An episode on the podcast "The Butterfly Effect" tells the story about a couple named Dan and Rhiannon who run a company that provides what's called "bespoke porn." People who have some extra money and who want a particular scene or set of scenes played out provide a description to this company which then rents sets, hires actors, films the requested scenes, and turns over the finished product to the customer. Once in the waning hours of the night, Dan received an email from a man who made this request: he wanted a porn actress to sit, fully clothed, on the floor and then look into the camera and say: "You are loved. Things are bad now, but they won't always be. Suicide is not the answer."

Dan and Rhiannon wrote back, but did not hear again from the man. They decided to make the film anyway, and make it as beautifully as they could, in hopes that he would still want it—still be able to benefit from it. And they did. The actress they hired to speak those words can't talk about the situation without tears.

Commenting on this story Alan Jacobs writes,

Why might a man, suffering as this nameless man was suffering, turn for help to people who make pornography? Perhaps because porn is fantasy, in the sense of a dream world in which your desires are fulfilled. But at least sometimes what we want is not sex as such but rather to live out a dream of human connection, a dream of warmth stronger and more comforting even then the warmth of bodies.