Danny Wylde Has Stuff To Say
So there’s this essay by Christopher Zeischegg aka Danny Wylde. It’s titled On The Moral Imperative To Commodify Our Sexual Suffering and I think there’s some stuff in there I disagree with. I have to say “I think” because it’s a dense essay with a lot of nuance, some of which may be getting past me. What’s more, I haven’t been where Zeischegg has been or done what he’s done. What I have done is worked (in my pasty-faced keyboarding way) in the same porn industry as him, and experienced (right along with him) certain changes in the porn business:
You’ve heard of the website PornHub.com? It’s owned by an international corporation called MindGeek. They used to be called Manwin, when they were developing a strategy to make free-mostly-pirated-porn sites the new normal. Employees were paid to rip DVDs and upload pirated content faster than any porn studio could send out their DMCA notices. MindGeek single-handedly caused the collapse of the pay-for-porn model of business. Kind of like how Napster killed the music industry. Except Napster did its damage and then disappeared. MindGeek went on to buy out every financially gutted porn studio until it resembled a production/distribution monopoly. MindGeek is Brazzers. MindGeek is Elegant Angel. MindGeek is Men.com. MindGeek is PornHub. You get the point.
Zeischegg, who no longer performs in porn after “all the ED drugs had caught up with” him, got a full time job filming and producing the stuff. He became bored, and in describing his boredom, he invokes one of the fears that animates me:
I could say with some certainty — after staring at several hundred hours of content in the absence of arousal — that porn had become boring.
There was flesh and it was fucked. Everyone over the age of 12 could list the ways in which a cock could fill a hole. Pornography was the equivalent of pop music — culturally omnipotent and void of all significance. It was visual mediocrity compounded by such widespread financial collapse that there might never again exist the capitalist incentive for novelty or spectacle.
“…that there might never again exist the capitalist incentive for novelty or spectacle.”
Sit with that thought. Allow it to fill you. Taste it, smell it. Try not to cry. If you love porn, novelty, and spectacle (and I love all three!) it’s pretty depressing, and there’s a lot of evidence loose in the world of 2015 that it might be true.
Zeischegg writes of suffering a severe depression “which may have never waned.” I want to think his depression is talking in the above quote. I want to think that porn as an art form will survive the loss of its status as an industry, and that once the MindGeek monoculture is as forgotten as Myspace, pornographic novelty and spectacle will flourish again, in a dynamic commercial ecosystem of small but creative businesses.
I want to think that. But I haven’t seen all that Zeischegg has seen.
As for the rest of his essay? He’s totally not done. He goes on to discuss in-person sexwork and the pressure it’s under as a business in a world where the decline of sexual shame is putting downward pressure on prices. Example sentence: “There’s Grindr. What’s the incentive to pay a young hustler for a blowjob?” He finishes up with an extended parable (or so I choose to read it) carrying his commodification notions to a logical conclusion that features a proposed partnership with a necromancer for the production of snuff films.
As far as I am concerned, he may have his fun with his necromancer. Or don’t call it fun: call it rather his Swiftian condemnation of the quest for novelty in extreme libertinage, if you choose to read him that way. It’s about the decline of sexual shame where I think we differ. He seems (and I freely admit to the possibility of misunderstanding) to think the decline of sexual shame is a bad thing. He’s regretful that, through writing and advocacy, he “did [his] part to normalize a profession that should have remained in the shadows.” He’s downright derisive about young women willing to make porn for low compensation as a (his scare quotes) “political act”. I can’t tell how much of this is a considered philosophy, versus sour grapes or just sourness in general. But I would argue that making porn and doing in-person sexwork are professions that have benefited from, and will benefit further from, the decline of sexual shame. It’s true that the premium wages they used to command will never come back, except perhaps for narrow specialists; but that’s no bad thing. The high wages were in part compensation for the social condemnation that came with the job. As the condemnation wanes — and it’s still got a long way to go! — it’s only logical that the wages will decline too.
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I would venture to say that many “A”-list celebrities are currently benefiting the most from the decline in sexual shame. Janet Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction” provided priceless publicity and made her name a household word among a whole new audience. Now Miley Cyrus is planning live nude concert dates. Millions can ultimately be earned in this manner both directly and indirectly. We’ve all seen Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, and Lindsey Lohan expose their labia to the camera. First they will exceed the earnings level previously set by the porn stars, then the celebrity sex-tape phenomena will decline further (I already am unable to keep up with the lengthy list), as joining the club ceases to become newsworthy.
I saw something on one of the webcam sites one day last month that made me think I had just seen a further nail in the coffin, but also the beginning of something new.
Already web camming provides women with the potential for more income selling their bodies without 1) the legacy (most cam broadcasts disappear without a trace) 2) having to deal with the outside world (partner jealousy, disease, travel, the list goes on). Why be a porn star when you can make more money at home with very little effort?
Now there is a vibrator/blue tooth interface that will activate through a signal. In this case the signal was viewers tipping. That’s one step towards viewers getting to control their objects of desire. It seemed to work. The camgirl was raking in the cash *and* getting off.
Of course, that won’t end people whose fantasies are about being things they aren’t, or pure voyeurism, but there’s something there I thought was very new, but inevitable.
Ted I would disagree with you about #1, the ability to record whatever you hear and see on a computer is incredibly easy to setup and many cam girls complain about users recording sessions and harassing them with clips or screenshots. But I think #2 is the more powerful, physical separation. That air-gap between the two people (electrons don’t count in this scenario) creates all kinds of new opportunities. And yes, the remotely-activated toys are going to be huge *chuckle*, even if you have to pay a hefty sum for a private show and then get the controls yourself, people will do it, especially for people with good acting skills or the ability to form appropriate bonds with their audience so they’re getting off themselves while giving a good show.
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