"When This Nation Is No Longer Compelled By J.Lo’s Fruited Bottom, We Are Truly In A Great Recession."

Vanity Fair pronounces the sex tape dead. And yes, it’s all kind of like that:

First of all, James Wolcott’s piece is supremely embarrassing. I’ll just tell you that right now so you don’t have to experience its labored archness, its tiresome high-low faux-anthropological grandstanding and hoary brand of wit for yourselves. However, its thesis is an intriguing one: have we entered a post sex-tape era?

The decline of the celebrity sex video mirrors the diminishment in Hollywood film of overt sex, which has migrated to pay cable, while mainstream movies revert to prolonged rhapsodies of renunciation such as the Twilight series and the dependable tent pole of Sandra Bullock acting spunky. The porn industry itself is on the edge of dissolution, ravaged by digital piracy that has de-monetized and democratized porn across myriad free Web sites where any amateur in a homemade video can attract as many glazed eyeballs as the glossiest face on a DVD cover. The very phrase “porn star” seems so 90s now, caked with dried mascara. We have moved on. To where? To wherever the all-devouring Internet takes us next.

The all-devouring internet, as it happens, is kinda over sex in general. The all-devouring internet is kind of like some pasha with a huge harem and, whatever, sometimes he’ll use it but seriously the thrill is gone and the all-devouring internet is becoming pretty jaded. In fact, the all-devouring internet, having plumbed the depths of the human psyche, feels the need for a spiritual cleanse, because the ultimate thrill – that of true purification – is the one height the all-devouring internet has not achieved in a career steeped in vice. Accordingly, the all-devouring internet is seriously considering giving it all up and joining a remote lay community with an eye to ultimately achieving a coenobitic asceticism. I’m not saying it’ll make for lascivious viewing, but hey, he asked.