Warning: Satire ahead.

By Stephen Oliver
Special to YNOT

CYBERSPACE – At a time when online pornography increasingly is being recognized as a threat to human health and wellbeing, most commentary on the subject seems focused on the already-accomplished task of proving the case porn is detrimental to society, rather than seeking real solutions to the growing global porn problem.

When solutions are offered, they never go far enough. Critics who are entirely too soft on porn trot out the familiar (and failed) idea of combining content-filtering and parental oversight, as though the entire problem is children watching porn before they’re old enough to do so.

Content filters aren’t going to do much for the billions of adults already addicted to porn, obviously, nor can they protect the rest of us from the porn-addled criminals already stalking our streets, seeking out women to assault in between masturbating and the occasional marathon “Fallout 4” session.

Even many staunch porn critics too quickly dismiss more promising ideas, like banning pornography and jailing for life anybody who creates, distributes, downloads or glances at the stuff. Cowed by pinstriped lawyers and “free speech activists,” even well-meaning opponents of porn have all but abandoned the idea of reasserting control of our country through legislation, perhaps because they’ve come to believe all judges are perverts, not just the ones who routinely wear penis pumps beneath their robes.

The truth is, if we’re going to solve the porn problem and prevent the world our children inherit from being a hybrid of a Hustler-branded casino and Disney World, we need to take drastic measures immediately.

Lost in all the discussion of internet pornography is an examination of how we got ourselves into this sorry porn mess in the first place. The answer is simple: digital technology.

Sure, porn is too easy to access these days, but the even bigger problem is it’s too easy to make. In the old days if you wanted to make porn, you had to be able to afford the equipment to do it — and back in the 1970s or ’80s, this was no easy feat. In 1978, for example, a single 35mm film camera cost approximately the revenue generated by the gross domestic product of El Salvador.

Unfortunately, these days any asshole with a smartphone can not only make porn, but also easily distribute it around world, all with a single piece of equipment and a couple apps. All he needs is the back office of a local fast food restaurant, an easy coworker with poor judgment and a decent signal for the upload phase.

In order to combat pornography effectively in such an environment, it’s simply not enough to enforce obscenity laws or force pornographers to use a porn-specific TLD like .NGONO. To address our modern porn pandemic, governments and private industry the world over must come together to eradicate all personal computers, digital cameras and mobile devices.

I’m sure this notion sounds extreme to many of you, maybe even fanciful. You probably think giving up the convenience of all mobile and digital technologies is too high a price to pay to rid the world of the porn scourge.

Ask yourself, though: Is writing out your shopping list on paper really such a hardship if it means a safer, cleaner, more decent world? Can you really not find the same Safeway you shop at every week without consulting your GPS?

Our forefathers did just fine with pen and paper. Why can’t we? The much-ballyhooed First Amendment (the same amendment that purportedly protects pornography from being banned) was written on parchment. Why can’t modern-day pornographers make do with sharpies and construction paper?

While many porn fans will complain magic marker drawings can’t compete with videos of real, flesh-and-blood human beings roughly penetrating and spewing bodily fluids onto each other, many of these same people will spend entire afternoons chasing around fictional cartoon animals from Japan — so how attached to “realism” are they, really?

Sure, giving up digital technology will be an adjustment for all of us, not just porn addicts. We don’t have to give up every piece of digital technology, though — just those that can be used to create, distribute and consume pornography. So, while you’ll have to give up posting selfies and pictures of your food to the internet, it’s important to remember the post office still exists — and if governments adopt my suggestion, I suspect the Polaroid OneStep will make a very strong comeback.

Until or unless my proposal for a complete ban on digital technologies comes to fruition, though, porn will continue to destroy the world.

In the meantime, I suggest removing your kids from school, locking your doors, boarding up your windows, stockpiling ammunition and buying my books. Make no mistake: Even if you do all those things, digital porn will still come to get you, eventually … but at least you’ll have a fighting chance.

Stephen Oliver is an expert on entertainment media, consumer trends and worrying about things. He is also the author of several best-selling books, including The Horizontal Apocalypse: Planking and Chronic Back Pain and Smartwatches: Wrist-Mounted Harbingers of Doom.