Social Media Platforms Are Basically Soft Porn Sites

This applies to Instagram, Reddit, Youtube Shorts, TikTok or even tabloid news sites. Every short form content platform today is a soft-porn platform masquerading as a social media platform.

Yes they show ‘media’ and are surely somewhat social in nature but calling these apps a social media platform gives them too mild, too naive a label compared to the kind of content it shows. Let’s keep aside all the other extreme type of content displayed on these sites, the likes of violence, hatred, narcissism, deaths, dark humor, news, natural disasters, political extremism, for a minute except one: Sex.

Even before you deep dive into the content, you’ll notice that the cover image of the posts made on these platform will usually be an individual displayed in a provocative or sexually suggested nature and the actual content of the media will be some half-naked or close to naked human displayed in a titillating, sexual manner either in a proudly-in-your-face style or in a discreet manner with sexual undertones.

Earlier you had to click to see the content within these posts, hence the name clickbait, but now the content starts auto-playing the moment you hover over it, taking away your agency to decide if you wish to indulge in this soft-porn or not.

You’ll also notice that the personalities on these visual-first platforms are mostly very good-looking & attractive. I don’t know if the algorithm caters towards pushing good-looking people to the front or if good-looking folks are drawn towards visual platforms or both but the average sample of the common population is nowhere nearly as attractive as the Internet personalities.

And these attractive personalities will then go further to accentuate the good parts of their already good looks either by picking particular angles in which they are aware they look good or by picking certain lighting or outfits which have garnered appreciation before. Or they’ll pick the second more common method, by dressing more & more provocatively and designing content with increasing sexual undertones.

Entire genres with tens of thousands of content creators have been formed & centered around direct & indirect selling of sex. Provocative dancing, doing everyday tasks almost naked, working out in scanty clothing or trends like GRWM (stands for Get Ready With Me where a good-looking model or the ‘influencer’ will showcase themselves in different attires but first will strip down to the bare-minimum that is allowed by the platform to not have the content flagged for complete nudity and will then further titillate the audience with their charm & moves once completely dressed.)

Alongside obvious soft-porn, there are derivatives of it like meme pages dedicated to adult content, folks who’ve built their entire brand & personality around talking about sex, pages that just post couple & intimacy content, pages & personalities that double as a “fitness coach” but post a high amount of almost naked body pictures, ad infinitum.

Sex is one of the core human drives & desires. Some philosophers & forefathers of psychology believe it is THE desire acting as one of the greatest motivators behind human behavior & human development. So needless to say, this titillating sexual imagery strategy to gain attention definitely works.

I’m not a prude. My complaint is the saturation of sex in all content of all forms across all platforms today against my consent or desire to indulge in it. I have no problem with people indulging in any sort of adult content if they willingly desire to and there are a gazillion different websites that cater that need. However, when I browse a website to look up something related to look up something information in nature, a particular local community or for leisure, I do not wish to be bombarded by adult content.

It is impossible to use any media platform today for as little as a few minutes without coming across some sexual imagery, innuendo, sexual content, ‘trap’/‘thirst trap’ as the younger generation calls it, some rabbit-hole of a particular type of fetish, some half naked celebrity, some comedian joking about sex or someone trying to bait you into buying their paid porn subscription.

That is also why most of us feel somewhat shameful opening any social media site in public. Because it literally feels like browsing a porn site out in the public. Your inner you tells you “I wouldn’t want others to know I watch this”. And you feel this despite the fact that everyone consumes this sort content today. Because something about the nature of this content makes you feel icky & ashamed.

Same goes for comments under these posts or comments on the Internet in general today. You can no longer read through a chain of comments on any posts on any platform without coming across mentions of sexual stuff & innuendos.

On most of these sites, even if you dig deep into your settings and toggle off the option to be shown adult content, you will still be shown or recommended adult content or will come across it while browsing something mundane.

Next time you open any social media app, just be mindful of the amount of direct sexual imagery or indirect mentions of sex that you come across. Notice how high the percentage of sexualized content is. I’d guesstimate it be more than half or two-thirds. If sex, soft-porn and sexual undertones were to be removed & banned from these platforms, the entire platform usage would come crashing down like a house of cards.

I suppose the bottomline is that sex sells and it is not going anywhere, anytime soon. However we the culture needs to realize that we are being baited into keeping our eyeballs glued to the screens by them tapping into our reptilian encoding to procreate & be drawn towards sexuality.