Online Pornography — Close-up of an ancient weathered stone carving

Online Pornography

1985catchphraseclassic

Published September 20, 2026

Online Pornography refers to the sprawling category of adult material distributed over the internet, from 1980s ASCII art and Usenet newsgroups to modern tube sites. Its reach shaped internet humor, spawning catchphrases like The Internet Is For Porn, Rule 34, and the '-porn' suffix that produced non-sexual subreddits like /r/EarthPorn12.

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Overview

Online Pornography is less a single meme than an umbrella joke about what the internet is actually used for. The gag shows up in three recurring formats: the catchphrase The Internet Is For Porn from the 2003 Broadway musical Avenue Q1, the internet rule known as Rule 34 which states that porn exists of everything with no exceptions1, and the '-porn' suffix that Reddit turned into safe-for-work subreddits like /r/EarthPorn, /r/SpacePorn, /r/CityPorn, and /r/BookPorn1.

The humor works by treating porn as a load-bearing pillar of web infrastructure. Writers describing the history of the World Wide Web routinely cite adult content as one of the driving forces behind its commercial expansion1, and the joke plays on that fact: any new platform, from Usenet to YouTube to Web 2.0 tube sites, ends up carrying adult material almost immediately1. Work-Safe Porn, a photoshop fad from 2002, inverted the concept by editing explicit photos so they looked innocent1.

Origin & Background

Platform
Usenet / FTP (early distribution), Reddit and Broadway (viral catchphrases)
Date
1985

The oldest surviving erotic images predate the internet by millennia, from paleolithic cave carvings to the Turin Erotic Papyrus of the Ramesside period1. Online distribution began in the late 1980s, when pornographic ASCII art was traded on anonymous FTP servers, moving to Usenet newsgroups by the early 1990s1. By the 2000s, tube sites copied the YouTube user-upload model, a shift KYM calls Porn 2.01.

The meme-facing side of the topic crystallised with Avenue Q's 2003 song The Internet Is For Porn, which was uploaded and parodied widely after the show's premiere1. Rule 34 emerged from the same era's Rules of the Internet lists, and the '-porn' suffix, in use since around 1984 to describe hi-res eye-candy photography, was picked up by Reddit for its non-sexual 'porn' subreddits1.

How It Spread

The catchphrases moved off their original platforms fast. Avenue Q clips of The Internet Is For Porn were reuploaded and parodied on YouTube throughout the mid-2000s5. Rule 34 saturated image boards and fan art communities, becoming shorthand any time a new character entered pop culture1. The '-porn' suffix subreddits scaled independently on Reddit and produced imitators well beyond the original Food Porn coinage1.

The subject also became a recurring policy story, which kept it in mainstream news. Beginning in 2011, UK Prime Minister David Cameron pushed opt-in ISP filters that would block adult sites unless users specifically asked for access2. The Verge reported in November 2012 that the plan had softened into a household-level filter prompt rather than a nationwide default block3. In July 2013, Cameron announced a default-on block for all UK broadband connections, alongside a ban on 'violent' or 'extreme' porn, drawing censorship complaints from civil liberties groups4.

In August 2013, Pornhub published a Tableau dashboard of average visit duration and top search terms by US state1. A Redditor named jeweloree turned the data into a map that hit /r/DataIsBeautiful and was picked up by The Daily Dot, Gizmodo, Jezebel, and Animal NY within a day1.

Timeline

1985

Porn-suffix usage documented as slang for high-quality photography, per KYM's origin write-up.

1989

Pornographic ASCII art traded on anonymous FTP servers, one of the earliest forms of online adult distribution.

2002-09-09

Something Awful publishes the 'Make Porn Work-Safe' photoshop thread, kicking off the Work-Safe Porn edit fad.

2003

Avenue Q premieres on Broadway with the song 'The Internet Is For Porn', later a widely reuploaded catchphrase.

2011-10

UK PM David Cameron first floats an ISP-level porn filter.

How to Use This Meme

The formats break down by joke type. For Rule 34, users typically produce or point to fan art pairing an unlikely subject (a cartoon character, an inanimate object, a piece of software) with porn, framing it as proof of the rule. For the '-porn' suffix, communities append '-porn' to any aesthetic category to signal a high-quality photo feed, common on subreddits like /r/EarthPorn. For Work-Safe Porn edits, creators paint over explicit content with everyday objects until the image reads as innocuous.

Frequently Asked Questions