction with violence.
I read the longer article you linked at the end. Never mind, I hadn’t realized this work is meant to make your case that “it’s time to put some brakes on the porn business.” Reposting my own comment about policy papers in a different context (bioterrorism from open AI[1]):
Not to be confused with the duplicitously-named OpenAI.