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This PSA from the Adult Entertainment Trade Association looks like it could be broadcast during primetime. There is nothing offensive about it. If the volume was turned down and this was presented to the unsuspecting and prurient, no one would guess that these ‘performers’ were porn actors. Most could be any Valley neighbor. Maybe Lisa Ann would stand out. (Those lips look ready to pop. I wanna tie them into a balloon poodle.) The word ‘arouse’ is only used once during the entire 35 sec. spot. It is a classy PSA that humanizes the personalities behind the screen makeup.
It reminds me that there are thousands of people behind and in the scenes that make adult films. The PSA gives them an unadulterated face. However, it is attempting to guilt me into something – not to steal porn. At this point, my illicit porn downloads have shrunk considerably. There are thousands of websites that offer freebie galleries and trailers. Who needs a magazine or DVD to get off anymore? Go by any adult site and you’ll get enough freely accessible content to put a satisfied smile on your face. Why steal?
In my nearly 40 years, I have consumed a lot of porn. To be honest, most of it was stolen. Hell, my first nudie mags were stolen from my step-father’s and dad’s secret stashes. (Hint to fathers: there is no such thing as a ‘secret stash.’ You might as well keep the respectable porn out in the open.) It’s a right of passage. This doesn’t necessarily mean that it is correct behavior. Any thievery hurts someone. Ask my step-father. He found pages missing from his stash. None-the-less, a precedent is set early in our porn consumption histories: Stolen porn is sweet because it is forbidden.
Eventually, I grew out of stealing the pages. Instead, I bought my own copies and kept subscriptions to Penthouse and Playboy. Hell, I even own a few DVDs. The amount of content I own does not substantially outweigh the illicitly acquired content scattered among hard drives and discs, but I did pay at one time. Then I got a computer. It opened a world of stashes to me. People shared everything that they could transcode and scan. A computer user is like a kid working as night watchman in a candy store. There will be half empty jars by the morning.
I quickly discovered USENET and alt.binaries. After USENET, web sites began to pop up. In the early days, image quality was crappy. Especially true for video. This wasn’t a deterrent, though. Hell, I cut my porn chops on scrambled Playboy channel. (I’m still a little turned-on by the moaning sounds of squiggly discolored video.) As long as AOL let me keep my connection up, I downloaded images. Soon the hard drives and Zip cartridges filled to capacity. Thank the Engineers for burnable compact discs!
In the meantime, the adult entertainment industry had the high ground. They could sell to customers a better quality viewing experience. Print and video was far superior to anything that the early internet had to offer. The producers and distributors still think this is true. In the meantime, the same industry has shifted to digital image and audio for all of their recording needs. (Huh, do I smell irony?) The producers and distributors still think that print and DVD is superior to their online counterparts.
It isn’t! Honestly folks, it isn’t. If the main capture methods are digital to begin with, then the highest fidelity will be preserved by the digital product. Simple math. DVDs use a highly compressed video codec. Blu-Ray media preserves more fidelity by using a lower compression scheme. This compression scheme also makes great video output for streaming and digital download. And print porn only has retro aesthetic going for it in comparison to digital images.
So why all of the thievery? It comes down to stashability (feel free to use the word). My dad’s stash was in the garage. Imagine the quiet footsteps as he went to take a peak at his latest issue. With digital porn, we can secret our stash away somewhere on a hard drive. Give a folder some innocuous name like “Architectural Erections” and quietly build a collection. No more sneaking out to the garage.
The thievery came in at the point that good quality digital porn was being collected and distributed by ambitious and generous collectors. They knew that the original producers and distributors would balk at the idea of making their products available via the Internet. So the collectors took it upon themselves to scan their personal collections. In the beginning, it wasn’t thievery. It was commodities exchange.
The digital era has banged the crap out of the media industry. Then again, most in the media (not just porn, but all media) looked at the internet as a hobbyists’ playground. It would never supplant the big producers and distributors. No. People would always come back to paper and tape. It’s an arrogance built on history. Moreover, that arrogance is killing the industry. Not only does the industry think that people want to collect hard media (he said ‘hard’), but they also think that people want the same scenarios and personalities. It’s just not true.
I know people that want their porn to have a decent story (weird, right?); and still others just want the scenes between the dialogue. The internet provides both without tying anyone to a single product. Somebody will want to buy a whole video. Other’s will prefer to stream just a few minutes of their favorite combination of partners. Instead of spending time trying to convince me not to steal content, the talent should be making an effort toward getting the producers and distributors to look at the viability of the Internet.
One of the things that could be looked into is creating higher quality content. Duh! The Internet has created a cottage adult entertainment industry. Anyone with a digital camera and some tech savvy can create a video or photo collection. It’s just easy. Models and performers have been hurt most by this. What was once a fairly tight knit group has now exploded into everyone’s neighbors. What has happened is that quality has bottomed out. It is a homogenized mess of flat lighting, bad audio, poor dialogue, and weak poses and sets. There is very little that is exciting.
The creators have seen this and have put models and performers over the barrel. Much of the talent has had to cut their performing rates to bare minimums. I worked with a Playboy model for crying out loud! If a crappy photographer like me can get a few hours with a model of that caliber, what does that say about the industry?
Big Media! Yeah, you. Pay your talent! They are hanging their asses out there and deserve better.
Cultivate talent. If you want to differentiate your content from the rest of the porn noise, then make sure that your talent is getting the support they need to improve their skills. Talent isn’t born. It is refined. So much crap is made that it will be easy to rise above. You just need to make sure that the premiums that your are charging for content are worth it to the customer. That value is seen in the quality of product your talent produces.
This also means that you should cultivate variety. Boy, I can’t stress that enough. Most of us are tired of seeing the same Barbie and Ken doll actors in your photos and videos. They just don’t titillate us anymore. We are more interested in people that we could possibly meet in a bar or live next door. Their accessible and usually not augmented by some prosthetic implant.
Here’s an example of what I mean. I resent that I have a subscription to Penthouse. Nothing in that magazine speaks quality to me anymore. All around, they have found people to work for the least amount of money and it shows. The models have interchangeable parts. (I suspect the PH is using Real Dolls.) The photography looks like it was done by Olin Mills Studio. And the sets look like the left overs from the 90′s. All around, blech. PH gets a quick thumbing on it’s way to the recycling bin.
Adult Entertainment Industry, I really do want you to succeed. At this point, I am more of a troll than a thief. I would like to be a customer. Just give me quality, and I’ll open my wallet. Honestly, I will.