CARNAL NATION

All right, class, it's time for our special lecture on anthro-economics. To begin, just google this phrase: "conservative states use more porn." How many results do you get? Several hundred thousand, a.k.a. “a huge boatload”? Very good, but I suppose we should make that a huge boatload plus one, since I'm writing about the phenomenon now.

For this rush of amusing and only superficially counterintuitive webtelligence, we can thank one Benjamin Edelman, writing in the Winter 2009 edition of the Journal of Economic Perspectives. His study “Red Light States: Who Buys Online Erotic Entertainment?” [PDF] is a fascinating read. Professor Edelman labors in the salt mines of the Harvard Business School, where, I am pleased to see, free-ranging academic enquiry has not gone out of style. His article looks mainly at paid subscriptions to online porn sites; a major company operating many different websites gave him access to their zip-code data, which allowed him to quantify which states (and areas within states) download more porn. (His results are striking but tell only part of the story because they don't allow us to analyze with certainty people's use of free sites and don't address either hotel pay-per-view or DVD rentals and sales, all of which means the porn market is even more dense and diverse than his numbers indicate.) By the way, Edelman controls for broadband, which seems sensible; broadband allows for faster download than dial-up, and hence its users would be able to get more porn in a 24-hour period than non-users. Edelman does note that in some cases a customer probably chooses broadband specifically because it improves access to porn. (He notes, with academic citations, that this production-side phenomenon has powered many new technologies, most recently Blu-ray format; longer ago, it helped to power little things like sculpture, the book, and photography.)

His research allows Edelman to create a table showing which states are more paid-porn-download-heavy, and guess what? Utah is first! Perhaps this is none too surprising given that Utah once appointed a "porn czar," but my memory must be playing tricks on me: I hadn't remembered the czar was supposed to promote porn. Clearly, though, he did a great job—a heckuva job! And Utah may be tops, but it isn't the only one: blogging about the study at ComputerWorld.com, Dan Tynan notes, "Close behind Utah with just over five porn subscribers per thousand is Sarah Palin's Alaska. California and New York, on the other hand, average between 2.4 and 2.9 subscriptions per 1,000 broadband users, smack dab in the middle of the pack. Overall, eight of Edelman's top 10 porn-consuming states voted for McCain last fall, while six of the least smut-crazed states went for Obama."

Beyond these useful findings—in case you are at loss for chat topics at your next cocktail party, here are more Edelman Fun Facts, which are not central to his thesis, but nevertheless instructive, if not downright jolly, to contemplate: Some of our web porn comes from Montreal, because Canada, a nation I have always admired, has a special "adult performer" visa. Yes, people from all over the world who wish to break into North American porn may have an easier time doing it there, and in fact when you apply for a visa of this type, you are required to submit photos proving you're an experienced performer or model. This means, among other things, that someone who works for Canada's visa control department probably has an awesome photo collection.

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