Porn has also become a lot harder and the exploitative nature of the business has become more apparent. It’s not just people’s opinions that have become more prudish (though sure, they have) it’s also that porn is now, broadly, much much harder.

People were shocked about deep throating in the 70s, for goodness sake. Today that’s light fayre.

No. These things come in waves. We’re certainly on the prudish side of the cycle right now, but the modern prudes are a far cry from the prudes of yesteryear.

The world propensity for prudeness is trending down on a macro scale, but we are also at a point where the existing prudes have consolidated and are the strongest they’ve been in the short term.

I find the wanton sexualization of the 80s and 90s almost wholesome compared to whatever the fuck is going on these days. Sex is too important to be relegated to porn - but that seems to be the mission now.

We’re allowed to have heaps of gratuitous violence, action, and misery in our art - but for some reason sex/nudity has this unique obligation to directly progress the plot (if it can’t be removed altogether). Sex apparently can’t just be part of character development, themes, world building, or just gratuitous fun, anymore without giving these fucking prudes the ick.

Much could be said about this.

Some people are prudish. Some people are not. Media could have two different versions: the sanitized version made for the first group of people, and mature version for the second group. Sometimes this is not possible in which case it’s better to just have the first version so that it’s suitable to the largest audience.

There’s also been (I think justifiable) backlash against adult stuff because kids now are big users of the internet thanks to the addictiveness of social media and the tiny supercomputer they carry with them everywhere that is now necessary to participate in society. Sanitizing everything for everyone is one solution to this problem. The other is keep the mature stuff but require age verification to view it.

Also, people often browse social media in public and are aware someone might look over their shoulder and see something that might be misinterpreted as porn. Nobody wants that.

There’s a great article in The Atlantic about the disappearance of communal showers without curtains or dividers in the US. Nude beaches and nudist colonies are apparently disappearing as well.

https://www.theatlantic.com/family/2025/11/naked-locker-room-end/684907/

Summarizing in my own words,

Progressive era reformers had communal baths built before municipal plumbing systems existed so that the poor who could not afford their own private bath could keep clean. Bathing suits at the time would fall apart and clog filters, so boys and men were required to bathe naked (apparently women had to be clothed). People naturally also showered naked without dividers or curtains. By cultural momentum, this practice stuck around long after bathing suits had advanced.

Fast forward to today and people are realizing that separating showers by gender isn’t enough to prevent any discomfort or sexualization of naked bodies because there’s awareness of different sexual orientations. Additionally, the internet exists and cell phones with cameras are ubiquitous. Nobody wants to have an image of their nude form spread to half the world over social media where it previously would only be seen by a few people for a few minutes. Add to this the fact that easy access to a vast amount of internet pornography has massively sexualized nudity. Communal showers are disappearing because a large number of people (including me) hate them.

Very much so.

I am Danish. A lot of our culture and humor used to revolve around the naked body and sex. This has totally changed within the last 20 years.

My personal theory is that social media censorship of anything sexual is the reason. America exported their prudish culture and it is erasing our culture.

It’s really all our faults. The first time someone used the phrase “horny jail” unironically and wasn’t slapped into the following week, we invited this. The first time someone complained about a sex scene in a movie and wasn’t shunned from their entire social circle and relegated to hanging out with the Boomer ladies at the local church, we began building the world we’re trapped in.

And the people in here defending this new secular Puritan paradigm all sound fucking insufferable. It doesn’t matter if you’re an upright prude because your gullible enough to think sex makes God angry or if you’re an upright prude because you think it’s a feminist position. Either way you’re still a jackass who’s clinging to a sexual morality invented by bronze age goat herders to maximize the prices they could get for selling their teenage daughters to their middle aged friends.

I hate it so much.

STOP VOTING FOR REPUBLICANS. For fucks sake!

I’m watching the Magicians, on Amazon, and I use subtitles. All the curse words are purposefully filled in with random letters, so as not to offend the reader.

IANAL, but in my opinion this violates the “functionally equivalent services” test of the Americans with Disabilities Act Title IV, and in a just world they would get hit with a massive lawsuit.

The oligarchs are using porn, and specifically child abuse, to get total control of everything said and done, to create secret social scores to be used against us.

I have fucking seen mouths blurred to stop lip readers understanding even slightly impolite words!

Inb4 it’s time to selfhost our own porn to avoid Johnny Law

Yet the violence we see on our screens (real and fictional) is non stop. I grew up watching 70’s and 80’s broadcast television. Rarely did anyone swear or say God damn. Nude images were rare. Things change then change again

It’s forced on us by rich Christians

It’s not people, it’s corporations. And it’s more US specifically rather than global