AVN Awards: What does AVN mean by Alternative?

171

Whatever Adult Video News means by “alternative” seems to include basically all the sites which old school mainstream porn people don’t understand, but somehow felt obligated to include anyway. It seems terribly 1980’s and out-of-date to consider anything, which is not heterosexist vanilla sexuality from a bleached blonde bio-girl with shaved underarms, to be in the same niche basket. It is so progressive of them to include Asians and anal as part of what they consider normative sexuality.

After reading about BurningAngel sweeping the nominations for the AVN Awards this year, I went to take a look at all the nominees on the AVN site. I found the AVN Alternative selections surprising, to say the least. Below is what they listed in their (I believe) new Best Alternative Site category.

It honestly seems like the AVN Best Alternative Site nominations have no pattern to them. There are both membership sites and free sites and they are all over the map for content. It is not that all the sites are bad, just that they can’t be compared to one another. For example, I’ve said for a long time that gorgeous April Flores is my future wife, but how is her slightly lower than 4,000,000 Alexa portfolio site to be compared to the central Kink.com site with an Alexa of around 8,000? The rest of the list is a mix of femdom and trans and hairy amateurs and slow blowjobs and adult video games and (male-owned and non-lesbian) “porn for women“.

The genres are different and the appropriate scale is different and all the criteria for excellence are different. Basically, this is a real apples to oranges comparison situation. Femdom and trans and pseudo-amateurs are all very popular and successful niches, which I think could and probably should have their own categories. If mainstream porn people can’t think of enough entries to put together an oral sex category, they should really rethink their chosen professions. It seems to me that most of the adult video games online use the same engine that Pink Visual is using in their Alternative-nominated site, so that niche is probably not ready for a category. Other than being apparently owned by the same man, what do the fetish site Wasteland and the “smart and sexy erotic journal for women, by women” site Sssh have in common and what does either one have to do with altporn? How could anyone compare the “shemale cougar” JoannaJet.com membership site with the San Francisco free site QueerPornTube and find any points of commonality to decide one is more award-worthy than the other?

Note that no BurningAngel site appears anywhere on their list. We may not be experts on Adult Video News over here, but I think we know a little bit about alt porn or alternative porn. JoannaAngel.com won Best Best AltPorn Solo Girl Membership Site in our most recent awards and BurningAngel.com won the year before for Best AltPorn Multigirl/Community Membership Site. Obviously, AVN is familiar with BA, so how did they get zero noms in the alt category? They did get a nomination for Best Membership Site, which is a good thing if you think assimilation equals progress, but it seems to me that BurningAngel should have been able to crush the Best Alternative Site category in a mainstream porn awards show this year.

Below, you will see both the multigirl and solo girl best site categories for the 2012 AltPorn Awards. Perhaps the field has changed between 2011 (the time period our last awards were for) and 2012 (the time period the upcoming AVN Awards are for), but it seems bizarre that there is absolutely no overlap between the APN Awards Best Site noms and the AVN Best Alternative Site category.

2013 AVN Award Nominees writes:

Best Alternative Site
AliceInBondageland.com
ATKHairy.com
DivineBitches.com
FattyD.com
IndiePornRevolution.com
JoannaJet.com
JulieSimone.com
Kink.com
LatinaTranny.com
MeanBitches.com
PinkVisualGames.com
QueerPornTube.com
ShemaleStrokers.com
SlowMotionBlowjob.com
Sssh.com
Wasteland.com
WendyWilliamsXXX.com

AltPorn Awards 2012: AltPorn Membership Site Nominees – Multigirl/Community writes:

Blue Blood
Bombshell Brats
Burning Angel
EroticBPM
GeekGirlsOnline
GodsGirls
GothicSluts
MyFreeCams

AltPorn Awards 2012: Best AltPorn Solo Girl Membership Site Nominees writes:

Cadence St. John
Ivy Snow
JoannaAngel
Lolita Borgia
Lynn Pops
Masuimi Max
MeowMistiDawn
NoelsNaughtyNook
XOEVE

What does AVN mean by Alternative?




Leave a Reply