The internet is for porn.
It’s 1995. An electrical engineer at Carnegie Melon, Martin Rimm, does a study and comes to the conclusion that almost 85% of what’s being shared on the internet is pornographic. This is before most people are online. Fifteen years later, though porn sites will make up only an estimated one percent of what’s become an infinitely vast, immeasurable internet, porn-- next to music, travel, and e-bay-- will remain the most frequently searched topic on the net.
At the turn of the millennia, the word pornography enters the vocabulary of a twelve year old boy. He’s sitting at a lunch table with someone who say’s they’ve found their dad’s collection of porn on VHS, and to his surprise he’s the only person who hasn’t heard the word before. His first year in public school has been an enlightening one: he’s learned a lot of things that the Catholic school 6th graders didn’t tell him about. What’s more frightening is the kid with the porn wants to invite everyone at the table over one weekend to watch in what sounds like a terrifying male-bonding experience.
He tells his mom about it. His mom’s baffled, and scared. What parents in their right mind could raised a child that assumes pornography viewing is appropriate for a social gathering? Pornography, by it’s very nature, is for privacy. All that exists in the world of the modern porn movie is the female model(s), the muscular torso of the male, and the observer who takes the identity of the usually faceless male.
By high school, his family and the families of his friends have bought computers and gotten online. Porn is no longer a mystery, but something regularly viewed and regularly discussed by almost everyone he knows. Christina Aguilera, oiled and wearing a bikini top with leather chaps, surrounded by dozens of sweating, shirtless muscular guys, has made a daily ritual of singing “Dirrty” on MTV’s video countdown. Back in Catholic school, girls bleach their hair blonde, wear thick mascara, and push the limits of the allotted skirt length. No one is complaining.
Christina’s “Dirrty” is an onslaught of sexual stimulation and pushes the limits of what’s allowed on television, and what being a role model to young woman can mean. But Christina is following the trend. She’s not especially beautiful compared to the woman in the other videos. Neither is her song unique compared to the rest of the top-40 crowd which feature radio-mandated hooks occurring before the first 30 seconds. She receives mixed critical reception.
She’s the “average,” not much different than what the girlsstrive for. Fake tan, heavy eyeliner and mascara, fake blonde hair with lots of spray, perfect and shining white teeth. They get in trouble for dancing like Christina and all the other pop divas at homecoming and prom and the 8th grade dance. The now 16 year Catholic school student makes a general observation: these near perfect goddesses are decidedly average.
The internet, for a Millennial teen, is a tool of discovery. Knowledge about everything: news, the opposite sex, music, all is available on the internet. He listens to music on a portable CD player. Meanwhile, some classmates have already begun carrying around ipods and other slick MP3 players. Technology moves faster, and becomes outdated faster than anyone can afford. The dial-up connection that once served as a gateway to a world full of epiphanies is now a cumbersome fossil that takes 30 minutes for downloading a single song.
No one likes outdated, unattractive technology or unattractive anything-- cell phones are a good example. We all get new phones every two years but try and convince our parents to buy us new ones before that time. Most of them cave.
Teens who, being teenagers, feel the need to stand-out from the group do so in a way that’s paradoxically reactionary towards MTV self-worship. Together, in a rejection to the individual pursuit of perfection, they mutilate themselves and wear uniformly unattractive dark clothing. They pierce themselves and listen to music without hooks or melody. They reject pop music and it’s petty sentiments.
There’s a loudness war occurring on the radio that gets increasingly worse. Metallica, long time sell-outs, release a tragedy of album production that is Death Magnetic. Everyone wants their album to sound good on ipods and loud on the radio, so corporate producers are raising all the instruments to Spinal Tap like volumes and killing what audiophiles call “dynamic range.”
Music, regardless of genre, goes like this if it’s going to popular and make it on the radio: It’s loud, even when it’s soft. There’s a chorus or a hook that occurs either right in the beginning or before 30 seconds have passed which is repeated ad nauseum. Consumers have the option to buy the song for 99 cents instead of the whole album, which can be listened to on a personal music player like an ipod or CD player.
Dei Market has brought Free Music and Free Pornography to the masses. Anyone and everyone is capable of fire sharing. New ways to do it crop up as the old ways disappear. Porn versions of Youtube which feature entire films are available en masse, highspeed connections are fast enough to watch more than one at once, at home, on the laptop, or on the cellphone.
For the college-bound millennial, hook based music is as regular and standardized as streaming pornography. Regularly downloaded, regularly viewed- a regular part of life.
Corporate record labels are pulling their hair out because no one wants to pay for the low-quality music that is freely and easily obtained via the internet. Women are pulling their hair out after contrived attractiveness becomes increasingly less powerful in the face of men who are both exhausted and apathetic. Bored married couples divorce after being married for a year.
2009- People aren’t showing up to concerts. Despite falling prices, Live Nation, an organization that makes its money by buying up tickets and selling them back to consumers with a service charge attached, report that attendance is down 22 percent. Fans of acts big and small complain that their favorite bands are “falling off” but in reality, Y generation simply isn’t into concerts. The stimuli of pure, real “live” performers can’t compare to their perfected electronic avatars.
