War porn

War porn refers to images and video footage of military personnel and encounters. The term is used by both a community of fans and by critical media theory. The images and video are typically of fatal U.S. engagements with insurgent groups in the war zones of Iraq and Afghanistan, though Katrien Jacobs includes the Abu Ghraib torture photos released by Salon.com in 2005 in her definition.

The site gotwarporn.com states its purpose as "Countering cyber-jihad one video at a time." Users can select videos from categories based on the type of weapons technology involved, for instance "30MM Bushmaster" or "M1A1/M1A2," as general categories such as "Historical" and "Compilations." A special category, "Bodies," contains compilation clips set to Drowning Pool's "Bodies."

An early example of war porn on the internet was nowthatsfuckedup.com. Jacobs examines the rise and fall of nowthatsfuckedup.com from an amateur porn site to a forum where U.S. soldiers posted pictures of dead insurgents killed in combat operations. nowthatsfuckedup.com was forced to close when an obscenity suit was filed against the site's owner, Chris Wilson, by the 10th Judicial District of Florida. An article in the Nation magazine from 2005 also notes that some of the pictures posted to nowthatsfuckedup.com seemed to be of Iraqi civilians, rather than insurgents.

References

• "Got War Porn?". Accessed 20 September 2009.
• Pasquinelli, Matteo. “Warporn! Warpunk! Autonomous Videopoiesis in Wartime”, Sarai Reader 05: Bare Acts, Amsterdam-Delhi: Sarai, 2005.
• Jacobs, Katrien (2009). Make Porn, Not War: How to Wear the Network's Underpants. In J. Parrika and T. Sampson (Ed.),The Spam Book: On Viruses, Porn, and Other Bad Objects from the Dark Side of the Digital Culture. New Jersey, Hampton Press.
• Zornick, George. "The Porn of War", 22 September 2005. Accessed 20 September 2009.