Is Fight Porn Destroying Us?

· Vice

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Are Western societies more barbarous than they were in decades past? As someone who’s never been on the wrong end of rat torture or a conquistador’s arquebus, it’s impossible for me to say, but abject ultra-violence has certainly become ubiquitous on our screens. Open any social media app right now, and you might see a Mumbai dog fight descend into horrifying farce as a spectator is sucked into the whirling power take-off shaft of a nearby tractor. Or a girl in a U.S. high school corridor crumpling to the floor after receiving a devastating triple blow to the face. Or a guy making minced meat of a foe who goaded him in a mall, complete with an audio edit that makes his punches land with a cartoon thwack.

In some parts of the world, the increasing algorithmic prominence of fist fights, stabbings, and gang brawls on social media has exposed some 70 percent of teens to real fighting on their timelines, often without them ever seeking out this type of content. This so-called “fight porn” bleeds into the everyday scroll, dissolving the line between entertainment, news, and snuff as it’s delivered by the same mechanisms that show you celebrity selfies and photos of brunch.

“If you make someone sit down and watch a UFC fight or a boxing fight, they’re going to have a very different reaction behaviorally and neurochemically than if they are watching a street fight,” reasons Dr. Nafees Hamid, a cognitive scientist of political violence at King’s College London. “In both cases, you’re watching someone beat the hell out of another person. But one case is sanctioned. There are rules and a referee.” Street-fight clips are a different beast. “Are they spreading a particular vision,” Hamid wonders, “of what it means to be a man?”

When I was at school in England in the 2000s, videos of playground dust ups would occasionally be shared from phone to phone, and we’d grimace at the beatings meted out to classmates. Some of my peers would be a little more cautious the next time we were around the assailant. Others would puff out their chests, wishing to gain the prestige of putting them in their place. But crucially it was all contained, the distribution system that disseminates such content yet to be invented. Social media creates a greater incentive to “post and boast,” allowing bullies to bask in a dopamine-fueled orgy of infamy—until their victim dies and they are arrested, as has been the case in several high-profile incidents both in the UK and abroad.

Fight porn bleeds into the everyday scroll, dissolving the line between entertainment, news, and snuff

Just as violence has always been a way for men to assert their dominance, violence in entertainment has long prompted outbursts of social hysteria, from the heavy metal “Satanic Panic” in the 80s to first-person shooters like Grand Theft Auto in the 2000s. But those were all packaged forms of opt-in violence. What we’re seeing now is unpackaged, real, and floating around us constantly in a grisly ambient cloud. Who profits from turning the human experience into a never-ending fight club? Violent content on X has blossomed since the social-media platform, then called Twitter, was bought by Elon Musk in October 2022.

“I noticed [the uptick] almost immediately,” says filmmaker Luke*, who neglected to provide his surname for privacy reasons. “People fighting in the streets and dying constantly.” He assumed there’d been an algorithm tweak, intended to increase the amount of time people spend on the platform, since it’s “the kind of horrible shit that’s hard to look away from.”

The never-ending stream of gritty street brawls via popular X accounts, or on the 2.2 million-member subreddit r/fightporn, are clearly intoxicating for some. But whereas an afternoon escapade into the darkest recesses of online porn naturally concludes in a regretful discharge and at least a temporary disinterest in watching yet more filmed intercourse, the abundance of titillating bareknuckle boxing pumps adrenaline that has nowhere to go, almost leaving you craving a fight of your own. The algorithm discovered that we’ll stop scrolling when someone’s face meets concrete, and the attention economy meets the adrenal economy.

“Shocking footage registers in the brain as threat and arousal, and as a result, dopamine is released to keep you alert and engaged,” says anger management expert Mike Fisher, the founder of the British Association of Anger Management. He warns that regular viewers of this sort of content may develop worsening emotional control issues and increased baseline anxiety. “The two together, anger and watching violence, become a serious toxic concoction.”

The allure of fight porn and the ultraviolent soup careening around social media is that anyone can get into a street fight. Perhaps titillatingly, we are all just an errant barge or a misconstrued glance away from a potentially life-ending brawl. 

“It’s like billions of cortisol spikes frying our brains every day,” says entrepreneur Antoine, who did not want to disclose his full name for business reasons. He’s been watching street brawl content on YouTube since the very dawn of the video-sharing platform. “I’m a little addicted to these videos. I have had to protect myself and others in the past, and I feel watching fight videos helps me to be more ready if I need to defend myself again.” 

Nick admits he went through a phase of watching no-rules backyard fights on YouTube. “There’s a well-organized European brand I liked the most and found the most unnerving,” he says. “Before I knew it, I was being fed all manner of violence and actual human suffering constantly,” he adds, saying he even got served someone live-streaming their own murder.

Over the last year, Nick believes that his consumption of extreme fight content may have led him to experience intrusive thoughts, which he has found are consistent with harm OCD (a type of obsessive compulsive disorder characterized by intrusive thoughts, images, or urges about causing harm to oneself or others). “While I’m speaking to people, I have these unwelcome thoughts of twatting them in the face,” he explains. “These people could be parents, family friends, or basically anyone. It’s obviously jarring: I don’t want to hit my mom.”

It’s like his brain is saying: “What would happen if this entirely neutral situation became incredibly violent out of nowhere?” When violence becomes ambient, the mind begins simulating it. Not because we want to be violent, but because the brain is rehearsing threats.

“While I’m speaking to people, I have these unwelcome thoughts of twatting them in the face”

We are hardwired to pay attention to violence from an evolutionary perspective, says Brad Bushman, a professor of communication at Ohio State University. “Our ancient ancestors who ignored violent cues became extinct,” he says. “But when people are repeatedly exposed to street violence, they likely become desensitized and numb to it. These videos reduce empathy—and empathy is one of the best predictors for pro-social behavior.”

Even primates are drawn to violent videos, he adds, citing a recent paper he co-authored, which reports that monkeys pay more attention to videos with active and aggressive content compared to sitting and grooming videos.

Perhaps the question isn’t whether we’re more barbarous than our grandparents but what the effect of being constantly exposed to barbarism is on our brains and societies as a whole. To be clear, there is little evidence that street violence itself has exploded in the West, but what has exploded is its visibility—and the way that visibility shapes what feels socially plausible. When violence is everywhere, it stops being shocking and begins to feel normal. The danger may not be that fight porn makes us more violent, but that it makes violence feel ordinary.

*Names have been changed for privacy.

Follow Mattha on X @matthabusby

This feature is from THE SELF-DESTRUCTION ISSUE of VICE magazine. Find it in a store near you, or get 4 issues each year sent straight to your door, by subscribing.

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