Monday, March 19, 2007

Porn comes as standard

Perhaps I am naive but I thought that to get porn on your mobile you had to, well, try. Seems I was wrong.

My phone broke recently and seeing as I was due for an upgrade anyway I went to my local Orange shop to get a new one. The guy asked what kind of phone I wanted and I said, "A free one that I can call and text people on preferably. I don't need any other stuff." He gave me a free Nokia which was a couple of grades up from my old one. You can't get new phones without cameras and bluetooth but I don't mind all that.

On the train to my mother's yesterday I was bored because I hadn't taken a paper, so I thought I'd browse my phone menu. One of the options is "Web" so I clicked on that. Having heard lots of stories about kids with porn on their phones, blue-toothing it to each other in class, I wondered how easy it would be to find some. It turns out you don't even have to look for it.

After clicking "Web" I clicked "Homepage", which was the first option, and then "TV & Video" which was the first option after that. Up came two pictures of naked women with ads for videos: "Thai Hotpot" and "Bikini Babes".

Shoving it in your face anyone? I scrolled down the main menu for TV & Video:

Top ten videos
TV shows
Music
Movies
Sport
Comedy
Cartoons
News & weather
Babes

Yeah, let's just slip "babes" in under the news & weather shall we?* So I clicked on it.
Two more naked women advertising their short films (£2 each) with text: "This housemaid loves to play around. Seems she is waiting for an audience", and "Watch sexy Susan get hot in the hallway", and "Watch me get red".

I don't know what "watch me get red" means. Maybe I should ask a ten year-old.

The categories below were:

Casino cuties
Hot housemaids
Best of the breast
Georgeous glamour babes
Girl of the week
Fhm & Zoo topless babes
Girls A-Z
Free alerts about new babe videos
Babes top ten
Sexy Collections

Each of these had around 10 sub-categories, and "Sexy Collections" had 17, including "Black beauties" and "Latino babes" (just in case anyone forgot that porn was racist as well as misogynist). Some of those sub-categories had sub-categories etc.

An underestimate would be that there are around 300-500 short "soft" porn videos on my phone. "Soft" meaning dehumanisation and degradation sans penis. I didn't acually check, what with not wanting to give my money to porn shits, but I assumed from the text used to advertise the films, and from the fact that "hardcore" porn would be too risky. Penises aren't suitable for children.

This kind of porn is NOT aimed at adult men who can easily go and buy some. It is clearly aimed at young boys who would then want to see some harder stuff or even, with the added bonus of their camera phone, create some harder stuff by bullying and blackmailing girls in the playground. Yes, it is happening (LINK). The porn companies are advertising themselves totally underhandedly - but what else is new?

Would the man in the shop have given me this phone if I was 12? Probably. He said nothing at all about what was on it. If he had I wouldn't have renewed my contract with Orange, which has been renewed for 18 months. I am angry that I am giving my money to a company that sells porn.

How many other people are unwittingly supporting the porn industry simply by owning a mobile phone?

I am stuck with this contract now. Is there any way out? Can I stop paying and take them to court?

Will porn soon come with everything we buy?

*Incidentally, I am a straight(ish) woman, so where's my "Blokes" category? I want me some beef! Oh yeah, silly me, men are people not entertainment.

Doh.

7 Comments:

Blogger Eugene Laars said...

That is so disturbing. Nowadays there are kids in like 5th grade with high grade phones.

Also I have heard that people use their PSPs to look up porn too.

I am a guy and I honestly don't like this kind of shit, and knowing that my peers look at this crap makes me sick.

Right on for opening all your viewers eyes to this sickening truth.

I hope my cell phone lasts for the rest of my life... :/

5:27 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Even if someone is a porn-liking type person surely even they have to admit there is a time and a place for it. And that time isn't not ALWAYS and that place is not EVERYWHERE.

Damn.

3:58 PM  
Blogger sparklematrix said...

I don't want to sit next to someone on the train who is looking at porn. Of course, i would speak up but I wouldn't want to be in that position. Depending how it went - things could get heated!

10:12 PM  
Blogger Cellycel said...

If there's a 'local area chat' sort of thing like there was on my phone, and you go into it, expect guys to hit you up for random sexual encounters.

If someone asks you something like 'So what suberb are you in' it's not some sort of genuine attempt at conversation, it's sussing out if going to your house to sex you up is easy enough for them.

Gah! Is it too much to just want to talk to someone? Could the porn content on phones have influenced those guys to speak to me the way they did?

I don't own a mobile phone anymore.

8:33 AM  
Blogger Liz said...

Oh yes, my phone also has porn on it through orange world. When I want to find out train times or whatever thru orange world, there is a link that says 'hot babes' or something of that sort :(

It really makes me sick how pervasive porn is: a few months ago I got really really disillusioned with the 'net because of the porn available on it.

I changed my filters on my email though and my email is quite a rare one so I don't get crappy junk mail anymore. But I found all you lovely feminist women so didn't go off the net indefinitely!

Some good things do come out of technology, especially MSN etc as I'm deaf. I don't have the choice of getting rid of my mobile as I use text all the time since I can't hear on the phone.

Apparently you can change the filters on your phone if you are with orange: you have to sign up on their website to access your bills etc and then somewhere there you can change the settings to stop over 18 content getting on your phone. Hope that helps?

12:47 PM  
Blogger lost clown said...

Good god, that is so horrific.

8:46 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Readers of this thread might be interested in the resources at NoPornNorthampton.org, especially our overviews of these two new video presentations:

Pornography and Pop Culture

A Content Analysis of 50 Top Selling Porn Films

NoPornNorthampton, founded by citizens of Northampton, Massachusetts, currently offers over 400 articles on porn and the porn industry.

12:32 AM  

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