• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Jon Ronson

If your mate was doing this job years ago then the computers would be used for porn probably because a. computers/mucky videos were a novelty and b. the IT department hadn't learned to block unsuitable sites.

OTOH when I did a course at our local FE college within the last 10 years it was hard to find ANYTHING to look at on the computers, so much was blocked. Today the kids'd just stream whatever they want on their smartphones.

This was almost exactly ten years ago so the cyberweb scud film was hardly a novelty. As I hinted, the "IT dept". (some bloke) didn't have a clue. I think he was mainly there to uodate McAfee every time he got an email telling him to do so!

It's the end of civilisation.

Yes. It is. It drove my well-meaning friend to the brink of suicide anyway.
 
Last edited:
This was almost exactly ten years ago so the cyberweb scud film was hardly a novelty. As I hinted, the "IT dept". (some bloke) didn't have a clue. I think he was mainly there to uodate McAfee every time he got an email telling him to do so!



Yes. It is. It drove my well-meaning friend to the brink of suicide anyway.

Ah yes I see, so IT could've sorted a block but they didn't. Tossers.
 
Episode 6 has the news that erectile dysfunction in men under 40 has shot up 1000% because of streaming porn. It's got so that the only thing that turns them on is extreme porn, and a real woman in front of them has no effect because she's too normal. Maybe this will stop the population explosion?
 
Episode 6 has the news that erectile dysfunction in men under 40 has shot up 1000% because of streaming porn. It's got so that the only thing that turns them on is extreme porn, and a real woman in front of them has no effect because she's too normal. Maybe this will stop the population explosion?

That and plunging sperm-counts.
 
Aaand I've finished. Great series about a subject not many are talking about, no matter how much they are thinking about it. Ronson makes a very good point about the pirating of porn, which is ruining people's livelihoods among the professionals: if nobody really cares about pirating musicians' work (or movies or TV episodes, I suppose), imagine how they feel about depriving porn stars and producers of any income. It'll all be amateur before long, apparently.

Last story was about a customised porn producer receiving a request to make a video featuring a porn star asking the client not to commit suicide. A lot of isolated people out there.
 
Noticed recently Jon's other porn podcast series is available for free listening:
Listen here

It's called The Last Days of August and is about a porn actress who committed suicide, apparently because of online bullying, but there was more to it. He makes it clear this is not one of those true crime stories, and it turns out to be the story of a huge problem in the industry, that of mental illness.

After hearing all of it you might think "well, duh" about the conclusions, but that doesn't mean they are not worth reiterating. Not exactly hilarious and I doubt it will make most masturbators think about the people behind the images, but it might help someone.
 
Louis Theroux might be regarded as the anti-Jon Ronson, but he interviewed him for his new podcast and now seems like the pro-Jon Ronson, which is good:
Podcast here

It's an hour-long chat where they discuss David Icke and Alex Jones, and how calling people paedophiles online is the great (?) new insult to ruin someone's reputation. There's also a bit about how overreacting to any faux pas can be as bad as allowing people a platform to say anything they like, and a swimming chimp anecdote. Anyway, really good discussion, give it a listen.
 
Louis Theroux might be regarded as the anti-Jon Ronson, but he interviewed him for his new podcast and now seems like the pro-Jon Ronson, which is good:
Podcast here

It's an hour-long chat where they discuss David Icke and Alex Jones, and how calling people paedophiles online is the great (?) new insult to ruin someone's reputation. There's also a bit about how overreacting to any faux pas can be as bad as allowing people a platform to say anything they like, and a swimming chimp anecdote. Anyway, really good discussion, give it a listen.

Thanks.

That's the rest of my evening sorted.
 
Not to mention the alt-right. It's called smear tactics and it's as old as the hills.

I enjoyed (not the right word) the last days of August
 
lt’s hardly a new tactic. “Animal rights” terrorists have been doing it for donkey’s years, even before l retired in 2004. Here’s a more recent example:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/31...-a-paedophile-by-animal-rights-activists.html

I probably should have made it clearer that paedophile accusations are the latest thing by the alt-right on social media. If you use racist or sexist language, your account will be suspended or cancelled, but if you call someone a paedophile that's within the rules. As Ronson says, the people this most benefits are actual paedophiles!
 
Here's a good article from Ronson in which he revisits THEM twenty years after its first publication to see whether he can divine the seeds of the fruit that has now been produced.

Making sense of conspiracy theorists as the world gets more bizarre

It is 20 years since Jon Ronson wrote Them, his eye-popping investigation into conspiracy theorists. Now, in a world awash with tales of paedophile elites and puppet masters, is he any closer to understanding it all?

Jon Ronson
Sun 11 Apr 2021 08.00 BST

In 1999 I sat in a Vancouver café with a group of anti-capitalist activists. They’d just returned from protesting the WTO in Seattle to find a new, far stranger foe in town – David Icke. He was there to lecture about how the ruling elite are actually child-sacrificing, blood-drinking paedophile lizards in human disguise.

Nobody had ever suggested such a thing before, and the activists were working to get his books seized and destroyed. They were alarmed not just by the echoes of antisemitism but because something startling was happening. Icke was beginning to win over people who should have been on their side. I wrote back then that they were “seeing an omen of the blackest kind, the future of thought itself: a time when irrational thought would sweep the land”. But this wasn’t prophecy on my part. I thought they were probably being overdramatic.


Full Article
https://theguardian.com/society/202...acy-theorists-as-the-world-gets-more-bizarre?
 
Thanks for that, a fascinating read. All a dangerous conspiracy theorist needs is a platform, and they all surely have one with social media. Completely supported by their algorithms, of course, that keep the vulnerable clicking away on their sites, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, feeding their hate and paranoia, making a vast fortune out of polarising the world. And getting rid of good manners, probably the worst thing!

I hope this is the basis for another Ronson book or podcast, he has such a lucid take on this subject.
 
New Jon Ronson material on 9/11/21. Some of the subject matter includes topics we do not encourage here on the board, but others are decidedly Fortean-adjacent.

Preview here:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0b1rg7c

Things Fell Apart - a reference to one of the greatest poems of the 20th century, W.B. Yeats' Things Fall Apart.

Once you know the work you see it everywhere.

(It even informs my favourite TV show, The Sopranos. :cool:
The Mafia Boss Tony Soprano complains that his business has run its course because of the way society is moving.
This is of course ironic because any societal developments that make things harder for organised crime can only be good news. :wink2: )
 
New Jon Ronson material on 9/11/21. Some of the subject matter includes topics we do not encourage here on the board, but others are decidedly Fortean-adjacent.

Preview here:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0b1rg7c

Thanks so much for pointing this out, I hadn't heard of it! Sounds like an absolute must, though maybe best if we keep our opinions to ourselves after listening?! We'll see.
 
Part 1 of Things Fell Apart on Radio 4 today, also available as a podcast. It should tell you something that the subject is so controversial I hesitate to mention it on here, but after listening, it's excellent, and it is my considered opinion that people are nuts.
 
Once you know the work you see it everywhere.

And what rough beast, its hour come round, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

I agree, I think I've seen every single line used elsewhere. Well worth reading the whole thing through, aloud.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43290/the-second-coming

Edit to add: it makes a good pair with Shelley's Ozimandias

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46565/ozymandias

Did we have a thread on poetry at one point? Fortean poetry?
 
Part 1 of Things Fell Apart on Radio 4 today, also available as a podcast. It should tell you something that the subject is so controversial I hesitate to mention it on here, but after listening, it's excellent, and it is my considered opinion that people are nuts.

Fantastic.

Having allowed me to listen to the 2 min preview, the BBC has set the first episode for UK-only and Apple Podcasts has it as US-only.

For our US-based members:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/1-000-dolls/id1592984136?i=1000540367806

The Internet really has become more rubbish since the early 2000s.

*Curtails incipient rant...*
 
And what rough beast, its hour come round, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

I agree, I think I've seen every single line used elsewhere. Well worth reading the whole thing through, aloud.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43290/the-second-coming

Edit to add: it makes a good pair with Shelley's Ozimandias

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46565/ozymandias

Did we have a thread on poetry at one point? Fortean poetry?
Dunno if we have a thread on poetry but I love it. :)
However, there's no point trying it here.

Discussion of poetry (or any form of art) on non-specialist websites withers in the face of the anyone could do that!/you can't understand what they're on about/it's the Emperor's New Clothes all over again! brigade.

I've learned that from experience. Chat about art or literature is kept to the Snails of Culture Webring. :cool:
 
Am I the only one who Jon Ronson's name causes them to have a mini-mind seizure? Hearing it seems to be fine but reading it my brain is simultaneously "saying" Jon Ronson/Ron Jonson, it doesn't help that it's three rhyming syllables either.
 
Am I the only one who Jon Ronson's name causes them to have a mini-mind seizure? Hearing it seems to be fine but reading it my brain is simultaneously "saying" Jon Ronson/Ron Jonson, it doesn't help that it's three rhyming syllables either.
I won't mention the song.....
 
Fantastic.

Having allowed me to listen to the 2 min preview, the BBC has set the first episode for UK-only and Apple Podcasts has it as US-only.

For our US-based members:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/1-000-dolls/id1592984136?i=1000540367806

The Internet really has become more rubbish since the early 2000s.

*Curtails incipient rant...*

I believe it becomes a podcast available to all in a month or two, once the broadcast is finished. Something like that. Just hang on!
 
Am I the only one who Jon Ronson's name causes them to have a mini-mind seizure? Hearing it seems to be fine but reading it my brain is simultaneously "saying" Jon Ronson/Ron Jonson, it doesn't help that it's three rhyming syllables either.

I'll probably never read his name the same way again!

I've listened to the episode. As GNC said it's probably wise to not fall down the rabbit hole of that topic as people tend to have very strong opinions on it, however the episode was really interesting. I had no idea about the relatively recent change in American attitudes concerning that topic, nevermind what had prompted such a change. I have a feeling I'm going to learn a lot from this series.
 
Having allowed me to listen to the 2 min preview, the BBC has set the first episode for UK-only and Apple Podcasts has it as US-only.
Having the same experience, it's a shame as I'm a big fan of Jon Ronson and was looking forward to this. I hope they open it up to the rest of the world soon.

it doesn't help that it's three rhyming syllables either
It's an eye rhyme but the last syllable has a different vowel sound.

I know this kind of pedantry is unhelpful but I literally can't help myself.
 
I've listened to the episode. As GNC said it's probably wise to not fall down the rabbit hole of that topic as people tend to have very strong opinions on it, however the episode was really interesting. I had no idea about the relatively recent change in American attitudes concerning that topic, nevermind what had prompted such a change. I have a feeling I'm going to learn a lot from this series.

Yes, all because a teenaged film fan wanted to make a movie with his dad, now doctors are dead, women are victimised and politics has been corrupted. But I was interested in the films he made afterwards, they sound like real good bad movies, but I've never heard of them. Never seen them mentioned on cult movie websites or anything.
 
Back
Top