The Apostolic Nuncio to 42nd Street is worried about the shlubbiness epidemic.
It may seem plausible, but it does not seem to be the case. Though the evidence isn't exactly powerful (it's hard to find anything on porn use that isn't sponsored by a church).
Seems completely plausible that both porn and video games might be linked to male retreat from responsibility, and by extension marriage.
— Ross Douthat (@DouthatNYT) July 18, 2013
It may seem plausible, but it does not seem to be the case. Though the evidence isn't exactly powerful (it's hard to find anything on porn use that isn't sponsored by a church).
A 2001 Forrester Research report claimed the average age of a male visitor to an adult web page is 41 and has an annual income of $60,000. According to the same report, 19% of North American users were regular visitors to adult content sites. Of that 19%, approximately 25% were women, 46% were married, and 33% had children. (http://www.discernement.com/fichs/10141.pdf)
It's not the tech-savvy teens who are obsessed computer gamers, in fact, the average video game player is a 35-year-old married man or woman earning 23,000 pounds a year, a new UK study has found. (2013; http://daily-frontier.com/Frontier/news.php?name=2013062858)
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| From Wikipedia. |
Douthat's concern about people not getting married is so incomprehensible to me. Why do people need to be coerced into marriage? Aren't republicans supposed to think "social engineering" is bad? Doesn't nearly everyone end up getting married anyway?
ReplyDeleteNot to go all Marxist, but I'm pretty sure the social engineering terror really applies only to people with substantial investment income. The example I always use is abortion law: that's for the religion-harrowed base, whose actual needs the rulers care about not at all, while they don't care for themselves because their daughters can always go to Switzerland and get in a little skiing as well. Evil social engineering in this view is things like telling you how much you have to pay your factory workers. How dare they interfere with my liberty to starve people who depend on me! But the Catholic contingent, people who are both rich and morally rigid like the Supreme Court conservatives and the National Review, are really creepy, and Marxism doesn't explain them. Douthat just thinks about fornication all the time..
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