Today many interesting things happened but one was truly shocking. It has nothing to do with this incredibly hectic yet charming city of Istanbul. After our lunch, we had some time off in the beautiful Yildiz park and Kosta left us briefly to go talk with our taxi driver nearby. Less than a minute later I noticed Ruslan and Nazgul on the next bench giggling noisily while watching something on their phone. I told them to keep it down, but they just started laughing even more. Nazgul then said “Maybe she doesn’t know about this? I think we should let her see it.” After some negotiations, Ruslan agreed and pointed me over to come to their bench, and handed me the phone. I felt very curious and even though I trust them both I was suspicious. Especially of Naz’s devious smirk. I took the warm phone from his hand. The screen was locked. Looking back at this now, nothing could’ve prepared me for what I was about to see when I unlocked it.
They found a porn website! I can’t remember what shocked me most, the flashing images, the horrible titles of the videos or the sheer amount of… “options” there. I heard about this a couple of years ago from Bea but I had no idea it is this bad. After the boys had their fun, they got serious and started telling me how it works and how almost half of the internet capacity is just free porn. They admit that they do watch sometimes, but it’s obvious to them how fake and messed up everything is there. They found it out through some new boy that just migrated in. He said that there’s nothing wrong there and he watches it regularly and he found out himself from his dad, by accident, after a search through his browser history. In Isataion all pornography is blocked of course, but one can manage to go around it easily with VPNs… But out here in the big wide world, it’s just as available to all as Wikipedia.
I don’t know whether I’m too young to fully understand this or not, but I couldn’t see anything funny in it. It was so sickening that earlier, I felt nauseous and had that lump in my throat. Ruslan later said how he had privately talked to the sociology teacher about pornography, after a lesson where the “objectification of women” was mentioned. He told me a lot more details about the whole business, half an hour ago in the hostel, and I just had to write something about it now. I simply can’t bare myself to write about the… dehumanising specifics. This world is a much worse place than I thought! Now I feel I’ll never be able to kiss Carlo, or want to touch any boy ever. After I come back home, I need to tell Mom how she’s not so pessimistic after all about the rest of the world after all and that I understand her not wanting to travel often. Maybe I’ll gather myself by then, and talk to her about all this… grown-ups’ collective madness.
24th August 2013 – Istanbul
Today many interesting things happened but one was truly shocking. It has nothing to do with this incredibly hectic yet charming city of Istanbul. After our lunch, we had some time off in the beautiful Yildiz park and Kosta left us briefly to go talk with our taxi driver nearby. Less than a minute later I noticed Ruslan and Nazgul on the next bench giggling noisily while watching something on their phone. I told them to keep it down, but they just started laughing even more. Nazgul then said “Maybe she doesn’t know about this? I think we should let her see it.” After some negotiations, Ruslan agreed and pointed me over to come to their bench, and handed me the phone. I felt very curious and even though I trust them both I was suspicious. Especially of Naz’s devious smirk. I took the warm phone from his hand. The screen was locked. Looking back at this now, nothing could’ve prepared me for what I was about to see when I unlocked it.
They found a porn website! I can’t remember what shocked me most, the flashing images, the horrible titles of the videos or the sheer amount of… “options” there. I heard about this a couple of years ago from Bea but I had no idea it is this bad. After the boys had their fun, they got serious and started telling me how it works and how almost half of the internet capacity is just free porn. They admit that they do watch sometimes, but it’s obvious to them how fake and messed up everything is there. They found it out through some new boy that just migrated in. He said that there’s nothing wrong there and he watches it regularly and he found out himself from his dad, by accident, after a search through his browser history. In Isataion all pornography is blocked of course, but one can manage to go around it easily with VPNs… But out here in the big wide world, it’s just as available to all as Wikipedia.
I don’t know whether I’m too young to fully understand this or not, but I couldn’t see anything funny in it. It was so sickening that earlier, I felt nauseous and had that lump in my throat. Ruslan later said how he had privately talked to the sociology teacher about pornography, after a lesson where the “objectification of women” was mentioned. He told me a lot more details about the whole business, half an hour ago in the hostel, and I just had to write something about it now. I simply can’t bare myself to write about the… dehumanising specifics. This world is a much worse place than I thought! Now I feel I’ll never be able to kiss Carlo, or want to touch any boy ever. After I come back home, I need to tell Mom how she’s not so pessimistic after all about the rest of the world after all and that I understand her not wanting to travel often. Maybe I’ll gather myself by then, and talk to her about all this… grown-ups’ collective madness.