A reclusive tribe in the Amazon finally got hooked up to the internet, thanks to Elon Musk — only to be torn apart by social media and pornography addiction, elders complain.
Brazil’s 2,000-member Marubo tribe has been left bitterly divided by the arrival of the Tesla founder’s Starlink service nine months ago, which connected the remote rainforest community along the Ituí River to the web for the first time.
“When it arrived, everyone was happy,” Tsainama Marubo, 73, told The New York Times.
“But now, things have gotten worse. Young people have gotten lazy because of the internet, they’re learning the ways of the white people.”
The Marubo are a chaste tribe, who even frown upon kissing in public — but Alfredo Marubo (all Marubo use the same last name) said he is anxious that the arrival of the service, which delivers super-fast internet to far-flung corners of the planet and has been billed as a game-changer by Musk, could upend standards of decorum.
Alfredo said many young Marubo men have been sharing porn videos in group chats and he has already observed more “aggressive sexual behavior” in some of them.
“We’re worried young people are going to want to try it,” he said of the kinky sex acts they’ve suddenly been exposed to on screen.
Oh no I perfectly understand that. In various comments around this article I’ve said that the people with mental illnesses that compel them to overuse anything are valid and should be helped.
But throwing around the word “porn addiction” as the article is doing is irresponsible and misleading.
And it’s possible I missed this, but I haven’t found any evidence that any members of this tribe have been diagnosed by any medical professionals with any sort of mental illness. It’s just a 73 year old complaining about the world around him changing. And even then, none of his actual quotes from the original NY times interview mention pornography addiction- that seems to have been entirely added by the editors of the various new outlets that have picked this story up. They are trying to sensationalize this story and rile up evangelicals.