Image of Dana A from this Met Art gallery.
A long, *long* time ago I wrote an article for AVN Online about what a smart, business-savvy porn version of Flickr would look like, relying on peer-to-peer social media structures to make a personalized user experience and foster brand loyalty, and yes, community. So it’s with great interest that I see Met Art rolling out a new feature this week: User Profiles. I often post Met Art galleries for your free perusal; yes, I’m on their affiliate roll but I encourage you not to buy anything and to just enjoy the freebees because erotic entertainment and sex ed mixed together are part of my subversive mission. But I also deliberately choose Met Art among a couple others because they have excellent photogs, explicit shoots, pretty girls, and they are exactly what Playboy should become if they want to survive (as “classy” porn), or even get close to erotic relevance these days. Anyway, add it to your list, my dear erotic anthropologists as yet another permutation of porn integrating social media models (like user profiles and shareability) to evolve into pr0n 2.0.
I agree – this is a great direction for online porn to be going. Social media is definitely the way to bring the creative / tech communities together and it only makes sense to bring together those creative techies who are into sexy things.
I honestly see more in common between Playboy and Met Art or ERROTICA. All three lead can lead to masturbation. But that is my subjective interpretation. What I would like to hear is a truly valid argument regarding anti-Playboy, anti-Met Art, anti-ERROTICA or anti-porn in general. I am unconvinced by arguments of objectification of women, commodification of sex or unrealistic beauty standards. Every anti-porn feminist has at some point masturbated to some erotic imagery (unless they are religious right-wing nuts) and the very same anti-porn arguments could be made. There will never be an absolute dividing line between “classy” and “bad” porn that all will agree upon. There will only be porn which will please some and at the same time offend others.