Porn in 140 Characters: The GFY Craze and Why It Worries Us

Does watching porn videos simply require too much time and investment? (Hey, we're all busy!) Fear not: the solution is here and it's name is GFY.

GFY (pronounced "jiffy") is essentially GIF 2.0: a short clip that has audio and allows for rewinding, fast forwarding and pausing; basically it's just a higher-quality than its lowly predecessor. Not surprisingly, this has made GFY a primo medium for porn, with Reddit now knee-deep in GFYs of, frequently, climactic sexual moments.

The Daily Beast speculated that this GFY porn craze could alter people's brains so they seek emotionally vacant hyper-stimulation in the bedroom. (Actually, it just talks about men, but can we all agree that women watch and enjoy porn, too? OK, good.) Which begs the question: are we having a foreplay crisis?

It's no secret that our #attentionspans are getting shorter and shorter in the digital age. (Good on ya if you're still reading this story four paragraphs in). GFYs are a natural extension of social media and other modern mediums that demand and reward quick consumption.

The problem, among others, is that this mentality can prove damaging in the bedroom, where wham-bam-thank-you-maam is not a particularly winning approach. Indeed, it's been proven that taking the time to engage in foreplay is sexually healthy.

In other words, GFYs promote intercourse in 140 characters, and good sex requires a lot more hashtags than that. So we say: GFY away if that's what you're into. But don't forget to pause for long-form erotica sometimes, too.

Image: Bryan Brenneman/Flickr

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