Trevor Noah says that if he held office, he would make porn plotlines the law. In a recent episode of his podcast What Now?, the former host of The Daily Show floated the hypothetical rule arguing that porn's instant gratification strips sex of its context.
"If I was in office, I would say, 'Legally, all porn has to have a story,'" Noah said, per Playboy. The episode's description pitches the idea as an effort to "save humanity's attention spans."
His argument, as Playboy reports it, is that the problem isn't performing sex for entertainment. It's that, unlike in real life, the gratification in porn is instant. "It is too readily available, and it removes the context of sex as a whole," he said.
Playboy frames the idea as the latest turn in a debate that stretches from early-aughts message boards to modern Reddit threads. It also nods to Boogie Nights, the 1997 film in which Burt Reynolds' porn director Jack Horner says he doesn't want to make a movie where people just "Horner off and leave."
The outlet also points to sex education. It quotes Al Vernacchio, a sexuality educator from Wynnewood, Pa., who told the American Psychological Association in 2021 that for many kids, porn is "unfortunately" becoming their primary method of sex education because they aren't getting enough at school or at home.
Playboy ties the debate to Gen Z, citing its own 2026 Sex Survey. It found that 34 percent of young men say porn completely satisfies their sexual desire, and that 1 in 3 young adults sometimes choose digital or solo sexual experiences over partnered ones.
Then there's the money. Playboy says the adult-film industry has struggled while demand for erotica has skyrocketed. Citing The Guardian, it reports that print sales of romance and erotica novels rose from 18 million copies in 2020 to more than 39 million in 2023.