CYBERSPACE — In what’s apparently another veiled attempt by mainstream media to grab Internet attention by using the power of porn, TechCrunch.com has launched its first column about the “digital matters of the heart” espousing a married man’s fondness for self love.
Although the article is pro-porn, it’s painfully obvious that it doesn’t deliver anything new about adult – especially where technology is concerned — even for those who have been cloistered in some squeaky clean corner of the Internet.
With so many sex and porn blogs saturating the Internet, one would think a tech-centric site like TechCrunch would debut it’s column on digital love with some special insight — maybe the future of dildonics or even what’s after 4D production — not a married guy’s testament to tissue boxes.
And the writers' pseudo-philosophic explanation of why porn exists at all, is well, all too obvious: “Now there is a low thrum in the media, a bass note under the endless cavalcade of news and chatter and commerce. That thrum is porn, vibrating like a secret chord through our lives. But porn is not some offshoot of perversity. Porn exists because we, the human animals, exist. And that, for better or worse, is the state of affairs.” Profound.
The piece goes on to say porn is the ultimate web service. Well, that’s not particularly insightful, not news, and certainly not a technical revelation.
And there’s a distinct naiveté about porn’s power on the web. “The Internet economy pretends like porn doesn’t exist and, although there are a few exceptions, the only things that get funded are ‘dating’ apps like Tinder, which is little more than a Hot or Not for lonely people,” the article says. But claiming that the Internet economy pretends that porn doesn’t exist is downright ludicrous. Porn virtually gave birth to the mass acceptance of the web like it historically does with most new technologies. And nearly every online news site has touted the adult industry’s “billion of dollars” marketplace.
Of course there’s nothing inherently wrong with mainstream using the “porn” headline to grab attention — it’s almost a daily occurrence on sites like The Huffington Post, Salon, entertainment sites, feminist blogs and even top new outlets — but when a site devoted to delivering technology news reaches for the low-hanging fruit like porn, it should at least deliver a new perspective.