Advice from three of EMandLO.com’s guy friends. This week they answer the following: “Why do so many guys forward really gross gonzo porn clips around to their friends? Why do they find it funny instead of disgusting or offensive or just plain sad?” To ask the guys your own question, click here.
Straight Single Guy (Colin Adamo): Don’t worry, we find them disgusting, offensive, and sad too. But we’re stuck in a world of proving our masculinity to one another in some way or another. Locker room antics don’t disappear just because we haven’t been to gym class in a decade. Sending around shocking internet finds to your friends is like a modern-day version of a game of Chicken, an electronic equivalent to a frat house panty raid. It’s our way of showing others that we are not wusses, that we’ve got the bravado to view even the most odious images that the Internet has to offer — and laugh about it all the same. Grossing out our friends is a guy’s way to gain social status. And if our friends are too far away to fart on or expose our testicles to, we’ll settle for an appalling e-mail thread.
Straight Married Guy (Irad Eyal): No idea. I’m against forwarding of all sorts, be it wealth-creating chain letters, warnings about anthrax in detergent samples, or gross porn. I just don’t get it. Once someone sends you the 2 Girls 1 Cup video, your relationship moves to a bad new place. I have friends who send me captioned JPGs of xtra hairy women or pokey nipples and I honestly think they think it’s hilarious. They’re tapping into their 4th grade reptilian brain where poopoo and boobies are solid gold punchlines. If they had to send that crap on a postcard they might think twice, but email is too easy. Thank you Al Gore for inventing the Internet.
Gay Committed Guy (Terence): Not having a clue what gonzo porn was, I looked it up on Wikipedia. Now I get it. Gonzo porn is porn. Plain and simple. I can’t remember the last time I accidentally came across highly produced porn with costumes and storylines. We pass around gonzo porn because we can. DVDs and VHS tapes just don’t travel well over the Internet. Besides, it’s fun porn. It’s group porn. It’s collaborative, point and shoot, easy to upload, easy to download and easy to offload. There’s no going back. So much so that vintage porn is becoming just plain sad.
Our “guys” are a rotating group of contributors. Irad Eyal is a writer, TV producer, and founder of celebrity gossip site Sexdegrees.net; Colin Adamo is a recent Yale grad and author/blogger behind Hooking Up & Staying Hooked, the only sex and relationships resource specifically for high school guys; and Terence is an American living in Sydney. To ask the guys your own question, click here.
