Connect your Claude, Codex or OpenClaw for full transcripts on millions of podcasts. Two week free trial, cancel anytime.

Start free trial →
PN Patricia Nilsson On Top Comment

“I sort of asked him, do you think that this type of content is why some critics might take issue with the porn industry? And he got really agitated and he was like, do you think I want to shoot that kind of shit? And he said, I can't decide what I shoot anymore. What I shoot is dictated by data of what people click on. And he pointed his finger at me and he said, you are the perverts.”

Top Comment · October 2026

“I sort of asked him, do you think that this type of content is why some critics might take issue with the porn industry? And he got really agitated and he was like, do you think I want to shoot that kind of shit? And he said, I can't decide what I shoot anymore. What I shoot is dictated by data of what people click on. And he pointed his finger at me and he said, you are the perverts.” — Patricia Nilsson, Top Comment

Context

Nilsson retelling the anecdote that opens her book: a conversation with a porn director in Prague. The director is the one speaking in the quoted lines. Her takeaway is that algorithms serve impulses people aren't proud of, and that what we do online is not always what we want to want.

Transcript

Top Comment Around 34:35 into the episode
Matt Shea

Sinister.

Marianna Spring

…about the way that that content is hosted and pushed and recommended and curated. That's definitely true of the social media platforms with their algorithms. Do you think that's fair to apply that same sort of thesis to the porn industry and to the pornographic content online and on social media?

Patricia Nilsson

Well, yeah, if I understood you correctly, I mean, I think we need to focus less on the content and sort of is this content good? Is this content bad? And we need to think more about the way it's reaching us, why it's reaching us, the way it's reaching us. And democratically, can we talk about turning these algorithms off or adjusting them so that they're not as addictive and they're not making us feel so icky and shameful all the time? I just sort of have one final thought as well on anonymity and sort of how this sense of anonymity is so key to how we behave online. And there is often a sort of desire to be like, the reason we're consuming all these horrible things, it's the tech company's fault, like they're creating this content. But in reality, it's more complex. It's a relationship. You know, we're being pushed this type of content, this type of content is being created because we can't stop looking at it. We can't stop clicking on it. And, you know, imagine your search history being sort of open to the world. I mean, I think for most people, that would be feel more intimate and maybe horrible than our diaries being published. You know, the way in which our…

Matt Shea

That's super interesting. Yeah,

Marianna Spring

thank you so much for chatting to us, Patricia. And we are very much enjoying reading your book, which gets into kind of everything we've just discussed there and much more. Thank

Patricia Nilsson

you for having me. Bye.

Speaker names come from our own diarization. The position is estimated from where the line sits in the episode.

More from Top Comment