by Coleen Singer, Sssh.com Erotic Entertainment For Women and Couples
Two porn related stories making the rounds this week, stories which have nothing to do with each other, combine to underline one of the central dilemmas of the Digital Age: Why did it take HBO so damn long to offer its highly addictive original content on platforms other than premium subscription cable and satellite television services?
Wait, sorry; wrong central dilemma of the Digital Age there. I meant the other one – the thorny question of balancing the easy duplication and distribution of digital data with people’s understandable desire to control the distribution of certain kinds of data in certain contexts.
In other words, how do we maintain the awesome freedom of information and ease of expression digital data affords to us and still ensure people shopping at big box stores aren’t suddenly and involuntarily subjected to loud audio from pornographic films?
Read on…
A Serious Blow to Porn Fans (Who Can’t Figure Hotel WiFi)
First, the Hyatt Hotel Corp announced its decision to drop pay-per-view porn from the chain’s in-room entertainment offerings, following in the footsteps of Hilton Worldwide and Marriott International.
While the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (formerly known as “Morality in Media”) was quick to list the move as one of the organizations “victories” in its ongoing crusade to eliminate porn from all outmoded and irrelevant content distribution platforms, just about everybody else agrees the real reason for Hyatt’s decision was economic in nature.
As Bjorn Hanson of New York University told the L.A. Times, “revenue from all in-room entertainment has been decreasing and the percent from adult entertainment has been decreasing even more.”
If this sounds familiar, it’s because similarly credentialed experts said similar things when Hilton and Marriott dropped porn. Put simply, porn being readily available for free on the internet has put a serious dent in attempts to sell porn via any platform, let alone one as overpriced as a hotel chain’s on-demand service.
I don’t think we should completely dismiss the lobbying of anti-porn groups in the decisions made by these hospitality industry giants to drop porn, but I do think we need to look at it in the context of a greater risk/reward analysis.
It’s not like the people behind the NCSE just recently started lobbying hotels to drop porn; in fact, under their original name, they’ve been doing it for decades.
Does anybody seriously believe a major hotel chain would change its mind now, when porn is probably more tolerated by the general public than in decades past, just because the NCSE is still in their ear about it?
On the other hand, knowing a growing portion of its consumer base never watches in-room porn anyway, even the minor PR headache of continuing to offer it makes less and less sense. Why not drop an unpopular product and be done with it?
If You Can’t Beat Them, Co-Opt or Partner With Them
This talk of who is dropping porn from what in-room system is all much ado about nothing to begin with, as the distribution method we’re talking about is just about dead, anyway.
Over time, we’re going to see hotels drop their current TV-based offerings altogether, in favor of focusing on monetizing their guests’ use of mobile devices, and offering “smart” televisions through which guests can access their existing accounts on services like Netflix and Hulu, possibly with a nominal charge, or included as one of those ‘added value’ things marketing consultants like to talk about.
They’re going to do this because no matter how hard they try, hotels are not going to be able to truly control how their guests consume content, or what content they consume – not any more. Digital data and mobile technology have rendered those ideas moot.
The smart money for the hotels at this point is to stop tilting at windmills and give in to the fact what their guests want from the hotel is to enable them to live as ‘normally’ as possible while staying there, with all the comforts of home – including the kind of unfettered access to digital data and content to which they have grown so accustomed.
An Unexpected Blow (Job Sound) to Target Shoppers
“What is going on at Target right now?” asks a woman who shot a video of the confused scene as it unfolded.
“Some people threw things down and walked out,” she told the NY Post. “Others were yelling at employees. Lots of people taking videos. Crazy!”
Even as a quite jaded person who has worked in the adult industry for nearly 20 years now, I can understand the angst and frustration of any aggrieved shopper who was there. You know what they say; there’s a time and place for everything, and it’s hard to see how in Target during business hours is the right location or timing for an impromptu high-decibel, fake-orgasm opera.
At the same time, I suspect somewhere in this incident lurks the persistent bugaboo of digital data, that fiendish imp of irrepressibility and impropriety.
The same properties which make digital data great (“Hey, look at this cool video I made on my phone and shared with the world without paying a cent or talking to a publisher of any kind!”) also make it not so great (“Hey, why is my phone locked down and unresponsive, but somehow playing a porn video at full volume during the weekly staff meeting?!?”).
So, the relentless forward march of technology being what it is, from here forward we’re likely to have struggles with our desire to use digital data as we wish, balanced against our vain desire to have it behave as we wish.
To shamelessly appropriate the words of two great writers in one closing paragraph, welcome to the brave new world; so it goes.
Read more commentary on sex in society by Coleen Singer at EroticScribes.com and Sssh.com
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