You Porn, I Porn, Everyone Porns

By Lindsay Dolak

That awkward moment when you walk in on your roommate doing the solo sheet writhe to the musical stylings of two moaning strangers on a computer screen. Now what? Do you laugh? Leave? Apologize? Turn on the lights and stare?

There are few more awkward moments than the revelation of someone watching porn or someone’s revelation of you watching porn. But, why? According to toptenreviews.com, there are 4.2 million pornography websites. That’s 12 percent of the Internet. 25 percent of daily search engine requests are for pornographic material. So, if virtually everyone is doing it, what makes a little literal boob tube so awkward?

I watched porn for the first time when I was around 10 years old. Some neighborhood friends and I were putting “.com” after our first names and plugging them into search engines. Well, my older sister’s name is Erica. If you can’t figure out what happened next, you’re not old enough to be reading this article. That might sound young , but the average age of the first Internet pornography experience is 11 and, besides, I like to think it gave me a one-up on the rest of the so-called porn watching perverts. What the next 10 years and countless Friday night middle school sleepovers with a bunch of curious girls going through puberty brought me is the ability to say that I have seen just about every type of pornography ever made. Every category. Every color. Every fetish. There—I admitted it.

If you think I’m weird, it’s probably because you are one of the many people that think either a) porn is an awkward activity to be viewed in the privacy of one’s own bed sheets and never discussed among peers or b) you think porn is for boys only. For the record, I don’t view porn as a means to “relax,” not that I’m against anyone’s masturbatory mechanisms. You know how people watch those gross shows on Discovery Health? Porn is like that for me. It’s weird and entertaining in an off-putting way so you can’t really turn away even when you want to.

Just about everyone has seen porn, watches porn and, in all likelihood, probably beats his or her meat to porn. I’m not saying I want to hear about your afternoon digital delight while I’m waiting in line in the dining hall, but I don’t think pornography and whether one watches it or not needs to be as awkward as watching the opening sex scene of “Bridesmaids” with your dad. Some people use it to get off, some people use it to get a good laugh, and some people even use it for research papers. Pornography consumption is actually quite common and if it helps, 42.7 percent of Internet users report viewing porn regularly. They admitted it; can you?