The Butterfly Effect by Jon Ronson Review

Jon Ronson investigates the impact that free porn streaming sites like PornHub have had on the porn industry in the Audible Original audiobook, The Butterfly Effect. And it’s an a’ight listen.

As you’d expect, a lot of the people making money from selling porn via VHS, DVD, etc. lost big and there doesn’t seem to be much money in the more traditional types of movies given that a phone and an internet connection basically do for most nowadays! As such, Ronson’s conclusions are fairly mundane and unremarkable: new technology has changed the business. Duh…

Some of the stories are interesting though. The custom porn video market has only gone up with some really unusual requests – always very, very specific – though I think Ronson spent far too long on the Norwegian man obsessed with sexy girls destroying his years-long valuable stamp collection on camera. It’s kinda sad how one former male porn star who quit the business and became a qualified nurse got fired because of his past. And it’s amusing how young men who watch an abundance of free porn now have erectile dysfunction! As the founder of PornHub wryly notes, at least it’s caused a decline in teen pregnancies, so it’s not all bad!

And the tone of the piece is largely negative. Ronson’s approach is that online streaming is to blame for ruining certain people’s lives, though some of his connections feel tenuous at best. Like the autistic kid who’s now a registered sex offender after sending internet porn to his girlfriend. Sure it’s a bizarre case, but the kid has numerous mental issues and it feels like if it wasn’t that it would’ve been who knows what else that would’ve landed him in trouble sooner or later. And sex dolls have been around for a while now and will continue on – I don’t think internet porn has much to do with it.

The Butterfly Effect’s thesis is vague and the stories a bit hit and miss so that my attention was fading in and out throughout – it’s just an ok audiobook for me. Jon Ronson’s written another Audible Original on a similar subject, The Last Days of August, which is a vastly more compelling narrative that I’d recommend over this one instead.