Porn conventions are decadent and depraved (and also very mainstream)

A former porn journalist returns to the scene of the crime

Hello situation normies! I’m really excited to share a new aspect of my writing with you. Today’s post is from an adult entertainment convention in Las Vegas. I went to the AVN Adult Entertainment Expo to research a sequel to Not Safe for Work, the first book in my Porn Valley Mystery series.

If there’s an operating theory to my writing, it’s this: truth is stranger than fiction, and the truth is usually a lot more interesting. That’s why my novels, like my Situation Normal stories, are rooted in real life experiences.

For example, I really was a reporter at porn’s second best trade publication, just like my novel’s protagonist, although I never solved any crimes. Like my protagonist, I firmly believe that when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro. Also, and I’m not proud of this, the real life me and the fictional version of me were both chased through the Angeles National Forest by a butt-naked man in a werewolf mask. But I’m getting WAY ahead of the narrative.

Sorry.

This year, I’m working on the second book in my Porn Valley Mystery series! To fuel my research (and promote the hell out of these kickass novels) I’m revisiting my old profession by writing about the current state of adult entertainment. You’ll find that writing in a new section of my Substack I’m calling Smutty.

You don’t have to do anything to receive Smutty, but if you prefer to receive Situation Normal without Smutty, or to receive Smutty without Situation Normal, you can unsubscribe from one without unsubscribing from both. (Same deal as Situation Bali, if you were around for those stories). Personally, I think you’ll love both newsletters, but I’m biased.

Like everything I do with Situation Normal, the internet’s 57th best humor newsletter, my goal with Smutty is to bring a smile to your face and (maybe) broaden your perspective. I know that’s a tall order, but I’ve got a step ladder, so let’s go!

---

---

An idiot once told me that porn would go mainstream. Back in 2007, that idiot was my employer.

(To protect the guilty, I’ll refer to my former employer as Oz, the nom de porn I gave to the publisher of The Daily Pornographer, my novel’s fictional trade publication.)

Oz—as in The Wizard of Oz— fancied himself as the man pulling the strings behind the curtain. The way Oz saw it, porn, which he called “adult entertainment,” or simply “adult,” was on the cusp of going mainstream, thanks to the internet’s power to democratize culture and an untapped well of freak flags just waiting to rise up from the analog ashes of late 20th century moral majoritarian America.

In order to work for Oz, you needed to produce clean copy, demonstrate unsound news judgement, and most of all, believe in Oz’s vision of mainstream porndom. I was a believer, not because I thought Oz was right, but because I knew my paycheck depended on my fealty to Oz’s idiotic claim. Like Upton Sinclair once observed, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”

Back in 2007, I thought I understood the porn industry. On the one hand, there were the old school producers and porn stars—the Boogie Nights crowd. They mostly operated out of the San Fernando Valley, where they produced movies that were distributed via shady and convoluted distribution channels that brought porn to the local video store, and from there, into the homes of anyone with a DVD player. On the other hand, there were the disruptors—quiet tech geeks with loud online personas who staked out prime online real estate, pioneered digital payments, and christened themselves “webmasters” of an ever-expanding network of adult websites that catered to every imaginable niche.

Just like the disruptors who moved fast and broke the record industry, the news business, and most other sectors of the analog economy, the geeks who moved fast and broke Porn Valley had little regard for the old order. In fact, many of adult’s early online empires were built on foundations of pirated content. But that was before my time.

My time in Porn Valley coincided with the rise of the so-called tube sites. On the surface, the tubes were YouTube knockoffs—porn’s answer to Web 2.0. But the revolution that ushered in user-generated content and social media platforms brought armageddon to Porn Valley in the form of unlimited free content.

As a trade reporter, I thought I was chronicling porn’s death rattle. Sure, porn was more popular than ever, but for webmasters and old school pornographers alike, unlimited free porn—as opposed to promo content like picture galleries and 30-second clips—spelled disaster for the industry. Right before my eyes, the profit was being sucked out of the industry, as legions of budget-conscious wankers discovered that the tubes were loaded with full-length, high-quality videos that could be streamed with the click of a button.

To me, it was obvious that free porn was a sign of the end. How can you have an industry when the product is free, I wondered? But to Oz, free porn was creative destruction—a cleansing fire that would purge the industry of its dinosaurs and usher in new innovators.

Who would those innovators be? According to Oz, anyone and everyone would join the porn industry.

“Your mom does porn,” Oz liked to say.

But Oz wasn’t making a momma joke. He was laying out his vision for an internet where every adult produced, marketed, and consumed porn—an ouroboros of smut that swallowed the ancient distinctions between porn star and fan, between industry and consumer, between mainstream and adult.

“Porn is going mainstream,” Oz told me. “It’s going to happen faster than you think. In a decade, maybe two, the President will be a porn star, but it won’t be a big deal. It’ll be so normal it probably won’t be worth mentioning.”

To me, Oz’s vision for the future sounded like something out of the Mike Judge movie Idiocracy, which is why I thought Oz was an idiot. But then a funny thing happened.

First, Idiocracy fans, myself included, noticed that with each passing year, Judge’s satire seemed to be inching eerily, uncomfortably, toward something prescient. Humanity wasn’t facing famine because we had suddenly decided to water crops with Gatorade (yet), but dang it, things really were getting dumb and dumber out there. Still, I had a hard time believing Americans would elect someone like Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Camacho, a former wrestler and porn star, to the Presidency.

Then came 2016.

America elected a WWE celebrity hall of fame inductee who banged a porn star, then ordered his dipshit lawyer to pay her off with money borrowed against the dipshit lawyer’s condo. As that stormy saga played out over the next few years, I worried that maybe I was the idiot and my former employer was a visionary. There’s a very fine line between idiot and visionary, after all, and only time can truly tell the two camps apart.

Maybe that’s why Christina and I went to the AVN Adult Entertainment Expo. I wanted to see how porn had changed, and if, as my former employer had predicted, an industry that was built by outlaws armed with fake boobs and fake names, was moving toward the mainstream?

Here’s what we found at this year’s AVN Adult Entertainment Expo.

Civilians are cheap, fans are gold

As I walked from the Resort World parking lot to the hotel & casino, I struck up a conversation with a couple from Cincinnati. They were dressed like they were headed for a night out at Buffalo Wild Wings, and since they weren’t wearing credentials, I figured they were civilians (industry slang for outsiders). I didn’t get their names, so I used one of those porn name generators. From here on out, the husband will be known as Kurt Packer, and his wife as Margarita St. McStuffin.

“We just came to see the hotel,” Kurt Packer said. “My wife is a travel agent, so we’re checking out the hotel, because it’s new, and we thought maybe we’d get something to eat.”

“We had no idea there was a porno convention going on,” said Margarita St. McStuffin.

Me thought Margarita doth protest too much. Also, I didn’t like the way she said porno, like the people who made pornos were somehow beneath her. They weren’t being forced to go to this hotel, and they weren’t being shamed for their curiosity, yet they felt the need to act like they weren’t the sort of people who would do this sort of thing. Whatever.

“Are you attending, or exhibiting?” Kurt Packer asked me.

“Neither. I’m press.”

My answer took Kurt Packer by surprise. But Margarita St. McStuffin put two and two together.

“I guess it’s just like a regular industry, huh?”

It’s more like an irregular industry, but I didn’t want to get into the weeds with these two. Instead, I told them to buy a ticket and take the ride.

“How much are tickets?” Kurt Packer asked.

“I think they start around eighty bucks. It’s more if you want to go to the awards show on Saturday.”

“Awards show?” asked Margarita St. McStuffin.

“It’s like the Oscars of porn.”

Kurt Packer started to make a joke about the award for best orgy, but then he remembered that he was from Cincinnati, where flying your freak flag is frowned upon, I guess.

“Eighty bucks seems high,” he said.

There it was, I thought, the free porn monster. Obviously, Kurt Packer and Margarita St. McStuffin watch porn, but after two decades of the digital revolution, they had been trained to believe that they’re entitled to get their jollies for free. Now, here they were, faces pressed up against the peep show glass, their hands unwilling to reach for the quarters in their pockets.

“There’s one! A porno star!”

Margarita St. McStuffin pointed to a lingerie-clad model waiting in line at the Randy’s Donuts located in the Resort World lobby.

“Wow, that’s crazy,” Kurt Packer said. “Will you look at her?”

I looked at her, but I didn’t see anything crazy. I saw a woman dressed in lingerie, waiting in line for a donut. Maybe that’s a wild sight in Cincinnati, but in Vegas, it looked like Thursday to me.

I said farewell to Kurt Packer and Margarita St. McStuffin, but I doubt they heard me. They were too busy gawking, even though there’s probably more skin at their local pool in Cincinnati. Just saying.

---

---

Inside the convention, it was a different story. There were thousands of fans who had happily paid the ticket price. There were plenty of industry people there too, but fans easily outnumbered industry professionals by an unofficial count of sixty-nine to one.

Most of the fans were dudes—shocker! But I saw a lot of couples and single women too. At first glance, the crowd looked like the crowds that attended the conventions I covered in the early aughts. Upon closer inspection, however, I detected a slight vibe shift. Dudes still dominated the space, but the dude energy had mellowed quite a bit. To me, it felt like Comic-Con, but with less IP and more sex toys.

Models and fans mingle on the AVN show floor

There’s a code of conduct and a dress code. For real!

At the risk of sounding like an old man, porn conventions didn’t have codes of conduct in my day.

For the record, a code of conduct is a good thing! But a code of conduct is also a sign of an industry that’s determined to abide by social conventions. That might describe adult entertainment in 2023, but it’s not an accurate description of the industry I covered in the aughts. Back then, pornographers proudly thumbed their noses at society’s conventions because that was the best way to promote their products to a culture that was still capable of being shocked by something lewd, crude, or transgressive. Also, most of the pornographers I covered wore labels like “lewd,” “crude,” or “transgressive” as badges of honor.

Of course, most mainstream conventions in the early aughts probably didn’t have codes of conduct either. But the point isn’t that porn, or society more broadly, has changed for the better. The point is that on the issues of safety and accountability, porn and the mainstream are converging.

To enter, the AVN Adult Entertainment Expo, attendees must sign a code of conduct acknowledging that the following behaviors are prohibited:

• Physical assault

• Stalking

• Unwelcome physical contact

• Harassing photography (cameras are allowed, but no means no if an individual declines to pose)

• Photographs or recordings that violate privacy (e.g., upskirt shots, shooting in non-public spaces) 

• Offensive verbal assaults, including but not limited to negative comments based on race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation or gender identity/presentation

• Harassment in public restrooms (guests at the AVN Show are welcome to use the restrooms that match their gender presentation or identity)

In addition to the code of conduct, there’s a dress code posted at the entrance to the show. While “sexy attire is expected,” the X-rated crowd is supposed to keep it R-rated. Or, maybe PG-13. I dunno, I never really understood the MPAA ratings, which seem to penalize bad words and boobs far more than they punish violence, but that’s another story altogether.

Cams, Cams & more Cams

I’m using the terms “porn” and “adult” interchangeably, but I probably shouldn’t do that. One reason is that some people in the adult entertainment industry dislike the word porn. To them, porn is a pejorative, although that view, while valid, probably dates them to a time when adult content had an uncertain legal status.

But even if you think porn is a positive word, the descriptor is a limiting one. The adult entertainment industry is a catchall for a range of commerce, from sex toys, to exotic dancing, to sex work, to, well, just about anything that floats someone’s boat, sexually speaking.

But if even we’re focused on content, porn really only describes filmed scenes and movies. Porn content is produced for paid member sites, tube platforms, hotel pay-per-view operators, and yes, DVDs. The performers in these videos are porn stars, although not every porn star achieves actual stardom.

Cams—short for webcam—are a different content play. As a segment, cams are bigger than porn and they’re growing faster, although it’s important to note that data on adult entertainment is notoriously unreliable. Nevertheless, you can tell cams are the main event by the amount of convention floor space cam companies and models command. Cams were everywhere at AVN, and while the models were there to meet their fans IRL, they were also there to livestream from the show floor to audiences all over the world.

Cam models, including a model with a leg injury, doing their thing from the AVN floor

Cams were around when I covered adult in the aughts, but unfortunately, we called the performers “cam girls.” Today, it’s more common to call performers “cam models,” which is a big improvement! Models, after all, is more accurate, respectful, and inclusive.

If you’re alive, and you haven’t been living under a rock, you’ve probably heard of OnlyFans. The platform shot to fame during the pandemic, when Bella Thorne and Cardi B launched their OnlyFans accounts.¹ But while OnlyFans is a household name, the reality is that there are scores of cam platforms.

“How can there be so many cam platforms?” Christina asked.

“How can there be so many streamers?” I asked.

“OK, but how do these platforms differentiate themselves? What’s their value proposition?”

Another man might’ve teased his wife for asking business questions at a porn convention, but when I was a trade journalist, this was precisely what I would’ve been trying to understand.

“They compete on model payouts,” I said. “They also compete, to some extent, on price for customers. Some platforms are known for serving a particular niche. Other platforms have better tech, or UI, or they do a better job of navigating the laws of a particular country.”

“How do you know this kind of stuff?” Christina asked.

I held up my press pass.

“I talk to people.”

The first cam model I chatted with was a transgender woman called Trinity.

“How’s your show going?” I asked.

Trinity told me it was going really well, and before we knew it we were talking about why she was there repping a platform called SextPanther.

“I’ve used a lot of platforms,” Trinity explained. “SextPanther is just better for trans models.”

“Why is that?”

“I’m more likely to get matched with a customer who wants a trans model. On other platforms, I get a lot of hate and just vile shit, but that rarely happens on SextPanther.”

“Why is that?”

I sounded like a broken record, but I’ve always found that if you keep asking your subjects to expand on their comments, you’re likely to find out all sorts of interesting stuff.

“I think it’s because customers have to book an appointment with the model, and if they don’t show up, or they just show up to be an asshole, they get billed anyway.”

“I see. So, if someone wants to be a dick, they have to pay for it?”

“Exactly.”

“But not many people are will to pay to be a dick?”

“Exactly.”

“And you said they have to make an appointment for you specifically, as opposed to being matched with a random model that supposedly meets their search terms?”

“Exactly. They have to book me. They have to want me.”

“So, the booking experience is like a subtle reminder that, you know, there’s a real human being at the other end of the internet?”

“Exactly. It’s not perfect, but it’s better. And I get to know my clients better too because they can schedule appointments.”

“Are you making good money on SextPanther?”

“Oh my god yes! I’m making twelve grand a month.”

“Holy shit, congrats!”

“I know, right!? Never in a million years did I think I’d make that kind of money.”

I thanked Trinity for her time, then found Christina at a nearby booth.

“They asked me if I was interested in modeling!” Christina said. “I wasn’t expecting that. Talk about an ego boost.”

“I just spoke with a model named Trinity. She’s making twelve grand a month.”

“Holy shit! Maybe I should be a cam model.”

Christina was kidding, but her reaction wasn’t unique. I don’t have the data to prove it, but based on the amount of play cam platforms like OnlyFans get in the mainstream press, it sure seems like millions of people have investigated cam modeling, experimented with it as a side hustle, or like Trinity, made cam modeling their full-time career.

“Maybe my old employer was right,” I told Christina. “Maybe everyone but us is doing porn.”

“It sure seems that way.”

Next, I spoke with a cam model called Natalie Luxxurious.

“I’ve been doing this for six years,” Natalie said. “I work on multiple platforms. My rule is that I’ll work with another model, as long as I’m attracted to them, and as long as they have a presence on at least two platforms.”

Natalie rattled off the list of platforms she uses: LoyalFans, ManyVids, MintStars, IWantClips, and Clips4Sale. On some of those platforms, Natalie sells live shows, which includes performing various sex acts, but also a lot of talking because, as she explained, “camming is about connecting with people, more than it’s about sex.” On other platforms, Natalie sells videos that fans can pay to download.

“Why do you work with so many platforms?”

“I don’t like to put all my eggs in one basket. Also, you never know how fans are going to find you, so it’s good to have a presence in multiple places, especially if you make niche content.”

I thought about telling Natalie that the same logic holds true for writers, but I wanted to keep the focus on her. So, I asked Natalie to expand on her niches.

“I’m a dominatrix,” she explained. “But in my personal life, I discovered that I’m a switch, so I incorporate that into my work too. Lately, I’ve been making a lot of burping videos.”

“Burping videos? At the risk of asking an obvious question, what’s a burping video?”

“It’s a fetish some guys have. It’s mostly guys. Men are… interesting.”

“And these men enjoy watching you burp?”

“Yeah, it’s a thing. They really love it. But you have to be able to burp on command. Not everyone can do that.”

“How does someone discover that they’re into burping?”

“The general category is bodily functions. You’ll see farting content, and burping content, hiccups, etc. Pretty much anything that classifies as a bodily function. I think fans start with the general category, and then they see something like burping, and it just clicks, they’re into it!”

I thanked Natalie for her time. As I walked around the show floor, I found myself wondering what my burps were worth? I Googled it, and Google had an answer! Sort of.

Turns out, adult content creator and 90-Day Fiancé star Stephanie Matto made $200,000 selling her farts in a jar.² Unfortunately, Matto didn’t produce enough “natural” gas to meet demand, so she switched to a high fiber diet that ended up sending her to the emergency room.³ After reading that, I realized that while bodily functions may be profitable, they don't scale. I decided against monetizing my burps and farts.

Let’s make some money, honey!

I'm not a complicated man. I like cinema. In particular, I like to see people fucking on film. But, I don't want to win an Oscar and I don't want to re-invent the wheel. I like simple pleasures, like butter in my ass and lollipops in my mouth. That's just me. That's just something that I enjoy. Call me crazy, call me a pervert. But, there's one little thing that I'm going to do in this life and that is I'm going to make a dollar and a cent in this business.

— Boogie Nights

As far as I know, there’s no such thing as nonprofit adult entertainment. There are adult entertainment ventures that are unprofitable, sure, but like the Floyd Gondolli character in Boogie Nights, everyone at AVN was there to make a dollar and cent in this business.

One of those people was an outrageously stoned wholesale vape accessory salesman named Nano. Between bites of Oreo cookies, Nano explained why he had paid thousands of dollars for a booth to exhibit has vaping accessories at a porn convention.

“Follow the money,” he said.

“That’s deep throat.”

Nano giggled. I tried to explain that I was referring to the X-rated codename Woodward & Bernstein gave their Watergate source, but Nano’s mind was on his money, and money was on his mind.

“Dude, I’m here to meet retailers. Adult bookstores, adult novelty sellers, those kinds of places. For them, putting in a small display of vaping accessories is a no-brainer. It’s easy money.”

---

---

At a nearby booth, I met Erik Cancél, the man behind an adult card game called Drinks with Frenemies.

“It’s a drinking game, but you don’t have to drink,” he said. “We make an explicit version. That’s why we’re here. But we go to lots of mainstream shows too.”

Like Nano, Erik was there to meet retailers.

“Say you’re at an adult novelty store with your wife,” he said. “You pick up some sex toys, maybe some costumes, whatever. Our game is right there by the register. It’s good fun!”

Next, I wandered over to a booth that had more pills than a pharmacy.

“What do these pills do?” I asked.

“They make dicks hard,” the salesman said.

“Like Viagra?”

“No, not like Viagra. All natural. No prescription.”

“How much for a bottle?”

The salesman wasn’t sure, which seemed like a bad sign. Also, there might have been a language barrier; his accent was thick. When I asked why his company was exhibiting at this show, he said, “sales.”

“To retailers, or consumers?” I asked.

“You buy?”

“No. I’m a reporter.”

I held up my press pass so he could see my credentials.

“No reporters.”

That ended the conversation. I’m not sure why the salesman gave off shady, incompetent vibes, but I will say that if you’re in the market for penis pills, whatever you do, don’t tell them you’re a reporter.

---

---

My next stop was an exhibitor who sold t-shirts. The owner of the company was busy making sales, so I didn’t get a chance to talk to him. But one of the booth models asked if I wanted to take her picture, and I said, “sure.”

As I walked away from the t-shirt booth, a random woman handed me a business card, but when I looked at the card, the woman’s name wasn’t on it.

“What do you do?” I asked.

“I created a social network.”

“Wow, that’s really impressive.”

She nodded, but didn’t make eye contact.

“What’s your social network called?”

She pointed to the card. The social network was called Freyja. The card gave the website’s address below the name, and below that, the text read: tired of being kicked off social media?

I’ve never been kicked off of a social media platform, but I know that mainstream social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram have strict and often arbitrary rules that make it difficult for adult entertainment professionals to market their goods and services. By way of example, you can’t even say “porn” on TikTok, but the adult performers on the platform have found a workaround by calling themselves “corn stars.”

“Can you tell me more about your social network?” I asked.

“No censorship.”

“OK, what else?”

“Free speech.”

We went around in circles like this for the next couple of minutes, but I had trouble getting more than a few words out of the woman behind Freyja. On the one hand, it’s a bad sign when a social network’s founder struggles with basic social skills, but on the other hand, it worked for Mark Zuckerberg.

Speaking of Mark Zuckerberg, I found a booth promoting the Metaverse.

“Not Zuckerberg’s metaverse,” the dude running the adult metaverse demo told me. “I hate that fucking guy. Why did he have to co-opt the word metaverse? He just confused everybody.”

“I think he was trying to confuse everybody. Tell me about your metaverse.”

“It’s virtual reality,” he said. “You can use whatever VR equipment you like. You can create a space for yourself, like a club, or a cool bar, or a sex dungeon. Then you meet performers and other people in virtual reality and just, you know, have fun.”

The VR company behind this particular metaverse application had partnered with Brazzers, a large porn studio owned by MindGeek, which is a holding company that owns sites like Pornhub, RedTube, and YouPorn. The idea behind the partnership is to pair Brazzers contract stars like Angela White and Abella Danger with the latest tech trend.

“Pretty cool, right?”

I didn’t have the heart to tell the guy that I actually found it a little clumsy. The demo featured a scantily clad model showing you around a luxury virtual space that looked like something out of Ready Player One. That part was fine, I guess. But the thought of wearing a clunky VR headset just didn’t seem sexy to me.

“Want to take a photo?” he asked.

I looked at the display, but I wasn’t sure how my phone could capture content inside a VR rig.

“You can’t really take picture of VR, so we hired models for the booth.”

I looked at the models. There was nothing virtual about them. But because this booth was all about the future, the models wore bodysuits that looked like something out of the movie Tron.

“Are those outfits what they wear to make VR content?”

“No, they just look kinda of futuristic.”

I wandered around some more and ended up at a booth for a blockchain / crypto company. The company had a name, but their “card” was a QR code, and I didn’t take a picture of the QR code because the whole thing felt sketchy. So, I’ll call this blockchain / crypto company FuckBucks.

The FuckBucks rep said his name was Jason.

“Just Jason, no last names.”

That part wasn’t too weird, not here anyway. Porn people, just like crypto people, deal in aliases, handles, first names, and other shorthands meant to conceal someone’s real life identity.

“How much do you know about blockchain and crypto?” Jason asked.

“Well, I’m on the internet and it’s 2023, so I guess I know a little about it.”

“Well, let me ask you this. Do you know that middlemen fuck everyone over?”

“No, I didn’t know that.”

“Well, it’s true. Middlemen fuck everyone over. Middlemen take a cut out of every transaction, and the biggest middleman is the government.”

“OK, what does that have to do with porn?”

“We’re here to cut out the middlemen, so that porn stars keep every dollar they make.”

From there, Jason launched into a very confusing pitch that was more jargon than substance. From what I could tell, porn stars are supposed to turn their content into an NFT (somehow), then their fans are supposed to purchase a crypto currency created by a FuckBucks “sister company.” With that crypto currency, the fans are supposed to purchase NFTs from their favorite performers. Then the performers can exchange their crypto for U.S. dollars, but according to Jason, they’d be “fools” to do that because “crypto only goes up in value” and transacting in U.S. dollars isn’t anonymous. It sounded like bullshit to me, but I wanted to know what Jason and team FuckBucks did.

“We put it on the blockchain.”

“But what does that mean?”

“It means it’s on an immutable public ledger.”

“So, it’s not anonymous?”

“The ledger is public, but the people are anonymous.”

We went around in circles on the anonymity question. The more Jason talked, the more I got the feeling that if this thing even worked—a very big if, in my opinion—the only real value proposition was to skirt the law. Either it was a tax dodge, or a way to sell illegal content, I figured. Still, I wanted to know how FuckBucks made money.

“It sounds like you’re the new middleman,” I said.

“No, no. We’re not middlemen because middlemen are evil. We’re the good guys. We’re just here to help.”

“But how do you make money?”

“It’s all DeFi.”

We went around in circles again, only this time there was even more jargon. I was still getting shady middleman vibes, but I wasn’t making any progress with Jason and the FuckBucks business model. Honestly, at a certain point I tuned out and thought about a movie that’s actually called Middlemen. The Luke Wilson film is about the guys who pioneered third-party processing, which allowed early internet porn companies to circumvent credit card company rules banning adult content. I wondered if Jason had seen the movie and if he thought those middlemen were evil? But I didn’t want to go down another rabbit hole, so when Jason stopped talking, I thanked him for his time and promised to buy some crypto and only transact with porn stars on the blockchain from here on out.

“Now you’re talking sense, playa!”

---

---

The last entrepreneur I spoke with was “Jim” Pensacola. I don’t know why “Jim” put quotes around his first name, but there were bigger fish to fry.

“I’m an inventor,” he said. “You ever find yourself fucking—I mean really putting in the work—and you’re wondering how many thrusts you’ve put in?”

Honestly, I had never asked that question in my entire life. But that didn’t matter because “Jim” Pensacola’s question was rhetorical.

“This device right here counts each thrust,” he said. “I call it The Tally Wacker.”

“So… it’s a FitBit for your dick?”

“Exactly! It’s a FitBit for your dick.”

“You can use that slogan if you want.”

“Are you in marketing?”

“No.”

“You should be.”

“OK, so I gotta ask, how did you come up with this?”

“Truth?”

“Or, you can lie to me. I won’t know the difference.”

“God’s honest truth is this: my buddy has a bad back.”

“OK…”

“One day, he tells me he’s got a bad back because of all the fucking he’s doing.”

“That sounds like a humblebrag.”

“Yeah, my friend is a bit of a character. But I said it him, prove it. How many thrusts do you really think you’re doing? He said, a million, or something crazy like that. But I was like, we need data.”

“Smart man.”

“Thank you! So, I went to Google to find out if there was something to measure your thrusts. Turned out, there wasn’t. So I invented it!”

“Are you sure the Apple Watch doesn’t do that? It’s really smart. My Apple Watch knows when I’m asleep, when I’m walking, and when I’m doing yoga. It must know when I’m having sex.”

“It doesn’t. Ask me why.”

“Why?”

“Because I hold the patent on devices that measure your fucking analytics. Apple wants to put that on their watches, Tim Cook has to talk to me.”

I asked “Jim” Pensacola if I could take a picture of his invention. He was happy to oblige, but to me the Tally Wacker looked like nothing more than pedometer grafted onto a cock ring. But what do I know? I never patented anything, and it never once occurred to me to data mine my sex life.

Body diversity

After the convention, I asked Christina if anything surprised her. After all, I was returning to scene of the crime, so to speak, but she was looking at this world through civilian eyes.

“I was not expecting to feel better about my body,” Christina said. “Like, when you say porn star, people have this image in their head of a blonde with big tits, a perfect ass, and a tiny waist. Basically, Barbie, but X-rated.”

“The Platonic porn star ideal. I know it well.”

“Totes. But that’s not it at all. There’s literally all kinds of people doing porn. Black, white, skinny, plus-size, trans. It takes all kinds. I saw several women with butt-acne, and I was like, you go girl, shake that ass!”

Body diversity was a thing when I covered the industry, but we didn’t use that term. Instead, the industry talked about niches. Certain body types—BBW, MILFs, gingers—fit into particular niches, but more often than not, niche-thinking tended to dehumanize performers by reducing people to a fetish.

Sadly, I think that’s still the case in some parts of the industry. But the same trends toward inclusivity and body positivity in the mainstream culture are present in adult entertainment. Whether that’s porn entering the mainstream, or the mainstream influencing porn, however, is a very complicated question. But the long and the short of it is that adult talent more closely resembles the broader society than ever before, and regardless of why that is, I think that’s a very good thing!

He treats objects like women, man

Unless, “you’re a child who wonders into the middle of a movie and wants to know [what’s going on],” you probably caught the pop culture reference that is the title of this subheading. If not, it’s from a scene in The Big Lebowski where the Dude complains about “known pornographer” Jackie Treehorn to the Malibu Sheriff.

The joke is funny because it’s true. In the parlance of the Dude, Jackie Treehorn treated objects like women, and (some elements) of the porn industry treat people that way too.

There’s a lot to say about objectification and exploitation, which is one reason why I plan on writing as many Porn Valley Mystery novels as I can. But as I worked on this piece and thought about how porn had changed for the better—a code of conduct, body positivity, inclusiveness, more opportunities for performers to control their own destiny—I began to worry. Was I presenting the world of adult entertainment through a rose-colored filter?

Maybe.

I saw a lot of progress, but I know that objectification and exploitation are still part of porn because objectification and exploitation are present throughout our society. In my view, porn reflects the culture more than it drives the culture, but that’s debatable.

What seems less debatable, to me anyway, is the existence of a mentality that squeezes out humanity and reduces people to essential organs and one-dimensional avatars. Of course, internet culture—especially as practiced on social media—reduces and dehumanizes too. So while that mentality was on display at AVN, I didn’t have to go to Vegas to find it because all I had to do was log on to social media.

Do you!

One of the liberating things about an adult entertainment convention is that you see so many people embracing their fantasies. It’s empowering to see people live their truth, even if there’s a lot more room for improvement in that department. I suppose that’s why adult entertainment—whether it’s pushed to the fringes of society, or part of the mainstream culture—is so threatening to people who amass power by dishing out shame.

But I didn’t go to AVN’s Adult Entertainment Expo to live my truth. I went to live my fiction. That’s why I put the name of my novel’s main character on my press pass.

While I walked the show floor, several performers noticed the name on my press. At least a few performers looked like they were tempted to say something clever in response to my nom de porn, something like, “no chance,” or “you wish,” or “dream on, sucka.”

But I didn’t choose to call my novel’s main character Heywood Jablowme—as in, hey, would ya blow me?—because of the name’s sexual connotation. I chose it because Heywood Jablowme, like Amanda Hugginkiss, and I.P. Freely are joke names that clever pranksters sometimes manage to slip past unsuspecting reporters tasked with doing person-on-the-street interviews. In other words, it’s a journalism joke, not a porn joke. Maybe that’s why my press pass got the most comments from my fellow reporters.

If you want more laughs and to learn more about adult, check out Not Safe for Work👇

If you’re new here, make sure to subscribe👇

If you’re a returning champ, do me a huge favor and share this with 3 friends 👇

If you’ve got questions, or something to say 👇

And if you still wanna help, hit that ❤️ button👇

1. https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/celebrities/2020/08/20/whats-onlyfans-cardi-b-and-bella-thorne-join-popular-site/3402066001/

2. https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/fart-jar-tiktok-stephanie-matto-interview-1280395/

3. https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucelee/2022/01/08/90-day-fianc-star-sells-farts-in-jars-then-suffers-health-scare/?sh=4c053d5936fc