The Butterfly Effect

A coincidence occurred this week. I’ve been preparing my class for their GCSE Mocks by reading Ray Bradbury’s A Sound of Thunder. The story is set in the future and revolves around Eckles, a big game hunter that wants to step into the past and shoot the biggest quarry of all: a dinosaur. The year is 2055, a time when the technology exists to make time travel possible. There is however one condition to Eckles journeying back in time: he must follow a circumscribed route. If he deviates from the path, he risks altering the very fabric of the universe. This is known as the butterfly effect: the theory that one small change can lead to huge consequences.

Sound of Thunder

The reason why I say a coincidence occurred is because I’d just started listening to Jon Ronson’s Butterfly Effect, a new seven-part podcast produced by Audible. Ronson has been writing for twenty years now, but I only began taking notice when I heard him interviewed on Richard Herring’s Leicester Square Theatre Podcast (RHLSTP!). On there, he talked about his oeuvre, along with his most recent work So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed. Plugging this, he spoke about how his own issues with the Internet made him want to investigate the effect it had on others. I’ve long thought social networking sites appeal to the worst side of our character, making us judge people not by the content of their character, but by the content of their characters. Before the Internet, we could make verbal mistakes and apologise to people sincerely, using our eyes and tone to show we really meant it. Now you can slip up and be set upon by a pack of keyboards that cry ‘justice,’ despite wearing a uniform that resembles mob rule. Difference is healthy; it gives rise to debate; on the Internet though, it often leads to shame-calling, something that really shouldn't happen in our ‘advanced’ age.

So last year I bought my first Jon Ronson book and absolutely loved it. It confirmed that people really are using their laptops as judge, jury and executioner. Ronson's books take the picaresque form, which mean we’re propelled from one story to the next. One particularly interesting tale revolved around Justine Sacco, a PR consultant, who in 2013 ironically tweeted: ‘Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding, I’m white.” Yes, this isn’t a great joke. She doesn’t have the comic chops to satirise white privilege; even if she did Twitter doesn’t have the nuance to prove someone is ‘just kidding.’ As a result, the tweet was re-tweeted to the firm she worked for. The firm made it known that this behaviour was unacceptable. Whilst Justine flew through the air, Twitter users rubbed their genitals with glee, taking pleasure in the enveloping storm. Justine was going to be fired. Before long Twitter was amok with flight paths and lookouts, all seeking her arrival. When she set off to South Africa she was a bright, educated woman; by the time she landed, she was an unemployable racist. If you look at how former Conservative cabinet minister Priti Patel was treated this week, you will see that online behaviour hasn’t improved. In writing So You’ve... Ronson caught the zeitgeist. I’ve read every one of his books since.

I've heard open mic comedians make worse jokes.

Ronson’s latest work is The Butterfly Effect, a podcast that’s been available to buy on Audible for a while, but has just been made free to all. I’d heard an excerpt on the brilliant This American Life and was really intrigued to hear more. Throughout the years Ronson’s dispatches have come from the hinterland of existence, taking in UFO’s with Robbie Williams, investigating the murky Bilderberg Group and befriending real life superheroes. This time round he’s turned his attention to porn – in particular, the porn industry. This then isn’t a Louis Theroux Weird Weekend episode where the focus is limited to the performers; this is an all-encompassing study of the economic framework that underpins the porn millions consume everyday. It is The Wire of podcasts, exploring the hierarchical structure from the top down.

In the first episode we’re introduced to the kingpin Fabian Thyimann, a German businessman raised in Belgium. As a teenager Fabian’s hormones led him to pornography. Being underage, however, meant he sometimes found it hard to come by. Before long he was on chat-rooms exchanging passwords with other users, ensuring access to restricted content. By harnessing the power of online users to satiate his needs, Fabian- unwittingly- founded a business.

Thyimann: the porn magnate.

Fast-forward a few years on and Fabian, along with a huge loan, buys up a Montreal company that specialises in user-uploaded porn. Just as Napster destroyed the music industry, many believe Fabian has torched the sex industry. With his bandit of tech whiz kids, Fabian purloined the money away from recognised artists and producers, putting it into his invisible corporation instead. To all extents and purposes, it is the heist of the century, one that’s netted him a reported $200 million dollars.

Each episode in the series follows the effect of Fabian buying that initial company - the butterfly effect, if you will. A theory that states a single flap of a butterfly’s wing in New Mexico can cause a hurricane in Japan. (This is because of something called Chaos Theory- a theory I have neither the intelligence nor the patience to understand.) Over the course of the pod, we hear how Fabian’s butterfly has created a hurricane that shows no signs of abating.

The first big casualty of the cyclone is San Fernando Valley, affectionately known as ‘Silicone Valley’: the Hollywood of porn. With users now putting pornography online, the producers can no longer make money through DVD sales. If they’re not making money, the porn stars don’t make any either. All of this has meant the producers, directors and artists have to work twice as hard for twice as less. As soon as their movies are recorded they find themselves online. Their only option is to be subsumed by Fabian’s business or walk away. For people who have worked in porn all their life, it’s difficult to leave (filming gang-bangs isn’t exactly something you put on your curriculum vitae). 

This establishing shot makes for a wholesome postcard. Don't send your grandma the zoomed in version though.

Some enterprising spirits have found a third way, however. Just as Arctic Monkeys and Lily Allen responded to the changing face of the music industry, pornographers have too. Episode two looks at bespoke porn that has been tailored to meet a client’s exact specification. These Saville Row producers have hired out their service to fulfil the quite bizarre fancies of their customers. So if someone wants a video of a porn star swatting a fly, they can have it. If someone wants their stamp collection destroyed by a group of DD’s then that option is available too. Nothing is off-limits. The people get what the people want. Bizarrely, the customer as auteur approach leads to much sweeter and gentler material than the ‘conventional’ kind beloved by so many.

Although my analogy puts Fabian as butterfly, many in San Fernando see him as the antichrist, hellbent on destroying their world. I see him as Oliver Twist’s Fagin. He has online users pick the pockets of Valley workers, consequently profiting big from it. In Dickens' novel, an innocent Oliver is unwittingly brought into Fagin’s lair: he never wanted to be there; but there is where he finds himself. Episode 4 shines a tragic light on children that have been affected by visiting a world they’re not meant for. With pornography accessible on every handheld device, teenagers are learning about intimacy through Sex Ed. teachers called Seamore Butt and Belladonna. Unfortunately in our society sex remains a closed lipped topic; until we talk about it these problems will only grow.

The Butterfly Effect culminates with Ronson presenting his findings to Fabian. With the evidence presented before him, will Fabian concede he’s more than an innocent butterfly? The confrontation is delicious, exhibiting Ronson’s skill as a journalist in friend’s clothing. 

Jon Ronson holding an umbrella.

I understand the subject matter might put some of you off, but this really isn’t a prurient look at porn, rather an intelligent dissection of it. As a fan of Ronson's work, hopefully this blog creates its own ripple, resulting in more listeners. I'll push the publish button now and find out ...

The Butterfly Effect is available to download now.