ErosBlog

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ErosBlog posts containing "curation"

 
September 30th, 2017 -- by Bacchus

Movie Club Guild 8mm Nudie Films: An ErosBlog Project?

In what was doubtless the long hard winter of 1955-1956, Mr. Earl Stout of Central, Alaska (per Wikipedia, then a town with a declining population of perhaps 35 people) received five or more air mail deliveries of 8mm films. Roughly fifty years after he received them, some of his 8mm film deliveries turned up at an estate sale in Fairbanks, where I bought them for small money:

nudie loops 8mm film collection

Earl Stout is known to local history; according to the “Central Chatter” column in the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner of December 9, 1959, he was then “a long-time grader man” for the Bureau Of Public Roads, retiring from winter road-clearing duty to be replaced by one Tom Kennedy. This would mean Earl was nearing retirement (at least from heavy road-grader operations) at the time he ordered the films.

November 15 1955 mail order 8mm porn loops from Movie Club Guild

To be precise about what was in Earl’s collection as it came to me, the boxes are sized to hold four films per box, but one film is either missing or was never included; there are 19 films in total. As you can see, one mailing box is so “plain brown wrapper” that it has neither return address nor even (by accident or design) legible postmark; the others are from the “Movie Club Guild” (about which more later) of Burbank, California. The unevenly hand-stamped “titles” on the internal film reel boxes constititute the totality of the labeling that exists anywhere in the collection.

December 15 1955 order of 8mm porno films from Movie Club Guild

At the time I first bought these, it was clear they were porn, but much more than that was hard to determine. Then and now, I didn’t (and don’t) have any 8mm-viewing tech. I’m old enough to remember when household 8mm projectors for watching “home movies” were common, but that was a long time ago. I’ve seen projectors and even table-top illuminated viewers (for simple cut-and-splice editing) at garage sales quite recently, but not for prices I wanted to pay. A scanner doesn’t really work either (something about reflected light) although it’s enough to confirm in the roughest sort of way what’s on the film:

three frames from bull 8mm nudie loop

Back in the early aughts when I bought these, I was quite flush with porn-selling money. I didn’t care about technical details, or (back then) much about curation; I just wanted to get them digitized and sling them up onto the internet for everybody to watch. Trouble was, back then there were no nifty $300 units on Amazon to do the work; you had to send them out to a bureau (who might easily reject porn work, with or without returning your films) or buy thousands of dollars worth of equipment. So I left the films in the care of a buddy of mine, a porn collector and film hobbyist who (a) already possessed much of the necessary equipment; and (b) was willing to do the work, or at least begin it. Of course, I also had to give him a wad of cash to buy the remainder of the necessary equipment, but I figured it would be worth it.

February 07 1956 shipment of dirty movies from movie club guild

Let’s just say: that didn’t work out. I’ll not say a harsh word against him; we’re still friends. He had some setbacks in life, which happens, and some heavy burdens to carry. The money got spent, the films didn’t get digitized, and he endured a lot of genuine shit that made my 8mm nudie loops fall off his list of actual problems. And thus, as they say in all the old stories, for many years the films were lost — not the “we’ll never find them” kind of lost, but rather the “I know they’re somewhere in that room and should turn up eventually” kind.

February 1957 box of 8mm dirty movies from movie club guild

My friend was not wrong, either, about what kind of lost they were. Turn up, the films eventually did. And when they did turn up, my friend dutifully dropped them in the mail to me, for which I’m grateful.

April 1957 mailing of 8mm porn films

What’s actually on the films? Well, that’s an interesting question. I’ll have to get a viewer and find out. Honestly, I don’t expect hard-core porn. These were sold through the mail “on the tease” without much description, and there isn’t much cultural record of a big fan club for them. Most likely, they are fairly tame striptease “nudie” stuff. If they were very awesome at all, you’d expect there would be an avid bunch of collectors swapping copies and reviews, and the internet doesn’t reflect much sign of that. Nope, the business model of the Movie Club Guild was to send these films “on approval” (that means free, sort of; they would come in the mail automatically on a regular schedule, and you could avoid paying if you sent them back promptly enough, or pay the bill that came with them if you wanted to receive the next shipment on schedule.) There’s not much indication that the Movie Club Guild ever advertised their titles publicly, or had much of a catalog; instead they used magazine ads with various come-ons. Here’s one from Man’s Adventure in 1957, the closest-in-time Movie Club Guild advertisement I can find to when my films were shipped:

Movie Club Guild 1957 ad in Man's Adventure

I don’t believe the ad’s bullshit claims for one second about the contents of the films:

Secret Producers Selection!

First time offered! The startling and dynamic party films formerly seen only by Hollywood’s inner circle of sophisticated producers! Privately staged — feature beautiful showgirls and starlets demonstrating their their special talents when on the way up. A most unusual find for the collector of the bizarre!

Here are more ads from a few years later, by which time the claims had gotten much more dull and generic, although I’m sure the film loops were no different:

scan dolls magazine ad for movie club guild

1960 movie club guild advert

In any case, by 1961 the game was all over. The U.S. Postal Service shut down the Movie Club Guild for “depositing or causing to be deposited in the mails information as to where, how, or from whom obscene, lewd, lascivious, indecent, filthy or vile material may be obtained.” Remarkably, the postal authorities seem to have reached this conclusion based on the tame magazine advertisements alone, without ever actually viewing any of the actual Movie Club Guild films.

Meanwhile, back in small-town 1950s Alaska, imagine for a moment what the sociology of all this may have been like. The town is so small that the postmaster knows what everybody gets in the mail, just by looking at the outside of the packages. And there probably isn’t central grid electricity. What kind of chutzpah does it take to fire up your noisy private generator to watch porn movies, when everybody in town will hear the noise and have a conversation about whether you’re running your electric shaver or watching your pornos again?

Close examination of the Movie Club Guild ads, though, makes it clear that the company offered a free viewer that was very low-tech — probably a plastic (?) reel-to-reel device powered by ambient light, hand cranked and not much different from a child’s Viewmaster toy. No generator (necessarily) required! It’s true that the one film I’ve taken out of its box so far does show one of those distinctive “hot bulb” damage blisters that you would always get when a film would jam in a projector, but that could have happened much later in the film’s existence.

Bottom line: these films were mailed on approval, without having to be carefully described or advertised in any particular detail; they were cheap, and there was no branding or star power or box art or labeling or marketing of any kind at the per-film level. And, seventy years later, there’s no internet fan club or collecting community, even though these things ought to be the 8mm-porn equivalent of Book Club editions of paper books: the most numerous type of this sort of thing available to collectors, given that they were basically broadcast by mail like fish spawn to anybody who could muster a pencil and a stamp. My expectations, therefore, are not high.

But still: nineteen nudie films that maybe don’t exist on the internet. No matter how tame or lame, to me this is like a red flag in front of a bull. You know what I am going to do; the only question is how long it’s going to take me. I just need to scrape up the cash and time from all my other projects and obligations.

Eventually, I will want to:

  1. Round up a simple viewer and inventory the 19 films by whatever title and credit frames may exist on them, the existence of at least some of which is visible to the naked eye;
  2. Research the films to whatever extent possible to make sure I am not wasting effort on digitizing films that may already be digitally available;
  3. Obtain a decent device for digitizing 8mm movies;
  4. Digitize them;
  5. Share highlights here and with my Patreon patrons as appropriate;
  6. Find a secure long-term home for the digitized movies (probably the Internet Archive)

None of this is going to happen quickly; I’ve learned that digital curation projects like this take enormous amounts of time, and there will be hardware costs as well on this one. I’m staking out an ambition here, not a schedule. But I’ll do what I can in the time that I can find, with the money that I’ve got. As always, if you’re really enthusiastic about me making this or any other ErosBlog work a higher priority, an ErosBlog Patreon pledge is the way to encourage that!

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August 17th, 2017 -- by Bacchus

Vintage Erotic Medical Exam

cute lesbians playing doctor and patient grinning at each other as the patient begins to pull her shirt off over her head

One of the most wonderful things about vintage erotica is that it’s often impossible to describe in words without offending someone. For instance, if I describe this as two women “playing doctor” I might be accused of infantalizing them and reinforcing sexist stereotypes of male-only professionalism. Likewise if I go with the “student nurses” tag that’s attached to various fragments of this set in places on the internet. However if I go the other way and describe this as an erotic medical exam, I’ll offend medical people who’ll huff that this sort of play violates all medical ethics, can never happen, and should never be ascribed to purported professionals. See? I cannot escape all the winning!

patient playing doctor holds her shirt up and cups her breasts with her other hand while doctor extends stethoscope

Nonetheless I was delighted to discover this set of sixteen vintage “doctor and patient” erotic photos. The participants are clearly delighted to be on camera, the play is tame to the point of innocence, and really all it needs is kittens and puppies to be any more perfect. I’m guessing that at some point the “Doctor” found out that the “Patient” has been ignoring doctor’s orders (smoking? unsafe sex?) because the medical exam eventually concludes with a mild spanking scene…

patient modestly holds her blouse over her bare breasts while the nurse or doctor takes a note of her vital signs

Sadly the collection as I found it was in the form of tiny scans (many no more than about 200 pixels wide) from the 20th-century “slow modems” era. I’ve put many Patreon-enabled hours (hint hint) into reverse image searches to try and expand the “10/P” collection (“10/P” being the identifying mark placed on the negatives or perhaps the prints by the photographer and/or publisher). I’ve also worked hard to find larger, higher-quality scans. In the end these searchers were, inevitably, only partially successful. The photos you see here are the best results I could assemble for you: lightly cleaned up, cropped as necessary and where practical, and regularized to 320 and 512 pixel sizes. If anybody out there has more images from this set, or larger cleaner scans of these images, please get in touch!

For purists, each photo appearing here is linked to the unaltered version from which I “regularized” it. Because I had to choose between multiple different source scans of the same photo in some cases — sometimes using a larger scan with less visual detail or clarity — I’ve assembled a zip set of all the originals and made it available to my Patreon patrons. (I figure that anybody who shares this level of obsessive interest in photographic provenance with me would have to be among my patrons, right? Right?)

doctor, my shoulder is making a funny noise

“Your shoulder sounds good, now let’s see what kind of noises your boobs are making.”

listening for boob noises -- yes your breasts sound delicious!

“Doctor, are you hearing yourself?”

listening to herself with her own stethoscope

“Clearly this medical exam can go no further until we both shuck these heavy skirts off.”

taking off skirts and dresses for better medical fetish playtime

“Could not hear your boob properly with my dress on, let’s try again!”

naked chest exam student nurse

nude chest exam and lesbian medical fetish play

“Now bend over! I can’t hear your lungs if the photographer can’t see your pretty bottom, dear.”

listening to her back with a stethoscope while her bare butt sticks out for the camera

“All right, time to check you for liver and kidney noises…”

more ass displaying and medical listening

“Well, doctor, what do you think? Have I convinced you yet that I’m younger and prettier and healthier than you?”

pinup posing on her knees during medical exam

“Hmmm, we’ll see, this medical exam is not over yet. I need to look down your throat and check you for … uh, cold sores, yeah, cold sores.”

oral exam  time

“Hey, what’s this I see? Pubic hairs? The same color as my husband has? And you think it’s funny to laugh right into the bell of my stethoscope? Why, I ought to slap your tits so hard they fall off!”

angry doctor breast slapping her patient after looking in her mouth

“I’ll make you pay, you little shameless hussy!”

hard medical spanking by hand from her doctor right there on the exam bench

“Doctor, I don’t have to put up with this from you! Because I have heeded the wise words of John Willie and you have not! So you’d better put down that stethoscope. Don’t worry, you’ll be able to hear what I’m about to do to you just fine without it!”

turning the tables, patient prepares to spank her doctor

Folks, I hope you enjoyed this image set. The curation effort at this level of detail literally consumed an entire corporate-style full-length work day. This is the sort of work I’d like to do all the time, but it’s simply not possible; most days, I have to do too many other things to pay the bills. If you would like to see more work like this, please consider supporting my Patreon. No pledge is too small to be helpful!

 
December 30th, 2016 -- by Bacchus

2016: ErosBlog’s Greatest Hits

favorite posts of 2016 at ErosBlog

ErosBlog is now in its fifteenth year, and yet I’ve never done one of those statistics-based retrospectives that are popular this time of year. I prefer to look forward rather than backward, but if we view my new Patreon initiative as the bones of an effort to do more of what makes ErosBlog worthwhile (which I do), might it not be worth looking at some statistics about what kinds of posts actually bring people here?

Here are the top five ErosBlog posts of 2016, as measured by Google Analytics data from 2016. By “top” I mean that these are the most popular entrance pages for people who were linked here (or sent by search engines) to a specific post:

  1. FBI’s Email Broadcast Stings Four CollarMe Users: My breathless rant about mass surveillance, law enforcement incitement versus entrapment, and official hysteria over imaginary human trafficking.
  2. Breaking Velma’s Snooping Habit: My soft-core summary in eight photos of some very hard-core Velma-from-Scooby-Doo parody bondage porn.
  3. French Pussy Spanking: A piece of vintage French pussy-spanking artwork. (To my shame, unattributed.)
  4. A Nude Celebration Of Sports Victory: Some celebratory force-you-to-grin sports nudity that went viral after it was falsely attributed to a team then in the news for an amazing string of victories.
  5. Vintage Vibrator Porn: My deep dive (including twelve screenshots and substantial narration) into a vintage French porn film starring two friendly massage nurses with an early electric vibrator/massager and some impressive oral skills (plus a willingness to share).

As top posts go, I’m rather pleased with these. My Patreon pitch focused on vintage erotica curation, better provenancing of web erotica in general, and long-form writing about threats to the adult web. Four out of five top posts are square matches for those categories of effort, and though the fifth (the Velma parody porn) was created as affiliate-link porn marketing to pay the bills, it stands as a photo essay that’s not without entertainment value. Meanwhile I’m particularly proud of my provenance-cleanup on the deservedly-popular soccer-team-in-the-shower photo. And the unpacking of the vintage French vibrator porn movie is precisely the sort of work that makes me happiest as a sex blogger.

None of these were quick or easy posts; the fastest was undoubtedly the Velma post, but all the rest of these were multi-hour efforts (especially if you include the time I spent breaking my teeth on the fruitless pussy-spanking provenance). Making and choosing and cleaning up the screen shots for the French vibrator porn was particularly slow and painstaking; I remember that project consuming the best part of one whole day. So it’s good to look back and see that these were the posts that brought the most people to ErosBlog.

I should emphasize these stats are all about people who arrive at ErosBlog from somewhere else. They don’t document the preferences of all the faithful readers who click an ErosBlog bookmark every day or two and read whatever is here. What say you, loyal ErosBlog fans? What were your favorite ErosBlog posts in 2016? Let me know in the comments…

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December 16th, 2016 -- by Bacchus

Please Support The ErosBlog Patreon

I’m delighted to announce that after months of hemming, hawing, and uncertain faffing about, I’ve set up a Patreon for ErosBlog:

Please support erosblog on Patreon

That means it’s now possible for me to ask for your support. My goal? A community-and-fan-supported ErosBlog, with more in-depth writing and a lot more of my “deep dives” into erotica research and curation.

I’ll let you read the full pitch on Patreon. It’s long, because I’m a wordy bastard. If you still want more explanation after all that, you masochist, try reading this.)

I soft-launched the Patreon a couple days ago. I am all agog at the generous pledges already received — OMG THANK YOU SO MUCH!!! Together we are already half the way to my first modest pledge goal. When we get there, I’ve promised to write up a detailed survey of the tools and methods I use for image provenance research.

Don’t worry, though! My Patreon initiative is all about using Patreon’s tools and your generosity to support ErosBlog, not vice-versa. I don’t plan to post very much Patrons-only content on the Patreon platform. I will post there a few things that make sense: some exclusive goodies to entice pledges, and some “extras” from the vintage erotica curation that the Patreon support will (I hope) enable. But I promise I won’t turn ErosBlog into a “I did some nifty stuff, you don’t get to see it unless you go somewhere else and make a pledge” platform. That’s totally not what this is for. The goal is to make ErosBlog stronger and better, with your support.

For the same reason, my pledge rewards are about service to the ErosBlog community: taking your requests for blog content and direction, writing you dirty limericks, doing porn provenance research for you, and helping you promote your own adult-community stuff.

So that’s the pitch. I want to do more of what makes ErosBlog great. I want to do it harder. If you — the ErosBlog community of fans, friends, and supporters — want that too, this is the way to make it happen. Thank you!

P.S. Even if you can’t pledge right now, letting people know about my Patreon also helps enormously. After 14 years ErosBlog must have many tens of thousands of readers and fans who no longer visit every day. If you’ve got an appropriate social media channel, please consider using it to mention this Patreon to them?

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July 28th, 2016 -- by Bacchus

Patreon’s New Stance On Adult Content

There is news today that Patreon has liberalized (a little bit) its stance on what it used to call “NSFW” and now calls “Adult Content”. An article by Lux Alptraum on Motherboard somewhat oversells the news with the misleading headline “Patreon Ends Payments Discrimination Against Adult Content”. Unfortunately the headline doesn’t mean what you’d think it means, because “Adult Content” in this context is a Patreon term of art that (a) Patreon refuses to or is unable to define; and that (b) explicitly excludes “porn” (again not defined). Nonetheless; there is actual good news in the story, and what appears to be real progress on the payments front for adult creators.

Last week [Patreon] sent out an email announcing a couple of changes for its more risque creators. Most notably, creators operating under the “adult content” banner on Patreon can now accept payments through PayPal (or, more accurately, its subsidiary Braintree).

There are a lot of reasons to feel excited about this. For one thing, it straight up makes things easier for Patreon’s Adult Content creators. Until now, Adult Content creators could only accept payments through credit cards, while other types of creators have had PayPal as an additional option for backers. Now, there’s no difference between Adult Content creators and other creators when it comes to payment processing options (though Patreon does distinguish between the two camps in other ways; Adult Content accounts aren’t discoverable through the site’s search function).

According to the Patreon email, the company went aggressively to the mat with the PayPal people, and succussfully argued that these transactions are not any higher-risk than Patreon’s other business:

For creators that have been with us for a while, you may remember that we used to allow this functionality in the past, and we only removed it after PayPal threatened to stop all payments to Patreon. Unfortunately, this is a common issue in the payments industry, both because payments for adult content are subject to a higher rate of chargebacks, and because of an aversion to the content itself among some payment processors.

After many long discussions we were able to convince PayPal, or more specifically their subsidiary Braintree, that Adult Content creators on Patreon are not a serious risk. Our content policy, and the nature of subscription payments, means that Adult Content creators on Patreon are less risky than most creators making adult content. We also have a very diverse mix of content types, so even if our Adult Content creators are higher risk than other types of creators, Patreon as a whole is less risky.

That’s good news. But as I wrote back in May:

I am reluctant to use a crowdfunding platform that’s openly hostile to porn. There seems to be a crowdfunding-industry consensus around allowing adult projects (sort of) as long as they are not “pornography” or “sexually explicit”, leaving those terms undefined. The rules on all platforms currently seem to boil down to some version of “We’ll allow your adult project, but if it becomes contentious or attracts any sort of negative attention, we’re reserving the right to redefine whatever you’re doing as ‘porn’ and blow you off our platform while pretending you were never welcome in the first place.”

At that time, Patreon’s policy was worded like this:

Patreon is not for pornography, but some of the world’s most beautiful and historically significant art often depicts nudity and sexual expression. Because of that, we allow nudity and suggestive imagery, as long as it is marked NSFW. If your work contains nudity or any material that could potentially be offensive to users, make absolutely sure to mark the page as NSFW in the creator description when creating your page. Think of the policy as allowing “R Rated” movies… but not porn.

Their email from last week says:

We are also continuing to clarify what content is acceptable when flagged as Adult Content and what content is not allowed on Patreon.

However, Patreon’s new clarity has not reached the policy, which is word-for-word identical to the old policy except for the change from “NSFW” to “Adult Content”:

Patreon is not for pornography, but some of the world’s most beautiful and historically significant art often depicts nudity and sexual expression. Because of that, we allow nudity and suggestive imagery, as long as it is marked as Adult Content. If your work contains nudity or any material that could potentially be offensive to users, make absolutely sure to mark the page as Adult Content in the creator description when creating your page. Think of the policy as allowing “R Rated” movies… but not porn.

So where does that leave people with adult projects who want to use Patreon? Pretty much in the same place they were before: don’t call it porn, and hope nobody complains. Or as Lux Alptraum puts it:

So where does this all leave indie smut creators? Only time will tell, but for now a bit of cautious optimism seems in order. Adult themed comics like Erika Moen’s Oh Joy Sex Toy would seem to be completely in the clear; as are art nudes and dirty minded podcasts. But people who want to photo and video document actual people fucking? Well, that might come down to the age old question of “art” versus “porn.”

Back in May I wrote that I was reluctant to use a platform that makes me lie about what I do, which I conceptuallize as “porn, or I’m doing it wrong.”

I’m proud of the fact that everything I do is porn, even if it’s also erotic art curation or forensic photoarcheology or deep-dive provenance research into viral photographs or reluctant investigative journalism and cynical commentary about platforms used by pornography enthusiasts. So I’m looking for a crowdfunding platform that won’t make me lie about what I love to do. I don’t doubt that with a bit of careful fancy-dancing I could use one of the porn-squeamish platforms, at least for awhile. But I would hate to get invested (or to get my patrons invested) in a platform where the official policy is to prohibit porn officially while tolerating it on a case-by-case basis as long as it doesn’t get too uppity.

And that’s why I’m torn about the news from Patreon. On the one hand, they still prohibit porn while refusing to say what they mean by that. On the other hand, they have promised greater clarity to come, and it’s clear that they actually went to bat with the payment providers in order to improve their platform for adult content creaters. Is it still fair for cynical me (who sees #pornocalypse under every rock) to call Patreon a “porn-squeamish” platform? Or should we credit them for taking this fight to the payment processors, and give them a free pass (until they abuse it) about maintaining a squishy “no porn” policy, especially if that squishy policy may have helped them in winning some very real progress with PayPal/Braintree?

I’ll admit I’m of two minds. I’m so offended by undefined “no porn” policies that I want to piss on the toes of every company that trots one out. But I also find myself tempted to give Patreon the benefit of the doubt just now. It’s possible they’re doing the best they can for adult content creators, in the context of a business/financial environment that is implacably hostile to us.

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May 25th, 2016 -- by Bacchus

ErosBlog: The Good Parts, And How To Get More Such

ErosBlog has been rumbling along now for more than thirteen years. There’s no shame in admitting that sometimes, the blog — which is me — has gotten stuck in a rut. There are plenty of posts I’m proud of, sure. But too often, here we are: still in the rut.

On too many days, an Erosblog post is one line of text, one image, and perhaps an attribution. My loyal readers deserve better. What does a post like that have to offer, that would make ErosBlog more worth visiting than a randomly-selected porn Tumblr?

sample tumblr-style erosblog post

I believe my very best sex blogging work has more in common with the Bernard Montorgueil post I put up yesterday. I’m proudest of the posts that synthesize my fascination with obscure porn, my decades of “experience” as a porn enthusiast, my formidable search skills, and my willingness to pursue a research project down into the tiniest and most ridiculous electronic dead ends and internet rat-holes. Sometimes I may call this higher-quality work by different names, like “erotic art curation or forensic photoarcheology or deep-dive provenance research into viral photographs or reluctant internet-business journalism with cynical commentary.” But call them what you will, all these higher-quality posts share one thing in common: every last one of them took at least half a day to create. That’s minimum. Some take much longer. A search-heavy research project can consume dozens of hours, because there’s always a deeper rabbit warren to get lost in, or another broken link to pursue into the most gruesome depths of the Internet Archives.

On the other hand, I can find and select and crop and make a one-image post in five minutes or less. Is it any wonder that ErosBlog can sometimes go days or even weeks looking like just another slow-paced image blog?

The brutal truth is that, as a business, ErosBlog doesn’t generate enough revenue to justify spending half of my work day (or even longer) on a single post. Once upon a time, it did, back when a lot more people still bought porn-site subscriptions after following my affiliate links. These days? No. Most of the time I spend here now is time I have to steal from better-paying work that I enjoy rather less. Without boring you with my troubles (we all haz them) even the “better-paying work” I steal the ErosBlog time from doesn’t pay all that awesomely well. To meet my responsibilities properly, I “ought” to be doing more of that work, while further reducing the time I spend here.

I would find that outcome…unwelcome. Maybe you would, too.

This is all to explain why I’m looking at the crowdfunding model, and especially the recurring-patronage version that Patreon has pioneered. Perhaps ten thousand people still look at ErosBlog on an average day; that’s down considerably from our heyday, but it remains a lot of people. If I had an easy way to collect small sums on a regular basis from a slim percentage of my most appreciative readers, it could radically transform the economics of the venture. Set it up correctly (and this I consider to be the genius of the Patreon-style model) and it would actually create daily incentives to do more of the good work, and less of the lazy stuff.

Of course, I might instead make the humbling discovery that nobody values this project enough to contribute actual money to its maintenance and improvement. That, too, would be useful to know. Then maybe I could do a little more paying work and still find time to return to my computer gaming habit!

That wouldn’t completely suck.

computer-gaming-hobby

This post is here because you’re most likely going to be seeing “fund me” pitches in the near future. I think it’s only fair to let my loyal readers know why that will be happening. If you’re reading all of this, you definitely qualify as a loyal reader! Thanks for that.

 
May 23rd, 2016 -- by Bacchus

Crowdfunding: Is There Porn Of It?

For reasons that will be explained in a post appearing soon, I am looking into crowdfunding (preferably Patreon-style) in order to try and improve the depth and quality of posting here at ErosBlog. However, I am reluctant to use a crowdfunding platform that’s openly hostile to porn. There seems to be a crowdfunding-industry consensus around allowing adult projects (sort of) as long as they are not “pornography” or “sexually explicit”, leaving those terms undefined. The rules on all platforms currently seem to boil down to some version of “We’ll allow your adult project, but if it becomes contentious or attracts any sort of negative attention, we’re reserving the right to redefine whatever you’re doing as ‘porn’ and blow you off our platform while pretending you were never welcome in the first place.”

Trouble is, I’m proud of the fact that everything I do is porn, even if it’s also erotic art curation or forensic photoarcheology or deep-dive provenance research into viral photographs or reluctant investigative journalism and cynical commentary about platforms used by pornography enthusiasts. So I’m looking for a crowdfunding platform that won’t make me lie about what I love to do. I don’t doubt that with a bit of careful fancy-dancing I could use one of the porn-squeamish platforms, at least for awhile. But I would hate to get invested (or to get my patrons invested) in a platform where the official policy is to prohibit porn officially while tolerating it on a case-by-case basis as long as it doesn’t get too uppity.

Here are the results of my first round of quick research into the porn policies at a few of the most popular platforms that sometimes allow adult projects:

  1. Patreon: “Patreon is not for pornography.”

    Patreon is not for pornography, but some of the world’s most beautiful and historically significant art often depicts nudity and sexual expression. Because of that, we allow nudity and suggestive imagery, as long as it is marked NSFW. If your work contains nudity or any material that could potentially be offensive to users, make absolutely sure to mark the page as NSFW in the creator description when creating your page. Think of the policy as allowing “R Rated” movies… but not porn.

  2. Indiegogo: currently prohibits “sexually explicit” projects.

    Do not post images or videos that are sexually explicit or post links to sites that contain sexually explicit material.

  3. Kickstarter: “We prohibit…pornographic material.”
  4. Offbeatr: Closed 2/8/16. Sounds like #pornocalypse in action:

    We’d like to thank all our customers and users for supporting Offbeatr throughout our years but the website will be closing indefinitely due to changes in corporate structure.

So, what have I missed? Is there a single crowdfunding platform out there that is officially open to projects featuring pornography and sexually explicit material?

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