NEW YORK — Men’s Health published this weekend an article making medical claims about the supposed illness of “porn addiction” by “science” YouTuber Greg Brown, but the link now leads to a less controversial September article on how to “quit porn,” which has been re-dated without clarification.
The original piece, by Philip Ellis, relying on one of the YouTubers behind Canadian channel AsapSCIENCE, can still be read by pasting the original link onto Archive.org’s Wayback Machine.
According to the archive site’s records, Ellis’ story was still live as of this morning. The Google News item promoting Brown’s highly controversial and medically dubious “Here’s Exactly What Happens When You Quit Porn” now leads to the much less inflammatory article “6 Ways to Train Yourself to Watch Less Porn, According to Sex Experts.”
That article was originally published back in September, although Men’s Health has not yet published a clarification as to why they re-dated it, or why they made Ellis’ article, which blatantly platformed the beliefs of anti-porn propagandists, disappear.
The original Men’s Health subhead made the claim that in the article “science YouTuber Greg Brown breaks down what happens to your brain and your body when you stop watching porn.”
A tweet promoting the original article — illustrated with the now-standard “porn addiction” clip art of a man sternly staring at a laptop under bedcovers — has not yet been deleted:
Ellis is described by Men’s Health as a British freelancer, and his article included a number of questionable claims as factual and scientific, such as:
- “porn addiction can be a destructive habit with a serious negative effect on our relationships”
- “even if you consider yourself more of a casual porn user, regularly watching porn could be changing your brain and your body in ways that you don’t expect”
- “your brain has neuroplasticity, meaning it physically changes in response to your behavior [and] it happens in the gray matter of the brain, which physically changes due to porn use”
Those statements are just from the first two paragraphs of the original article.
Adult performers’ union APAG President Alana Evans commented under the original tweet promoting the article, “Why isn’t Men’s Health magazine promoting actual health for men? Falling down this ridiculous rabbit hole is not science.”
To read the original article, enter the URL “https://www.menshealth.com/sex-women/a38244822/quitting-porn-side-effects/” into the Wayback Machine.
Because of Men’s Health’s stealth switch, entering it into a regular browser would result in automatic rerouting to “https://www.menshealth.com/sex-women/a29122111/how-to-stop-watching-porn/”
Before:
After:
Main Image: Illustration from one of Greg Brown’s anti-porn propaganda videos, Men’s Health magazine logo.
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