Ariel X writes:

I get a lot of emails from girls and guys who are trying to break into the industry. I actually had one of my sister’s old high school friends recently write to me to ask me about herself getting into the industry. I wrote her this big long letter and I figured I would share it here on my blog in hopes of helping out others who may be interested. Most of what I wrote is very cliche but it rings true so you’re gonna have to hear it

here goes:
If you are going to take nude pictures you need to think about how it will effect your future. Although you are secure with your body, you should understand that 99.9% of the world’s population frown upon nudity or anything remotely sexual that is performed in public ( on the Internet or anywhere not in the privacy of ones bedroom for that matter). Now you and I both know that this same 99.9% of the population will do the most scandalous things behind closed doors and they think what they do it okay because no one knows about it. Yet they will still judge people like myself who do it in honesty for the world to see.

So be prepared to be judge and not just by enemies. You will find that even close loved ones will judge you and try to make you feel like a bad person. You will lose some friends apparently but think of it as a blessing because those aren’t really the type of people you want in your life anyway.

You will need to really think of what your goals are. Why are you doing this? who are you doing this for? what do you expect to come from doing this?

You need to be realistic with your expectations. I was modeling for 3 years before I got any recognition from fans or directors and producers. I did a lot of tfp (trade) work for up and coming photographers. I didn’t want to pay to have my pictures taken but I also knew that no one was going to pay me to model being a Nobody. Some times I got burned and the photographers never sent me the content we shot supposedly for trade. That sucks but it happens and you can’t do anything about it other than bug the photographer every day until he sends you your content or changes his phone number LOL.

I can give you a list of websites you can make profiles on and network with photographers. If a photographers contacts you, it’s important to be respectful and punctual in getting back to their emails. Though you may be doing this for recreation, a lot of photographers do this for a living and want to be treated in a professional manner. If you write a photographer about shooting and he/she doesn’t respond don’t hound them about shooting any more. Chances are he/she just isn’t interested in shooting for one reason or another and their not responding is a polite way of declining your invitation.

Here are just a few websites you can create free profiles on:
http://www.modelmayhem.com/
http://onemodelplace.com/
Beware of scams as they do happen. Both sites have great articles about how to avoid being scammed so please take a look at them. These websites are not dating sites so dont’ treat them like they are and if a photographer or another model asks you out on a date through the site, report them. I fucking hate when people write me on my modeling port and ask me on a date…get real and get professional (yes porn people have standards to…low standards but we have them LOL). If and when a photographer does contact you to do a shoot, check references. Ask who he/she’s shot with in the past and try to contact those models to get feedback. Obviously if he has a picture he took of a girl, he worked with that girl but you should always contact said girl to see how the shoot went for her. Did the guy creep out on her? did he whip his penis out midshoot (yes this happens)? Did she feel uncomfortable at any point of the shoot. Just because someone works with a lot of girls doesnt’ mean he’s not a creep!!!

The most important piece of information I can offer you is this:
Always be true to yourself; do not compromise anything you believe in during a shoot. You control what you do in a shoot so don’t let ANYONE tell you what you should or should not do. If you want to do just topless do just topless. Don’t show full nude if that’s really not something you want to do. If you do tasteful nudes, do only that. Don’t go flashing your pink if that’s not something you are comfortable with. You will regret it and feel bad later. Do what you want to do because YOU want to do it, not because you want to make more money or want to make someone else happy.

If you have any questions I will be more than happy to answer them. These are the basics and pretty straight forward. Good luck!!!

Killshot of EroticBPM writes:

I recently started reading LuckIsBack.com to keep up on what is happening in the mainstream porn industry.

I read a series of posts about Michelle Avanti’s story on being a troubled young girl who gets into porn, gets addicted to drugs and alcohol, is tricked by her agent into doing scenes she didn’t want to do, is injured, beaten, catches multiple STD’s and finally finds Jesus, gets out of the industry and is currently getting ready to have a baby.

Read the whole story here
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

This got me thinking about ethics in porn and the perception of Altporn being more ethical than mainstream porn.

When I started this site, I did not sit down and think about ethics. It was just a creative project started from a silly idea. There was no plan with rules and a code of conduct, but as a person with strong personal ethics and ideals, what would become my full time job and business would be a direct reflection of my ethics.

Aside from their appearance, how I represented the models would arguably become one of the biggest marketing gimmicks for the alt porn industry. However, at the time it was more out of necessity than any big ethical choice.

I found rave & club girls attractive, I figured other people found them attractive, and in building a porn site around a community based on that scene. It only made sense to let the girls express themselves and let them be who they were in the photos. Girls who had any modeling experience found it refreshing to not need to take out their piercings, cover their tattoos and wear stupid outfits.

Along with this came models ability to choose how much or how little they wanted to show.

The little known ethical choice I soon made in connection with this was paying models the same no matter how much or how little they decided to display. The girl who doesn’t spread her legs gets the same amount as the girl who has anal sex with her boyfriend. This ensured that models were never being coerced into doing something they were not comfortable with, simply because they needed or wanted the money.

The expressive freedom and choice enjoyed by the models created content that was appealing to not just men but also women, and not just women, but feminists. Getting the seal of approval from feminists was not too common in the porn industry and the media loved this angle. Women were taking off their clothes because they wanted to express themselves, not because they were troubled young drug addicts being coerced into doing unspeakable things. Thus, altporn became ethical porn. Or so it appeared.

As the altporn scene began to take shape, appearing feminist was a priority among new sites and any females involved became the face of new sites with male partners taking less public roles. I think that people felt it was essential in order to get press and credibility. Oddly, it seemed the sites which were actually run by women got less attention for being feminist because they didn’t get involved in the contest of running around declaring that they too are women. I too failed to play this game and probably lost out on some attention because of it.

As droves of amateur models came out to participate in these altporn sites, many quickly found that their experiences varied widely with each site having its own set of rules, expectations, pay rates, even penalties. Many models somehow expected that a good experience on one alt site would equal a good experience on another alt site. Alt porn it turned out, was not homogeneous.

With alt porn growing closer to mainstream porn just as alternative subculture finds its way into mainstream culture. The importance of appearing feminist has died off. Instead, more and more hardcore alt is making an appearance and more sites are being started purely as a business choice and less as a DIY project.

When it is no longer a collaboration between model, photographer, and creator. The model simply becomes a product. This is not inherently bad, but it leaves far more opportunity for ethics to be thrown out in favor of maximum profit.

The same booking agent that got an unwilling Michelle Avanti to do a 75 man bukakke scene 2 weeks into her career could tomorrow be pressuring a fresh alt model to do a gangbang scene for an alt film.

At this point, what even defines alt?
I honestly don’t know.
Lux Alptraum said goodbye to alt on fleshbot last year. Maybe she is right, but Ebpm isn’t going anywhere yet. So get your altporn here like it’s 1999!

I’ve continued to make what I feel are important ethical choices over the years, like not selling out to a mainstream company because I didn’t think it would be fair to the models, and even today deciding to keep my pay rates the same despite rates falling through the floor on numerous other sites.

I have a feeling that the other good alt webmasters I know are not going to change their ethics, but new up and coming models should be aware that Alt does not automatically mean ethical, it does not automatically mean feminist, and just like in mainstream porn, you should do your research. Separate the good from the bad, and choose who you work with carefully.

Sugasm writes:

This Week’s Picks
The Annual Anti-Valentine’s Day Posting: 2009 Edition
“Ahh, Valentine’s Day. Sigh.”

Exposed: “We talk a lot about putting me on display, and it was even more intense in reality as it has been in fantasy.”

Yes: “At the edge of the precipice, my nerves rippling with electricity, i tumbled down into you”

Sugasm Editor
Sex Work And Compassion: A Call From Baghdad

Editor’s Choice
Stairwell

Sex News, Review, and Interviews
20 Questions with Shawn (aka Syd Blakovich)

Thoughts on Sex and Relationships
Things I’ve Discovered I Like

NSFW Pics, Videos & Audio
Dakoda Brookes

BDSM & Fetish
25 Things, the Kinky Way

More Sugasm | Join the Sugasm

See also: Fleshbot’s Sex Blog Roundup each Tuesday and Friday.

San Fransisco Bay Guardian writes:

Recently, I chatted with Annaliese of the famous altporn site God’s Girls about nudity, tattoos, and DIY photography. In this installment of altporn interviews, I got the chance to talk to Cutter Smith of Altporn.net, the blog to read if you’re a fan of altporn. We literally talked about everything — Cutter is a veritable encyclopedia of altporn knowledge, and his site reflects his thoughtful, intelligent, and knowledgeable obsession with observation of his favorite genre of porn.

SFBG: First, what is the story behind Altporn.net?…

San Fransisco Bay Guardian writes:

Most people involved in altporn view their work as fundamentally different than mainstream pornography. Cutter, of AltPorn.net, explains, “AltPorn makes the trends and porn-porn tends to follow them. Traditional porn is conservative in a weird insular way. It tends to copy outside things.” Cutter doesn’t think that altporn appropriates or copies from existing subcultures. He and others view altporn as being organic, DIY, independent, and fundamentally authentic…

Smith (Cutter) elaborates, “All the originators in this genre were driven to create sexual media that appealed to their own community and their own communities’ aesthetics. So, the goths created goth erotica and the punks created punk erotica and the ravers created raver erotica. So, on an aesthetic level, altporn offers an alternative look, as well as the community interactivity, to prove it’s authenticity.”

Killshot of EroticBPM writes:

Lately I have been hearing more and more about Zivity, a new adult site that pretends not to be an adult site. I largely ignored it even after seeing a few mentions by some members here at Ebpm. Then I heard some more details from a friend and started to check into it more.

I signed up for a beta account and got access a couple days later. I looked around a bit and was not really impressed because parts of it as even fleshbot noticed seemed pretty similar to what I did with spiceplay. (Sharing revenue with models based on members giving credits to models or each other.) And they even have a patent pending on that.

Yeah there are some pretty girls, some of them are naked, some of them are not, and there is all the basic social features you can expect to have. But nothing else really notable.

The thing that caught my eye the most was the fact that they take paypal. Most people wouldn’t think twice about that. But talk to anyone in the adult biz and you will probably hear the same story about their account getting banned. Or you may even hear stories about paypal once upon a time courting the business of adult websites (myself included) only to ban them all a few months later when Ebay bought them out.

So why does Zivity get a free pass?
Well, it turns out that Founders Fund and Blue Run Ventures put up the $8 Million in VC funding to get Zivity started. The same people behind paypal and numerous other tech startups. And the people behind Zivity is quite impressive.

Jon Elvekrog – CEO
According to his bio on Zivity, he has worked for HP, TIBCO, Volex, and helped build LinkExchange

Scott Banister – Chairman and Co-Founder
Founder of ListBot which sold to Microsoft
VP of Idealab – sold to AOL
Co-Founder of Ironport – Sold to Cisco for $830 million

Cyan Banister – Co Founder and Editor in Chief
Scott Banister’s wife – Details on her background are lacking
*edit* Cyan was kind enough to link me to her linkedin profile. She was a senior manager at IronPort and has had a successful career in recruiting for bay area startups. */edit*

Jeffrey Wescott – Co Founder
Former Ironport engineer

Jordan Ritter – CTO
Napster Co Founder
Cloudmark CTO
Columbia Music Entertainment CTO

John Manoogian III – Director of User Experience and Product Design
Worked at Organic Inc
Designed Yahoo’s homepage and UI
Claims to have invented social bookmarking

So why is this a big deal to me?

The fact that they can use paypal and no other adult company can is only a minor annoyance.

The fact that they are attempting to patent something that is neither new or innovative is a little more concerning and makes sense coming from an industry that is increasingly patenting anything obvious just for the sake of having a large patent portfolio and then suing people.

Non Obvious innovations that took hard work to develop certainly deserve to be patented for a period of time. Obvious patents only serve to stifle innovation and end up doing far more harm than good.

However, the biggest thing that has me going is why are they doing this? Why would all these people decide to get into the adult business? If the VC investors hope to see their money back. Zivity would likely need to maintain a paid membership of over 100,000 users. I really don’t see them lasting long.

However, if they are successful. I feel that it will be another sad day for all the creative people out there who don’t have access to piles of money but have plenty of amazing ideas.

Part of what makes the internet great is the ability to share ideas, art, and collaborate with other people to create new things. When big companies and big money comes along and lock down ideas with patents and further stifle creativity by throwing so much money at their project that other people do not even get noticed. Well, it makes the internet less diverse, it puts a lot of money in the hands of a few people, and it certainly takes away a lot of the fun.

Maybe I would feel better if Zivity had come along and done something truly different. But I just don’t see it.

Fleshbot writes:

“Free Lithium Picnic” boybeater tank top: $25. Limited edition print benefiting Lithium Picnic lawsuit relief: $450. Total Lithium Picnic lawsuit relief: $20,000. Finding out the whole thing was just a “misunderstanding”: priceless. (warnermediagroup.com + sglawsuit.chipin.com + community.livejournal.com; more @ blueblood.net)