snowclone: [X] porn

Jesse Sheidlower jester at PANIX.COM
Sat Mar 28 23:18:09 UTC 2009


On Sat, Mar 28, 2009 at 07:03:31PM -0400, James Harbeck wrote:
> I first encountered "torture porn" in reference to _The Passion of
> the Christ_ a few years ago, and it had a certain catch to it -- I've
> encountered it occasionally since, and a Google search pulls up quite
> a few other instances. On Thursday I saw "pessimism porn" noted in
> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/26/opinion/26schott.html?th&emc=th ,
> in reference to the Great Depression kinds of themes that have been
> focus in the popular media: millions homeless etc.
>
> A Google search for "it's just * porn" gets a few interesting hits --
> "it's just quality food porn", "it's just Journo-porn" ("I am sick of
> having to pay a licence fee for this level of excessive and obsessive
> detail about foriegn countries: it's just Journo-porn."), "it's just
> hurricane porn", "it's just lifestyle porn", "it's just war porn",
> "it's just Automotive porn", "it's just veg growers porn", "it's just
> car porn", "it's just discography porn"...
>
> I'm not sure if this one has been noted before.

It's in OED, _porn_ n.(2) sense 2, "As the second element in
compounds: denoting written or visual material that emphasizes
the sensuous or sensational aspects of a non-sexual subject,
appealing to its audience in a manner likened to the
titillating effect of pornography," with quotes back to 1973,
including _food porn_, _disaster porn_, _gastro-porn_,
_weather porn_, etc.

Jesse Sheidlower
OED

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



More information about the Ads-l mailing list