Unless someone's going to prove there's no such thing as legitimately free smut on the Internet I don't think you can assume it has anything to do with being more moral.

"Harvard researcher Ben Edelman, who "analyzed subscriber data from an unnamed 'top 10 seller(s) of online adult entertainment."

Ie: who is actually is stupid enough to pay.

As previously and accurately noted, this study is very, very bad.

1. One sample, from one company. Top Ten provider? Sure, okay, but hardly representative. Perhaps they just don't provide the porn that "Red States" want.

2. The far more obvious and damning flaw: the study only measured PAID consumption of pornography. Which, as anyone who has used the internet in the last ten years, is a useless measure of *free* porn consumption online. Not only is there a vast quantity of free porn readily available to anyone able to use Google, even the high-quality product is freely available to anyone willing to employ rudimentary file-sharing technology (Rapidshare, Netload, Bittorrent, etc.).

All this study tells us is that people in Utah are more likely to purchase their porn instead of stealing it via online piracy.

Well, that, and the study tells us that its creators are incompetent social scientists eager for cheap publicity.

Over the years, I've heard numerous stories of fundy christian conventions at hotels where the use of pay-per-view porn increases dramatically, so this is no surprise. And if anyone wonders why porn use increases in states that falsely claim to be worried about "gays and morality", remember that all these states that produce morons like Mark Foley, Larry Craig, Ralph Reed, James Keating, Tom Delay, Jim "Bonehead" Boehner, Bill McCartney (and his promise keeper cult), Anita Bryant, the Phelps family, etc.

If you wonder why Utah so overuses porn, think two words: "sexually repressed". Take a good look at these results published in Time Magazine on the total alcohol consuption in the US during 2007: [www.time.com]

Utah has the lowest rate of consuption for alcohol (both beer and wine), but all the states surrounding Utah with the exception of Idaho, had the highest rates of consumption or near the highest. Idaho has a small population and only one moderately sized town near the Utah border.

That tells me one of two things: either (a) all the states around Utah are laden with drunkards, or (b) the Utahns are travelling out of state to get shitfaced. No doubt the drinking-and-driving stats for Utah and the other states would show which was the case.

Maybe I am missing something in your snark, but how is "Dial-up" not online? If you had said Usage of Broadband Online Porn, I would understand.

Well, I can't come up with a good argument against it.

Please Just Kill Me Now.

@Eyebrows McGee:
I believe that Hooters was started out of the south which is a much more conservative area. Most of the whole red state/ blue state data would be poor because there are too many variables. If the state demands that publications like Playboy not be sold at a 7-11 then the data might be different then a state that has it next to the mints. The different state laws make the data unreliable.

As a resident of the great State of Florida, I demand a recount.

Here is something interesting about the Mormon population in Utah. In the area between Ogden and Provo it is about 30% Mormon and in the thousand little towns with less than 5000 people in them the ratio is much higher. So yeah, the ratio may be pretty high on the Mormon side, but in the areas with the most population it is quickly becoming the minority. I work on a team in Utah with twenty people and there are two mormons on the team. I would suggest not believing the stereotype of everybody in Utah being mormon. It is absolutely not true.

Think about this: Only broadband customers were surveyed. I know so many cheap mormons, even ones that are well off financially, that are too cheap to subscribe to broadband and suffer through dial up. Maybe this data is more skewed than one might have thought. I mean, remember that lame researcher who claimed autism was linked to vaccinations with mercury in them. He was the only one to ever get those results. But he published them, made them well known, and bam! Everyone blames vaccinations for autism and make a big huff and fuss over it when they could have been directing their energies towards more promising explanations.

I don't buy it. I live in L.A. and I've never purchased adult material in a store. Any purchase I make would be on-line. This would be doubly true in a conservative small town where everyone knows everyone and no one wants to be seen in a porn shop.

But point taken. I would prefer to be able to satirize all religions equally.

Meanwhile, life goes on.

Pretty scenery, though.

If you think they refrain if it is Jews or Southern Baptists, imagine if they made light of Islam.

In the media, Catholics are always fair game.

As for why Utah consumes so much Internet porn I think a lot has to do with accessibility outside the home. There really are no strip clubs, sex shops, magazine and video store here compared to everywhere else.

Wow. Talk about outside the lane.

I'm not sure if that's true -- red states I've lived in have tended to have far higher concentrations of strip clubs, "titty bars," XXX stores, even Hooterses. I'd like to see blue state/red state data on adult entertainment venues before making that judgment.

@N.RobertMoses: It's not a poll, it's subscriber data. The researcher was probably given access to this company's database in order to conduct his study.

And because this is a "top 10 seller", they probably have enough customers to make it a representative sample of all porn customers.

/stat nerd

(Note shameless working in "family", "share" and "boinking" into a story referencing Utah sexual practices)

That sounds like the most sensible conclusion to be drawn from this survey. If people can't get porn locally, then they're going online for it. Pretty common-sense stuff.

Of course, why anyone in any state would prefer a trek to the local XXX video store over a quick download is beyond me..

Any sensible adult can find free pr0nz.