Have You Seen a Porn Casualty?
Or, what's behind those eyes?
(This post is a follow-up to my previous post, Everything is Porn. Go consume that first.)
What kind of man can you be when you are a slave of shit?" - G.I. Gurdjieff, Paris Meetings 1943
For better or worse, without judgment as to the why, every generation has its casualties. The silent generation has a prevalence of hyper-cautious, stifling independent uprights, armored to the gills in seemingly caricature notions of duty, respect, and loyalty. The baby boomers (holy fucking shit) is a malodorous concoction of GDP-brained selfishness, self-entitlement, self-centeredness, and, in general, a predominance of self self self, to such a degree that one wonders if they even understand other people exist. Generation X finds its casualties unable to recover from near-lethal doses of cynicism, apathy, and above all, irony (If you’re wondering where that new, hip, sarcastically infantile shithouse humor came from, it’s here). Millennials—my generation—are a hothouse of gullibility and certainty, whilst simultaneously owning cynicism and radical skepticism—a valueless mess whose worldview is, unbeknownst to them, largely built from memories of Gen X-created TV shows. From this point on, starting with Gen Z (though perhaps it’s just too early to tell what their uniqueness is), unsurprisingly, everyone is cast into a sordid soup, an admixture of the prior traits, all rolled into an indiscernible ball of apathy, nihilism, cynicism, and certainty, constructed from a pithy smattering of signifier demigods, namely: Science, Economy, Education, and Politics, all of which are hastily retreated to in times of confusion; linguistic wombs where one can both avoid responsibility and assert authority!
However, developing throughout all these generational shifts, amidst them, parasitically overriding them, is the pre-eminent casualty of our modern day, the porn casualty. A 1000-yard stare, entertainment-jonesing, peak-tweaking, orgasm-addicted, shrivelled up excuse for existence. Someone who, when you really look at them, it’s like no one is there at all, as if their being (what’s left of it) is back at home, opening another tab, cracking open another can, getting ready to unzip and miss the roses.
The porn casualty is distinct in their apathetic plasticity concerning everything, barring a single, sensually direct vector, namely: the peak, the release, the urgh!, the ooh!, the ahhh!, the splooge, the splurt, the splurge, the terminus, the apex, the ultimate, the best, the top, the zenith, the…the…the….(Ohhhhhh! Yes, right there!)…the (tensing)…orgasm!
Due to their near-universal existence in the modern world, it’s quite difficult to ‘see’ a porn casualty via a simple, quick glance. Having ground feeling, thought, and curiosity down to a greying pulp hellbent on finding the next release, there is nothing emphatically, vitally, or aesthetically identifying about them, primarily because there is nothing emphatic, vital, or aesthetic inside them. They are walking shells who, upon confrontation, bend and bow, snivel and avoid, umm and arr, maybe and could be, I guess so and fair enough; there’s just no friction there, as if, at the moment of impact—be it with a car or an angry lover—they…cease to exist, as if there was never anyone there to begin with. However, I feel I need to at least make a stab at identifying these ontological wisps, even if it is largely in the negative.
As per my previous post, Everything is Porn, the (our) pornographic focused existence is such that, again, everybody is instinctively looking for the next opportunity to shoot their respective wad! Whether it’s eating the best pizza ever, watching the next thing immediately, acquiring the latest gizmo now, or just ramping up various status scores (likes, followers, subscribers, shags, X-consumed, etc.), the point—this much is clear—is no longer to be curious, to engage, or to be interested, it is solely to consume-as-to-cum. Consumption for the purpose of the climax! And the next…and the next…and the next…ad infinicum.
The porn casualties, then, are those people whose very existence is entirely in line with this ‘way’ of being. Those who, simply put, are looking for their next hit, their next release, the next “It was SO amazing!”, the next next, and anything and everything in between those hits is, for them, really nothing at all. They eat the amazeballs pizza…nothing happening…they watch the oh-my-god-you-have-to-see-it-it’s-so-good TV series…nothing happening…they perform (being the apt word) some mimicked, pornographic act (facials and the like) with their special other (“He/she is my best friend!”)…nothing happening…they travel somewhere and make sure to get that just right shot for Instagram…nothing happening, etc. Their life is like a Wes Anderson film with no filler, line after line of infantile orgasmo-gunge snorted into their empty dome as perpetually momentary filler. A shrivelled-up nothing, coasting around the world latching onto the latest-and-greatest hit as a sole means to feel alive. The machinic sleep; the living dead; an unlife, unlived
Yet, the porn casualty does, in some, far-gone, unliving sense, exist. The question then is, just what does this ‘next-peak’ vector, this direction of ever-greater sensual succession, look like in practice? Or, how can one spot a porn casualty? It might just be that you’ve seen a few, or, God forbid, you’re reading this and getting a bit angry, a bit squeamish, a bit uneasy…Well, I hate to break it to you, but…in broad strokes…
Physiognomically, the porn casualty is neither grossly under or overweight, they seem to hold pockets of inflammatory resistance that are in complete contrast to various appendages: Rotund guts with skinny arms, birthing hips (male) and sloped shoulders, tired, sunken faces atop taut, stressed necks, exhausted eyelids drooped over bloodshot, alert eyes, stiff, spindly legs holding an ass that’s given up, a posture leant forward yet somehow still cradling inward, protecting itself, thin wrists and flabby triceps, sloppy shaving and a popular haircut, clammy, yet simultaneously dry skin. An air of foistyness about them, not pleasant, not necessarily grim, yet, memories of unkept teenage rooms, subtle dankness never (despite many attempts) masked by affordable body spray. A walk that is hastily trying, grasping, to get somewhere…now! Shifty eyes, shifty neck. Tapping leg, twitchy fingers. Pinching skin, picking cuticles. Stretched smiles that never use the eyes. Forced, back-of-the-throat laughter (with wide, gaping mouths). Lots of nose laughs. And sighs, so many exasperated, drawn-out, tiring, draining, physiologically bureaucratic, vampiric, sighs!
Audibly, they, again, are neither here nor there. A middle-of-the-road volume, complete with light vocal fry and consumerist intonation—that is, patterns of emphasis taken directly from movies and TV. On becoming what they deem to be ‘too quiet’, they will, if they’re in company, excuse themselves by way of saying they had a long day or are tired. Likewise, if they happen to speak too loudly, they will noticeably lower the volume over a few words, leaving everyone around them to deal with that horrid, awkward fresh silence, which—of course—is hastily filled by modern convo filler (Did you see X? Did you hear Y? etc.)
A strange facet of the porn casualty’s relationship to sound is that, amidst, during, and within any peak/orgasm type moment—be it an actual orgasm or, say, witnessing a beautiful vista—they quickly seek to fill the now apparent void (because the peak has been reached) with something new, almost in a panic. For instance, upon reaching a vista, they will state how beautiful it is (as if that needs to be said), whilst eating some infantile slop, they will reiterate how amazing it tastes. Even the classic orgasm itself doesn’t get out scot free where noise is concerned, more often than not, some cynical, I’m-so-adult comment will follow after cumming like, I needed that, That’s the ticket!, That’s a bingo!, That was SO good, We’re good, aren’t we? or the eventual porn casualty classic (holding back tears now), Why do I feel empty?
Musically, as with all consumptive things, they ‘happen’ to like whatever most people like. When asked what they like to listen to, they will reply ‘Oh, I’ll listen to anything really, as long as it’s not [insert comically derided genre here (country, rap, etc.)’ Much like the aforementioned vista-moment (‘Oh fuck isn’t that sunset so absolutely shitifyingly PRETTY!’), long, complex, and attention-demanding classical pieces are either A. Ignored altogether as fuddy-duddy [Read: Not ‘normal’, B. Appreciated with a cynical gloss, or C. Reduced to historical appreciations.
Musical albums will rarely be listened to in full. In fact, the modus operandi of porn listening is to seek out the 3-4 tracks on an album you absolutely adore and play them over and over until you can’t stand them, the musical equivalent of jerking it ‘til it bleeds. In this vein, much of the music that ends up on playlists is put there for near-cinematic reasons. Be it listening to Van Halen’s Jump in the gym, as if one was in a Rocky-esque montage; listening to Noel Gallagher’s Where Did It All Go Wrong? after a particulary sharp breakup; nostalgically masturbating over MGMT’s Time to Pretend whilst driving through your old town; blaring out (not too loud) Oasis’ Live Forever whilst necking a few before the pub, just like we used to; rage-enjoying Metallica’s Master of Puppers whilst angrily cleaning up (a song both heavy and accepted now due its inclusion in Stranger Things), or, if they’re feeling particularly onanistic, firing up Busted’s Year 3000, McFly’s That Girl, Duran Duran’s Rio, Abba’s…anything, and entering into a deep pit of retrospectively false, near-euphoric nostalgia, because please, please! Just let me crawl into the womb and not have to deal with anything!
Filmically, the porn casualty’s ‘appreciation’ is much like music, except that as the political [Read: socially normative] dimensions of contemporary music have long since been thrown into the bin…
…film (rarely cinema) has had to attempt to fill the void. The first port of intrigue for any film is no longer screenwriting, cinematography, or acting, but a gossamer-thin Manichean moralism, wherein the porn casualty immediately, possibly even before seeing the film, seeks out who or what it is they should be supporting. They sit down, flick on the flick, and quickly get to work figuring out which side they should be on. And, from thereon, edging themselves with thought for the eventual ‘bad-guy-gets-theirs’ moment, wherein they can sit back in a self-congratulatory ooze of rightness, knowing not only did they support the right person, but that person got it. The entirely failed audience reaction to Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds is the case par excellence here.
Entering into a film whilst vectored solely toward the money shot entails a viewing experience wherein only the last 1% matters. As such, various porn casualty targeted expanded universes now tailor themselves toward replicating that 1% (the climax) in as many ways as possible. What are Marvel films if not prolonged, juvenile, edging sessions, intent on draining you of as much essence as possible? But hey, bad guy goes boom boom!
A further issue with film, and more so TV, for the porn casualty is that, as they’re ceaselessly looking for the next Oh yes!, drawn-out, difficult, and multi-layered shows become near anathema to their way of living due to the attention and delayed gratification required of them. So what happens? Do they merely skip over these shows? Of course not! Watching The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, Sons of Anarchy, Walking Dead, or any other prolonged TV event is as close to an initiatory rite as they get; therefore, something else is needed. That’s right, more TV, more climaxes, more OH! Whilst that sick scene where the good guy blows away the bad guy with the weapon is playing in the background, you can find the porn casualty munching on a snackie, swiping on an app, swiping on a reel, swiping on a swipe, or possibly even needing rewind as they were too busy focusing on a different clip entirely on a different screen altogether. Double the screens, double the climax! In short, TV and film aren’t stories or narratives to be curious about for the porn casualty, but pure filler, primarily intended to be a ‘fun way to pass the time’. No wonder these fucking Marvel films run on for over 3 hours now, I mean, I guess it makes sense, why jerk off for 2 hours when you could crank it for 3?
Literarily, the porn casualty might as well be a clone of Oprah Winfrey, no longer reading for some higher goal (self-development, existential quandaries, etc.) but because that’s what other people are reading. It’s less about the contents and more about that new style of cover design. You know the type, I don’t even need to give you an image. Books are perhaps the most difficult thing to cumify, in large part because reading is work, and even when the content itself is simple, one still has to—God forbid!—scan their eyes over page after page of text.
However, crime thrillers and low grade, subtly hidden smut are becoming ever popular with titles like Hard Glass, Branded for Duty, Judged for Ruin, or Trials of Fire (I made all these up), affording our casualties a carbon-copy narrative framework, allowing them the exact same hit every time: Establish good guy > good guy does good things (happy) > introduce bad guy (Oh no!) > bad guy temporarily stifles good guy (sad) > good guy hatches plan (foreplay) > bad guy and good guy fight (I’m about to blow!) > good guy wins (What a mess!)
Alongside these pithy (an insult to the word) novels is a whole genre of I’m so smart books. Whether it’s Zuboff’s The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, Varoufakis’ Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, Harari’s Nexus, Haidt’s The Anxious Generation, or Sumnobhead’s Capitalism Bad, there is an entire industry of books that, much like TED Talks, promise so much, yet deliver so little. Books that make one feel as if they’re smarter for reading them, but on enquiring as to just what one learned, they are left drawing a blank. But hey, that doesn’t matter because the orgasm of reading isn’t the reading itself, but having read. What does the contents of Crime and Punishment matter unless I get to click the ‘Read’ button on Goodreads?
Gustatorily, the porn casualty is in their element. Here we find not only a superb excuse for juvenile habits, Well, we’ve all gotta eat!, but also a ceaselessly recharging mechanism of justification; we always be hungry! However, again, like all their prior habits, food consumption, too, falls under the purview of ‘Others are’. Others are watching it, listening to it, reading it, and likewise, Others are eating it. Have you not seen the ‘Coke and Wotsits’ trend on TikTok? Oh my God, you’ve got to try it! You’re telling me you haven’t tried the deep-fried-chorizo-loaded-fries-with-ranch ‘trend’, it tastes so good! Of course it fucking tastes good, you imbecile, you just expended your calorie intake until 2027!
Every meal is a thing. Every drink is a thing. Every act of consumption is a signal, an act, a mind-numbing, singular coom-session sought to entertain. One will, however, more than any other vice, be astounded at the lengths a porn casualty will go to try some food of the spectacle. A 3-star Michelin restaurant is defined as Exceptional cuisine, worth a special journey, such a ‘special journey’ that a casualty would take for loaded fries, a chicken gyro, or a restaurant where you actively get abused whilst eating generic pub grub. Again, everything has to be a thing.
Conversationally, they are caught in an ever-accelerating event of merging, wherein all opinions and values appear to desire some eventual unification. If firing off eyewateringly generic responses such as:
Statement: I’ve been thinking about doing some travelling next year.
Response: Oh, that’ll be so good for you.
Statement: I’m just struggling at the moment; everything seems overwhelming.
Response: You just have to believe in yourself really. I’m here for you.
Statement: I just…I just can’t go back to him/her, not after the way he/she treated me!
Response: Hey, bro/girl, you deserve so much better than him/her!
Statement: I am going to attack passing villagers with a chainsaw.
Response: Hey! You’re living your truth, remember that.
Statement: My soul is rotting, I fear for being itself.
Response: Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, babe.
Statement: The entirety of my inner organs have just prolapsed…
Response: That’s life, you gotta just get up and get back out there, man.
doesn’t work, then they will have a popular TV or film quotation for near enough any event or response, or, failing this, they will quickly utilize an oft-repeated signifier of accepted cynicism as a deflationary retort, such as: Why don’t we just kill ourselves!, I wish I was dead, Life sucks, then you die, I hate life, Oh well, only X more years, or (again), I want to kill myself. (What was it Freud said about jokes?)
The conversations here are, unsurprisingly, alike the post-TED talk feeling I mentioned earlier. One can sit and ‘chat’ with a porn casualty for hours, seemingly touching on anything and everything, and yet, upon walking away and thinking back, one isn’t sure they could really tell you anything of depth, anything of worth. That, even though such conversations might touch on such topics as breakups, divorces, hatred, and cheating (and are, in fact, very likely to as…you guessed it, that’s what people do in the movies), there isn’t sufficient feeling there to really get the ball rolling. As if what’s being said is a sincere script as opposed to sincere, as if line after line unfeels like it’s been lifted from a TV show and not from the immediate moment.
Porn casualty conversations and in turn, friendships, eventually devolve into quotations, meme sharing, and ironic photos, all held up by the flimsy supports of Remember when! Yet, all of this is itself nothing because the key factor in real conversation is missing from the start, eye contact. The casualty looks down and around near always, eye contact is reserved for moments of utmost seriousness (job interviews and funerals) or moments of faux-sincerity, such as trying to get into another’s pants.
The conversation, then, flitters around externally like a swarm of factoids, the casualty hoping that one is niche enough to land and garner a connection. But a connection built from a thing is no connection at all; such is why so few modern, adult friendships last outside of their immediate place of origin (karate club, climbing club, model train club, etc.), built atop things, there’s nothing real to anchor to. But, yet…please, if we just keep talking, then maybe, maybe something will latch on. Please stay.
And he’d been staying in his room a lot, playing a video game called Morrowind and downloading lesbian porn. - Neil Strauss, The Game
Sexually, they’re fried. Utterly gooned out of existence. Whether it’s literal porn usage, in the case of porn induced erectile dysfunction (you’ve been PIED!), or the more abstract form of pornography I’m eluding to, the erection—literal and metaphorical—is now at the behest of fantasy. The mental image has usurped the reality. With many finding themselves (both men and women) covertly (or even unconsciously) recreating pornographic scenes and positions, and what begins as defensibly filed under ‘kinky’ or ‘naughty’ soon enough transforms into ‘BDSM’, humiliation, and eventual soul-loss (latent hatred).
As with all orgasm-vectors, there is an inverted form of entropy, wherein as the ceaseless seeking of ever greater entertainments and enjoyment continues, so too does the need for ever-greater Oohs and Aahs, that is, ever heightened sensuality. But as the pores of feeling become increasingly clogged up, so too does the sensitivity to sensual touch. Like a drug addict requiring an ever greater high, the porn casualty’s final destination is slingshotting themselves into the sun whilst masturbating, eating a donut, and listening to Cyndi Lauper’s Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.
Their boyfriends and girlfriends, husbands and wives, lovers and lusts (if they have any) have become part (that is, a thing) of their lives. A factor, a function, a segment of the story, someone not taken for themselves, but envisioned as part of a masturbatory story running wild in one’s mind. Me and X are going to go here on holiday, have three kids, and a little cottage in the woods. That’s great, have you both met X and gotten to know them, yet? And when it comes to sex between these couples—if it’s happening at all—well, what can one say other than that each is subtly using the other to jerk themselves off; another lust-filled movie moment of acknowledged ‘adulting’—Look at us, we’re doing it!
Mythologically, they abide by deflated binaries, not in the sense of Good vs evil, hero vs villain, right vs wrong, or liberal vs conservative (though these are easy pickings), but in the sense of the ‘vs’ itself. All porn casualty myths are in obedience not to a found A and B that are against each other, but that the very concept of versus (vs) will be relevant. It doesn’t matter if it’s politics (Democrat vs Republicans), films (hero vs villain), food (Coke vs Pepsi), music (Beatles vs the Stones), conversation (my opinion vs your opinion), or even sex (dominant vs submissive), the porn casualty just cannot grasp the idea of open curiosity, vulnerable intrigue, active inquisitiveness. No, they have no other means to attend to the world other than via a pornographic tension wherein, again, one ‘side’ will arise (peak) as the winner.
Or, even if in agreement, things are like other things, but in the most literal, flat manner. Oh, you’ll love X film, it’s just like Y film, or, between the lines, You’ll love this, it’s exactly the same as everything else you like. It is one of the foundations of the porn casualty to abide by a rule of dualities. You cannot have one without the other. One cannot understand what it is to like something if one doesn’t also understand what it is to dislike something, and so on. Everything in tension. Everything, abstractly, for or against, good or bad, yes or no, and most importantly, right (I am normal) or wrong (I am weird).
Ontologically, they’re not there. Not really. I have, admittedly, painted with broad brush strokes thus far, and yet this is my broadest of all. For where I have written of existence and living, or traits and life, truly I have only spoken of being. That feeling, that presence, that possible wonder one gets—or may get—when before another person, when conversing with another, when connecting with another. Here, with the porn casualty, there is nothing. Not literally, these people exist as matter and brain and movement, of course. But there isn’t that, again, presence of someone open to be vulnerable.
See, they are scuttling around, hasty, cunning…slippery. When one’s entire life is at the whim of the orgasm-vector, there is no space, no place, no present unto which to develop, to grow; the ever-elusive present moment of the Now isn’t for porn casualties, for the fact that they are always and ever already in the future. It need not matter that they’re not literally tonight, tomorrow, or next week. In terms of where they are living, they are already eating that pizza, already watching the next episode, and already on that holiday. It doesn’t matter that there are some beautiful, delicate, and quite dashing Calystegia sepiums blossoming all around; what matters is getting to the next thing, and the next, and the next, and oop, they’re dead.
They just aren’t there. It’s like beneath that thin film of water coating their eyes, there is…something, someone staring out. Behind this thing before me, there is a real trembling, dying to get out, yearning, but it just can’t.
Love murders the actual. - Alexander Theroux, Darconville’s Cat
Lovingly, they just cannot speak. Where some may be able to love, and risk that gaze into the ever-present possibility of both love and hate with an open, courageous heart. The porn casualty is, inherently, unable to say the wholehearted Yes! required for love. Their yeses are doubts, as are their nos. Their affirmations are cross-referenced, their habits fickle, and their principles null. The porn casualty is at a loss to raise their self-focused one to that love-entailing two. Their inability to connect is not a felt pain, but viewed as a dualistic quandary to be figured out—If only I could figure out what things she liked! They ask questions of love in the same breath as they ask questions of Star Wars and pasta; love thrown into the gamut of pornography shan’t and can’t last a second.
What’s recognized as love by the casualty is the Valentine’s Day card quatrain, the hastily bought box of chocolates, the extra passionate kiss (Until next year!), the begrudging visit to the in-laws, the 15-minute backrub, or maybe I’ll let her pick the film tonight. For love, in its must and to be, is the delicate adversary of this daily humdrum, and with the latter as the fodder of the casualty’s life, can’t it be that in being touched by love they only crumble into confrontation and win and win and win again, a success leading them back upon those shores of loneliness and confusion. That blackest of rules given to young men who don’t want to hear it—If you’re confused, she isn’t interested. Can’t we say too of the porn casualty—If you’re not interested, it isn’t love. And as such, as it is with their being, so too with their curiosity about life—there is nothing there.
They walk and talk and eat and watch and listen and fuck, yet they neither move nor state nor digest nor see nor hear nor make love.
There’s just nothing there, and like so many, I’d love to have so many people back who are long since gone, yet still with us, existing.
Ironically, this post is just a high-brow masturbatory essay that takes every human experience and turns it into the classic: ”bad because phone and junk food and instagram” or whatever.
The problem with stuff like this is that it never proposes how people should be. It just pines for some implicit perfect being that is somehow opposite the “porn causality” in every regard. In fact, it never even grapples with the simple fact that many life experiences simply don’t amount to their idealized form regardless of “porn” or whatever. Humans are easily short-circuited, and fundamentally just animals whose primary motivations involve social signaling and defining oneself in relation to others. Great man history likes to obfuscate this as if Aristotle or Xerxes didn’t have buttholes and never shit and never had embarrassing moments and never jerked it or ogled a woman or said/did something dumb.
People are gross, apish, and barely domesticated. And its ok. Stop writing imaginary horoscopes that you can cast on 85% of humanity to make yourself feel better about writing on Substack. Its just another type of social signaling.
Coming to terms with the fact I can’t do anything about it, I’ve come to appreciate the silver lining of the porn era (using the word in what I think is your intended broader sense of losing onself to a perpetual hyperreality of cheap stimulus): it may well be a great Darwinian Reckoning, much needed now as the weaker of our species no longer die en masse in childhood. The less vital among us — the gooner, the gamer — die off without reproducing. And with this evolutionary pruning there follows a healthier, profoundly less neurotic population.