Porn actor consults Pornhub mid-scene
anecdote · Jon Ronson podcast: The Butterfly Effect ·
retold in 6 talks
A porn actor loses his erection and, rather than re-engaging with the real naked woman below him, grabs his phone and searches Pornhub for phantasmatic support, illustrating that even 'real' sex requires fantasy as its supplement.
≤2000talks it is told in, per year2026
As told 6
“he turns away from the woman naked below him, he grabs his phone and desperately searches for Pornhub”
“Sorry, I'm losing erection, can somebody pass me my iPhone so that I go onto Pornhub to excite—”
“the guy steps back and said 'Sorry I am losing erection, could please somebody bring me quickly my iPhone so that I go on Pornhub to get excited again.'”
What it carries
one story, many jobs: the ideas this anecdote is deployed to argue, one tally mark per use (an idea page shows the same relation from the other end, as its shelf of stories)
Its cast and sources
populated by
Eva Wiseman4Jon Ronson2Jaron Lanier1Rainer Paris1Michael1Sappho1Naomi Klein / Fredric Jameson1Friedrich Nietzsche / Steve Bannon1
alongside works
Every retelling 6
16:39 Apocalyptic & Post Apocalyptic – pandemic, dystopia, horror, climate change, & so on2021-10-14 · 1:35:56
A porn actor loses his erection and, rather than re-engaging with the real naked woman below him, grabs his phone and searches Pornhub for phantasmatic support, illustrating that even 'real' sex requires fantasy as its supplement., illustrating sexual apocalypse,masturbation with a real partner,the gap between reality and fantasy
Eve Wiseman reported a behind-the-scenes porn film in which the actor, losing erection mid-scene, asks for his iPhone to go onto Pornhub to get excited, proof that human sexuality needs a phantasmatic support, not pathology., illustrating phantasmatic support,fantasy
During a porn shoot, an actor loses his erection with an eager real partner in front of him and asks for his iPhone to browse Pornhub, showing that virtual images are needed to arouse one even in the presence of the 'real thing.', illustrating virtual sexuality,desire and the object,globalized depression,objet petit a
On a porn film set, a male performer loses his erection while with a real partner and recovers it by watching hardcore porn on his phone. Eva Wiseman finds this apocalyptic; Žižek argues it perfectly illustrates that sexuality is structurally dependent on fantasy-supplement even with a 'real' partner present., illustrating phantasmatic supplement,sexuality as constitutively perverted,gap between reality and fantasy
Eva Wiseman in The Guardian reported a documentary where a male porn actor in the middle of intercourse loses erection and asks for his phone to look at Pornhub, illustrating how virtual pornographic fantasy has become necessary to enable real physical desire, the absurd inversion of mediation and immediacy., illustrating inner life as ideological fiction,eroticization of failure,truth has the structure of fiction
On a hardcore porn shoot the penetrating actor stepped back saying he was losing his erection and asked for his iPhone to watch Pornhub and get excited again, he had the real woman there but needed virtual fantasy., illustrating Fantasy