STDs are not only transmitted via sexual activity. so that's not objectively true.

Yes, but the point is that you can't get a disease transmitted from sex if you don't have sex.

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Suffering from the diminishing marginal utility of wealth.

Oh yes I am so sorry, let me include an asterisk with a rider stating to also avoid blood transfusions, sharing needles, licking cuts and wounds on others and to always sanitize toilet seats before sitting down on them.

Wouldn't a better analogy be smoking on screen?

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If you believe in Telekinesis, raise my hand.

Is the logic at work here that people can only be influenced to do things they can already do? Is that why we're okay with depicting murder (be it G-rated cutaway murder or R-rated torture porn) on screen but not smoking or unsafe sex? Are we okay with showing someone brutally gunning down people as long as he remembered to switch the safety on and detach the magazine after he's done?

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I do know how to spell
AniThyng is merely the name I gave to what became my favourite Baldur's Gate II mage character

Why couldn't people be influenced to do things they can already do?

If media has any effect at all on the way we think, and I kind of hope it does, that's what it would affect most: the things under your control. Seeing a man fighting a dragon won't make you more likely to fight dragons. Seeing Rambo shooting up a bunch of foreigners probably won't make you more likely to go looking for armed foreigners to kill- it's more physically possible than fighting dragons, but almost as far outside normal people's everyday experience.

Seeing people drink Coca-Cola, on the other hand... well, there's a reason Coca-Cola pays movies for product placement. If tobacco companies weren't on the run from all the watchdog groups mad at them, they'd probably do the same.

Well yeah, that was what I was getting at. I know a common defense against violent media in general is that it's (usually) so outlandish that people simply would not emulate it, but then again doesn't this play again into what your baseline level of what constitutes "outlandish" is? Your Rambo analogy isn't that far out too - there's a reason America's Army exists after all.

And previously you generally only got to watch or read your fantasies. Now video games start to blur that line - what will we do when we get to "holodeck" levels - are we still okay with people hacking virtual holopeople to death, looting them and then possibly multilating the holo corpse* at that point?

*Elder Scrolls X: Tamriel Holodeck Edition

On that no sex = depression = suicide arguement: Clearly I am typing this from beyond the grave. Woe.

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I do know how to spell
AniThyng is merely the name I gave to what became my favourite Baldur's Gate II mage character

This is a bit tangential (or maybe not), but the film and television industries actually have been adopting gun safety rules for a while now. Not for any ideological reason, but simply to prevent accidents on set like the one that killed Brandon Lee. Turns out a blank firing gun can still kill someone in the event of a barrel blockage. So... think you might want to use a different analogy?

Yes- but that's product placement again. The army is real, is a known and accepted part of our way of life. Advertising for it is not the same as encouraging people to become axe murderers. To be an axe murderer you have to be in some way deviant or abnormal long before any outside impulse can make you do it; to join the army you don't have to be all that unusual.

Good question. The closest real life approximations to virtual reality environments already have this going on; the more divorced from physical reality people get, the more free they are to dream bizarre and creepy dreams. It's going to be an issue sooner or later.

Obviously, all sensory input to your brain influences your thoughts. A dog can be conditioned to automatically salivate upon hearing a bell, and a human can be similarly conditioned to automatically think of beer whenever you mention partying. It's why we have advertising.

You are examining this as if media causes conscious thoughts, ie- "I have seen men shooting other men on screen, so I will shoot men myself". That's not really how it works, any more than a person sees beer commercials and consciously concludes that since he has seen this in commercials, it must therefore be true that partying must always be associated with beer. It's all subconscious.

If all pornographic and Hollywood sex scenes invariably showed the guy putting on a condom, this wouldn't necessarily cause people to consciously decide they need to use condoms, but it would create a very strong association, ie- that this is just something that feels right to do before sex.

Of course, it would also be bullshit, because while some people do use condoms before sex, plenty do not, nor should they be asked to. Couples in committed long-term relationships, for example, generally don't use condoms. Showing married couples invariably slipping on condoms before sex is just as ridiculous as 1950s TV shows in which married couples slept in separate beds separated by at least six feet.

...That was my point.

Product placement ads work, "there's a reason Coca-Cola pays movies for product placement." Requiring all porn to use condoms would, yes, be like product placement for condoms. I figured I didn't need to spell that out. I was concentrating on the part where product placement works on us when it comes close to where we 'live,' and pushes us to do things we might normally do.

Product placement for coffee works because most people drink coffee. Product placement for jet planes doesn't, because most people don't fly jets.

More appropriately, product placement for jet places doesn't "work" because most people are not in a situation, financially or otherwise, in which it is even remotely possible for them to buy or fly a jet.

That is, I feel uncomfortable saying product placement "works" because it doesn't force or coerce you to buy or do anything. It really is no more powerful in and of itself than having, say, a friend that prefers Coke to Pepsi. It's basically the priming effect. If you are in a situation where buying a soft drink is relevant, and you have seen a million ads talking about Coke, you are more likely (on a probabilistic scale) to then buy Coke. But by the same token, even if you have never seen a Coke ad in your life but just heard your co-worker talking about Coke ten minutes before, you are more likely to buy Coke. Product placement only works in the sense that your brain prefers immediacy of information, not that seeing those ads (by and large) actually makes you want to buy Coke.

As Wong implied with his beer-party example, the "best" product placements simply build upon or reinforce already existent social archetypes. Basically, they remind you, they don't inform you or trick you or anything.

I know this is a bit nitpicky because it doesn't change your basic point, but it is something I feel the need to point out.

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"Spare me your space age technobabble, Atilla the Hun." -Zap Brannagan

"It means they could've done some freaky human/demon hybrid thing." -Nightstalker, on Nazis

Actually product placement for jets works and is sometimes done ; Because while common people don't buy jets, their purchasing decisions for things like airline tickets are still influenced by things like perceived prestige of a jet manufacturer, and that in turn can influence the purchasing decisions of the airline when it comes to upgrading their fleet.

Point; I've seen ads on the subway for jet engines because I live in the same city as a bunch of congressional aides who are taking those subways to work every day. But Boeing doesn't try nearly as hard for product-placement ads as Coke or McDonalds, because the effect is weaker for them.

Ziggy, I agree with you; product placement serves to remind and gently prod someone in a direction they were already pretty likely to go. Which as you note, kind of is my point.

Since people are a lot more likely to not use condoms than they are to go on shooting sprees, saying "showing unsafe sex in entertainment will make people have unsafe sex!" is more like "showing smoking in movies will make smoking glamorous!" and less like "showing violence in movies will make people into serial killers!"

I live in Los Angeles county.

The pro-arguments on the ballot listed mostly reducing the spread of STDs from porn stars to others and worker's protection (much like mining masks).

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Suffering from the diminishing marginal utility of wealth.

Lets assume that showing condom use in porn does lead to increased condom use among the viewers. So one jurisdiction mandates condom use when filming porn within it.

What is there to stop people from just watching porn produced somewhere else because they don't like seeing condoms ?

So all such legislation is likely to do is drive porn production out of that jurisdiction.

That's exactly what it's done. Apparently they plan on filming in Ventura county now instead of LA county.

And the mayor of LA Country said he wanted Porn Stars gone (as noted earlier).

Looks like he got his wish.

So does everyone in this thread acknowledge that's the real reason this legislation was passed?

Oh no, how will the porn stars move their expensive sets and elaborate production facilities? Will they be able to find a nondescript room with a couch in it in Ventura County?

I guess the only bummer for porn producers is that they would have to buy new mansions elsewhere, since an awful lot of porn movies are clearly just being shot in a producer's house. The much bigger obstacle they face is that porn tends to exhibit almost no creativity, so new porn is pretty much the same as old porn, and as the library of old porn available on-line grows and grows, there will be less demand (and money) for new "original" (if one can seriously use that word for their repetitive product) porn.

Even their cavalcade of "parody" movies is terrible. They don't really know how to do a parody, so they just copy the plot of the original almost scene for scene, and then stick gratuitous sex scenes in between the horrible attempts to recreate the plot of the original. Take a look at the Incredible Hulk XXX parody for example: they basically copied the story of the old Incredible Hulk TV show pilot episode lock, stock, and barrel, and then inserted sex scenes. It is ridiculous how easily you could make a sexual parody of the Incredible Hulk concept (for example, just the dick gets big and green, or Hulk is sexually insatiable rather than uncontrollably violent), but no, their parody Incredible Hulk was the same thing as the original: a big green guy who got violent and dangerous, albeit not to females. It's not as if you would need a brilliant script-writer to make a new story which makes fun of the original, but it takes even less effort to just copy the original and stick a sex scene in it here and there.

I honestly suggest independent porn producers, like meet the mayhems.

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Suffering from the diminishing marginal utility of wealth.

Maggie and Ned are pretty excellent people, too. In addition to being creative indie porn producers (and stars), they're good friends too.

I don't know how much time or organization goes into producing these things; it's probably not a lot. Just the time it takes to write an original-ish script might be part of it.

It seems to me that you could probably brainstorm a story (adequate for porn) in an afternoon at a Starbuck's.

That sounds like the start of an amazing porn movie.

Group of friends start brainstorming ideas at a Starbucks, and end up fucking to be able to have fiction imitate life.

Check please?

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"My annoyance is exacerbated by the fact that the suffering I am witnessing now cannot exist on its own, it has to fall into the hierarchy of a “lesser animal suffering.” In the made-for-TV reality of American culture, the only acceptable genocide is historical. It’s comforting—it’s over. Twenty million murdered humans deserve to be more than a reference point. I am annoyed that I don’t have more power in communicating what I’ve seen apart from stuttering: “It’s like the Holocaust” " - Susan Coe