Porn Peeves
by Jonathan Quince
Tuesday, March 29, 2005 06:23:59
Update: Rather than trying to wipe the crap off a turd, as I do below, I have now entered the realm of der Pornohass and am calling it for what it is. This document may be considered deprecated; however, as it does make many valid points, I shan’t retract it entirely at this time.
No, this isn’t Yet Another List of Rants against the clichéd formulae of mainstream porn. Rather, this is primarily a bevy of peeves against the mainstream porn industry in the U.S. as it stands today.
Spam
The next time I hear a porn-person even mildly defending spam, I may just relieve him of his teeth. Even those who only defend spam deserve to wear dentures — wooden dentures, like George Washington had. (If it was good enough for George…)
Spam itself is a serious property crime that deserves harsh punishment, up to and including the death penalty.
I may be (or have been) naïve enough to think that Big Porn has clean hands. Well, it is time to break out the clue mallet (and Cesium Hydroxide Enema kit). In the mean time, I am looking for white-hat porn shops, particularly affiliate programs that actually do kill spammers on sight and without pay.
Free-Speech Hypocrisy
If there is something involving consenting adults as talent that you think should be illegal, you are against freedom of speech and freedom of expression. Period. After all, if you have the moral authority to say that “extreme” porn is outside the mainstream and should be banned, then why shouldn’t Rev. Jerry Falwell have the moral authority to say that all porn is outside the mainstream of society and should be banned?
Rob Black, for example, may come across as a total asshole; but last I checked, being an asshole isn’t against the laws of the land. If you work in porn and you think he should be jailed for obscenity, then you deserve to go to jail for obscene hypocrisy. And this just scratches the surface. There are plenty of people who wouldn’t dare even to try operating in the United States; I somehow doubt most in sunny Porn Valley would welcome them with open arms.
In large part, it’s all about the dollar. Porn is big money, and those who currently dominate the U.S. industry get very upset when others do what they see as rocking the boat and putting the entire industry at risk. But the moment you support a single prosecution under obscenity law, you acknowledge, ipso facto, that obscenity law should exist as written. Rather than trying to demolish the ridiculous concept of community standards, you try to enforce the community standards of Porn Valley on the entire world. And that instantly negates any principled argument for freedom of speech and freedom of sexual expression.
I guess that even people who make a living selling videos of 18-year-old girls being gang-fucked up the ass feel a need to condemn someone else’s sexual proclivities and expressions. But please, oh please! If you don’t support real and complete freedom of expression, stop wreathing yourself in the poor old First Amendment. Which leads us to…
First Amendment Abuse
No less than 99% of people who invoke the First Amendment have no idea what the bloody fuck they are talking about.
And if you can’t explain elementary principles such as, say, the Congressional jurisdiction laid forth in Article IV Section 3, then your general knowledge of the Constitution is really too weak for you to be rendering grave opinions on any part of it at all.
The Constitution is freely available. You can legally download it off the Web; you don’t even need Kazaa to get a copy! It is not that long, and it is not that difficult to parse; any supporting information and historical context you need is also easy to find. If you are an American and you give even half a flip about the politics of liberty, there is no excuse (save grave stupidity) for this ignorance.
“Legal Warning” Homepages
Ludicrous. Ineffectual. As damaging to usability as any splash page.
Must die.
Deep linking, good. Hypertext, good. Content-free homepages, bad.
If even one child in the entire world has been stopped from seeing porn by a “legal warning” entry page, I will post a fantasy about sucking Ron Jeremy’s horribly obese dick. (And if even one obscenity prosecution has been warded off by a “don’t enter if you are law enforcement” disclaimer, I may just bite off my own dick and swallow it whole.) Of course, the porn industry cannot afford to admit that these pages are useless; after all, they need to pretend that they have some means of carding visitors. Perish the thought that parents and people who object to porn should take responsibility for their own computers!
Sleazy Scumbags
I doubt this item requires much elaboration. (Though at least, the porn profession has less sleaze in its midst than the legal profession.)
If my daughter grew up to be a prostitute, I’d advise her against servicing most porn-industry execs as clients. Ick! Rather, I say, select honest and upstanding citizens as customers. Honey, if you’re really hard-up, even used-car dealers are better. Make Daddy proud.
Of course, porn-industry scumbaggery is hardly limited to the executive classes alone. One of my criteria for all-too-rare Really Hot Porn is talent in whose presence I’d actually consider spending a fun and pleasant evening.
Some smart-ass will doubtless now step forward and say, “Well, be part of the solution! Why don’t YOU work in porn?” The short answer: I’d love to work in porn! However:
- While I may be the best-looking man ever to walk the Earth, I don’t exactly have a mainstream porn body-type. This excludes me from 99% of existing porn jobs.
- With any job, porn or otherwise, I am only capable of working if I am my own boss. This excludes me from the rest of the existing jobs.
- I haven’t yet started up my own porn shop, so #1 and #2 remain unremedied at present.
Speling, and, Grammer Problum’s
Jesette H. Christina on a Buddhist tricycle, people! If you are from Hungary or Ukraine or wherever, I can understand your lack of facility in the English language. If, however, you grew up in America or another Anglophonic land, there is simply no excuse.
And frankly, there are few greater turn-offs than an all-American girl who can’t properly construct a simple erotic e-mail (or blog entry or…). I am not demanding CesiumSex-level mastery from everybody here; but I at least want to see the basics!
By the way, if you can neither spell nor punctuate worth a shit, do not claim that this means you are somehow a rebel. Please. You are not a rebel. You are stupid. The least you can do is to admit it and try to improve.
Meta-Peeve: Spelling & Grammar Hypocrisy
I see it again and again: Complaints about screwups in an e-mail that is written approximately on a second-grade level of understanding.
Know your own limitations, damnit. If your English sucks, fix it before you start complaining about other people who are no worse than you are. Everybody makes the occasional typo or brain-hiccup of a grammatical flub; but when you write a spelling flame in fluent Idiot Pidgin, you make it painfully obvious that you are simply a raging moron. Rather than showing this off to people who will only be annoyed, go drool your complaint on someone who cares.
All of the above is more a general Internet problem, but it rears its ugly head in the porn world so often as to be the regular state of affairs.
Attempts at Plot
This ties into the idea of beating around the bush.
Storytelling is an art; plot, character development, and all the other components of storytelling are an artist’s tools. Do not insult the art of storytelling with a wan facsimile.
…and plenty more…
But the rest shall have to wait for another day.