
The transformation of the porn industry under coronavirus - paulpauper
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/otilliasteadman/coronavirus-amateur-porn-onlyfans
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cbanek
This was actually really interesting to me!

It feels like they're saying basically now people are doing the whole thing
themselves (soup to um, nuts, as it were). Directing, lighting, shooting, and
being in the films. It seems like these are great skills to learn and
differentiators! I wonder if this might inspire a new generation of not only
porn making but film making as some of these people may eventually end up
doing other things?

The ending of "Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmakers Apocalypse" (filmed during the
shooting of Apocalypse Now, 1979):

Francis Ford Coppola: To me, the great hope is that now these little 8mm video
recorders and stuff have come out, and some... just people who normally
wouldn't make movies are going to be making them. And you know, suddenly, one
day some little fat girl in Ohio is going to be the new Mozart, you know, and
make a beautiful film with her little father's camera recorder. And for once,
the so-called professionalism about movies will be destroyed, forever. And it
will really become an art form. That's my opinion.

~~~
foepys
While movies aren't being produced by "little fat girls in Ohio", the internet
and digital cameras made "Vloggers" possible. The predicted outcome wasn't met
exactly but 40 years later people are making their own video productions for
millions of viewers online. It was a very good prediction.

~~~
burntoutfire
Except for the fact that no masterpieces were created this way...

~~~
gumby
So what? Perhaps the overprofessionalization of activity is winding down.

People used to enjoy singing together, amateur productions, and local amateur
sports. Those things have not vanished, of course, but are significantly lower
volume, having been replaced by purchasing the work of professionals.

There's nothing wrong with high quality professional product, but something
else was lost in the process. If the pendulum moves back a bit many people may
enjoy life more.

The two aren't mutually exclusive.

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BrentOzar
"Everyone is making music at home now. Will the music industry survive?"

"Everyone is making software at home now. Will the software industry survive?"

Yes, these industries survive - they just changed. The market just has new
competition at lower price points, which improves competition and forces the
higher end producers to invest more rather than keeping so much profit.

On the low end, if you wanted to build this stuff yourself and go direct to
market, you can - but then you always could. This kind of event just means
there's MORE competition on the low end, which also forces low end producers
to up their content quality (or go for more niche subject matters) if they
want to attract an audience long term.

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jliptzin
I have absolutely no problem with porn. But as Louis CK said, you could
alphabetize the world’s cumulative porn collection from A-Z and sit a newborn
baby down and push the play button, by the time he’s dead at 100 he wouldn’t
have even gotten through the anal category. So if porn has to pause for a
while I thing we can survive.

~~~
verylittlemeat
Porn video quality increases a lot year to year. There are probably multiple
lifetimes worth of 90s porn out there and I bet almost no one watches it now
besides as a curiosity.

It's not just video quality either but style. I've noticed that a lot of
modern porn tries to have an amateur aesthetic but with high technical
proficiency. Compare that to old professional porn where they were still
trying to go for some kind of "hollywood of porn" style.

I'm sure tastes will continue to change and this generation's porn will lack
the novelty future generations crave.

~~~
mixmastamyk
4k isn’t necessarily a bonus in that world.

~~~
verylittlemeat
I dont even mean 4k. Just simple 720/1080p quality amateur porn is a huge step
up from what we had 5 years ago.

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zafiro17
Yes.

Many years ago the internet allowed anyone to post their own websites, blogs,
and comments on forums. Sites like Buzzfeed quickly blurted out "Oh noes, now
that anyone can publish, will the publishing industry survive?" As we all
know, the publishing industry was forced to change (and because it didn't, it
has suffered mightily) but proper news sources still hold their value.

Just because I can make a porn video at home doesn't mean anyone will want to
watch it. Pro models, proper lighting equipment, video editing equipment, and
production knowledge all have value because the amateur stuff is mostly
horrible.

The rare gem will be noticed. There are a few citizen blogs out there that are
very much worth watching. The crappo ones faded into obscurity.

In the meantime, just like crappo publishing houses that refused to adapt and
were pushed out of business, the pro porn industry will be forced to up its
game. A good thing.

~~~
rsynnott
> Sites like Buzzfeed quickly blurted out "Oh noes, now that anyone can
> publish, will the publishing industry survive?"

...

Wait, Buzzfeed, which was founded, as a website, in 2006, was concerned about
the rise of blogs, personal websites, and forums, all of which were going into
decline by 2006 with the coming of social media? Buzzfeed didn't even employ
journalists til 2010 or so.

~~~
MiroF
The parent comment is pretty obviously ill-informed for anyone who has any
familiarity with/adjacency to the print journalism/publishing industry.

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brenden2
Yes, the industry will survive. You can skip the article.

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ReticentVole
We shouldn't accept Porn being freely available online. Instead, we should
require all sites to charge for content, minimum $5/month, with 10% of that
being collected as sales tax.

Sites that do not comply will be blocked.

This will ensure that children cannot access them, and allow people to control
their pornography addictions.

~~~
tenebrisalietum
I don't agree with the downvotes because I feel you presented a point that's
worthy of debate.

> This will ensure that children cannot access them

A. Kids will just steal their parents credit cards or logins.

B. The responsibility for raising children is the parents and not credit card
companies. Things that make people better parents will work far better, like
creating economic systems that don't require two parents to work and be
unavailable to their children.

> and allow people to control their pornography addictions.

A. $5 a month won't work. People continue to smoke and cigarette packs are
generally more expensive than that per pack.

B. Why should those who are not addicted pay for those who are?

~~~
ReticentVole
A: Stealing a credit card is an order of magnitude more difficult than just
getting a mobile phone and typing 'pornhub.com' into the address bar.

B: How do you police something which is so easy to access? We expect
Governments and businesses to police access to drugs, why not for pornography?
Why don't we require ISPs to provide free DNS-level blocking for residential
broadband and mobile phone services?

It is not reasonable to expect every single parent to manually install
blocking apps on all phones and devices that children have access to. This is
something that should be managed centrally by ISPs, enforced by Government
regulation.

C. $5 a month is an order of magnitude more expensive than free, and forces
people to confront their addiction if it has a real price.

D. Disabling access to free porn would be a boon for the Porn industry who
could focus on quality content rather than spectacle and exploitation.

~~~
sokoloff
B. I’m not in favor of governments policing drugs the way they’ve been going
about it and I’m even less in favor of them having the power to censor the
Internet.

I’d rather my kids, even at 9 and 11, stumble across pornography than grow up
in a world where the government decides which sites are allowed to be in DNS.

C. No addict will be slowed by $60/yr price tag for their addiction. You’re
not forcing anyone to confront their addiction in any meaningful way.

D. I’m not in favor of protectionist rackets even for businesses that I think
should be allowed to operate.

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longtom
Gross.

