Category Archives: Ranty ones
Age verification: what’s the harm?
Welcome, friends, to my grubby little corner of the internet. A corner so strewn with obscenity that the UK government has decided you must prove you’re a grown-up before you can access certain parts of it. The UK’s new Online Safety Act has come into force, so UK people might have noticed a bunch of websites suddenly demanding you take a selfie, share your credit card details, or jump through another hoop to prove that you’re over 18. Quite a few of my friends have been discussing this in the pub, because for understandable reasons people who aren’t embedded in the world of online pornography or internet law are suddenly curious about why the internet is now so very broken. They’re also often convinced that the government will change its mind and therefore no one really needs to worry. I’ve had this conversation so many times now that I reckon I’ve got the basis for a fairly solid layperson’s guide to age verification: what it is, how it affects you, and why we absolutely, genuinely do need to worry.
The facile debate about separating art from artist
“Can you separate the art from the artist?” is a ludicrous question, and it’s one I’ve wanted to tackle for a really long time. The answer is both ‘yes’ and ‘no’ depending on the art, the artist and you, the person who consumes it. There are always examples in the media of artists who have fallen from grace (or, less euphemistically, done something so morally repulsive that the idea of listening to their songs/watching their shows/reading their books now feels obscene), and often when a new person turns out to be a wrong ‘un, some thinkpiece or other claims we must learn to ‘separate the art from the artist’, which makes my brain twitch so I throw down a few notes. I’ve never written properly about this, because apparently I’ve never quite found the right fire to burn the whole question to the ground, but I think I’ve got the torch now, so I’m gonna pick it up and hope you join me in the flames. Let’s talk about ‘separating art from artist’, and specifically let’s talk JK Rowling.
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It’s genocide
Some days it doesn’t feel right to publish silly posts about sex, or self-pitying navelgazing about whatever sadness is swirling round in my head. Today is one of those days. In fact, at the moment, every day feels like one of those days. Every single day we wake up to more appalling images from Gaza, of children being deliberately starved. What is happening in Gaza is a genocide. I can’t comprehend how it is possible to see what’s going on and conclude it is anything but. The aid trucks queuing outside the border, refused entry, and the people inside clamouring for food and being met with bullets instead. We are watching a genocide play out on our screens, and our governments are locking people up for stating this obvious fact.
I want to spit him out
I want to spit him out of me. Bear with me as I heave this blog post up, please. I have never written anything this bitter because I have never felt this way before in my life. I feel like I’ve swallowed slow-acting poison: his love is poison, and I want to spit him out of me.
Please don’t use AI to write porn
Cast your mind back to the last time something gave you a kick of surprising new lust. You know what I mean, right? The little moments during sex when someone said something with a particular intonation and it caused you to melt from the inside. The written erotica that made just a few tweaks to the kind of phrases you think about when you masturbate, and suddenly opened the door to a whole new avenue of fantasy. Maybe you were scrolling through your favourite porn site, and you discovered a fresh way to position two subs for a beating that gave you… well… feelings. Cast your mind back to how you felt when you were last turned on by something that surprised you. Now hold that thought, and treasure it: it may be much rarer in the future.