In the grand, creaking machinery of the modern nanny state, where every citizen is presumed a toddler in need of a firm hand and a sippy cup, there emerges a new contraption so exquisitely absurd it could only have been forged in the fevered dreams of a bureaucrat with too much time and too little imagination: age verification for the internet. Oh, how the left wing’s heart swells with pride at this latest triumph of meddlesome governance, this digital chastity belt designed to save us all from ourselves. The blog post at Pornbiz.com—a source, I confess, I never thought I’d cite in polite company—lays bare the scam of age verification with a clarity that shames the obfuscatory drivel of its proponents. But let us not merely nod along to their exposé; let us, in the spirit of relentless inquiry, dissect this farce with the dry, surgical wit it so richly deserves, and peer into the darker currents that swirl beneath its sanctimonious surface.
The premise, as Pornbiz so bluntly puts it, is simple: age verification is a solution in search of a problem, a bureaucratic boondoggle dressed up as moral necessity. Governments, particularly those of a certain progressive bent, have decided that the internet—a vast, untamed wilderness of ideas, filth, and cat videos—must be tamed, lest the delicate minds of the young be exposed to the horrors of, say, an unfiltered nipple or a rogue opinion. The mechanism? A requirement that users prove their age before accessing certain corners of the web, typically those deemed too spicy for the under-18 set. Sounds reasonable, doesn’t it? Who could object to protecting the children? Only a monster, surely. And yet, as Pornbiz points out with the kind of bluntness that makes one wince with admiration, the whole enterprise is a sham—a costly, invasive, and ultimately futile exercise in control masquerading as compassion.
But the impracticality is only the beginning. The deeper farce lies in the assumption that age verification will actually work. Teenagers, as anyone who has ever met one can attest, are not exactly known for their deference to authority. If they can outwit parental controls, school firewalls, and the occasional overzealous librarian, does anyone seriously believe they will be thwarted by a pop-up demanding their birth date? The Pornbiz post rightly mocks this notion, pointing out that VPNs, fake IDs, and the sheer ingenuity of youth will render such measures as effective as a paper umbrella in a monsoon. The left’s faith in technological solutions to human nature is touching, in the way one might find a toddler’s belief in Santa Claus touching—charming, but utterly divorced from reality.
And yet, to focus solely on the incompetence of the scheme is to miss the forest for the trees. For there is something more sinister at play here, a creeping agenda that Pornbiz hints at but does not fully articulate, perhaps because it is too grim even for their unvarnished prose. Age verification is not merely about protecting children; it is about control, pure and simple. The left, with its unerring instinct for sniffing out opportunities to regulate, has seized upon the internet as the final frontier of human freedom—a place where ideas, however base or noble, can still flow without the heavy hand of the state. By cloaking their ambitions in the rhetoric of child safety, they seek to normalize the surveillance of every click, every search, every fleeting curiosity. Today it’s pornography; tomorrow it’s political dissent, or perhaps just a blog post that dares to question the orthodoxy. The infrastructure of age verification, once in place, is a skeleton key to the digital lives of every citizen, a tool that can be wielded with chilling precision by those who believe they know best.
the rhetoric of the nanny state’s champions. They speak of “harm” and “vulnerability” with the fervour of revivalist preachers, as if the mere sight of a risqué image will send the youth of the nation spiralling into moral decay. Never mind that children have been sneaking peeks at forbidden material since the days of scribbled graffiti on Roman walls; never mind that the internet, for all its flaws, has also democratized knowledge and given voice to the marginalized. No, the left insists, we must be saved from ourselves, and if that means handing over our privacy to faceless corporations or government agencies, so be it. The Pornbiz post, with its sardonic tone, captures the absurdity of this moral panic, but it stops short of naming the true cost: a society where every step is monitored, every choice scrutinized, all in the name of a nebulous “greater good.”
And who, pray tell, decides what constitutes harm? The same bureaucrats who once banned books for their subversive ideas? The same politicians who clutch their pearls at the sight of a swear word but turn a blind eye to their own hypocrisies? The left’s vision of a sanitized internet is not just impractical; it is a power grab disguised as altruism. By demanding that we prove our age, they demand that we prove our compliance, our willingness to submit to their ever-expanding web of rules. It is no coincidence that the loudest voices for age verification are often the same ones calling for speech codes, content moderation, and the de-platforming of those who dare to deviate from the approved script. The nanny state does not merely want to protect; it wants to control, to shape a world where every thought, every desire, is subject to its approval.
Clive James, that master of the barbed pen, would have seen through this charade in an instant. He would have skewered the sanctimonious posturing, the faux concern for the children, with a quip so sharp it would leave the architects of this scheme clutching their wounded egos. “The nanny state,” he might have written, “is like a maiden aunt who insists on checking your pockets for sweets before dinner, only to eat them herself when you’re not looking.” And he would have been right. Age verification is not about safety; it is about power, about the left’s insatiable need to impose order on a world that stubbornly refuses to be homogenated. The Pornbiz post, for all its bluntness, is a clarion call to resist this creeping tyranny, to laugh in the face of those who would bind us in their digital chains while claiming it’s for our own good.
So let us raise a glass to the internet, that glorious, messy bastion of human freedom, and to those who, like the irreverent souls at Pornbiz, dare to call out the emperor’s new clothes. The nanny state may have its algorithms and its databases, its pious rhetoric and its earnest crusaders, but it will never fully tame the human spirit. Age verification is a scam, yes, but it is more than that—it is a glimpse into a future where every click is a confession, every search a submission. Let us mock it, resist it, and, above all, refuse to hand over the keys to our digital souls. For if we do, we may find that the nanny state’s embrace is not so gentle after all.