SAN FRANCISCO — Wired Magazine published an online opinion piece today by Virgina Heffernan, who deploys a number of stigmatizing and stereotypical tropes about sex work and depictions of sex in the course of speculating about the future of Twitter.
The premise of the article, which is titled “Let Twitter Devolve Into Porn,” is that websites and platforms that permit adult content inevitably become overrun by it, and that this is the fate awaiting Twitter under Elon Musk.
“Of all the threats posed by Twitter since it fell under sketchy new management in October, one of them doubles as a promise,” Heffernan asserts in her intro. “Twitter will devolve into pornography.”
After decrying Musk's "tiresome shitposting and hospitality to hate speech," Heffernan lays out the case for her prediction — in the process unleashing a barrage of stigmatizing and demonizing language about adult content and sex work.
“Swaths of Twitter,” she imagines, “are now mangy empty lots crawling with vandals, lechers, con men, and swastikas. The time is perhaps right for porn, then. Porn abhors a vacuum. Especially where it can be ennobled as constitutional duty.”
The last line, of course, echoes religious anti-porn crusaders and their SWERF allies, who want to ban all porn and who claim that protecting sexual expression as a matter of free speech is not a legitimate cause, but a subterfuge.
Porn online, Heffernan writes, “behaves like a predator plant, saturating the pixels with flesh colors, choking off biodiverse memes, and sowing vast digital acreage with salt.”
Heffernan contends that Tumblr “lost its allure when it was overrun by porn,” that Chatroulette was meant to be “a whimsical way to meet strangers” but was taken over by “dick pics and leering goons” and that OnlyFans was diverted from its original conception as “a platform for performers to post videos” by sex workers — whose labor famously grew it into a phenomenon.
Throughout, Heffernan’s language and choice of metaphors are aggressively anti-porn. Though initially leading off with a restrained “Porn’s not my cup of tea,” she goes on to fantasize about what other people are doing on social media like Twitter, which she labels “an orgy of hyperstimulation, with people baring their souls, posting thirst traps, coyly subtweeting, and of course negging and prodding and simultaneously secreting dopamine and cortisol and God knows what other precious bodily fluids.”
Heffernan anticipates her scenario of Twitter's fate as “good news,” since “Not only will it make Twitter2 easily quittable, but it’s pleasing to see things become what they deep down are. Twitter has slouched toward porn for years.”
Musk has yet to reveal his thoughts or planned policy changes concerning adult content on Twitter. While Heffernan’s prediction of the platform's inevitable takeover by porn might come as a surprise to the Republican-endorsing CEO, her attitude toward adult content would likely appeal to his hard-right backers and allies, like Peter Thiel and his protege J.D. “Outlaw all porn” Vance.
The article can be read on Wired and will soon appear in the magazine's February print issue.
