Fetish on Flickr

The more repressed and prudish members of Flickr tend to complain about the pornographic "element" on the site - those who use it for more sexual than artistic purposes (despite the presence of content filters). I, for one, though honestly not all that interested in pornography, as I am far more turned on by art, support the relative freedom of the site, intrinsically, as I am a freedom fighter and a hater of censorship and all that. But one thing that's vaguely interesting to do (if you've got the stomach), is to glance at random people's favorites - it can give you a pretty neat insight into a person's tastes. Ignoring the art lovers, since this is a post about porn, I have to say that the majority of people's sexual interests I see are rather unappealing to me. This is not surprising, as we're talking specific personal tastes here, but one overarching quality I can't help but notice is how grotesque and actually repulsive a lot of it is. I have a hard time imagining that people actually get off to this stuff. Granted, my own tastes aren't exactly normalized, but I like to think (at the risk of succumbing to elitism) they're at least "cleaner" than what I'm seeing. I suppose that's just part of who I am - and related to my interest in art over porn. I respond to beauty, not vulgarity...