FHM’s publishers have finally realised people would rather look at boobs online

Who is still buying magazines?


Lads’ mags FHM and Zoo are shutting down print publication. 

Publishers Bauer Media said the decision was made as an increasing number of readers were shifting towards accessing the magazines online rather than in print.

Really, this is something they should have done years ago. Finally, the stagnant secret from your older brother’s room is gone.

No longer does the poor 14-year-old “lad” have to risk embarrassment at the local newsagents, reaching for that gloriously shiny (soon-to-be sticky) magazine on the top shelf with pocket money clutched in the other hand.

With an online readership of five million, Bauer Media’s “men’s lifestyle” product isn’t less popular, just only popular in the online, private community. Why it took them so long to realise this would happen, I don’t know.

An analogue wank in a digital age

There will, of course, be casualties. When the teenage boy’s parents figure out technology, they’ll be able to put a password on the dirty sites, stranding him in a sea of his own pubescence with nothing to “help him out”. At the other end of the spectrum, dwindling old men will be losing the last remnant of their own childhoods, the still-shot bikini poses which got them through their own awkward sexual development back when colour printing wasn’t even readily accessible.

For everyone else though the disappearance of lads’ mags from the shelves of supermarkets and newsagents will hardly get noticed. Why should it when we’ve got a world of full-frontal, cinematic porn right there at our fingertips (and even available on our phones)?

Goodbye filthy mags, we’ll be seeing you online.