There are some places you can stand and glimpse the future. On Earth, there’s the island of Little Diomede, where it’s possible to gaze across the Bering Strait — 2.4 miles and 24 hours across the International Date Line. Online, you can don a VR headset and step into a world where the line between sex and violence, intimacy and isolation, fantasy and flesh has all but dissolved.
For now, the digital realm remains notionally separate, but the distinction is fading fast. The content streamed today is shaping the habits, expectations, and sexuality of tomorrow’s adults.
To see how pornography came to define that future, we must first look to the recent past. In the early 2000s, Web 2.0 transformed the internet from a static gallery of images into an interactive and addictive parallel world. Pornography didn’t merely ride the crest of that wave—it powered it. Its influence is etched into our devices, from the ever-expanding phone screen to the rise of deepfakes, 98 percent of which are pornographic.