Well, Christ, this is dull. I bookmarked it a few days ago, got around to reading it, and felt like if I pressed my ear close enough to the screen, I could hear a conceptual erection deflating. The premise is interesting. A Wired/wired individual considers what NSFW means today. Forget NSFW, he says. The answer:
"Here's my cutting-edge solution: How about if we actually describe things? This isn't semaphore, people. Unless you routinely blog in the middle of a desperate escape from a burning building, you've got plenty of time to say something like: 'Warning: visual depiction of pert nipples and raspberry jam' or 'Beware: contains pictures of Drew Barrymore in a business suit, eating ice cream and giving the camera that look' or 'Cuidado: cloacas!'"
Ugh. As a writer, I feel I can safely say there is nothing less sexy than words. Besides, part of what makes the internet hot is clicking on words that will take you to the unexpected, what you have not yet seen, and sometimes what you haven't yet seen is a naked woman painted like a cow. (Nice... milk jug?)
I'm well aware of this whole NSFW concept, seeing as NSFW will probably be stamped on my gravestone. I ignore it. I, for one, am not at your place of work, and how you choose to navigate those waters is your business, not mine. To self-censor, to even self-label in a way that promotes your self-censorship, goes against whatever mutagen lodged itself into my DNA and made me this way.
This entire blog is NSFW, I suppose. But the fact of the matter is that I'm well aware that's part of its appeal. And the idea that I would pretend it's not, by somehow indicating what's here is in some way oh-my-gosh taboo, when the fact of the matter is that what was once taboo is now a matter of course, is hypocritical, backwards, and, well, idiotic. NSFW is a game people play with themselves, the same kind of thing the New York Times and the LA Times do when they peek at sex and hide their eyes at the same time.
Radosh: "How can it be inappropriate for a young person to read that someone their own age said 'fucking awesome' about a museum exhibit, yet be perfectly fine for them to read about a 'half-dressed man cavorting with a sexually aroused farm animal'?"
It's this kind of ridiculousness--"I'll show you bestiality while pretending I'm not"--that I'm not interested in engaging in. Instead, bosses needed to grow up. After all, it's our minds that are NSFW.
AVN.com: "Roger Jon Diamond, [Ira] Isaacs' attorney, has told KNBC.com, 'This is a sad day for our country when zealots in the Department of Justice can try to destroy the reputation of a fine judge by threatening a recusal motion,' and has said that he will attempt to prevent any judge who doesn't look at pornography from presiding over the case."
Good luck.
