It is entirely predictable that a Utah Mormon would lead the charge against online pornography, for a couple of reasons. A) Mormons are legendary for their hypocrisy in privately consuming vice while publicly condemning it, and B) ignorant legislation would be pushed by someone who takes pride in declaring his ignorance of what he’s banning.
Mormons have been in a furor for years over the disclosures about their paid-porn watching habits.
That’s the conclusion of a Harvard economics professor who tracked subscriptions to online porn sites. Utah ranks No. 1 in subscriptions, according to Benjamin Edelman, who reported his findings in the article “Red Light States: Who Buys Online Adult Entertainment?,” published in the most recent edition of the Journal of Economic Perspectives.
The most porn-watching ZIP codes in Utah, “with unexpectedly high subscriptions relative to their population and broadband usage,” are 84766 in Sevier County, 84112 in Salt Lake County, 84018 in Morgan County, 84006 in southwest Salt Lake County, and 84536 in San Juan County.
A color-coded map in the journal article shows only two states with subscription rates higher than 3.6 per thousand home broadband users: Utah and Mississippi. Utah topped the list, with 5.47 users per 1,000. (Edelman says he took into account the amount of broadband access available in various regions and adjusted his data accordingly; porn users tend to favor high-speed data transfer that can download lots of the steamy visuals quickly.)
“Subscriptions are slightly more prevalent in states that have enacted conservative legislation on sexuality,” Edelman writes. In the 27 states where “defense of marriage” amendments have been adopted, there were 11 percent more porn subscribers than in other states, he reports. Use is higher also in states where more people agree with the statement “I never doubt the existence of God.”
Let me just say that when I lived in Utah, I was in the 84102 zip code. 84112 is the University of Utah, which is weird — to be fair, there is a higher proportion of non-Mormons there, but there aren’t a lot of people living there, outside of university housing.
Also, it’s a weird metric: there is so much free porn available all over the web, why would people pay for it? Perhaps this isn’t so much a commentary on Mormon porn habits, as it is on Mormon naiveté about online access.
I’m also reminded of the ubiquitous Mormon joke — even Mormons tell each other this one.
Why do ex-mormons always take two Mormons fishing?
If you take only one Mormon he drinks all your beer.
Todd Weiler is posturing in front of his congregation electorate, so of course he’s going to take the most sanctimonious position possible.
I love that joke. I have a friend who fits that to a T, and it also reminds me of a church friend of my dad way back when he was still active (although in that case the vice was coffee).
The anti-porn talk brings back memories. Back when I was still an active Mormon, I’d go to the annual priesthood session meetings. Literally every time I went, there was always at least one or two speakers who warned about the “dangers of pornography”, which tells you how incorrigible Mormons were in watching it.
I don’t remember our zip code, but we were smack in the middle of SLC. Mormons, like all Christians, wallow about in the lake of hypocrisy. It can be overwhelming when you’re in the middle of it all, and have a mass amount of extended family who are Mormon.
Anywhere there is a deep obsession with sex, you’ll find the devoutly religious.
A similar joke: Jews don’t recognize Jesus as the Messiah, Protestants don’t recognize the Pope as the head of the Christian church and Mormons don’t recognize each other in the liquor store.
I still remember the major zip codes: 84112 was the university, 84102 was the area around Trolley Square, Liberty Park was south of that in 84105, and the Aves, where a lot of students lived, was 84103, north of the university.
That’s where I was lurking most of the time I was there.
Oh, and the Aves included Temple Square and Mormon office buildings.
To be ethical. Porn actors deserve to be fairly paid, and paying for porn is necessary for that to happen. It’s no more naive to pay for porn than it is to pay for music or non-adult movies, despite everything being available for free online.
“Why do ex-mormons always take two Mormons fishing?
If you take only one Mormon he drinks all your beer.”
Mennonites tell the same joke about non-Mennonites taking Mennonites fishing.
Yeah, you get the same joke about baptists here in Texas.
A buddy of mine who grew up in Corpus and now lives in SLC once said over lunch: “Utah would be the best place to live in the whole country (He was a big outdoors-man) if only the church would learn to mind it’s own damn business.” Which, I always thought, you could say about a lot of places.
Oooh, Oooh, I have a good Baptist joke. Heard this one when I dropped another friend of mine off at Baylor. Where it was illegal to dance up until some time in the nineties.
Why won’t baptists have sex standing up?
They’re afraid it will lead to dancing.
re 8:
*smiles*
well sex is dancing horizontal
and
♫ dancing in the dark ♫
;-D
[don’t forget to tip your ~server~ ]
Well, in the interest of science I have to point out what’s called the “ecological fallacy.” When a high rate of some phenomenon is found in a zip code with a high prevalence of some kind of people, it might just be that it’s the other kind of people in that zip code who account for the prevalence — for example, relatively low income people in an affluent area, or vice versa, may be more likely to do something than similar people in an area where they are more typical.
So you can’t really draw definitive conclusions from this kind of observation.
re 10: Aw c’mon, cervantes, let us enjoy our schadenfreude!
re 9: Huh. So I guess Van Morrison’s “Dancing in the Moonlight” was about an outdoor orgy?
Gah.. Messed up the tags again. lol Also, forgot to mention – paying the actors… has become “per scene”, so.. another factor is that, in all odds, once the video “exists”, none of the actors are being paid a damn thing any more, no matter who, or how many, view the videos, or pictures. At least, from what I understand, most of the contracts supposedly say any more.
@ 11: The Van Morrison song was called Moondance. Dancing in the Moonlight was by King Harvest.
I seem to be the fact checker here.
qwuints @5:
More likely it’s because, as Kagehi stats, a lot of the free stuff is just advertisements and also because pay sites are theoretically less likely to try hitting you with malware.
PZ:
One of my grandma in-laws lived in the Aves. Beautiful area.
@14: Well dang. It was the lyrics to “Dancing In the Moonlight” I had in mind, so I retract the Van Morrison attribution.
Funny how memory works. Or doesn’t.
Given the ubiquitous free porn, you might wonder how they make money at it. Perhaps it’s more about laundering money from other sources, rather than making money.
Those Mormon/Mennonite/Baptist jokes reminds me of two muslim friends (exchange students like me) I had in student housing over in Lithuania. They’d both drink alcohol with me or a purely non-muslim group, but if they were both together or other muslims were around they wouldn’t touch it. I never remarked on it, I guess everyone needs a holiday from their arbitrary religious taboos once in a while.
Yeah, Kagehi, you’re right: actors don’t generally get paid residuals in porn, unless they’re under contract to a particular company—and often not even then. And yes, if people want to continue to see new, well-produced porn, they should pay for it. Subscriptions to legit websites aren’t that expensive.
Mormon porn is apparently a thing. Magic underwear and all.
http://www.vice.com/read/mormon-themed-porn-is-apparently-a-booming-business
“Ma’am, I’m hear to talk to you about the Church of latter day saints. Also I’m here to clean your pool.”
Now I’m wondering about what kinds of porn are being watched in Utah- what’s the most popular? Gay? BDSM? Group?
Running porn DVDs into Utah, and cannabis products from Colorado to the east coast – could be lucrative.
robro@#18:
The talent get paid less and less and less. A lot of imports from eastern Europe on tourist visas. It takes a while for a market to compress (“optimize” if you’re a capitalist) to the point where there’s no profit for the middleman. Direct-to-customer disintermediation is already in progress.
Because exhibitionism isn’t a thing that exists.
Hypocrisy should not apply to me.
@5 qwints
I came down here just to say that. Glad other people are aware.
@12, Kagehi
That isn’t entirely accurate. I know quite a few people in the sex industry and most of them are largely unhappy about sites like Pornhub and the like. Sure, there are some who just roll with it and do the ad stuff like you said, but they all tend to be aware that free sites are essentially picking their pockets. And, sure, bigger producers like Kink.com or Vivid can afford to do takedowns with the understanding that they can legally/financially back it up, but for small independent porn producers they have very little power over such things. And that’s assuming they even have the time/capability to do so. Bigger companies have more resources to track and take down pirated content. For people who make their own stuff at home often the only way they can try and do a copyright takedown is to manually do it themselves, one at a time. And for every one they take down, three more will pop up.
@28 Hmm. Didn’t say that everyone was necessarily happy. And, yeah, small scale companies would be the most impacted. Then again, you have things cropping up like Uplust – it has a pay area, but most of its content is, for the most part, people’s erotic selfies, which they posted just to post them. The landscape seems to be getting, complicated, for online porn, and the big producers are running into purely free places, like Uplust, along with smaller producers, and a whole host of other content, which is hard to compete with, if all you are doing is making.. well, the usual badly acted content, or you don’t do any of the vast number of specialty stuff, like Dancing Bear, or.. think one of the new ones I stumbled on recently is… Box Truck. Its a variation on something I saw from Japan ages back – glass/plexi with a mirror coat on it, so those “outside” the truck can’t see what is going on inside, but the people inside have a completely unrestricted view of “everyone” around them, as though they where doing it publicly, on the street.
The Japanese version was smaller, and a window the girl involved could peek out of, and talk to people, while… the guy was still doing his thing inside, and.. yeah.. very, very weird. Even without the, seemingly, necessary fetish (for some stuff in Japan) of her taking a dump. Kind of surprised they didn’t somehow involve tentacles… lol
But, your right.. a fair bit of stuff from small timers probably is landing on the free sites, due to “fans” not comprehending just how stupid it is to do so, or what impact the theft will have on the producers.