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You Can Thank Porn Lovers For The Rise Of Social Media
Practically the whole dang internet was created because people wanted to jerk off, and now ... well, it's mostly still that. The first incarnation of message boards, then adorably called "bulletin board systems" or BBS, were painfully slow peer-to-peer networks like Usenet, which connected one user's computer to another so they could share files. And you know exactly what kinds of files. OK, it wasn't all porn; just 83.5 percent of it.
Did you recognize that term, "peer-to-peer"? Because that's what Napster used. It's what allowed the floodgates of digital media to open. It's what the entire idea of social media is based on. The first version of the social internet was essentially a bunch of scanned copies of Playboy centerfolds.
It was only decades later, after we'd finally finished wiping ourselves off, that we realized we could use the web for a lot of other stuff as well. So the next time some perv slides into your DMs, remember that you have some other, older perv to thank for it.
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