saw a video this morning that was along the lines of "folks arent ready to talk about how they can only read smut now is cause they grew up on ao3" and i have several feelings about this
a) written porn did not come into existence with ao3 or the internet, youve been able to buy it for decades in the walmart book section up by the registers. its one of the most prolific genres of books that exist. your straight mom has read some, i guarantee you. hell, ever seen her reading an adult fantasy novel, adult as in it is not written for 'young adults' aka kids? it had descriptive sex in it. fanfictions are just pared down versions of that where they dont have to give you any character or world setting context because you already have all that from whatever property it is. really creates a lot less filler to a story when you already know everything thats going on.
b) why are we all jumping into this indulging of sexuality in any capacity is bad? the religious freaks should not be listened to. especially being pushed hard on queer folks and no, no there is no way to sanitize your behavior that will help you escape queerphobia.
c) yeah its actually pretty normal to be horny in your 20s. that is kinda standard. it is very normal to get some alone time and be like wow wanna get off now, that isn't "degeneracy" or you being a bad person. very fucking weird to act like being horny when one is young is something that developed because one looked at porn. you looked at porn because you were horny.
d) this modesty culture shit that is trending right now is coming out of the religious backlash against progressive egalitarianism (and especially against anything further to the left) and is not something we should be accepting. this is a hegemonic push that will easily pull in moderate trend followers into a naturally patriarchal, theocratic leaning view of life. there have always been women who do not enjoy more sexualized or revealing fashion trends who dont need to dip into fundie evangelical culture to do so. the evangelicals are literally our enemy, their religious demands that they force it on everyone else and that they enforce it through violence.
If the implication of that video was that reading smut regularly is an addiction, I would like to add that e) one cannot be addicted to porn any more than they can be addicted to any other media. Newer studies on the matter suggest that feelings of guilt, stressed interpersonal relationships, and compulsive urges related to porn consumption correlate more with one's moral judgement of porn, rather than the actual rate of consumption. In other words, watching or reading porn feels and functions like an addiction when you think what you are doing is evil or unhealthy. Anecdotally, I feel a lot less 'addicted' to porn and sex nowadays than when I was a fundie preteen who felt immense shame even imagining people naked, even though my consumption's probably increased.
Porn is a lot like food: theoretically, you can have an unhealthy relationship with these subjects, but that unhealthiness doesn't originate from either your natural urges or the subject you consume. Believing otherwise is what leads to the disordered relationship, more often than not.
