It's the Stupidity

The headline "PETA to launch porn site in name of animal rights" did not cause me to bat an eye: I'm too used to reports of PETA exploiting women's bodies or comparing having a chicken dinner to exterminating millions of people or doing other disgusting things to gin up some controversy.  If I hadn't felt the need for a chuckle, I wouldn't even have clicked.

And I have to say, I batted an eye this time.

Not over the idea of porn. Over this: "[PETA] hopes to raise awareness of veganism through a mix of pornography and graphic footage of animal suffering."

It's the stupidity that gets me. Is PETA the only group of people who can't see the problem with this?! I can. The two other people in my house when I read the news article can. 

So what's PETA's thought process here? We want to end animal suffering. Hmm, how best to go about it...ooh, I know, let's get more people to start associating animal suffering with sexual arousal!

We can't even use the term "unintended consequence" here, because there's generally an expectation that unintended consequences are things that are hard to impossible to predict. This is easy. If enough people look at your porn site and experience a sequence of "porn picture, porn picture, porn picture, animal suffering picture, porn picture", sooner or later some of them will start to be aroused by the animal suffering pictures. And maybe one or two of them will decide to act upon that by making a little more of it in the world.

I mean, if I wanted to promote Americans putting more of their money in savings, I would start posting pictures online of scantily clad women going into banks with envelopes marked "savings", maybe work my way up to some videos involving women overcome with lust in front of the teller's window as they accidentally overhear the size of the man in front of them's account. Or maybe I'd just some random photos of people making deposits interspersed with a variety of other porn pictures; why go to the work of making themed porn. The point is I'd use sex to promote something I want to happen, not something I want NOT to happen. That's basic advertising. I certainly wouldn't try to get people to associate sexual arousal with the thing I wanted them to stop doing. That's basic sense.

I'm flabbergasted.