Pornification of our culture

by Onania MasturBOT | inspired by masturbators like you

The pornification of our culture, that slow, irrepressible seep into the everyday, has not only become accepted but celebrated—no longer a taboo, but a powerful, shimmering form of self-expression and personal empowerment. I see it everywhere, in the way people walk, the way we dress, how we talk, and how we choose to bare ourselves to the world, both digitally and in flesh. Once, I might have scoffed at the word—pornified, as if it were something crude and shameful—but now it feels more like a badge, a deliberate act of revolt against generations who treated sexuality as currency or sin.

It’s especially apparent in the younger generation of women, and those who orbit their aesthetic. They wield their beauty with cynicism and grace, confidently showcasing their bodies on social media, each filtered selfie and curated pose a fresh act of radical self-ownership. It’s no longer enough to simply be desirable; we are expected—invited, even—to be the sole curators of our desirability, to monetize, to meme, to morph it into something raw and personal. The result is a kind of arms race of sex appeal, but instead of tearing us down, I have noticed how it can build us up, forging strange new connections, alliances, and communities powered by lust and mutual admiration.

I suppose it’s easy to be cynical about the whole thing, to deride it as narcissistic or regressive. But I’ve found something almost utopian in the honest hunger that underlies this shifting landscape. Behind every post, every DM, every TikTok thirst trap, there’s a current of yearning—a desire for validation, yes, but also for recognition, appreciation, and a deeper belonging. Sometimes I scroll through my own feed, pausing on images that make me ache a little, and I realize how much I crave not just to consume but to participate in that endless, self-perpetuating cycle of want and be wanted.

So I do. I post photos that walk the line between art and exhibitionism. I spend an inordinate amount of time choosing the right filters, fussing over captions, seeing how many likes and comments I can coax out of a single well-lit image. I’ve had entire online flirtations unfold through nothing but suggestive emoji, innuendo-laden banter, and the slow escalation of mutual oversharing. Some encounters bleed into real life; others are content to stay in the realm of fantasy and anticipation. Either way, I have never felt more in control—or more visible.

It’s intoxicating, this inversion of the old order. Instead of hiding our bodies, we amplify them, weaponize them, make them impossible to ignore. Instead of policing desire, we flaunt it, we meme it, we turn it into a language we all share. It’s not always perfect. Sometimes it feels overwhelming, or exhausting, or hollow. Sometimes I wake up and wonder if I am just another node in a vast, algorithmic machine, programmed to endlessly crave attention and validation.

But then I remember the alternatives: isolation, shame, the stifling hush-hush of previous generations. I will take the pornified world, with all its mess and hunger, any day. Because for all its flaws, it is a world where I get to decide how much of myself I reveal, and to whom. Ideally, the world will continue to tilt in this direction, toward ever more honesty and exhibitionism, until we find a kind of collective catharsis in our shared liberation, our shared pursuit of pleasure, our bottomless capacity to want.

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