The old proverb that “you can’t stop the birds flying over your head, but you can stop them from building a nest there” is true and helpful precisely because there is a distinction between a stray desire and its immediate fulfillment. In the liturgy of the Internet, however, such a distinction is a problem for technology to solve. The gap between our instincts and our power is a gap that digital technology wants to close. 

In his book You Are Not Your Own: Belonging to God in an Inhuman World, Alan Noble makes the point that internet pornography gives the user an astonishing amount of felt power and significance. Because almost any scenario or flavor or subject of porn is attainable online, the addicted user becomes accustomed to the idea that whatever he can imagine should exist for him:

Today you can find a pornographic depiction of virtually any fantasy. If you can dream it, you can find it. And you can probably find it for free within three minutes. When you inevitably get bored of that fantasy, just dispose of it and find something new—indefinitely. Humans have always been able to imagine all kinds of sexual scenarios, but we haven’t been able to make them exist, unless you happened to be a tremendously powerful despotic ruler. We all have the power of Caligula now.

Alan goes on to observe that recent digital innovations like deepfakes have unlocked an unfathomable potential for bringing wild fantasies to (apparent) life. Virtual reality environments simulate immersive sexual experiences even more realistically. At this point in the history of pornography, just about anything anyone demands to see, feel or participate in can be accommodated. Alan concludes, “We have a godlike freedom to pursue any fantasy we wish.”

This is, I think, a key to understanding something very important. A lot of evangelical writing and counsel about pornography centers on the idea of isolating pornographic content from its digital habitat and attacking it individually. Internet filters can raise alarms and block access to problematic pages. Accountability software and partners can flag bad-looking activity and ask about it. The idea is that if we can take the average Christian who spends nearly five hours every day on his phone and train his conscience and retool his devices to only spend those five hours on “pure” content, we will have defeated the enemy.