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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.
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.
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.
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.
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 A-Lo, the company behind Pornhub, Brazzers,
RedTube, U-Porn, and X-Tube,
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.
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.
Unfortunately,
we’ve built a fire-retardant generation.
Zoomers prefer staying home
and scrolling to going out,
and when they do venture out,
they’re less likely to visit a bar,
reducing the chances
they’ll make a series of bad decisions
that might pay off.
By the way,
I believe the anti-alcohol movement
is second only to remote work
in the damage it’s doing to young people.
The risk to a 25-year-old liver
is dwarfed by the social isolation
and loneliness epidemic
plaguing America’s youth.
Think of the most important things in your life,
who you decided to have kids with
and the friends you still count on.
Then ask,
did alcohol lubricate
the often awkward formation
and cementing of those bonds?
Despite the risk
to our one and only God,
shareholder value,
one-third of workers
say they’ve had a workplace romance.
This is verboten,
but it shouldn’t be.
Work is a great place to find a mate.
The rules don’t apply, however,
if you’re the founder of a tech firm.
See above men
who didn’t get laid in college.
The culture wars
are another fire retardant.
Richard Reeves,
the president of the
American Institute for Boys and Men,
recently told Vox
that men know what not to do on a date.
Don’t mansplain,
don’t be toxic,
don’t be a predator,
don’t be a creep.
But they’re clueless
about what to do on a date.
We’ve pathologized the pursuit of sex
and made porn the path
of exponentially less resistance.
In news that won’t surprise anyone,
dampening the fire that fuels casual sex
and dating has coincided
with the U.S. birth rate
hitting an all-time low.
Global birth rates
are also plummeting.
According to Pew,
63% of men under 30
are single,
compared with 34% of women,
i.e. the women
are dating older guys.
More than half
of single Americans
say they’re not currently
looking for a relationship
or casual dates.
Another study found
the percentage of sexually inactive men
ages 18 to 24
increased from 19% in 2002
to 31% in 2018.
The percentage of sexually inactive
young women
increased from 15%
to 19%
over the same period.
I graduated, barely,
from UCLA
with a 2.27 GPA.
I did, however,
go on campus
almost every day.
Specifically,
I left my fraternity
to venture on campus
as UCLA
in the 80s
was like a Cinemax film
set in Brentwood.
I would hang
at North Campus
with friends
and,
to be blunt,
hope to meet someone
I might,
note,
might,
is doing a lot of work,
have sex
and establish
a relationship with.
If I’d had
on-demand porn
on my phone
and computer,
I’m not sure
I would have graduated
as I would have lost
some of the incentive
to venture on campus.
I just read
the previous sentence
and it sounds crass
and shallow,
but it’s also accurate.
And that’s the rub,
so to speak.
Porn can reduce
your ambition
to take risks,
become a better person,
and build a better life.
The best thing
in my life
is raising two men
with a competent,
loving partner.
The catalyst
for me risking
humiliation,
approaching her
at the Raleigh Hotel pool,
and introducing myself
wasn’t a desire
to someday qualify
for lower car insurance rates,
but the desire
slash hope
to have sex.
By the way,
our oldest son’s
middle name is Raleigh,
and I’m taking him
on a college tour
next week.
The key to success
isn’t getting
an investor,
employer,
or woman
to say yes.
It’s putting yourself
in situations
where you take risks,
get a no,
and realize
you’re fine,
i.e.,
build resilience.
And while it’s great
that social norms
have helped more women
feel comfortable
asking men out,
the default setting,
the expectation,
continues to be
that men
make the first move.
Among Zoomers,
one study found
men paid for all
or most
of a couple’s dates
90% of the time.
On first dates,
80% of men
expect to pay
and 55% of women
expect him to pay.
I’ve told my boys
that whenever they are
in the company of women,
they pay.
Can’t wait for the shit
on that one.
I coach a number
of young men.
It’s unrealistic
to tell them
to abstain from porn.
And there is evidence
that porn consumption
is fine in moderation.
The problem
is losing the fire,
the sexual desire
that inspires you
to be a better man,
to have a plan
for economic viability,
to be fit,
to demonstrate
kindness,
intelligence,
and a willingness
to take risks,
to build resilience
and develop the ability
to express romantic interest
while making someone
feel safe.
We have companies
with infinite resources
and command
of godlike technology
all attempting
to convince young men
they can have
a reasonable facsimile
of life on a screen
with an algorithm.
The most frightening data
I’ve seen recently
is that 51% of men
aged 18 to 24
have never asked
a woman out in person.
I find this
so fucking depressing.
Romantic comedies
are two hours,
not 15 minutes,
for a reason.
Relationships
and mating
are hard
and worth it.
We need more venues,
national service,
third places,
freshman seats,
the office,
where young people
can meet.
And men
need to recognize
there’s a profit motive
in dampening
the flames of desire
and motivation
to become better men.
In sum,
as I said
on Bill Maher’s show,
young men
need to get out
of the house,
take risks,
and demonstrate
excellence
so they can make
their own bad porn.
Life is so rich.
As read by George Hahn.
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