As read by George Hahn. https://www.profgalloway.com/porn/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What is the main topic of this episode?
I'm Scott Galloway, and this is No Mercy, No Malice. Young men face a variety of obstacles to thrive. One of those obstacles, on-demand porn.
Porn, as read by George Hahn. Quote, pornography is the McDonald's of sex. Fast, convenient, and utterly divorced from nutrition. Unquote. 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. I told him, boss, you should mentor me.
Chapter 2: Why is porn considered an addiction?
I mentor young men who are struggling and you are clearly thriving. He said, I have an addiction. I 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.
Chapter 3: How prevalent is porn on the internet today?
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. Ten of its competitors rank in the top 100.
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 Lemke, 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.
Chapter 4: What are the societal impacts of online porn?
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. Humans came off the savanna hardwired 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 millennia 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.
Chapter 5: How is OnlyFans changing the adult industry?
The most valuable companies arbitrage the disparity between our instincts and industrial production. 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 ALO, 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 the 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.
Chapter 6: How might AI disrupt the content creation industry?
Pro tip, research shows women are attracted to men who signal three primary attributes, resources, intellect, and kindness. In the VHS and DVD eras, porn consumption was a wealth transfer from men to the adult entertainment industry and mom-and-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 100 times 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.
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 preferred 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. 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, hone 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. Sexual desire is fire. Without this fire, our species goes out of business.
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