Over the past year there have been tons of articles in newspapers, more specifically The Daily Mail, that refer to online pornography. These articles have mainly been about the paper's views on how it needs to be banned and the bad effect it has on teenagers.
Something bugged me on a massive scale, however, when they started publishing articles regarding crimes that were being committed by teenagers and how because they watched explicit videos it wasn't their own fault.One case jumped out at me, though. It was about a boy (14, maybe 15) who had sexually assaulted a very underage girl that, I believe, he was baby-sitting. In terms of the girl's age we're talking (and again this is an 'I think' moment) under 10 years old. This wasn't simply a case of a boy assaulting a majorly underage child; this was a case, according to the paper at least, of the boy doing what he did because he was 'addicted' to online porn. Admittedly The Daily Mail is well known for being a shit paper and is classed as a tabloid (despite being designed like a proper, respectable paper) however that doesn't mean that the things they say are not valid. Some people agreed with them and they were making their case against online porn even stronger.However I disagreed. Big time. This boy who assaulted this girl; he was practically using his so-called 'porn addiction' as a get out of jail free card. It was suddenly as if everyone went 'aw, he only did what he did because he didn't know better'. That's bullshit. There is no excuse - NO EXCUSE - for what he did.Watching porn does not make you a bad person. It does not make you a violent person. Not even if you watch kinky shit. It doesn't make you a sex-crazed maniac. It simply makes you a human being who watches porn. It's the same as violent people who play video games are not violent because of games; they are violent because they are violent people (I might do an article on this too).Now I know what some of you might be thinking, 'But Mike, he was FOURTEEN', and I understand that, however 14 years old is far from very young. When I was 14 I not only knew the big difference between good and bad but also how to handle myself around human beings and present myself. Porn is not even remotely a good excuse for that boy.In fact; there is no get out of jail free card here. He committed a crime. He assaulted a very young girl. He committed a 'sin' or whatever/however you want to phrase it. He did something bad, something wrong. There's rarely an excuse for that.I'm not saying that nothing can be used as an excuse, or reason. If a kid is heavily sexualised and maybe beaten; shown that violence is OK or even good, all from a very early age, the psychological effects of that could be catastrophic. I'm not disputing that there is never a reason for anything; however it seems that in recent years people have resorted to just making excuses. And porn is becoming one of these frequent ones.I'm not going to go into details about myself but I'm going to say that from personal experience watching a lot of porn, even the kinky shit, does NOT make you a mental head. Especially not if you are 14. 14, again, is not a young age. Not anymore at least.When you say to someone that they have been a dick, or they have made a bad choice; been horrible, nasty, committed a crime; they instantly jump up and shout as loud as they can, 'IT WASN'T ME I SWEAR'. No one seems to take responsibility anymore.This lack of responsibility taking reminds me very much of issues like depression and even self-loathing. I don't want to go deep and make this article all depressive but this is a great example as it is very similar to the above yet does not involve any bad being done. People who are depressed are depressed. And that's the way it is - or at least they think it is. I'm not saying being depressed is 'not OK' and that it is 'your fault'. I used to suffer from clinical depression and still have bouts of depression these days. I know how it feels and a majority - at least two thirds - of my time when I was depressed I thought it was everyone else's issue. They made me depressed, they made me sad and so they should fix it. I made little effort, despite telling myself in my head that I was doing something, to help myself. It wasn't so much excuse making, more me not realising that I had to say 'This is my issue and I CAN help it. I might not have caused it or whatever but I can do something about it.' And stop waiting for everyone else to do what they couldn't actually ever do: fix me.Same goes for self-loathing. You may not want to be in the situation you are in and it may not even be your fault, but sitting there, in a pool self pitying emotion, is NOT going to help. Sit yourself up and be your own counselor. Make yourself right. Believe in what you want.
Little relevance to this topic but still brilliant
When people do bad things they do exactly what I just said about depression and self-loathing. They sit there and make excuses. Another porn example is a kid who was arrested for watching illegal pornography. We're talking child porn, maybe even more obscure. And apparently this was the porn's fault.Now illegal pornography is vile. There is no excuse for people making it. However there is no excuse for this kid watching it too. He wasn't forced. He made the conscious decision, while sitting in front of his computer in his room, to watch ILLEGAL porn. Why would you even want to do that? It wasn't the porn's fault. All it was doing before he clicked onto it was existing. He went to it because he made the choice to. It didn't come to him and make him watch it. He made a bad decision. Take responsibility for it. There's no excuse.People often find some sort of way to make it seem like they have a reason for doing anything bad that they did.Oh you stole clothes? Well society is fucked anyway and what's more I'm surrounded by gangs of people who don't give a shit. Not my problem. You killed someone? Video games, movies, music; violence is everywhere man. Not my fault society is a violent as fuck place.You stole a car? Grand Theft Auto told me to.You were rude to someone? Everyone at my school is rude. No one cares; why should I?Why should I?Why should I?Because it is YOUR responsibly to. It's YOUR responsibility to tell right from wrong. To identify an issue and avoid it. To say, 'you know what? I know stealing is bad. So what I'm not going to do is say that society is fucked and all that shit and instead take responsibility for my own actions and do the right thing; not steal'.And if you do steal and are caught? You make don't make excuses. You don't blame society for making you what you yourself could have avoided being; an asshole. You hold up your hands and say that you made a mistake. Even if you are not remorseful, at least fucking admit it.Society is far from perfect. In fact, every day we degrade ourselves further and fall deeper into this black pit we're making for ourselves. We could all say 'we couldn't have avoided it, it's not our fault that the world is screwed!'. But we could have. This didn't have to happen, and while yourself are not responsible for the issues with the system; everything ties into one to make a world dictated by man, and every man (or woman) and his/her choice affects its outcome. People can help, easily. By simply being a good person. People over complicate things. Life is simple. Sure the world we've created tries to make you think it isn't and indeed everything is very harsh and hard to do. However that is simply a mask. That is only the shallow, unnecessary man-made side of the world that is hard to survive in. In truth, the most important thing; being good, is still as simple as it ever was.It's not hard to be good. All you gotta do is just be good.Side Note (Short Story):
I wanted to just add in a side note regarding good and bad choices and simply being a good person. I could add in a lot about myself and how I am far from perfect and am still a heavily flawed human bean, however I wanted to focus instead on a series I used to run on my second blog Michael The Entertainer (now in-active).
This series was called Spoofed and on it I used to either make up a news article or put a spin on a real life one. They were satirical, sometimes mean (when they were about celebrities) articles that while popular I ended up cancelling. The reason I cancelled was because I was not comfortable with the direction they were going in. The celebrity jokes were borderline nasty and I did not feel good about writing them.
So true
I tried to make excuses, tell myself it was all a joke but in the end I realised that there was no excuse for being a dick about people and making nasty jokes about them. So I finished it. I feel much better about it and the direction my blog has taken since is far more positive and just better. It's not hard to make a good decision, and when you do you will always feel miles better about it than if you had made the bad one (and by the way I'm not talking about bad decisions like choosing the wrong font or something. I'm mean moral decisions).I said the same thing in my Question Of Faith article and I'll say it again here: forget Religion, forget politics, forget everything else. Being good is simply being good. It doesn't matter what you believe or think. There is only one way to be good. And that is simply being good.I hope you are enjoying my content and thank you all for reading! Thanks for all the positive, awesome e-mails everyone is sending me as well as the comments my articles have been getting. You're all awesome, brilliant, legends. Thank you!
