Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by heavyset_go 336 days ago
> I am old enough to remember how hard it was to find access to adult mags.

It wasn't difficult to find, it was just in your parents' or siblings' drawers, or your friends had it, or you or someone else had Pay-per-view TV or one of the soft core channels, or you or someone had illegal cable/sattelite, or it was just out in the woods[1] for whatever reason.

No one's minds melted from that.

If access to content is so unhealthy for anyone, then policy should address that. For example, sites should throttle or cut heavy users off. Giving 3D models of our faces + our IDs/passports online just for some government contractor to lose them is a solution looking for a problem that it does not solve well.

Funnily enough, I was going through my grandfather's possessions from when he was a kid and found what can be described as cartoon adult content in with his comic books. This was shit from literally 100 years ago, and yet that generation turned out alright by most standards.

[1] https://dangerousminds.net/comments/the_inexplicably_ubiquit...

2 comments

I never encountered any of the things you list, growing up, and would have been shocked if I had. There's a tendency to overgeneralize a culture based on one's own subculture -- or perhaps you're even assuming things after watching too many '80s movies.
I am speaking from experience. I don't know anyone growing up who didn't have a friend share a Playboy with them, see risque things on TV, or when dial up was a thing, did not use the Internet to search for "boobs".
> If access to content is so unhealthy for anyone, then policy should address that

Kids aren't the same as adults. It's like saying "no one should drive/smoke/drink because kids aren't allowed to".

> cartoon adult content in with his comic books. This was shit from literally 100 years ago, and yet that generation turned out alright by most standards

You can't be comparing, surely? A drawn picture of breasts compared to the most hardcore and (almost always female) degrading stuff imaginable in 4k?

If laws were consistent, they'd apply equally to tobacco and alcohol, but they get special carve outs to cater to entrenched industry.

If any of those things are as harmful as proponents claim, there is no excuse for letting them continue to harm anyone for profit. Children aren't the only sympathetic victims here.

> You can't be comparing, surely? A drawn picture of breasts compared to the most hardcore and (almost always female) degrading stuff imaginable in 4k?

I am. The content of those magazines was horrendous by today's standards. Just because it was drawn does not mean the content itself was wholesome. I was genuinely shocked by what it contained.

Still wouldn't ban it, though.

> The content of those magazines was horrendous by today's standards

Without specifics, how was it horrendous by today's standards? As in you'd never see anything on the internet anywhere near as degrading as it?

Gang r*pe, the violent kind and by and against what we'd now say are those who could not consent to that even if they wanted it to happen.

No, I have not seen anything like that before on the Internet or since, and I hope to never see it.