For our presentation we decided to explore the effects of cyberporn on other digital media sources. The article we read, Toward a Symptomatology of Cyberporn by Michael Uebel, discussed the possibilities of these effects, but did not go into any sort of detail about specific aspects of digital media that had branched off of the cyberporn industry. Once we took a close look at it, we discovered many of these branches of cyberporn that we experience in our day to day lives. We determined that cyberporn has expanded the industry- as well as the overall societal view- of porn into realms such as TV, advertising, and new internet possibilities.
The first digital media source of cyberporn we looked at was the TV show, To Catch a Predator. If you have not seen this show, its premise is attempting to catch internet predators in action by setting them up with an actress and filming their face to face encounters. We saw this show as relevant to the article when it stated:
As socio and psychopathology, all porn functions in this view as a mirror of the dark side of power relations, for porn sets in motion fantasies whose virtual support is found in virtualized practices and fixations, primarily of sadistic sort. (Uebel)
We related the idea of fantasy to the show because it deals with relationships that start online, a fantasy of meeting someone young and good looking, but then branch out to the ‘real world.’ This show takes the idea of fantasy one step further than cyberporn because it takes a virtual fantasy and brings it to life. It is an excellent representation of the possibilities, and potential dangers created by cyberporn.
The next area we studied was advertising and more specifically, suggestive ads produced by the makers of Axe Body Spray. The specific ad we looked at was an ad for a body soap powerful enough to clean even the dirtiest of balls. In the ad they are showing two women cleaning sports balls but there are obvious sexual undertones to the script and actions in the commercial. We thought this suggestive advertising was a great example of the “disruptive cultural appearance” cyberporn has made and the ways in which it is “radically altering the ways men consume porn” (Uebel). Cyberporn is so widely consumed that it has normalized the idea of sex in media to the general public. Sexual advertising such as this shows just how much cyberporn truly has changed the way people view and consume porn.
The last digital media source we decided to talk about was the website Chat Roulette. This is a website where anyone can sign on and video chat with other people using the website. It is a widely known fact, however, that many people use this site for purposes other than “face-to-face chat.” By that we mean it is almost impossible to go onto the site without seeing some form of genitalia or other sexual reference. The article talks about the “’unexpected, unheard-of universes of possibility’ that the encounter of man and machine generates” (Uebel). Chat Roulette can very easily be seen as one of these possibilities. Not only does this site open the possibilities of porn, it also introduces new people to porn because it is not specifically a “porn site.” It completely redefines cyberporn because it creates a brand new encounter between man and machine, one in which the man is actually engaged in the pornographic encounter with the machine, and another person using another machine.
After learning about all of these new uses of digital media in the porn industry we completely agreed with Uebel when he stated, “There are pleasure values...that have not yet been discovered.” Considering all of these new ways people use and consume porn it is safe to say the industry is definitely expanding. In some ways it is frightening to consider just what ‘discoveries’ will be made, but these examples gave us a general idea as to the direction in which the industry is going- which is basically in every direction.
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