Haha, the headlines said: Conservative states pay for porn! OMFG, what *news*. Image by the ever-talented tanguero (BLOCK, rinse, repeat).
In the SF Chron online this week, I skewered the media over the really kind of weird porn study that showed conservative US states are the biggest porn buyers. Notoriously, ones that voted for McCain and profess conservative sexual values. The Mainstream media went all postal about it, but missed the subtleties. So I had fun with all of ’em. And since I read the study carefully when it came out — my idea of a hot night in bed NOT — I’d like to mention just how dated much of the data in the study is (truly — evidence of porn leading in “tech innovation” is shown in ancient sculpture and the VCR!?) Did anyone like ABC actually bother to read this thing? And WTF is the connection with gay marriage? Anyway: I say, good on you conservatives who pay your porn companies for their content. Us beeyotches in the blue states will just keep stealing it, because we’re like that. Snip from the middle:
They’re called “red states” because they’re so hot and bothered, baby — at least, that’s how it’s being trundled through the headlines, “it” being a recent ZIP-code based study published last week in the American Economic Association’s Journal of Economic Perspectives (.pdf link) about online porn consumption demographics. ABC brayed, “Porn in the USA: Conservatives Are Biggest Consumers.” It’s not like we’re really shocked or anything. However, as a San Franciscan, and especially as a blue-state Californian (where most of the nation’s porn comes from), I worry that it makes us look, well, frigid. (…)
(…) Not that I don’t want to give the red states their well-deserved props for loving and enjoying porn, because that’s always a good thing. Even if on the surface it’s a mixed message. Here’s what we really learn from a data set that tells us conservative states buy the most online porn:
1. Shopping for porn in Utah sucks. Someone open a Babeland in Provo and give wankers in need a better selection!
2. People aren’t finding what they want to jack off to at the local Kum & Go or the outskirts of town at Goldie’s Moldy Adult Boutique Emporium. If they’re buying online subscriptions, they’re likely looking for “specialty” fare that’s not at the top of their Google search.
3. Red states are just as tech-unsavvy as we thought: in California we know how to find free porn, thank you very much. As with McCain and his tech-ineptitude, conservatives just need to get up to speed in terms of both bandwidth and porny search-fu. (According to ABC’s spin, 8 of the 10 top porn buying states gave their votes to McCain.)
4. People in conservative states just want a reliable source of jack-off material from a source they can trust, and are willing to pay for it. Simple masturbation equation.
5. Since masturbation is healthy, and we now have concrete proof that red staters do their fair share (as we all must do to pull together in these challenging times), people in Salt Lake City must have some fierce Kegel muscles. In fact, one of the most interesting and current offerings the study shared was ComScore’s web monitoring results, which as of June, 2008 showed that 36% of their surfers visited “adult” sites — and that they spent an average of 11.6 minutes per visit. See! Practice gives you stamina!
6. Porn is indeed as American as apple pie and Reaganomics. (…read more, because the SF Gate blew fucking chunks when they nonconsensually re-interpreted my headline on the front page and I keep telling them NOT to and I don’t think anyone read the damn column and it’s a good one, sfgate.com)
God, I’ve got an attitude problem, don’t I? I’m going to sing to the cat for a minute (it makes him play with the fuzzy mice, can’t explain it), then I’ll be back with my plans to rip a tear through Austin, Texas this weekend. Let’s just say I already know where the SXSW sex parties are.
Shit — kitteh, not the soldering iron cord! Ack, must publish!
There’s a pornographic application for firecrackers?
apologies, oh gawd, for the red states and whatnot… I being in one. I totally agree w/ Christopher. To wit, in my southern state, my closest porn resource is the state-line, along with firecrackers… but I digress. Also… due to the rapid protestant enculturation the act of brick and mortar porn shopping has got to be soooo hard for the average consumer. Eh…
And my lab has this bad habit of drinking from my slack tub. Does scale make it tasty? Gawd knows what she’d do with a soldiering iron.
As a long-time resident of Salt Lake (30th anniversary this June,) I have a slightly different take on it: you can’t buy porn in this state except online — you can buy watered down dirty magazines, thought those stores are being harassed out of business (I bought one once when I was younger that had been blacked out with a sharpie by the store clerks) and all the videotapes are so softcore that the porn on HBO is better. There’s no hardcore porn anywhere for sale inside state lines, and back before flash enhanced our web viewing options, I went on a couple of road-trips with friends to “Evingston” (sic) Wyoming for purchasing the illegal trifecta of booze/fireworks/real porn. Now that we can haz pr0n from the internet, it’s no wonder that the closet connoisseurs are spending there rather than cash at the crappy “Adult Magzine & Video” (real misspelled name of one business here, which may have gone out of business but I can’t check because they don’t have a web presence.) LAWLZ