Contrary to what feminists might think, men are generally decent creatures. Objectively, we are a simple species. Especially when it comes to sex. When man invented the internet, it wasn’t about watching cat videos. A quarter of all search engine queries are related to porn. Our elders have known this for thousands of years. According to the old Chinese proverb, ‘If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. Give him a laptop and a start-up loan, and he’ll design something we can impregnate.’ Say what you like about Confucius, but this guy understood the true meaning of seed capital.

When we combine our love of shagging inanimate objects with our other source of male pride, our cars, we truly become an unstoppable force. A few weeks ago, it was reported that a life-size sex doll had completely sold out in Melbourne. Available from Wild Secrets with a retail price of $5,500, ‘Donna’’s popularity confused its marketing manager. ‘This has never happened in the company’s 30-year history,’ Mr. Lea told the Herald Sun. It turns out Eastern Freeway drivers were using the doll as a passenger to access the faster transit lane. Men. Perpetually sex-starved but objectively more resourceful and better drivers than women.

Needless to say, I would never condone such reckless behaviour. When you use a sex doll, do the decent and respectable thing and have sex with it. Fortunately, I am in a loving relationship, so there is no need for such lewd acts… unlike the Japanese.

When it comes to bizarre sexual fantasies, our Far Eastern cousins outdo themselves. Caveat: Caveat: If you want to investigate this issue, I recommend turning off your browsing history or dumping your laptop in the nearest active volcano. From hentai to tentacle porn to public molestation (Chikan), porn is all over Japan. Like bukkake it’s everywhere. Six-story-high sex shops line the neon-lit streets of Tokyo’s Akihabara district. Vending machines (gachapon) that sold used schoolgirl pants may have disappeared – replaced with plastic toys – but the country still takes an extremely liberal stance on child pornography. Possession was not criminalised until 2014 – offenders were given one year to destroy the material before the law was enforced.

Ever since I was a child I have been obsessed with Japanese culture. But like any otaku, my main interests were video games, anime and horror. Their game shows are legendary. I would watch Clive James fall off his chair in hysterics describing the antics of Takeshi’s Castle. But times have changed. James didn’t have to watch Orgasm Wars!

Japan is one of the most technologically advanced countries in the world. As technology improves, the way Japanese people get off is becoming more and more sophisticated. As a result, many people refuse to engage in sexual intercourse. These ‘herbivores’ tend to avoid sex and relationships with real women in favour of fake women. Hikari Azuma, to use her ‘real’ name, is an anime-style hologram with a voice pitch reminiscent of a young girl. Thousands of Japanese men are married to this artificial woman, known as a Waifu.

While it could easily be dismissed as a surreal quirk stemming from a very strange and bizarre subculture, the predilection for all things sexually synthetic is having a deleterious effect on the land of the rising sun.

Last week, it was reported that Japan’s population had fallen for the twelfth consecutive year. It fell to a rather disconsolate-looking Chief Cabinet Secretary, Hirokazu Matsuno, to inform the nation that there are now 556,000 fewer people living in Japan – a record decline, offset only by an increase of 175,000 immigrants in 2022. The current fertility rate is 1.3, and the rate required to keep the population healthy is said to be 2.1.

With one of the lowest birth rates in the world, combined with an ageing population – nearly one in every 1,500 Japanese people is 100 or older – it is no wonder that it is being treated as a national emergency.

This is a serious problem for the world’s third-largest economy. Prime Minister Fumio Kishida told compatriots earlier this year that Japan is ‘on the brink of not being able to maintain social functions’.

According to the leader of the conservative Liberal Democratic party, the country’s most important policy now must be ‘child-rearing’.

Kishida’s words should horrify anyone dealing with demographics. Unless action is taken to increase fertility, it will take a generation to return to a similarly stable population. There is another issue as well. Artificial intelligence (AI) has become so powerful that it will soon be able to create customised porn. This makes it possible to tailor every imaginable fetish and kink to the individual consumer. Anything a depraved mind desensitised to mainstream pornography can imagine. Judging by the tastes of Japanese men, that’s bound to be pretty strange.

Of course, there are many other reasons why Japanese people don’t have sex. Coupled with busy urban lifestyles and long working hours, dating is not seen as a priority. Japan is one of the most expensive places to raise children, so many young and ambitious Japanese find it too expensive to raise a family.

Pornography changes our relationships with others, especially women, but what about our relationship with ourselves? If AI means we will all have sex with robots in the future, how will it alter our personalities? If we’re just talking to an emotionless machine, why should we spend our  time and energy being friendly when we can just, er, stick something into the hard drive? We could end up with a country of narcissistic sociopaths.

But there is a glimmer of hope in this paradox. The evolution of porn could fundamentally change how we behave, but it could also sow the seeds of its own downfall. AI won’t age, need a paycheck, suffer from erectile dysfunction, or get sick. We can’t stop the rise of the machines, but we can at least prevent young, impressionable people from entering this most sexual of neoliberal markets.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not Mary Whitehouse. In a liberal society, adults should be free to explore their own desires. But freedom is not unlimited. Some moderation is required. When it comes to the potential collapse of civilisation, surely some of us men can keep our trousers zipped up. Can’t we?