Chapter 18 leisure and entertainment

XXX people Some of the trends in this book involve small groups that are creating huge markets.The trends described in this chapter, however, involve a large number of people whose activities seem to be unknown, even though they occur frequently. Few topics are more taboo in America than pornography.Despised both by religious leaders (often on the right) and condemned by feminists (often on the left), pornography, like any other pastime, is widely frowned upon in America.But in recent years, the Internet has made pornographic pastimes so easy that millions of otherwise respectable upper-class Americans are consuming them with alarming frequency.Sales of pornographic magazines may be down, but pornography on the Internet is lucrative.

About 40 million American adults regularly visit pornographic sites on the Internet.That's more than 10 times the number of people who watch baseball regularly.Which pastime should we call the national pastime of America? In fact, the market is so huge that pornography is the most common pastime.Nearly every hotel room in the US offers easy access to porn sites.No matter who it is, just click the mouse. A staggering number of people browse pornographic sites during work hours.According to statistics from Websense, a vendor of Internet security and filtering software, 70 percent of all pornography is downloaded between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. 20% of American men admit to browsing pornographic websites during work hours.Are there 5 serious men in your office?You sneak a glance at their computer screen while they're hunched over their computer, looking like they're working.It may be the case that at least one person is not staring at the report.

It is worth noting that these people originally held to some extremely high moral standards. In 2003, Today's Christian Woman reported that 53 percent of men at that year's Promise Keepers Convention admitted they had visited a pornographic website in the previous week. Forty-seven percent of Christians say pornography is a serious problem in the family. Former President Jimmy Carter once agreed that "the flesh is in you."And the Internet puts lust on your computer screen, satisfying lust that you don't want others to know about for very little money. After all, it was the hot sex tapes that went viral that made Pamela Anderson famous again and Paris Hilton famous.Both men were annoyed that their boyfriends were distributing the tapes without their consent.But they all reaped the benefits of this heightened exposure and the interest they generated.In the past, such videos would have made these stars ostracized, but in today's society, these videos make them stars.

Pornography is a $57 billion industry worldwide, and in the United States it brings in $12 billion a year. In 2001, pornography generated more money than the major leagues of baseball, football and basketball combined. A 2006 study claimed that Internet pornography generated more profits than the combined profits of ABC, CBS, and NBC. Almost 2:1. As one might expect, pornography is a big part of cyberspace.On the Internet, there are more than 4 million pornographic websites, accounting for about 12% of all websites.One out of every four requests search engines receive each day is for pornography.Likewise, 1 in every 3 downloads is for pornography.It is often the case that the number of visits to pornographic websites exceeds that of Google, Yahoo!and MSN three times the combined traffic of these three websites.

Less noticed, however, is that pornography has become one of the key industries driving technology.In the 1980s, when Video Home System (VHS) supplanted Betamax as the videotape standard, its triumph was largely due to the X-rated movies that existed alongside it.Now, according to Investor's Business Daily, disc giants HDDVD and Blu-ray Disc (Blu-ray Disc) are battling over who will be the standard format for next-generation discs, and HDDVD and the "adult industry "(adult industry) coalition is likely to win. Porn distributors are now among the biggest customers of major technology companies. "Sex" (sex) has become a popular topic in Google and Yahoo!The #1 search term on the site.While various conservative groups have stepped up boycotts of companies that advertise in gay porn magazines, they have never boycotted companies that buy equipment and services into the porn industry.Why not?While these organizations don't have many gay members, they do have a lot of members browsing porn sites.

When it comes to the impact of pornography, one has to wonder if we'll ever see real changes in relationships between the sexes.Violence has been blamed on television, but some studies say otherwise.Now, with the rapid spread of Internet pornography, online dating is also skyrocketing.People have never had so many opportunities to meet and date people in reality. While meeting and dating, they may also indulge in various fantasies that they don't want to be known. Perhaps the biggest impact has been on teens who once bought illegal pornographic magazines, then pornographic videos, and now have access to the Internet.You just type such obvious porn sites into your web browser and you'll see exactly what happens.Photos that young people had never been able to get before without a lot of trouble are quickly passed on to anyone without any credit card or ID.The age at which American teens have first-time sexual intercourse is falling and is now as low as 16, and easy access to sexually relevant photos and unrestricted sexual messages may be one reason.

For women, though, that's what's really scary.The mainstream porn industry is creeping up like a behemoth - a phenomenon that is already commonplace for men but often overlooked by women.If women realized this, would they change the way they think about co-workers, bosses, husbands, and boyfriends?Or, are women deliberately ignoring this phenomenon?Do they agree with Jimmy Carter that a little sensuality is okay as long as their man remains faithful to them? Among women, more than one in four had visited a pornographic website.Moreover, more and more women are now living alone.So if there's another trend within a trend, it's that more women will adopt the attitude: If you can't beat them, come with them.

international picture The passion for porn is not unique to Americans. TopTenReviws.com states that the annual global sex industry is worth approximately $81 billion, with Internet-based pornography accounting for $3.5 billion.In the past 5 years, pornographic webpages around the world have grown at a rate of 1800%, and 25% of the 68 million daily search requests worldwide are for pornographic websites.So when you scramble to hide a nude figure on your screen because your boss walks by, you're probably not alone—someone in the Netherlands is probably doing the same thing. Is it true that porn sites are so popular?According to the 2004 Global Sex Survey (2004 Global Sex Survey) conducted by Durex (the condom manufacturer), 35% of viewers of pornographic materials watch it with their partners.Globally, South Africans are the most willing to admit to viewing pornography (60%), while Indians (22%) and Chinese (24%) are the least willing to admit.

People all over the world come into contact with pornographic material in basically the same way - mainly through the Internet, telephone and magazines.But in Europe, the new craze is accessing pornography on mobile phones.Europeans already spend the equivalent of tens of millions of dollars on mobile-compatible pornography; in 2004, PhoneErotica.com received more than 75 million hits a week.In the U.S., cellphone carriers have been slow to keep up with Europe, fearful of public outcry.Regardless, the researchers claim that by 2009 pornography on mobile phones (conceivably next to your work e-mails and digital photos of your family) will be a $200 million market in the US.

Naturally, pornography isn't just for adults.Thailand's "Nation" (TheNation) magazine reported that in 2002, about 71% of Thai teenagers (12-25 years old) had visited pornographic websites, and 45% were regular users of these websites.The 13- to 14-year-old boys from Alberta, Canada, claimed they had browsed "uncountable" porn sites. Japan has a very prominent place in the pornography scene as a home to both adult and child pornography. In 1998, Interpol estimated that up to 80 percent of child pornography sites came from Japan. Which country has the highest number of registered pornographic websites?It's Germany, with about 10 million of them.A small African nation, São Tomé, claims to have about 307,000 such pages, nearly twice the population of the tiny nation.

This is the biggest, least kept secret in the world. adults playing video games In the United States, video games conjure images of acne-ridden teenage boys huddled before control panels in dimly lit arcades on sunny days. "Gamers" are unsocial teens who sit for hours in their respective basements, with no fresh air, exercise, or necessary conversation. While old impressions are entrenched, the statistics reveal a very different picture.In 2006, the average age of a video game player rose to 33 from just 24 four years earlier.Not only are they older than you'd think, but apparently they've only been playing games for an average of 12 years -- which means the average gamer doesn't start playing video games until they're old enough to buy booze.Video games have become the greatest entertainment for adults, not children. According to the Entertainment Software Association, gamers under the age of 18 actually make up less than a third of all gamers, compared with 25 percent of those over 50.I know this is hard to believe.At AARP's 2006 National Convention, alongside Bill Cosby and Elton John, Nintendo game developer business. Even adult women who play games — who make up 30 percent of the video game market — far outnumber boys 17 or younger, who make up just 23 percent of the video game market. Attention, children, your parents are down in the basement.They're not here to take your video games and tell you to play them outside, though.They want to play with you. What is going on? First of all, those in their 30s are the first generation to grow up in front of a computer.For their parents, "entertainment" meant buying a ticket to a show, play, movie or ball game and watching the action unfold.Unlike them, this generation is more receptive to entertainment that involves mouse clicks, control panels and interactive narratives. Second, because today's parents don't see video games as a danger, they actually see them as a way to bond with their children.According to the Entertainment Software Association, 35 percent of parents are gamers, and 80 percent of parents who play games are playing with their children.So in DanceDanceRevolution, the kids (and their fat-feeling parents) get sweaty and scrambled to dance moves that require a bit of skill to keep up on the video.It used to be that adults and kids didn't care about each other at parties; now it's different, and they actually have some fun in common, like playing Guitar Hero games together.It appeals to every generation. Third, the entertainment software industry has come to realize that it has a growing adult audience.In addition to guns, Goths, and Grand Theft Auto, there are now increasingly lifestyle games like The Slims, in which players follow their daily Live programs to manipulate their fictional family members. In 2005, The Sims was the best-selling PC game in North America -- and among women, it was the most popular.One of the fastest-growing groups among computer gamers is mothers over 45, whose children have left home for school and who have plenty of time but not a lot of money.Compared with other groups of gamers, they watch more TV and play games in the second place.Unlike the withdrawn teenage geeks of the past, this group wants their game to be easy to play and to meet more people, not fewer, by playing it.This is a whole new player world. The most popular form of gaming is online gaming, with 2 out of every 3 adults who play games, or about 35 million people.For regular gamers, there are also Massive Multiplayers Online Games (MMOGs), in which people interact as virtual characters in a virtual world that is constantly changing , even if the player is offline.Almost 1 in every 5 adults who play games, or almost 10 million people play these games.With more than 5 million registered users, one of the most popular massively multiplayer online games, SecondLife, allows adults to create virtual characters and let them play in real estate transactions, organizing events, workplaces and Interact with others in ordinary social life.Currently, minors are not allowed to play the game (they have their own version: TeenSecondLife). I must admit that I am also an adult who likes to play computer games. I've been playing the Command and Conquer series of war strategy games for several years, and in those games you can control armies in a lot of different ways.What I've learned is that there's always a path to victory - all you do is keep playing until you find that path.Later, I played more Scrabble online, but if you look at what people are doing on airplanes today, they're either watching DVDs or playing video games.Those who work on laptops while flying are actually a minority. After all, what was once an obscure hobby of teenage geeks and internet junkies is now a very mainstream activity among American adults.Nearly 100 million adults are considered "active gamers."Sales of video games in the United States are greater than sales of movies worldwide.About 100 American colleges and universities teach how to design and produce video games. The advent of adults playing video games is a big deal — first and foremost for the industry itself.For 'mature', well-regarded games, adult gamers represent a thriving industry, the fastest growing segment at almost 15 percent; as are games specifically designed for women A market with unlimited potential.There is also a growing segment of older adults who play games, known as "grey-haired gamers." In 2006, Nintendo developed a touch-based computer game called BrainAge, which played a series of logic tests on the screen for older adults to fill out and then told them how "young" they were .Elderly people living in nursing homes still argue over whether to be "50" or "40," and it's this debate that keeps their minds active and potentially keeps them from developing Alzheimer's. (Remember how Nintendo was popular at the AARP convention?) This market will only grow as seniors become more and more computer literate in the future. Even among adults in their 30s and 40s, though, the market for video games is vastly underestimated—just look at the CircuitCity product showcase, and the sprawling, grotesque patterns on most video game covers. Just know.These games could have made greater strides in sales with more polished covers, more interesting themes, and new gameplay experiences.There is no mainstream game dedicated to investing and making money – although one of the biggest high-stakes games of all time is Monopoly.All of these games focus on world conquest, dating, or killing.But what most 33-year-old men want is to make a fortune suddenly in the market, or if they want to beat someone up, it's his boss or someone in the corner of his office.And the women around their age had just had their first or second child and were busy with their growth and their struggles.The untapped market in human experience is huge, but game makers still seem to focus on acne-ridden teenagers and pay a little less attention to the lifestyles of their new customers. The advent of adults playing video games is also a big deal for advertisers.With a $10 billion and growing ad spend, the video game industry is a very new market hotspot.Entertainment software is still a relatively small niche compared to television, but Nielsen — whose TV ratings ranking system has helped set the price of TV ads for decades — declared in 2006, It will develop an evaluation system to regulate the trading market for video game advertisements.As marketing tactics get closer to reality, it's not just cellphones and DVDs that are attracting video game ads, but home mortgages and minivans as well. On a more general level, the emergence of adult gamers speaks to a blurring of the distinction between adults and kids.True, children are having sex at a younger age than in the past, and are addressing adults by their first names — but increasingly, watching cartoons (The Simpsons, King of the Hill) "[King of the Hill], "South Park" [South Park]), go to adult Chuck E. Cheeses for dinner, and now it's adults who play video games.For all that free time, adults are playing video games, not working, reading, volunteering, or doing other community-enhancing activities that once were the hallmarks of adult citizenship.In fact, they are now living in imaginary space.Is this a state of isolation, or is it a state of broader interpersonal interaction? My opinion is that, comparatively speaking, the advantages of adults playing video games outweigh the disadvantages. The reason is that adults’ love of video games is not only for entertainment, but also for their own education.Gaming has become the new frontier for skill-building and training that adults need as they tackle some of the world's worst problems.The Woodrow Wilson International Center of Scholars (WoodrowWilsonInternationalCenterofScholars) called video games "serious games". The next stage of video game technology will be based on learning and imitation. and the peaceful overthrow of dictators.Firefighters use it to respond to various biohazards, university administrators use it to transform higher education, and the military uses it to prepare for war.In times of urgency and when the choices are pressing and complex, making actual choices through the game can provide a substantial competitive advantage.But only when the mainstream adult population is comfortable with the means and technologies involved in gaming—in large part, in their leisure time—institutions like schools, universities, and governments will Start discovering its full value. So what started out as a hobby for socially awkward teens is now the latest way adults think about counterterrorism, education and war.We "play games" not because we're too disgusted with society to go outside, but because we are able to imagine, plan, and act out some of our life's greatest challenges through scenarios programmed by software.