Op-Ed: Where Did All The Sex Go On the Internet?

by Coleen Singer.

Rather than reviewing the latest and  greatest new sex toy, or making fun of Pat Roberston’s views on cheating, today I’m taking a little departure into commenting on something I have been noticing on the internet over the past six months which disturbs me and pisses me off. It’s difficult to find porn or adult entertainment in the usual ways on the internet.

Search engines (specifically google) have shoved most of the organic links to ACTUAL porn sites and movies down on deep page results. Well, unless you get VERY SPECIFIC in your search. “uUkrainian midget porn” does yield first page results as nobody has started a wikipedia page on that topic. Yet. More on that below…..

Mainstream media websites have now pretty much scrubbed the deck clean of any links, or even type-in domain credits on stories.  Even the traditionally liberal Huffington Post threw porn under the bus recently as this article tells the sad tale: “Huffington Post Censors Article Against Censorship“.

Social media?  It just goes on and on.  Within the last several months, Blogger.com enacted draconian policies for any adult entertainment bloggers, banning them from posting any ads for adult products on their blogs.  Twitter Vine deep-sixed adult related hash tags last week.  Facebook has always been hostile to adult content, but last week, banned all advertisements to adult products. Google+ now insists that if a female porn actress, writer or producer wants to have a Google+ page, she needs to use her real name along with a photo of herself and accurate bio information (talk about a stalker’s paradise! The creepy guys can go find the actresses homes. Morality In Media and other conservative nutbars can burn crosses on the lawns of adult industry producers, film makers and bloggers). MsNaughty goes on to say “Long-time adult blogger Bacchus calls this the Pornocalypse and he says it comes for us all. It’s come to Ebay, Blogger, Amazon, WordPress, Paypal, Kickstarter, the iPhone, Google Glass and Tumblr among many others.”

Even rising star Cindy Gallop, the unique new bedfellow in the adult industry and founder of MakeLoveNotPorn.com managed to get a belly full of it from how to actually collect money from folks that want to rent or buy movies on her site using mainstream billing companies. In her blog post, she says, “Every day, we get at least one MLNP member writing to us saying, ‘I’m having trouble setting up my credit card details.’ Every few days, we get at least one member asking, ‘Why don’t you work with PayPal?’ A number of you write to us and say, ‘I set up my account fine but I don’t seem to be able to rent?’ Every time we get one of those emails, we die a little inside. Because we know we’re not delivering the experience you deserve.”

Well it’s sort of like this and has been since around the years 2000-2002 when some bad people entered the adult industry for fast cash and pissed in the punch bowl, did some major scams, banged a few million dollars in unauthorized credit card charges, which caused AMEX and PayPal to pick up their tents and leave.  Billing options are very limited now.  “Adult” is now squeaky clean as far as billing integrity and consumer protection from future nefarious acts, but the damage was done long ago. However, I have wandered off on a tangent worthy of a full article about “billing in adult”……. (more on that in a future post)

Back to the topic at hand:

In a recent Free Speech Coalition interview with adult industry veteran, Colin Rowntree (publisher of Wasteland.com since 1994), he into goes the corporate censorship issue in more depth:

” One of the biggest problems for the adult industry in general at this time is the swift and merciless “ghettoization” of adult content on the internet.  During the 10 years of the “lively discussions” about the threat of Dot-XXX having this effect (which, thankfully, it has not that I can see), who could have anticipated that corporate media would fill the role of the ultimate judge in driving adult content into the dark shadows of the internet?  To be sure, mainstream has always distanced itself from “porn”. Since day one of the net, most credit card processors would not do adult.  Most mainstream news, information, dating and community sites have never taken adult advertising.  That all made sense for a variety of reasons.  But, the recent fast trend is that this is happening in a big way now in other sectors that have traditionally, if not enthusiastically welcomed adult, at least allowed it into their spaces as it drove traffic to them.  But this has changed.  Looking for generic sounding porn words on google these days?  Well, be prepared to wade through the first 2 or 3 pages of wikipedia results.  Want to have a Google+ page for your brand?  Be prepared to have to use your real name on it, and then be very careful not to slip a nip on there or get banned instantly.  Facebook ads, Twitter Vine, Blogger.com Tumblr….. The list goes on and on with a rapid fire list of new developments in which adult is being thrown under the bus.  Even the unlikely candidate for doing such, the traditionally liberal Huffington Post, seems to be climbing onboard.   About this HuffPo example, Ann Oui cut to the chase and nailed the core issue, saying,”Unfortunately, it’s much more than that; it’s actually corporate cowardice alert. The Huffington Post, despite its pretentions to being a progressive voice is like any other mainstream corporation: risk averse and very conservative in practice. In effect, it is an entity that perpetuates the very harms that Stabile writes about in his piece.”
 
So, as much as our industry has always been vigilant in fighting government censorship, those fights are within the realm of free speech protection under the 1st Amendment (and, in the U.K, the Magna Carta, which apparently Prime Minister Cameron need to re-read) and generally “winnable” (or at least, slow-downable) in the courts.  But, there is no court for “corporate cowardice” and though I’m sure it is just “easier” for the mainstream networks to take porn off the radar to keep their advertisers and stockholders in a calm and happy “cute kittens on the piano” paradigm. But, once again, the adult industry does need to take a bit of responsibility for this situation.  We as an industry have a long and consistent history of “poisoning the well” and alienating mainstream by seeing opportunities for often inappropriate exploitation of consumers and mainstream media, and then flooding those venues with a volume of free content, offers and possible scams that have lead over the years to everyone from PayPal and American Express to now Google and social media to enthusiastically exit stage right from any connection with adult.”

But, back to our experience as surfers that are looking for some movies, photos or written words about some particular sexual practice.  Assuming that most of us are not really THAT into “Ukrainian midget porn”,  let’s go looking for something a little more common: “Blow Job”.  Anyone that has ever seen a porn movie knows that there is at least ONE blowjob in it.  If the movie has six scenes, there are probably SIX blowjobs in it.  So, let’s say I really want to find one of the skinamatic masterpieces just to maybe pick up some new tricks and techniques for my personal use at home.

Step 1:  Go to Google.com

Step 2: Make sure any adult content filters are shut off to be able to see “the good stuff”.

Step 3: Type in the search term “Blow Job” and wait 150 milliseconds for all of the wonderful things to choose from.

Here is what comes back, in order of appearance on the front page of search results for “blow job”:

#1:  Oral Sex Tips – How to Give a Great Blow Job – Redbook
Redbook? I want to see a blowjob, not how to make curtains or cupcakes!

#2: Fellatio – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Oh great. A questionably accurate article about the history, socio-economic ramifications and etymology of the blow job.  Not exactly toe curling blow job entertainment.

#3:  Blow Job (film) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Hmmm….. this looks promising. Maybe it might have a link to it to a website with a blowjob movie. Oh wait, the wiki article tells me “Blow Job is a silent film, directed by Andy Warhol, that was filmed in January 1964. It depicts the face of an uncredited DeVeren Bookwalter as he apparently receives fellatio from an unseen partner. While shot at 24 frame/s, Warhol specified that it should be projected at 16 frame/s, slowing it down by a third.”  Warhol HAD ME at saying 24 frames per second, but maybe I’ll come back to that one when I’m in a mood for modern film making techniques….

#4: Urban Dictionary: Steak and Blowjob Day
I didn’t even bother clicking on that one.

#5:  Visa Blowjob – YouTube
About as sexy as a YouTube “Cute Kittens On A Piano” home video.

#6:  Cosmo Master Class: How to Give a Blow Job – Cosmopolitan
Oh great. Is that before or after Cosmo makes me feel like my ass is too fat, or I read about Angelina’s latest adoption of a lucky kid?

#7: Blow Jobs Videos – Metacafe
Well, finally soomething that might have a blowjob movie in it!  MetaCafe?  Sounds kinda like a tube site or something so clicked on it.  After patiently waiting a full 30 seconds to be force fed a Playstation advertisement, was rewarded with a iphone video of a couple of people under a blue plastic tarp doing something under there.  Not sure what it was.  Onward…..

#8: Her BJ Hang-Ups – AskMen
Oh great. A men’s magazine blaming all blow job problems with women’s attitudes.  Is Pat Robertson on their editorial staff?

#9:  7 Killer Blow Job Techinques | Sean Jameson | YourTango
Mind you, I actually am a regular reader of YourTango and enjoy it, but I know for a FACT I am not going to actually SEE a blow job movie on their site.

END OF GOOGLE PAGE 1 RESULTS

Sigh… Thwarted at the Google Gate in finding a blow job movie.  “Maybe page two” I optimistically said to myself….

Page two DID offer a link to something called OV Guide that promised to at least have a set of reviews of blowjob movies, all on the tubes and probably pirated content, but hey, I was getting desperate so gave it a click.  As soon as every possible anti-virus and security warning went off telling me this site was going to steal my identity and soul, I quickly returned to my Google page 2 results.

Page two consisted of a blog posting by some guy remembering that his first blowjob in high school was painful, several dictionary site definitions of the word, an Esquire article about “Eight of ten men surveyed preferred giving than receiving oral sex..” (yeah. right), and some posting on a site called “Family Sex” which sounded too creepy for me to even consider clicking on.

Page 3 of Google results for “Blow Job” offered Gwyneth Paltrow giving advice for women about blowjobs, some more dictionary definitions, a couple of cocktail recipes (I had no idea there was a cocktail called a “blow job” so bookmarked that for later mixology experiments) and FINALLY! ONE LINK to some blow job movies!   Some site called xnxx.com that seemed to have LOTS of blow job movies.

Click with eager anticipation….

A Free Porn Tube. With horrible quality movie clips (many possibly pirated) as 3 live sex chat windows spawned in the background, all while a friendly woman in a little chat window offered to please me, and another message told me there were dozens of women in my hometown that want to fuck me (which seems odd, as I live in a rural town with only 1200 residents).

Pages 4 and 5 offered much of the same. Celebrity blow job opinions, drink recipes and a couple more cheesy and probably “illegal in some way” tube links.

It was not until PAGE 6 that I finally found exactly what I was looking for:

The Art of Blowjob: Redhead Camille Crimson’s Blowjobs and …   www.theartofblowjob.com/ – Gorgeous redhead Camille Crimson’s passionate and sensual blowjob videos.

I clicked. It was good. Peace was restored to the realm.

Now, had I known the name Camille Crimson and that she made great blowjob movies, I could have searched for “Camille Crimson Blow Job” and it would have been on the first page of results (it is, actually).  But, I didn’t, and like most surfers that don’t know the buzzwords or pornstar names to look for, have to rely on the search engine to give me things to look at.  And, in the instance of “looking for a blow job movie”, it was not real helpful to have the first quality relevant result be buried on page 6 after at least 130 links to Wikipedia, grocery store tabloids (like wikipedia, with colorful photos) and advice column blogs. This would have been expected and welcomed if I had my Google “Safe Search” turned “On”, but I didn’t and Google knows darned well that a keyword search for “blow job” in NSFW mode is not from someone looking for a cocktail recipe or academic discourse on the matter.

Just to check reality, I tried a couple of other searches in Google just to see what happened:

• “Pornography” – I got as far as PAGE 20 with no links to actual pornography. Lots of dire warnings about how bad it is for you, and how just about every mass murderer and psychopath in recent history have “blamed it on porn”  My finger got tired for all the wrong reasons from this search, so I moved on…
• “BDSM” – This search fared a little better with Kink.com on the first page and Wasteland.com at the top of the second page, but other than that, mostly just a lot of wiki-leaking and vanilla sex tips from Ask Men and Huffpo.
• “Porn For Women” – Aside from two links on the 3rd page to MsNaughty’s sites (For The Girls and Bright Desire) not much to look at here on the first 10 pages other than solid blogging by Violet Blue and a lot of silly nonsense from The Frisky, Marie Claire Magazine and other “authority voices” on porn for women (read: sarcasm).

Maybe there is something to looking for Ukrainian Midget Videos after all.  At least these can be found without digging through a maze of mainstream PG-Rated tripe.

But, not to leave you on a sour note, let’s take another peek at a now-dated video from a kinder a gentler time about “internet Porn”, created in an age before “Google” was a verb, and “social media” was a big advertisement banner being dragged behind a bi-plane over Miami Beach…..  It pretty much says what it was, and what we are quickly loosing.

Coleen is a writer, photographer, film editor and all around geeky gal at sssh.com. She is also the editor and curator of eroticscribes.com. When she is not doing all of the above, Coleen is an amateur stock car racer and enjoys doing mods on 1970s vintage cars to equip them for the race track. Oh, she also likes porn.

More of Coleen’s murmurings and musings about sex, porn, sex toys, censorship. the literary and pandering evils of “Fifty Shades of Grey”,  and other writings not in the running for a Pulitzer Prize may be found at sssh.com