American porn is becoming a more and more dangerous thing every day. We have a nation full of men (and increasingly, women) who are desperate for constant novelty, leading them further and further down the seemingly endless hardcore porn rabbit hole into darker and more fringe territory. And the rest of the world doesn’t necessarily have the same relationship to porn.

Hardcore isn’t what it used to be.

In a (frankly, unethical) YouTube video titled “Korean Guys Watch American Porn For The First Time,” several young Korean men are subjected to American porn. To sum it up, the video interviews several young Korean men and then places them in front of a laptop with headphones. The video (thankfully) never shows the viewer what the guys are seeing, but it soon becomes clear that they are being subjected to American hardcore pornography. Their shocked and horrified facial expressions speak loudly to the nature of mainstream American porn that so many Western males have become tragically accustomed to.

These guys are quite clearly horrified and disgusted by what they are seeing. “Thirty years ago ‘hardcore’ pornography usually meant the explicit depiction of sexual intercourse,” wrote Dr. Norman Doidge, in his book on neuroscience, The Brain That Changes Itself. “Now hardcore has evolved and is increasingly dominated by the sadomasochistic themes, all involving scripts fusing sex with hatred and humiliation.”

Dr. Gail Dines, a British professor of sociology and women’s studies, summed up our society’s concerning porn culture in her book, Pornland: “In a world populated by women who are robotic “sluts” and men who are robotic studs, the sex is going to be predictably devoid of any intimacy: Porn sex is not about making love, as the feelings and emotions we normally associate with such an act – connection, empathy, tenderness, caring, affection – are replaced by those more often connected with hate – fear, disgust, anger, loathing, and contempt. In porn the man makes hate to the woman, as each sex act is designed to deliver the maximum amount of degradation.”

The UK is legally cracking down on porn use.

In the United Kingdom, brand new laws have been enacted to prevent underage children and teens from accessing pornography, unheard of in the United States. Cambridge News reported about the, “Digital Economy Act, which is set to be introduced in April. This will introduce a new "age check" built in to websites or other online platforms that provide pornography on ‘a commercial basis’ to people in the UK. If businesses refuse to comply, they will be fined up to £250,000. If you want to watch porn, you will be required to enter credit card details upon loading the homepage of a website, confirming proof of your age. You will not be charged upon entering your details.” Laws like these go far beyond the usual “age check” that just requires a person to click a button verifying they are over 18, no credentials needed. Everyone agrees that children under 18 should not have unfettered access to pornography, so laws like these show a great deal of common sense.

Americans be porn crazy.

As seen in the following infographic, the United States is consuming internet pornography at a shockingly higher rate than other countries:

So why the incredibly disproportionate amount of American porn viewership? Perhaps because America is a wealthy country which lends itself to high-speed internet at everyone’s fingertips and more free time. What it does say to me is that Americans are over-porned and under-sexed, longing for real human connections.

So what?

No matter how you slice it, porn is a problem world-wide. Access to high-speed internet and the ubiquity of smartphones have literally put porn into the hands of anyone who might want it. But it is interesting to see that several other countries besides America seem to have a lower tolerance for violent, degrading porn than we do. Why? I don’t know for sure. But I do know that you can’t have really good sex without real respect and real communication, which is sorely lacking in today’s porn of all shapes and sizes.