The Egg Yolk Principle: Human Sexuality Will Always Outsmart Prudish Algorithms and Hateful Politicians
A metal fork drags its four prongs back and forth across the yolk of an over-easy egg. The lightly peppered fried whites that skin across the runny yolk give a little, straining under the weight of the prongs. The yolk bulges and puckers, and finally the fork flips to its sharp points, bears down on the yolk and rips it open, revealing the thick, bright cadmium-yellow liquid underneath. The fork dips into the yolk and rubs the viscous ovum all over the crispy white edges, smearing it around slowly, coating the prongs. An R&B track plays. @popping_yolks #popping_yolks #eggs #food #yummy #watchmepop #foodporn #pop #poppingyolk @Foodporn Chill Day - LAKEY INSPIRED People in the comments on this video and others on the Popping Yolks TikTok account seem to be a mix of pleased and disgusted. Bro seriously Edged till the very last moment, one person commented. Its what we do, the account owner replied. Not the eggsum someone else commented on another popping video.The sentiment in the comments on most content that floats to the top of my algorithms these dayswhether its in the For You Page on TikTok, the infamously malleable Reels algo on Instagram, Xs obsession with sex-stunt discourse that makes it into prudish New York Times opinion essaysis confusion: How did I get here? Why does my FYP think I want to see egg edging? Why is everything slightly, uncomfortably, sexual?If right-wing leadership in this country has its way, the person running this account could be put in prison for disseminating content that's intended to arouse. Theres a nationwide effort happening right now to end pornography, and call everything pornographic at the same time.Much like anti-abortion laws dont end abortion, and the so-called war on drugs didnt win over drugs, anti-porn laws dont end the adult industry. They only serve to shift power from peoplesex workers, adult content creators, consumers of porn and anyone who wants to access sexual speech online without overly-burdensome barriersto politicians like Senator Mike Lee, who is currently pushing to criminalize porn at the federal level.Everything is sexually suggestive now because on most platforms, for years, being sexually overt meant risking a ban. Not-coincidentally, being horny about everything is also one of the few ways to get engagement on those same platforms. At the same time, legislators are trying to make everything pornographic illegal or impossible to make or consume.Screenshot via InstagramThe Interstate Obscenity Definition Act (IODA), introduced by Senator Lee and Illinois Republican Rep. Mary Miller last month, aims to change the Supreme Courts 1973 Miller Test for determining what qualifies as obscene. The Miller Test assesses material with three criteria: Would the average person, using contemporary standards, think it appeals to prurient interests? Does the material depict, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct? And does it lack serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value? If youre thinking this all sounds awfully subjective for a legal standard, it is.But Lee, whose state of Utah has been pushing the pseudoscientific narrative that porn constitutes a public health crisis for years, wants to redefine obscenity. Current legal definitions of obscenity include intent of the material, which prohibits obscene material for the purposes of abusing, threatening, or harassing a person. Lees IODA would remove the intent stipulation entirely, leaving anyone sharing or posting content thats intended to arouse vulnerable to federal prosecution.Do you know anything else about how platforms, companies, or state legislators are ? I would love to hear from you. Using a non-work device, you can message me securely on Signal at sam.404 Otherwise, send me an email at sam@404media.co.IODA also makes an attempt to change the meaning of contemporary community standards, a key part of obscenity law in the U.S. Instead of relying on contemporary community standards to determine if a work is patently offensive, the IODA creates a new definition of obscenity which considers whether the material involves an objective intent to arouse, titillate, or gratify the sexual desires of a person,First Amendment attorney Lawrence Walters told me. This would significantly broaden the scope of erotic materials that are subject to prosecution as obscene. Prosecutors have stumbled, in the past, with establishing that a work is patently offensive based on community standards. The tolerance for adult materials in any particular community can be quite difficult to pin down, creating roadblocks to successful obscenity prosecutions. Accordingly, Sen. Lees bill seeks to prohibit more works as obscene and makes it easier for the government to criminalize protected speech.All online adult content creatorsOnlyfans models, porn performers working for major studios, indie porn makers, people doing horny commissions on Patreon, all of romance BookTok, maybe the entire romance book genre for that mattercould be criminals under this law. Would the egg yolk popper be a criminal, too? What about this guy who diddles mushrooms on TikTok? What about these women spitting in cups? Or the Donut Daddy, who fingers, rips and slaps ingredients while making cooking content? Is Sydney Sweeney going to jail for intending to arouse fans with bathwater-themed soap?What Lee and others who support these kinds of bills are attempting to construct is a legal precedent where someone stroking egg yolksor whispering into a microphone, or flicking a wet jelly fungusshould fear not just for their accounts, but for their freedom.Some adult content creators are pushing back with the skills they have. Porn performers Damien and Diana Soft made a montage video of them having sex while reciting the contents of IODA.The effect Lees bill would have on porn producers and consumers is obvious, but its the greater implications that scare us most, they told me in an email. This bill would hurt every American by infringing on their freedoms and putting power into the hands of politicians. We dont want this governmentor any well-meaning government in the futureto have the ability to find broader and broader definitions of obscene. Today they use the word to define porn. Tomorrow it could define the actions of peaceful protestors.The law has defined obscenity narrowly for decades. The current test for obscenity requires, for example, that the thing that's depicted has to be patently offensive, Becca Branum, deputy director of the Center for Democracy and Technologys Free Expression Project, told me in a call. By defining it that narrowly, a lot of commercial pornography and all sorts of stuff is still protected by the First Amendment, because it's not patently offensive. This bill would replace that standard with any representation of normal or perverted sexual acts with the objective intent to arouse, titillate or gratify. And so that includes things like simulating depictions of sex, which are a huge part of all media. Sex sells, and this could sweep in any romcom with a sex scene, no matter how tame, just because it includes a representation of a sex act. Its just an enormous expansion of what has been legally understood to be obscenity.IODA is not a law yet, and is still only a bill that has to make its way through the House and Senate before it winds up on the presidents desk, and Lee has failed to get versions of the IODA through in the past. But as I wrote at the time, were in a different political landscape. Project 2025 leadership is at the helm, and that manifesto dictates an end to all porn and prison for pornographers.All of the legal experts and free speech advocates I spoke to said IODA is plainly unconstitutional. But its still worth taking seriously, as its illustrative of something much bigger happening in politics and society.There are people who would like to get all sexual material offline, David Greene, senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told me. There are people who want to see all sexual material completely eradicated from public life, but offline is [an] achievable target, he said. So in some ways it's laughable, but if it does gain momentum, this is really, really dangerous.Lees bill might seem to have an ice cubes chance in hell for becoming law, but weirder things are happening. Twenty-two states in the U.S. already have laws in place that restrict adults access to pornography, requiring government-issued ID to view adult content. Fifteen more states have age verification bills pending. These bills share similar language to define harmful material:material that exploits, is devoted to, or principally consists of descriptions of actual, simulated, or animated display or depiction of any of the following, in a manner patently offensive with respect to minors: (i) pubic hair, anus, vulva, genitals, or nipple of the female breast; (ii) touching, caressing, or fondling of nipples, breasts, buttocks, anuses, or genitals; or (iii) sexual intercourse, masturbation, sodomy, bestiality, oral copulation, flagellation, excretory functions, exhibitions, or any other sexual act.Before the first age verification bills were a glimmer in Louisiana legislators eyes three years ago, sexuality was always overpoliced online. Before this, it was (and still is) SESTA/FOSTA, which amended Section 230 to make platforms liable for what users do on them when activity could be construed as sex trafficking, including massive swaths and sometimes whole websites in its net if users discussed meeting in exchange for pay, but also real-life interactions or and attempts to screen clients for in-person encountersand imposed burdensome fines if they didnt comply. Sex education bore a lot of the brunt of this legislation, as did sex workers who used listing sites and places like Craigslist to make sure clientele was safe to meet IRL. The effects of SESTA/FOSTA were swift and brutal, and theyre ongoing.We also see these effects in the obfuscation of sexual words and terms with algo-friendly shorthand, where people use seggs or grape instead of sex or rape to evade removal by hostile platforms. And maybe years of stock imagery of fingering grapefruits and wrapping red nails around cucumbers because Facebook couldnt handle a sideboob means unironically horny fuckable-food content is a natural evolution to adapt.Now, we have the Take It Down act, which experts expect will cause a similar fallout: platforms that cant comply with extremely short deadlines on strict moderation expectations could opt to ban NSFW content altogether.Before either of these pieces of legislation, it was (and still is!) banks. Financial institutions have long been the arbiters of morality in this country and others. And what credit card processors say goes, even if what theyre taking offense from is perfectly legal. Banks are the extra-legal arm of the right.For years, I wrote a column for Motherboard called Rule 34, predicated on the internet rule that if you can think of it, someone has made porn of it. The thesis, throughout all of the communities and fetishes I examinedblueberry inflationists, slime girls, self-suckers, airplane fuckerswas that its almost impossible to predict what people get off on. A domino fallsplaying in the pool as a 10 year old, for instanceand the next thing you know youre an adult hooking an air compressor up to a fuckable pool toy after work. You will never, ever put human sexuality in a box. The idea that someone like Mike Lee wants to try is not only absurd, its scary: a ruse set up for social control.Much of this tension between laws, banks, and people plays out very obviously in platforms terms of use. Take a recent case: In late 2023, Patreon updated its terms of use for sexually gratifying works. In these guidelines, the platform twists itself into Gordian knots trying to define what is and isnt permitted. For example, sexual activity between a human and any animal that exists in the real world is not permitted. Does this mean sex between humans and Bigfoot is allowed? What about depictions of sex with extinct animals, like passenger pigeons or dodos? Also not permitted: Mouths, sex toys, or related instruments being used for the stimulation of certain body parts such as genitals, anus, breast or nipple (as opposed to hip, arm, or armpit which would be permitted). It seems armpit-licking is a-ok on Patreon.In September 2024, Patreon made changes to the guidelines again, writing in an update that it added nuance under Bestiality to clarify the circumstances in which it is permitted for human characters to have sexual interactions with fictional mythological creatures. The rules currently state: Sexual interaction between a human and a fictional mythological creature that is more humanistic than animal (i.e. anthropomorphic, bipedal, and/or sapient). As preeminent poster Merritt K wrote about the changes, if i'm reading this correct it's ok to write a story where a werewolf fucks a werewolf but not where a werewolf fucks a dracula.The platform also said in an announcement alongside the bestiality stuff: We removed Game of Thrones as an example under the Incest section, to avoid confusion. All of it almost makes you pity the mods tasked with untangling the knots, pressed from above by managers, shareholders, and CEOs to make the platform suitably safe and sanitary for credit card processors, and from below by users who want to sell their slashfic fanart of Lannister inter-familial romance undisturbed.Patreons changes to its terms also threw the adult baby/diaper lover community into chaos, in a perfect illustration of my point: A lot of participants inside that fandom insist its not sexual. A lot of people outside find it obscene. Whos correct?As part of answering that question for this article, I tried to find examples of content thats arousing but not actually pornographic, like the egg yolks. This, as it happens, is a very I know it when I see it type of thing. Foot pottery? Obviously intended to arouse, but not explicitly pornographic. This account of AI-generated ripped women? Yep, and theres a link to 18+ content in the accounts bio. Farting and spitting are too obviously kinky to successfully toe the line, but a woman chugging milk as part of a lactose intolerance experiment then recording herself suffering (including closeups of her face while farting) fits the bill, according to my entirely arbitrary terms. Confirming my not-porn-but-still-horny assessment, the original videomade by user toot_queen on TikTok, was reposted to Instagram by the lactose supplement company Dairy Joy. Fleece straightjackets, and especially tickle sessions in them, are too recognizably BDSM. This guy making biscuits on a blankie? I guess, man. Context matters: Eating cereal out of a womans armpit is way too literal to my eye, but itd apparently fly on Patreon no problem. @toot_queen original sound - Toot girl Obfuscating fetish and kink for the appeasement of payment processors, platforms and Republican senators has a history. As Jenny Sundn, a professor of gender studies at Sdertrn University in Sweden, points out in her 2022 paper, philosopher douard Glissant presented the concept of opacity as a tactic of the oppressed, and a human right. She applied this to kink: Opacity implies a lack of clarity; something opaque may be both difficult to see clearly as well as to understand, Sundn wrote. Kink communities exist to a large extent in such spaces of dimness, darkness and incomprehensibility, partly removed from public view and, importantly, from public understanding. Kink certainly enters the bright daylight of public visibility in some ways, most obviously through popular culture. And yet, there is something utterly incomprehensible about how desire works, something which tends to become heightened in the realm of kink as non-practitioners may struggle to understand."Weve seen similar attempts to redefine obscenity that havent gone very far. However, were living in an era when censorship of sexual content is broadly censored online, and the promises written in Project 2025 are coming true"Opacity, she suggested, works to overcome the risk of reducing, normalizing and assimilating sexual deviance by comprehension, and instead open up for new modes of obscure and pleasurable sexual expressions and transgressions on social media platforms.As the internet and society at large becomes more hostile to sex, actual sexual content has become more opaque. And because sex leads the way in engagement, monetization, and innovation on the internet, everything else has copied it, pretending its trying to evade detection even when theres nothing to detect, like the fork and fried egg.The point of eroding longstanding definitions of obscenity and precedent around intent and standards are all part of a journey back toward a world where the only sexuality one can legally experience is between legally married cisgender heterosexuals. We see it happen with book bans that call any mention of gender or sexuality pornographic, and with attacks on trans rights that label peoples very existence as porn."The IODA would be the first step toward an outright federal ban on pornography and an insult to existing case law. Weve seen similar attempts to redefine obscenity that havent gone very far. However, were living in an era when censorship of sexual content is broadly censored online, and the promises written in Project 2025 are coming true, Ricci Levy, president of the Woodhull Freedom Foundation, told me. Banning pornography may not concern those who object to its existence, but any attempt by the government to ban and censor protected speech is a threat to the First Amendment rights we all treasure."And as we saw with FOSTA/SESTA, and with the age verification lawsuits cropping up around the country recentlyand what well likely see happen now that the Take It Down Act has passed with extreme expectations placed on website administrators to remove anything that could infringe on nonconsensual content lawsplatforms might not even bother to try to deal with the burden of keeping NSFW users happy anymore.Even if IODA doesn't pass, and even if no one is ever prosecuted under it, the damage is done, both in his introduction and sort of creating that persistent drum beat of attempts to limit people's speech, Branum said.But if it or a bill like it did pass in the future, prosecutorsin this scenario, empowered to dictate peoples speech and sexual interestswouldn't even need to bring a case against someone for it to have real effects. The more damaging and immediate effect would be on the chilling effect it'll have on everyone's speech in the meantime, Branum said. Even if I'm not prosecuted under the obscenity statute, if I know that I could be for sharing something as benign as a recording from my bachelorette party, I'm going to curtail my speech. I'm going to change my behavior to avoid attracting the government's ire. Even if they never brought a prosecution under this law, the damage would already be done.
