CNN on Spornography

One of my favourite sources of comedy these days, the mainstream news, has revealed its take on the recent phenomenon of what many of us like to call "Spornography":

Within 24 hours of the "Creature Creator's" release, gamers had gone creature-crazy, designing millions of critters that were all thrown into a database and shown on a YouTube channel for the public to see.

But scrolling through the database -- past the three-legged sea horse, past the seven-eyed wildebeest and the half-motorcycle-half-pig -- revealed something many users didn't expect. Buried among the more wholesome attempts were two-legged dancing testicles, a "giant breast monster" and a four-legged, "phallic fornication machine," for starters. 

These naughty -- some would say obscene -- creations have spawned an Internet meme, nicknamed "Sporn" -- short for "Spore" porn.

Aww yeah, that's right, gots ta get me my Sporn.

The only real comment from EA was made by executive producer Lucy Bradshaw, who remarked, "Whether it's modeling clay, dolls or crayons, a small number of people can be counted on to use it for something vulgar."

Wise words, really, of which the "Spornmaster", a web developer who wished to not reveal his real name, had his own: "It came up simply as something silly and juvenile to do."

And that's the end of that. Or, it should be, anyway, yeah? Well, there's been some censorship and banning and whatnot on the supposed issue, and these are his thoughts on it, so on we trod:

"It was a totally ridiculous overreaction. I admit it is silly and juvenile, but I don't think there's anything perverted, vile or awful about it. If people find it offensive, they can simply not search for it online. No one is forcing anyone to see this content."

In response, he created a site to preserve as many of his naughty creations as possible. He told CNN that many other creators of "Sporn" have told him that they too were only joking around. But the Web developer and other "Sporn" creators have had their share of critics. On blogs and message boards, some have called these creators perverts.

And of course there's people like Michael James from Calgary, Alberta, who I like to affectionately refer to as "the plague": "I consider this very similar to child pornography, at least to the extent of distributing the material to children." James said he has flagged about 10 of the "disgusting" creations.

Honestly, I would call these people perverts. But you know what? What's so bad about that? I think by definition, if most of us stopped being so restrictive of ourselves and others and just were, we'd all be defined as perverts under the current perception of what a pervert is. I say, let's have fun with sex and stop being afraid of some freaking digital penises.

Anyway, I think EA seems to have smartened up (somewhat) and have reached a happy compromise; when people play Spore upon its release, users will be given three choices regarding people's creations: to receive no outside content, to receive content from buddies only, or receive all external content. Common sense is nice sometimes, eh?