New Review: The Butterfly Effect

My weekend was filled with porn.

I spent 3.5 hours of my weekend on porn. 

I spent 3.5 hours of my weekend listening to an audiobook about the variety of impacts that free, streaming porn has had on American and Canadian societies. Jon Ronson (Them, The Men Who Stare At Goats, This American Life) has compiled a long series of interviews and in-depth research into a podcast-style audiobook, made available (for free!!) from Audible.com.

Like Amazon and Netflix, Audible is producing its own content. It seems that The Butterfly Effect will be released for your usual podcast streaming services at a later date. Until that time, you can listen to “Who Really Pays the Price for Free Porn” for free with your Audible subscription. I am not sponsored by Audible, so I don’t have any kind of coupon codes to offer, but I promise that if you subscribe and listen to The Butterfly Effect – I will buy you a beverage of your choice or send you the equivalent amount for purchase, so that you may drink it while you discuss the book with me.

I’m itching to talk with someone about:

• the statistics about erectile dysfunction in teenagers
• the bespoke porn industry
• the age gap between “just legal” and “MILF” for porn stars
• the STAMP COLLECTION!!
• Fabian
• the emotional stories about the dolls
• other ramifications of free porn that were not discussed in the book.

To say that I found this book thought-provoking would be an extreme understatement. It begins with an interview with the man who had the idea for streaming free pornography on the internet. Prior his work (as it were), most “adult sites” required a credit card or another type of pay wall for viewing. The pay wall created a kind of equality between internet porn and DVDs or other viewing sources. Once porn could be streamed, all day and night, for free, the people who were in the business of creating content (and hoping to make money off said content) had to work even harder to earn their living. Besides availability, free porn created tighter and tighter (no puns!) markets for niches, certain types of stars, and an ever-expanding variety (still to be made available for free).

I am not seeking in this review to create a sense of shame around porn, but rather a desire to converse about this particular following of a thread. I sincerely hope that this is the first in a series of studies in butterfly effects- the ripples that happen from a single decision or action.

Please accept this statement in the spirit in which is intended: I’d love for you to spend your weekend on porn and then talk about it with me!