Porn “Fans”

Once again I’m writing a post sparked by an article I read on Slate. (The article is long but it doesn’t use many big words so you should have no trouble reading it.) (Sorry, am I getting jaded with the 140-character-or-less nature of the new internet? Anyway...)

The article was written by a reporter attending the Adult Entertainment Expo about her thoughts on the whole experience. For me, there were two main things I took away from the post:

1. Porn “fans” are different than they used to be. The internet has changed how we consume porn, but it’s also changed who consumes porn. (I’ve written about this in a previous post, though from a different point of view.)
2. Because of the way the internet has changed porn, it has also changed how people pay for porn. Namely, they mostly don’t – so how are pornstars now supposed to get paid?

How are porn fans different? Well for one thing we expect more – nay, demand more – when we meet pornstars in person. In the past we put them on pedestals, now we expect them to be at our beck and call. Or, as the writer puts it:

When David Foster Wallace chronicled [the Adult Entertainment Expo] back in 1998—at the height of VHS and DVD sales—he observed a sweaty, trembling mass of shy guys who appeared both thrilled and ashamed to make first contact with their favorite pornographic actors. But the Internet crumbled all that, and last year I watched a man wait 30 minutes to grope a porn star’s breasts and announce, “That’s going on Facebook later!” Another languished in line to see if his favorite star was nice; act too aloof, and “I’ll never want to see her again,” he told me. “Not even in porn.”

Interestingly, though, this is despite the fact that most of us aren’t paying for it. We’re giving less and expecting more. Or, as the author put it, “When porn is free, we want it more, and we value it less.”

This is a dilemma for the porn industry as a whole. They have succeeded in distributing porn very widely, to a much, much broader audience than ever before, but most of these people are getting that porn for free. Gone are the days of VHS and DVD sales, we now get our porn on the net, but as soon as porn gets on the net, even if it’s on a pay site, it’s going to get distributed widely (to places like Smutty and Fantasti, among others) and viewed for free. Maybe there are some people who pay for it initially, but those numbers will grow smaller and smaller; porn probably doesn’t have a way to move forward unless it continues to be cheaper and cheaper to produce, so that the margins are better and some profit can be made from the dwindling numbers of people who are paying for it. Or maybe they’ll have to rely on advertising revenue, but few companies other than Google have really been able to make that work in large degrees.

As the writer says:

Now that porn is a normal, everyday thing, typical viewers are less likely to see porn performers as objects to either venerate or degrade. While this humanization can feel good … the shrinking pool of porn money does not. The question of how to get performers compensated for their work remains.

My Relation to Porn Stars

The article also led me to think: how do I view pornstars? The conclusion I came to is this: I hope I never meet one in person.

Not that I see myself denigrating them, like some of the guys in that article did. I don’t see them as being somehow less than myself. Neither do I see myself putting them on a pedestal. I think pornstars are girls just like any other girls in most ways, except that they get filmed having sex for a living. (I’m only thinking of female pornstars, not male.) I’d probably want to approach them as “normal people,” but that might not be welcome either. After all, they’re porn stars, so at these types of events they are probably expecting to be treated as such.

Personally, I’ve never had crushes on pornstars anyway, or particularly followed the career of any. The closest would probably be #KobeTai (because her body blows me away) and #JennaHaze (because everything about her blows me away). On Smutty I’m also following hashtags for #GeorgiaSalpa, #LenaAnna, and #MindyMain, just because I saw pictures of them that I found sexy and figured that seeing additional pictures of them would be... ahem... pleasing to the eye. (As it turns out none of those hashtags have many pictures or videos, so following them on Smutty won’t turn up a lot of new material.) But I don’t know anything about their careers, or anything about them as people, the way I would if I was an actual fan.

I also follow the #PeterNorth hashtag, but that definitely isn’t so much about him, it’s about the amount of cum he produces – most of the pictures and vids that turn up under that hashtag have to do with sexy girls being coated in gooey cum. Then again, maybe that is about him. It’s not about his body or how he looks when he’s getting fucked the way it is for the porn starlets, but I’ve seen enough of him that I know who he is; that’s more than I can say for Lena Anna or Mindy Main, regardless of how incredibly sexy they are. (And they are. Holy moly, are they sexy...) So by some definitions maybe I’m more a fan of Peter North than of the starlets I mentioned. (Not more than Jenna Haze; she drives me crazy in all the right ways.)

My Relation to the Porn Industry

So I’m definitely not a “superfan” of any porn starlets, not even Ms. Haze. What about the other aspect of the article: Am I helping to fund the porn industry? Definitely not. I haven’t paid for anything porn-related in years and years; long enough that it’s safe to say no modern pornstars are getting any money from me, unless it’s via advertising revenues.

So given that fact, do I feel guilty about this? I mean, I’m addicted to porn, I definitely get a lot of enjoyment out of it, but I’m not helping it to thrive. What if porn disappears? I’ll have to take part of the blame myself.

I don’t think porn will disappear, though. It’ll reinvent itself if it has to, but it’s not going anywhere. Maybe the social aspects of porn will become more predominant, and the amateur porn stars and starlets will completely take over from the pros. Or maybe the industry will find other ways of making money, such as the aforementioned advertising revenues, and we’ll continue to see high quality porn side by side with the amateur stuff. (And of course as technology progresses the differences between “studio porn” and “amateur porn” will continue to diminish.)

Who knows what the future holds? In the meantime I’ll continue to feed my addiction, and continue to be guilt-free about it.