Altporn Gossip

This is part of a response to a comment posted earlier today. It brings up some issues related to why I do this site, and I wanted to highlight it here. Unless otherwise indicated, none of this is aimed at a particular site or organization.

If you want to focus on some drama why not report about how when they tried to start this thing Suicide Girls sued them and tied everything up in court for a few years until SG of course lost for having a baseless suit.

I haven’t actively decided not to discuss that. I’ve known about that for at least two years now, though, and as far as I’ve seen it’s pretty easy to get the info related to that. Generally, I try to talk about things that either aren’t widely known, or bring up perspectives that seem to be missing from active discussions. What I’ve found is that most fanboys/fangirls of altporn sites know very little about how sites are operated, or how the adult industry as a whole operates, and therefore are unaware when people in the industry pull some questionable shit. SG’s the best example of that, but far too few people are learning anything from that situation and applying a healthy distrust to all the other sites and organizations in this genre.

To be clear, because people seem to think that I’m implying shit I’m not:

I am not saying that site A or site B or site C is operated by evil zionist fucktards who hate women, or whatever flavor or capitalist/racist/sexist pig you dislike the most.

I am, however, saying that:

• the vast majority of people who are fans of this genre are extremely naive about how these businesses are run
• the vast majority of people who are fans of this genre swallow a whole lot of bullshit marketing designed and packaged to appeal to their notions of feminist punk rock rebellion. And despite the fact that we already have a huge example of this in this genre, people are still doing it with their chosen flavor of the week.
• you shouldn’t give your trust to anyone until they’ve proven it, and I can count on one hand the number of organizations in this genre who have proven worthy.

And that includes me. Don’t believe what I say, if you like. Just please, don’t believe the hype. Be suspicious and critical.

Update on the update: Gwindylyn wrote again to state that the cards numbers are being collected for age verification purposes. I appreciate her taking the time to address the concerns raised here to some extent.

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Update: A comment from “Gwindylyn” who appears to be from DN states:

We have corrected the encryption problem. FYI.

Still no word on why credit card #s are being requested. One comment reports not being asked, but others say they had to enter one.

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So DeviantNation is apparently getting close to finishing up their three year long development process, because they’re starting to send out emails that give instructions on getting access to folks who have signed up for beta testing. One interesting tidbit that’s coming out is that activating your beta access requires entering a credit card number. This is, of course, a free service, so requesting a credit card number seems curious.

That is, unless they’re trying to use it as a method of age verification. This might be okay, except that:

• That’s a pretty poor way of verifying age, and in fact Visa and Mastercard refuse to allow their systems to be used in such a way
• If you’re really serious about age verification, you can find something pretty comprehensive via Google in about 30 seconds
• 95% of adult sites give away some 2257-covered content without requiring a credit card. At most, they make you say that “yes, I’m 18 years old,” and maybe something about living in a jurisdiction that allows adult content. Admittedly the new FBI “war on porn” shit is troubling, but do you think that after they deal with rape and shit porn, their next target will be a tiny punk pinunp site?

Oh yeah, and beyond that, they don’t encrypt the connection to send your credit card info to their site. The DN codemonkey claims that it “slipped his mind,” but Christ on a crutch, if you have ANY clue about running a porn site — or any e-commerce site, for that matter — you know that encryption of payment information is fucking essential. Yeah, it’s a lot easier and more likely that your card will get swiped over the phone or at a restaurant, but anyone who has worked in this biz for more than 10 minutes knows that people shit a brick when they don’t see their little lock symbol when entering payment info.

In addition, a faithful reader passed this on to me:

But they don’t actually validate the [credit card] number..
Go ahead.. enter a fake one and you get in.

Why are they asking people for credit card numbers?
What are they doing with them?

Those are good questions.

I hate to pick on any one site too much, but TrashyKittens.com just makes it too easy. It appears their access has been restored for a few days, and I noticed that they’re now running a few banners at the bottom of their page, presumably having figured out that they have no money and not enough compelling content to make their primary business model work.

Besides a couple small banners for absinthe and GothicMatch, they have a standard-size 468×60 banner at the bottom. Curiously, they also have a little scroll bar by the banner. So I decided to explore a little:

Hey, look, another banner:

three…

four…

five…

six…

and we’ve reached the end.

In case you’re not following what’s going on: TrashyKittens.com is placing six banners on a page, but displaying that page in an IFRAME that’s only large enough for one banner. It’s a method of cheating banner exchange programs, so they get an impression hit on each banner, but only actually show one. This is particularly lame in banner exchange programs like the ones they’re participating in, because they’re effectively scamming all the members of the exchange by using up the other members’ impression credits without actually showing their banners.

So if you’re a member of the Gothex.com Gothic Banner Exchange, DarkExchange, Putre Factor Network, Sinister Visions Banner Exchange, GOTHIC Banner Exchange, or The Fetish Exchange, you’ll be happy to learn that TrashyKittens.com is stealing impressions from you. Enjoy!

Hey kids, remember this post? And remember this comment?

Actually it was an error on the webhost people’s part.

Well, guess what showed up again today:

Man, those webhost people just keep making errors!

Holeeee shit, this is good stuff. Go take a minute to read it. I’ll wait.

Done? Good.

First off, if this is the first time you’ve read Cherry Bomb’s blog, don’t make it your last, because she’s a fucking good writer and has interesting shit to say about the sex industry. Wise beyond her years, let’s say.

Secondly, it’s pretty crystal clear who she’s talking about and what site she was working for. Not many alt. sites in NYC have 100+ models and a female front who wrote a chapter in a book about women “changing the sex industry.”

I honestly can’t say a lot about Joanna, other than I do think her band interviews on their first DVD were very tepid. I’ve never dealt with her personally, but the folks that I have dealt with at BA (yes, they were guys) seemed like professional and standup dudes. I’ve certainly heard some things about her, especially since she started jumping into mainstream porn with VCA, and those things are pretty consistent with what Cherry Bomb describes. It’s a shame because it sorta sounds like Burning Angel’s mascot is fucking shit up for what is otherwise a solid group of people.

CB brings up another really good point:

As far as some of the bigger alt. porn sites are concerned, they choose a female member of the team to basically be the mouthpiece for their “mission.” She gets cute and goes on to somehow incorporate the title of the site into her own name, and continuously repeats the story about how she created and runs the company. This is how they eventually get tapped as a “feminist” company without any affiliated person having to utter the dreaded word. Critics find it titillatingly progressive, and women cheer.

People need to stop equating “woman-fronted” – or even “woman-owned” – with “feminist.” Fuck, people can’t even agree on what “feminism” is, so discussions that include it inevitable end up missing the point.

The problem is not whether women run the site or not. The problem is not whether or not a site has non-skinny white chicks on it. The problem is site ops being disingenuous assholes.

Well, that didn’t take long.

Hey, remember TrashyKittens.com? No, you don’t, because they’re one of dozens of mediocre altporn sites out there that don’t know how to market themselves. The site is somewhat notable in that, instead of claiming they’ll pay you a pauper’s wage and then just lying to you when you complained that you never got your check, these folks out and out tell you they aren’t gonna pay you.

Instead of cash we’re giving our kittens gift certificates. Choose from tons of corsets, hosiery, vibrators, pvc, costumes, bondage gear, lip rings and more!!

I’m sure this is quality gear, too…. But anyway, it wasn’t much of a surprise that for the past several days, this was their new site design:

You’d think with all the money they’re saving not actually paying their models, they could afford the, say, $7.50 a month it should be costing them for hosting. But really, if they’re in such bad shape that they can’t throw a measly $100 the way of the model, I have a feeling this won’t be the last time we see this message.

Alt Porn Overload?:

· “The New Pornographers” (timeoutny.com)
· “We Want Our Porn and We Want It Now!” (adultvideonews.com)

Will success spoil our horny heroes and heroines? We’ll have to wait and see, but in the meantime we here at Fleshbot are proud to say we knew them when.

Okay, so they didn’t really call bullshit, but they quietly raise some concerns that that the stars of altporn who are carrying the flag of “indie revolution” and planting it in the middle of the Valley are gonna end up just like the rest of the mainstream industry.

Let’s take a look at that AVN article for a sec here:

“They’re always worried about the release schedule and quality control and meeting the release schedule,” [Eon] McKai reveals. “That’s what they talk to me about on a daily basis. I’m making a product, and the moment it stops being a product is the moment VCA stops giving me money to make it.”

I’ll deal with this guy’s poor moniker choice later, but let’s continue:

“Since watching Suicide Girls [the popular alt-chick Website] grow, I try and promote my product in the same way,” says McKai, who is also promoted by his company, VCA. “One of the first things I did was create a Myspace profile and start talking to the kids, just open that channel. We sent buttons to people, IM’d people, flirted with girls.”

Nice, dude. I’m not sure you want to be hitching a ride on that bandwagon right now, but whatever. Point is, as this confirms, the Myspace/IM/LiveJournal shit that McKai/SG/GodsGirls make use of may give your 18-year-old hairless ass a warm fuzzy feeling, but it’s really just the way that Larry Flynt is marketing to you. He’s tricking you into thinking that this is about feminism through sexuality or DIY ethics. Like disinformation tried to tell you, you are being lied to.