Screen Interruptus

The premise of the Cockbusters, as documented online, is as follows: pornography is a moral catastrophe on par with the worst things that have ever happened to humanity, and someone has to do something about it. That someone turns out to be a group of feminist hackers who have made it their mission to break into the computers of men mid-session and interrupt them live, at the precise moment of maximum concentration. The intervention arrives on screen. The man looks up. Justice is served.

I find this genuinely brilliant. Not because watching porn requires some elaborate ideological defense, but because the gap between the grandiosity of the framing and the physical reality—a woman’s face appearing on a stranger’s monitor while he’s got his hand on his dick, presumably at 11 p.m. on a Wednesday—is one of the great comedy distances in recent internet culture. The sheer logistical commitment, hacking individual browsers in real time just to catch someone in the act, suggests either a very organized group or a very compelling story. Either way, I’m in.

I read the full piece through to the end, sitting at my computer like the exact disgusting wanker the Cockbusters are presumably coming for. Thoroughly educated on the moral dimensions of my browser habits, I am now going to go jerk off to Justin Bieber’s enormous cock. Thanks, feminism.