I knew a guy who paid for porn. The way he explained it boiled down to curation.
Those youtube-for-porn sites are pretty random, and places like usenet and bittorrent are even less organized, and require a bit of, er, delayed gratification. By paying a site to exercise editorial control he got exactly what he wanted with zero hassle or delay.
I run a few (very) small porn sites - throwaway account for obvious reasons, though I'm a regular contributor on my main account. The sites I run are single-girl sites owned and operated by a single model - I'm the technical and business side.
People are still very willing to pay for original, quality content that would not otherwise be produced. The value proposition is that you're not paying for porn that has been produced, you're paying for porn that has yet to be produced by making it lucrative for the models, photo/videographers, editors, technical folks on the back end, etc to stay in the market.
Without that sort of sponsorship, I couldn't stay in business, and the women that own the sites I operate wouldn't be in it either - they'd be stripping or working minimum wage retail - and there'd be less porn in the world, and some people are still willing to pay for that.
The main thing is that it's about the interaction - people can chat directly with the models, there are forums, requests are often fulfilled with no additional hassle, that sort of thing.
Extrapolating that you could imagine a society where every material need is provided for but you need money to get other people to interact with you....
Maybe that's why Culture citizens are genofixed to be sociable and use a language, Marain, that "places much less structural emphasis on (or even lacks) concepts like possession and ownership, dominance and submission, and especially aggression".
You assume the reasons for your throwaway account are obvious, but they aren't to me. Is it because you objectify and dehumanize women for money, or because the content you serve is addictive and distorts people's views on relationships? All of the above?
I suspect it's mostly because any association with pornography is considered to taint one's professional reputation outside that business, and at least somewhat because mentioning, without shame, any personal involvement in erotica or pornography -- be it tangential and innocuous as it may -- tends to provoke Internet feminists into hurling overheated accusations of being the next thing to a slave factor.
The former reason suffices quite well on its own, but the latter is not entirely inconsiderable, much as one tends to choose among the sturdiest of one's footwear when dressing for a visit to one's friend the chihuahua breeder.
(The sheer, blinding gall of flinging vitriol at a declared and justified sockpuppet, under the guise of an undeclared sockpuppet, I shall leave uncommented save briefly noting the fact of it; while I know your ilk of old and thus suspected your hypocrisy on the instant, readers lucky enough to lack such experience probably wouldn't be so likely to spot it on their own.)
> tends to provoke Internet feminists into hurling overheated accusations of being the next thing to a slave factor.
If it ever actually became a problem, I'd point the women I work with at them. One of them is a gender studies major and perfectly willing to systematically dismantle "think of the poor defenseless women" arguments about the adult industry.
I would go with none of the above. Whether or not anything you said is true (I'm doubtful but I haven't researched the subject) I would guess the reason of his burner is the stigma associated with the industry and the effects it could have on his other ventures / personal life.
The reason his industry exists is because people want it. A similar, if not worse, industry is tobacco, yet it doesn't have the same proliferation as pornography for a good reason, not as much demand. It is just as addictive and even more destructive. You also have marijuana, which is laughably easy to get in California (legally) and Amsterdam, it also is not as widespread as pornography.
> I would guess the reason of his burner is the stigma associated with the industry and the effects it could have on his other ventures / personal life.
Correct. This is not my full time occupation - I do it mainly as a favor, with some beer money thrown in.
Probably more significantly, it affords a reasonable living to otherwise unskilled women. Their alternatives are extremely limited - if it's exploitation to give people an alternative to poverty, so be it.
Maybe it's because she/he is paid much more than the actual value her/his technical contribution, like most of the programmers servicing simple user sites, and wants to protect her/his niche?
> Maybe it's because she/he is paid much more than the actual value her/his technical contribution, like most of the programmers servicing simple user sites, and wants to protect her/his niche?
Rather the opposite, I'm afraid. It's not even enough money to bother with, only profitable in good months, but it affords a living to women I know who would otherwise be destitute.
That's an argument against capitalism, not pornography.
I know several people in the sex industry, including some who are professional porn models. None of them feel that they're being exploited -- they do this work because they enjoy it.
I am certain that there are people who are forced into this work who don't want to be there, but it's far from everyone.
There's a fine line between labeling pornographers as exploiters (which certainly some are, though there are exploiters in many industries as well, even in software dev.) and slut shaming. A woman who is thoroughly in control of every aspect of her pornographic career and who receives the greatest part of the proceeds from it cannot reasonably said to be being exploited.
Those youtube-for-porn sites are pretty random, and places like usenet and bittorrent are even less organized, and require a bit of, er, delayed gratification. By paying a site to exercise editorial control he got exactly what he wanted with zero hassle or delay.