This will surprise NO ONE:
Mississippi is a book by William Faulkner that somehow turned into a dumb reality show called Haley Barbour and Other Comical Racist White Villains With Dumb Accents vs. Poor Black People Forever. And ever since the nation’s poorest, most obese and reliably Republican-voting state got Internet access last year, the main thing the people of Mississippi have been looking for, on the ‘puter, is “free gay porn” and “God.” In that order.
You have to see the graph to believe it. I’m really starting to believe that half of the south is little more than closet cases.
redshirt
Makes some sense. Goes like this:
Get the urge – HOT BOYS!
WANK!
Then the guilt sets in – SINNER.
Next search: God
Result: Sin forgiven, proceed.
cmorenc
Roughly one-third of the 200 prisoners Barbour pardoned are black. OTOH, two-thirds is the percentage of two things: 1) the percentage of Mississippi prison inmates who are black; 2) the percentage of prisoners Barbour pardoned who are white.
Let’s give partial credit to Barbour here, but only partial credit. Barbour is an archetype of the sort of genteel stratum of southern society who seems inexplicable to those from outside the region: an inhomogeneous mix of genuinely humanitarian equal regard and courtesy for people of other races, and insensitive deeply inbred racism coexisting uneasily, sometimes one dominating sometimes the other.
Linda Featheringill
Loved the graph!
Now we know what The South is really up to. You gotta watch them good ol boys, ya know.
:-)
Lev
Certainly the works of Tennessee Williams suggest this to be true.
Poopyman
And do I see West By GayPorn Virginia peeking up from the bottom in that pic?
AA+ Bonds
Well . . . . it’s also a symptom of how gay people in those states are often isolated and terrified to reveal themselves to others
I mean, you know, ha ha ha closeted gay Republicans, but you’re also looking at evidence of how people are being hurt there, people who might find common cause with you given a chance
kdaug
You are a local resident, correct?
No dis, me too, but in Austin we have migas.
Nom-nom-nom. Never hankered the verde salsa.
But some habanero? Oh, shit, son, I will be borrowing your napkin.
Suffern ACE
Man. The Ad Council needs to get a PSA out there on this right away. There’s no quicker way to get viruses on your computer than clicking on free porn of any sort. People need to be warned.
Daaling
I don’t have to see the graph Cole.
News flash, the fact that the redder the state the more hypocritical is not only a theory. It’s a well known fact!
This maybe be news to you but it is well known in the porn industry that the #1 consumer of porn is….UTAH!
Mustang Bobby
Nice to see that Florida — my adopted home state — is right up there with them!
We should change the slogan on the license plate from “SUNSHINE STATE” (or the optional “IN GOD WE TRUST”) to “GAY AS PINK SHOES.”
shortstop
I keep thinking of that toothless guy in Alexandra Pelosi’s video.
Woodrowfan
@AA+ Bonds: good point. I had not considered that aspect.
Arm The Homeless
@Mustang Bobby: I too was glad to see where we ranked. But it does add another data point to my theory that we have extremely depressed wages in this state, which leads to the consumption of sub-par pornography.
Schlemizel
@redshirt:
Those boys need to read Jesus General – he understands he needs the spatula of redemption in order to be corrected when he falls victim to the flesh 8-{D
Warren Terra
I’m not especially well informed about the Gay community, or for that matter about actual life in the South, but I’m guessing a Gay guy in big parts of the South might have very strong incentives to stay closeted Google finds 200 million web hits in Texas alone, as I found refreshing my memory about the James Byrd case), and that in more enlightened parts of the country Gay guys are more able to find other Gay guys, and less likely seek a substitute experience online.
ETA What the flipping heck has Google done to their search result URLs? They used to be fairly modular, and reasonably short, and I could modify them to send searches to people. Now it’s a mile of gobbledegook and can’t be easily simplified.
Cat Lady
That Pelosi video of Mississippi voters Maher played on his show the other night – they all made those Deliverance crackers look positively debonair. I wouldn’t want to be a woman, man or beast there. If gay porn is keeping them all from acting their fuckedupedness out, then wank away fucktards.
jonas
@cmorenc: that’s always been the rub of Southern racism. It’s the prerogative of the white person to be considerate and charitable to the lesser colored folks. That’s how you “care” for your blacks — by occasionally extending to them common human courtesies.
When they get all uppity and start demanding “rights”, as opposed to being content with a cheerful “good job, boy”, and a shiny quarter now and then, well, then the veneer of gentility fades quickly.
SRW1
Love the third comment on the site about the search term “free gay porn”:
But that could just mean they’re cheapskates! What about just “gay porn”?
Comrade Mary
Oh Lord, won’t you find me some strappin’ young men?
My friends all drive buff twinks, I must make amends
Worked hard all my lifetime, no help from my friends,
So Lord, won’t you find me some strappin’ young men?
/clicks I’m Feeling Lucky again
/weeps
Mattminus
Alexandr Pelosi probably traveled to those red states and did millions of searches for gay porn so she could make the not at all retarded and gay denizens of the south look bad.
Daaling
@AA+ Bonds: Heavens to betsy. Here, let me pull up the fainting couch for you my delicate little flower.
Narcissus
Everybody who is anybody knows the best free gay porn is on tumblr
J
I’m beginning to think that the mark of the present-day conservative is not that they don’t have, and indulge, sexual impulses, but that disapproving of other people’s sexual lives and preferences is at least as important to them as satisfying their own inclinations. Or perhaps, they can’t experience sexual excitement without denouncing other people for doing what they do themselves or doing themselves what they denounce other people for doing. It’s fearfully confusing.
Zifnab
I always thought Minnesota was pretty gay. Kinda shocking to see them at the bottom of the list.
Florida doesn’t surprise me at all. When your state is shaped like a wang…
Cat Lady
@J:
Conservatism is a mental disorder. Everyone left who calls themselves conservative should be getting professional help. The 27% figure tells you that one out of every four people walking around is a certifiable nutjob.
quannlace
No,no,no….I’m sure all these folks are just trying to reach out to those homo-sinners to bring ’em back to Je-suz!
Zifnab
@Narcissus:
FTFY
Zifnab
@Narcissus:
FTFY
Jay B.
@Daaling:
Jesus some of you people are assholes. AA+ Bonds quite possibly right and it certainly sounds plausible enough — and that’s your response? I’m also positive that there are tons of hypocrites in the South, but of course gays are forced into closets in the South. That used to be considered awful, until, of course, it got in the way of a solid guffaw about free gay pron and God.
Hell, at least you know what they were looking for with “free gay pron” what the fuck were they aiming for with God? Did anyone think they’d find him there when they couldn’t find him at church?
gene108
By gay porn, do they mean man-on-man action or girl-on-girl action? Straight dudes checking out lesbos going down on each other is a perfectly normal heterosexual male thing to do. Why? For fuck’s sake if I know why. It just is.
Warren Terra
@Jay B.:
Daaling (pka Derf, among a dozen or three other ‘nyms) is an asshole. It’s not a secret, and hopefully it’s just a character this jerkwad obsessively plays in the comment section of this blog, rather than being the personality with which they engage the people they encounter in the real world. Their goal in life seems to be to spend as much time as possible being an asshole in the comments of Balloon Juice. Fortunately, it’s very obviously a consciously conceived act, and it’s not more broadly representative of the community here – or else there would be no community here. Don’t take Derf’s assholishness to reflect on the rest of us.
Delia
@Daaling:
There was a case some years ago (it was on 60 Minutes and I’m straining to remember all the details now.) Some man ran a little porn shop in the Provo, UT area and the local authorities tried to have him shut down. He took it to court, and the argument centered on whether or not he was in violation of community standards. His attorney, who was a very clean-cut Mormon (who talked to the 60 Minutes crew) subpoenaed the cable TV records for the entire Provo region and proved that indeed, lots and lots of people were watching the porn channels. And he won the case. With a Provo jury.
Comrade Mary
@Zifnab:
So much so that if you start a scavenger hunt looking for almost anything else in the world, you still get a lot of cocks.
General Stuck (Bravo Nope Zero)
Mississippi is a very strange place, but is but a slight, the evil it once was. The Godly, the white Godly, have now traded in lynching black people, for a trip to the Biloxi Cas inos, to try their luck. Some of them lose everything and end up squatting in the Sea Gull shit under the Biloxi peers, riding the trolleys during the day up and down the coast, wondering what happened to the good old days.
JGabriel
John Cole @ Top:
Seems to me that a lot o’ people who claim to have found god are still searching.
.
Comrade Mary
MY COMMENT IS IN MODERATION.
I BLAME FILTHY MALE LUSTS.
Cat Lady
@JGabriel:
FTFY.
Fwiffo
Are all those Southern states looking for “free gay porn” out of poverty? After all, those liberal coastal elites can afford to pay to get their rocks off with hot man-on-man action.
JGabriel
@AA+ Bonds:
Possibly, but … I’m having trouble envisioning Florida, apparently the capitol of “free gay pr0n” searches, as terribly isolating for gays — maybe the Panhandle but not the Keys or Miami, and the latter would far outweigh the former by population.
.
Warren Terra
@JGabriel:
Yeah, but there can easily be enough people up in the panhandle terrorized into staying closeted to make up for all the liberated folks down south.
Narcissus
“Lotta straight guys like to watch their buddies fuck. I know I do.”
Citizen Alan
@J:
Interesting idea. Or to paraphrase an old saying, a conservative is someone who would be happy wanking to gay porn under a bridge if the homosexual under the next bridge didn’t have any gay porn to wank to nor a box of Kleenix to clean up with.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@J:
They could’ve been the Sultans of Swing, but instead they choose to be the Pharisees of Phucking.
Tonal Crow
@Comrade Mary: FTW!
Loneoak
Not to be pedantic, but that ain’t what the graph says. The graph compares relative frequency of the searches in relation to the norm of the state with the highest number of searches (so 1.0=the number of searches for ‘free gay porn’ in FL, and 1.0=number of searches for ‘god’ in AL). It doesn’t actually tell us how many searches were made—it could be that there were elebenty billion searches for gay porn and 342 for god.
J
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: @Citizen Alan: @Cat Lady:
I see a paradox of liberalism in the offing here. The liberal outlook we share says, very roughly, tolerate the views and practices of others as long as they don’t harm others, involve mutual consent and so on. Indeed do more than tolerate them, if by ‘tolerate’ one means endure or allow while holding our noses (I don’t mean that). When we fight to defeat the conservative war on women or their homophobia and the like, however, we are threatening their chief and perhaps only source of sexual satisfaction! Their sexual preference or inclination simply *is* to denounce and punish, legally if possible, the sexual preferences inclinations and actions of others.
Wouldn’t you know it, we liberals are the true oppressors, the genuinely intolerant ones, the prudes, the prigs! We should be ashamed!
Suffern ACE
@Loneoak: Yep. But it’s less fun that way.
Now as for the hypothesis that the south is full of closet cases leading empty lives, surfing for free gay porn. I’d have to say, well, no. Gay-curious folk search for “Free Gay Porn”. Closeted and out gay men don’t actually have to search google for that. They know what sites contain what they want, and probably have them in favorites.
New Yorker
I think the more sexually repressed a society is, the more sexuality will manifest itself in weird, underground ways. Apparently Saudi Arabia is a hotbed of internet porn (of the straight variety).
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Zifnab:
Chat Roulette is the internet equivalent of the naked guy wrapped in a trench coat standing outside the local grocery store, flashing everyone that passes by.
Without consequences!
As they say, ‘whatever turns their crank’…
The bit Jon Stewart did on it some time ago was pretty damned funny.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@J:
I modified that a bit to reflect my own view that this describes the authoritarian conservative mindset on a great many subjects and issues (e.g. religious belief), not just with regard to sex. They seek (and even seem to crave) self-validation via the power to oppress others, by setting normative definitions and then imposing those normative definitions on everyone else, using the power of the state if mainstream culture isn’t getting the job done to their satisfaction. It seems to me that this reflects a deep-seated sense of insecurity on their part. Their internal sense of [adjective] isn’t strong enough to stand up by itself without being validated by society more generally. To my way of thinking this explains why people who are authoritarian followers are so attracted to these issues.
Odie Hugh Manatee
Oops, I used the baaaaaad words and teh WP Mod Gawd done smacked my post down!
Save it! Peeze!
Tanks!! :)
gocart mozart
Santorum is on it
http://www.ricksantorum.com/enforcing-laws-against-illegal-pornography
Bruce S
In fairness, since the search is “FREE gay porn” don’t you think that Mississippi’s dire poverty level needs to be taken into account as a controlling factor.
I’m not going to draw any conclusions from this until Nate Silver has sifted through the data.
Jeffro
Delaware REPRESENT!!
J
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: To be sure, but to really understand their mentality–a difficult, perhaps impossible feat for me–we’d somehow have to grasp how, in the conservatives’ view, preventing them from embodying their ‘moral’ and ‘religious’ views in the law applying to all is a case of oppressing, or victimizing or persecuting them.
Anyway in the spirit of open-mindedness and comity, and to encourage the fullest possible sexual fulfillment among our conservative brethren, let’s restore the public stoning of selected* adulterers!
*obviously some mechanism for ensuring that the punishment is only inflicted on the truly deserving will be needed, i.e., ‘those people’ .
Jim Pharo
Wait — they have FREE gay porn now? When did that start?
Is this s a great country or what!
trollhattan
Little-known fact: “Deliverance”–a documentary.
You might could look it up.
WereBear
Conservative shorter: If it ain’t naughty, by gawd, it ain’t porn!
Narcissus
So what’re republicans into
bel ami
corbin fisher
colt
helix studios
Tonal Crow
@gocart mozart:
Ew, don’t link to that site. Here’s a story about it on Yahoo. http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/rick-santorum-wants-ban-hardcore-pornography-222833811.html . A porno ban? What’s next? Blowing up the Buddha statues?
Jager
@gene108: Learning by observing the experts?
doey-o
re: Tonal Crow
the last time we had an attorney general who was committed to eliminating porn, 19 crazy guys hijacked some airplanes and crashed them. IFAIK, we still aren’t recovered from that nightmare.
don’t believe me? just google it. what could possibly go wrong?
Anne Laurie
@Warren Terra: Next time y’all want a great slapstick feel-good movie, may I suggest Happy, Texas?
(If I could find a clip of ‘the only all-cowboy bar in three counties’, I’d’ve used that instead…)
beergoggles
Ran into this today: Probably Gay, the Homophobia Song – Katie Goodman’s Broad Comedy
http://youtu.be/1CQg9f7z9eg
Tonal Crow
@doey-o: Oh, I remember Ashcroft and his anti-porn crusade very well.
oklahomo
@Narcissus: I’m gonna guess “Broke Straight Guys.”
Paul in KY
@Jay B.: If we can’t get most of the gay people’s votes in the South, well, we are well & truly fucked when it comes to ever winning one of those states.
It is the votes of the heterosexuals (of which there are a lot more) that we need to win. Not, of course, by doing any gay bashing.
Paul in KY
@General Stuck (Bravo Nope Zero): Lived in Biloxi for about 8 months. People were quite nice (whites & blacks). No casinos down there when I was there.
Just that beautiful Biloxi Beach (snicker).
Collin
What’s the matter with everyone? Wonkette is a humor site! And the graph is hand-drawn! Now can you all get your brains out of your a**es?