The Best Twitter Reactions To Nude-Free 'Playboy'

On Monday, news broke that Playboy is dropping full-frontal nudity from its magazine as a reaction to online porn in order to focus on the reason your dad says he subscribes: the articles. Naturally, everyone has a lot to say about the change — and the many, many Twitter reactions to the Playboy announcement show that mostly, we're joking about it. While a lot of those jokes are actually the same joke (see: "The reason your dad says he subscribes"), there are a few gems and some unexpectedly astute observations scattered throughout — so let's take a look at some of the more interesting reactions, shall we?

But first: What will the new Playboy actually look like? There will still be suggestive spreads of women, editors told the New York Times, but slightly more will be left up to the imagination. Other changes include getting a sex-positive female columnist and expanding its features section. “Don’t get me wrong,” Chief Content Editor Cory Jones, the fellow who suggested to Hugh Hefner himself that the magazine drop the nudity, told the Times. “12-year-old me is very disappointed in current me. But it’s the right thing to do.”

It's weird — in a world where you're just a few clicks away from seeing some of the most gonzo porn imaginable (wanna see Minnie Mouse act as a dominatrix to every Disney prince at once? I haven't done the research on this one, but I am sure you can), Playboy has seemed increasingly quaint and, as feminism has trended in a more sex worker-positive direction, less objectionable to everyone. I am not a fan of many of Playboy's practices — read former top bunny Holly Madison's account of living at the Playboy mansion, and go hmmm over the whole thing — but even when the magazine showed nude images, it had never really shocked me.

Of course, Twitter is going nuts with jokes and commentary over this change:

The answer to that question is "too many." Guys, you can do better than I did in my first paragraph of this article. YA NEED TO GOOGLE YOUR TWEET BEFORE YOU TWEET IT.

But maybe all these jokes about reading it for the articles have a point. With writers like Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Margaret Atwood, and Kurt Vonnegut having graced Playboy's pages, the shift might — might — put the focus more on the words and less on the centerfolds (although it's unlikely that the sexy pictures will ever vanish altogether).

In the meantime, though, does anyone else find the image of the Playboy mansion as Grey Gardens kind of hilarious?

Image: Courtesy Of Playboy