Swide Magazine by Dolce&Gabbana

Moaning, humping, grunting adult film stars coming to a phone screen near you; it's on planes, trains, buses and on the underground. What with new technologies and wireless everywhere it's more than likely that on your next commute you'll get more of an eyeful than you bargained for!

We'd all vaguely heard of Japanese businessmen reading hentai (that's manga porn for you prudes...) on the metro and filed that under the "aren't-those-Japanese-weird" section of our (sizeable) brains. Word on the street is commuters these days are taking it a step further by taking full advantage of our modern technologies: why use your iPhone for boring old applications when you can turn it into your own mobile adult entertainment center?

They call it "secondhand porn" and apparently it's something like the new passive smoking. Or when selfish, inconsiderate (ahem, male...) beings with a complete disregard for etiquette end up polluting you without your standing a chance to do much about it. Though to be fair there is some sort of sociological explanation (other than men being pigs that is... alright, alright, that was the last gratuitous gender-biased comment) behind all this: the blurring of the lines between private and public spheres as the combined dynamics of takeaway entertainment and our obsession with social networking mean we carry all our very personal baggage with us at all times. Including our porn addictions.

For those involved it isn't even a question of whether porn is acceptable (let's face it, we've become a fundamentally voyeuristic bunch), it's more that its being so overtly displayed in closed spaces makes it fairly unavoidable; on a super crowded, "can barely move" train ride at rush-hour it might just be a case of facing the pervert to your right with his on-screen buddies or the pervert to your left and his stomach-churning lewd looks. Not your dream scenario on your way to work on a bleak Monday morning!

For a lesson in public transport manners let's look once more towards the Japanese and the fantastically funny public information campaigns they run on the Tokyo underground. Okay so we may have got carried away in interpreting the meaning of those posters but they look suspiciously double-meaninged to us. See for yourselves...

 

 

This is obviously meant to warn fellow passengers about the likeliness of rude boys reading the wrong king of magazines on the train.

 

 

You can clearly see that poor spectacled man's horrified expression at the sight of two teenagers watching a dirty video on their phone.

 

 

This is a final warning to all potential perverts as to the effects of public transport pornography: don't do it or it's likely you'll get a good beating. Either that or you've fallen victim to your disgusting 24-hour porn addiction. You disgusting disguting perv!

 

Aurelie Bellavigna

 

Source: Washington Post, loneleeplanet

Photo credits: Various

TAGS: porn public transport iphone commuters subway tube metro hentai