Erotica and the Internet

I've been busy with my LiveJournal blog in connection with my writing seminar. This posting from earlier today (and private on my LJ) is one to which I'd welcome comment by whoever reads this blog. I've been interested in these questions for some time.

It's no secret that much of the information that whizzes about the Net is titillating to someone. I suspect much of the common activity of older children and young adults on-line has to do with sexy pictures and words. This seems a daunting kind of fiction to write in our public setting, but you may want to satisfy your curiosity about what erotic fiction is being published daily in cyberspace, as you think about how fiction is changing in an AIM world. You might start with the FAQ and the dated archive page at alt.sex.stories.moderated. Caveat lector! I would be interested in hearing from those of you who do browse this literature how you think the availability and the particular content of Net erotica is changing personality and social behavior. Freud thought the flavor of our adult sensual lives was set in the first several years of life. He had (IMHO) no real theory of personality change in adolescence and adulthood. He did think that having to work to find a "love object," a partner to our desire, made us grow up and helps keep us sane, as we repeatedly shape our wishes to what the real world will provide. What if our fantasies could be fulfilled, at little cost to us and none to anyone else? What would happen to our notions of morality? To our interest in and skill at maintaining our culture?

See: Davis, D.A. (1997). A glossary of Freudian terminology. Freud, S. (1933). The Structure of the Unconscious. From New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis [1933], translated from the German by W. J. H. Sprott, New York, 1933, pp. 104-5, 105-7, 108-12.