Playboy Magazine announced this week that it will stop publishing nude photographs, opting instead for "PG-13" images of women in "provocative poses."
The New York Times reported that the magazine's once robust circulation of 5.6 million has dwindled to 800,000 in recent years. The culprit, according to Playboy executives, is the wide availability of highly intense pornography online.
"You're now one click away from every sex act imaginable for free. And so it's just pass at this juncture," Scott Flanders, the company's chief executive, told the Times.
The move might sound like a slow turning of the tide against the endless stream of extreme pornography found online these days Playboy's decision comes a year after Google banned pornography from appearing in its ads, while Facebook and Instagram continue to wrestle with banning photos and other material it finds inappropriate.
But Time Magazine posited this week that Playboy backpedaling on its signature nudity isn't a victory, but rather a signal of something worse: The unbridled success of harsher, darker, more violent pornography found in abundance on the Internet.
"In the battle for hearts and minds, porn has won. It is now as exotic as chewing gum and just as ubiquitous on main street as gum is on sidewalks," Time reported. "Fifteen-year-old-boys wouldnt bother lifting so much as a feather duster to seek out a girly mag. The kind of porn available on the Internet is so tantalizing that it makes Playboy look about as enticing as the American Journal of Public Health."
The New York Times reported that the magazine's once robust circulation of 5.6 million has dwindled to 800,000 in recent years. The culprit, according to Playboy executives, is the wide availability of highly intense pornography online.
"You're now one click away from every sex act imaginable for free. And so it's just pass at this juncture," Scott Flanders, the company's chief executive, told the Times.
The move might sound like a slow turning of the tide against the endless stream of extreme pornography found online these days Playboy's decision comes a year after Google banned pornography from appearing in its ads, while Facebook and Instagram continue to wrestle with banning photos and other material it finds inappropriate.
But Time Magazine posited this week that Playboy backpedaling on its signature nudity isn't a victory, but rather a signal of something worse: The unbridled success of harsher, darker, more violent pornography found in abundance on the Internet.
"In the battle for hearts and minds, porn has won. It is now as exotic as chewing gum and just as ubiquitous on main street as gum is on sidewalks," Time reported. "Fifteen-year-old-boys wouldnt bother lifting so much as a feather duster to seek out a girly mag. The kind of porn available on the Internet is so tantalizing that it makes Playboy look about as enticing as the American Journal of Public Health."
