Playboy has finally made the decision that it should have made many, many years ago. No more nude photos. I don't say this because I'm anti–nude photos. In fact, I'm a big fan of nude photos. I'm saying this because we live in a world where all the world's porn is like three mouse clicks away, and most of it is totally free. In a world like that, Playboy is redundant at best and embarrassing at worst.

The story comes via The New York Times, which sums things up thusly:

Last month, Cory Jones, a top editor at Playboy, went to see its founder Hugh Hefner at the Playboy Mansion. In a wood-paneled dining room, with Picasso and de Kooning prints on the walls, Mr. Jones nervously presented a radical suggestion: the magazine, a leader of the revolution that helped take sex in America from furtive to ubiquitous, should stop publishing images of naked women. Mr. Hefner, now 89, but still listed as editor in chief, agreed. As part of a redesign that will be unveiled next March, the print edition of Playboy will still feature women in provocative poses. But they will no longer be fully nude.

So where does that leave those of us whose puberty was heavily driven by images found in copies of Playboy magazine? Well, it puts us in the position to be the men we always said we were. Finally, we will read Playboy for the articles, because that will be all that's left. In the past, this has meant great pieces of fiction and investigative journalism that were overshadowed by photos of nude women that fit a very specific and reductive model of femininity. But now, these pieces that have long been reduced to a punchline by virtue of the photographs surrounding them will be elevated to pieces that actually are finally the star attraction of the entire magazine. Sure, Playboy will still feature photos of almost-naked women, but now those photos will be closer to, as the Times puts it, "the racier sections of Instagram."

This is a good thing. Yes, future generations of young men will not talk about Playboy the way my generation did. In the years leading up to the Internet's porn bonanza, that magazine represented our first real exposure to the female form. The next generation? Well, I have a feeling we will hear people talking about things like "I remember when we went into the woods and found that iPad which we used to watch BangBros. That was awesome." This is sad, but it is real. And therefore the future. (And you know what? As long as young men are also exposed to sex-positive women and the ideas intersectional feminism presents on the Internet, too, I think it might be a half-decent tradeoff.) All I know is that my fingers are crossed that a future of hardcore pornography being many people's first experience with sexuality doesn't lead to disaster.