Comment
COLIN ROBERTSON
Accessing porn has become easier than ordering a pizza – it’s time for regulators to show some teeth
It would take the most basic bit of technology to stop kids accessing porn
WHEN I was a randy young twerp, me and my pals used to head up to “The Island”, a parcel of woodland in the local park where, if you rummaged around, you’d find a tatty page ripped from an adult mag.
You might get a glimpse of a nipple from a well-thumbed copy of Playboy, or if you were really lucky, something, ahem, bushy in them thar bushes.
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I never really wondered why all this porn was in these woodland hidey-holes, which was probably for the best.
So for me — and maybe you too, it seemed to be a nationwide phenomenon — the forest has always been synonymous with smut.
Fast forward four decades and it still is. Just ask the indigenous people of the Amazon rainforest.
This week it was revealed the Marubo tribe have finally accessed the internet from their tiny huts on the Itui River, thanks to Elon Musk’s Starlink.
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And once they were online they looked at porn. Lots of it.
So much so that some young tribesmen have been acting in an aggressively sexual way towards women.
Given their culture finds kissing in public scandalous, this is quite the development.
Alfredo Marubo, a tribal elder, said he was concerned that youngsters were filling their brains with so much filth they “are going to want to try it”.
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All this surfing for sex had also rendered many of them bone idle.
“Young people have gotten lazy because of the internet,” fellow elder Tsainama Marubo said, adding: “They’re learning the ways of the white people.”
Ouch! I’m not 100 per cent sure pornography and idleness are exclusively the preserves of white people but the central complaint is valid.
Shocking figures suggest porn addiction is on the rise for middle aged men
Unfettered filth
What is happening on the Itui River is a turbo-charged version of what parents are grappling with across the globe.
Access to porn has become easier than ordering a pizza.
Thanks to giant free-porn aggregators, anyone with an internet-connected device can be ringside to an orgy in seconds.
Of course the Marubo tribespeople who are looking at these sites are mostly not children and they may have engaged in sexual relations already.
But they are as naive as to the content they are now witnessing as kids in the UK are.
The vast majority of the footage on free porn sites is fantasyland stuff, where women are often slapped and choked roughly as they rictus grin and bear it.
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Adults can tell the difference — kids and tribespeople cannot.
Porn sites have made a big song and dance about how they do their best to stop youngsters viewing their content.
But they have done little more than simply ask users to confirm they are over 18.
It would take the most basic bit of technology to stop kids accessing porn.
But these sex-tech behemoths — Pornhub’s turnover is estimated at $500million — won’t do it because they fear users (barf!) will drop as adults fear giving too many personal details or handing over credit card numbers to verify their age.
So unless regulators such as Ofcom actually show some teeth, instead of just offering “guidance”, we will be forced to deal with the ramifications of this unfettered access to filth by our children.
It makes you wish we could return to the days of finding those Fiesta fragments and rips from Razzle among the foliage.
At least it would get the kids off their phones and out of the house.
Troupe a Si boy bland
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SIMON COWELL is hunting for a boyband to add to his collection – and buy him another home in Beverly Hills.
“Every generation deserves a megastar boyband,” he declared, kicking off the search for the next One Direction (rather than the new Ultimate Kaos, his 1992 group whose debut album failed to even make the Top 50).
I’m not sure this generation really does deserve the kind of box-ticking, manufactured garbage Cowell’s pop factory will spew out.
My kids, for example, are far more interested in solo singers who look like they may actually write and be in control of what they’re doing – The Weeknd, Lewis Capaldi, Eminem.
Troupes of teenage youths miming to bubblegum pop and winking at fans while caressing their hairless chests seem a little passé for the YouTube generation.
At least we’ll be spared another outing of the once great X Factor, which if it came back now would be more like the
(Gen) Zzzz Factor.
Jibe at Kemi's stupid
THE charmless “mental health campaigner” Alastair Campbell this week slagged off the Trade Secretary Kemi Badenoch.
Tony Blair’s former mouthpiece thought he was being very clever by belittling her for daring to express opinions on the trans debate that clashed with the woke world view of his North London dinner party chums.
He sneered on Twitter/X (where else?): “I’m sure the world of trade and business will take note that the Secretary of State for trade and business has decided that the biggest issue on her agenda on her first big election outing is the weaponisation of trans rights.”
It took significantly less than, ahem, 45 minutes for the inconvenient fact to reach him that Badenoch also happens to be minister for women and equalities.
I WAS a bit worried I had ovarian cancer this week after a charity suggested blokes could get it too.
Turns out it was all part of a tacky stunt for Pride Month.
Someone at Ovarian Cancer Action thought it would be a great idea to say: “Let’s raise awareness by asking: “Can men get ovarian cancer?”
Well it certainly caught my attention.
But allow me to help with the answer: It’s no.
Men do not have ovaries, much like the cretins at Ovarian Cancer Action appear to have no brain cells.
What an insulting position from a charity which claims on its website: “Women don’t just deserve better, they deserve the best.”
Do they even know what a woman is?
Milkshake idiot? Up yours love
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I’M not a fan of chucking stuff at people you don’t like.
Eggs, Champagne buckets full of ice – or milkshakes.
It’s ugly and aggressive and often ends up in actual violence, as John “Two Jabs” Prescott showed us when he twatted that mullet-topped egg-chucker in 2001.
So Victoria Thomas-Bowen’s puerile stunt, splattering Reform UK’s Nigel Farage with banana milkshake, got a red buzzer from me.
Even worse was when it was revealed she wasn’t even doing it to make a political point. It soon became clear why she did it.
There was no Newsnight interview giving a ten-point rebuttal of Reform UK’s plans for Britain.
Instead, Little Miss Lactose stripped off and went on her OnlyFans page to boast of her exploits and hopefully score some extra subscribers.
But by wearing a tacky thong wedged so far up her backside she merely succeeded in making another massive arse of herself.
A D-Day debt
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IT has been a humbling week listening to the stories of those D-Day heroes still with us.
And it has been heartening as children have become engaged in a story that, many have been at pains to point out, can for them seem like ancient history.
“Lest we forget” is the Remembrance drumbeat and the past week has helped hammer this home.
Soon there will be no one left to tell these tales of bravery first- hand, so it is a debt of every one of us to ensure they are not forgotten.
Rant is so rich Mr Fry
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I SEE Stephen Fry is pretending to be a man of the people again.
He was hauled over the coals by the old boys of the Marylebone Cricket Club this week for suggesting its home, Lord’s, was “stinking of privilege and classism”.
He went on to slam the MCC’s public face as “deeply disturbing – beetroot-coloured gentlemen in yellow-and-orange blazers sitting in this space in front of the Long Room and looking as if they’d come out of an Edwardian cartoon”.
It’s a good line, to be fair, that could have been uttered by one of his sarky Blackadder characters. But it just reeks of hypocrisy.
After all, crusader Fry – who later apologised, saying he should shut his “big mouth” – has not always been so offended by privileged old men.
He has for years been a member of London’s Garrick Club – a stuffy private members’ joint that did not allow women to join until last month following a public row.
During the hoo-ha, Fry, whose membership was a secret until it was revealed by The Guardian in March, was incensed by the no-women rule.
Never mind that it had been in place not only since he joined but for nearly 200 years, he said he would bloody well quit if it wasn’t changed.
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This ultimatum was of course in no way linked to the bad publicity the club, and therefore its members, were getting.
Do as I say and not as I do, eh, Melchett?