Porn Purge: They Took My Favorites!

To the brunette in the green sweater getting railed over the desk in the office: I’m going to miss our mornings together. And Desirae and Amber, the foursome at the hotel was one of the wildest displays of atavistic sex I’ve ever witnessed. I came back to you over and over—and you never let me down. I hope to see you both again.

These videos along with seven million others were purged from Pornhub last week after allegations that the site was hosting videos containing underage sex, nonconsensual violence, and rape. It’s the latest example of a behemoth company coming under pressure for unethical and illegal practices. I recently wrote about the unethical practices of Amazon, and the recent antitrust case against Facebook is another. More on that next week.

According to The New York Times, Pornhub is monetizing spy cam videos of women showering, revenge porn, and footage of women being asphyxiated with plastic bags. I’ve never searched for those videos, but my taste occasionally runs on the deviant and depraved side. But I’ve been a porn fan since birth. Porn is oxygen to me. My editor recently asked me if I ever felt guilty for watching. I told him I feel shame and self-loathing when I don’t watch, which is true. 

My relationship with smut goes back to the 1990s, before it was everywhere, when you had to work for it. Back in the day, I bought Hustler Magazine at a smoky news shop downtown to gawk at the darlings of the day: Asia Carrera, Jenna Jameson, and Tori Welles. My friend would take me to a seedy video store on the north side of Syracuse where we’d peruse the XXX titles in the “adult room.” As a 20-year-old, it was exhilarating and dangerous.

When I heard about Pornhub in early 2009, I was dumbfounded. What!? A site where you could watch long unbroken clips and full movies!? It was like discovering a champagne spigot in my bedroom with an endless flow—and it was free. Overnight, my watching went from the casual-pot-smoker level to a back alley junky, banging a gram of H a day. 

And the girls…my darlings…I had many: Eve Lawrence, Kimberly Kane, Chloe Nicole, Faye Reagan. We spent countless hours together. In my mind we became friends and family. My fascination went beyond the carnal. I followed them on social media and watched their interviews. Jenna Haze was getting a psychology degree and giving Ted Talks. Codi Carmichael had a GoFundMe campaign to raise money for a van to start a dog grooming business. I donated twenty bucks. And Sasha Grey was doing YouTube cooking videos, making pumpkin empanadas and Mediterranean chicken with Moroccan watermelon salad.

Much has been written about the darker aspects of the porn world, but porn can be an empowering force for women. It’s about women’s exaltation, not their degradation. Porn’s practically mainstream now. It’s an essential feature of our culture, a multi-billion dollar industry, as American as McDonald’s and Levis and Budweiser. Life without porn would be a dreary, milquetoast affair. 

But like any great thing, there are downsides. Like a drug, your brain can get addicted to the volume and variety of images, which can make it difficult to get turned on without them. Porn Induced Erectile Dysfunction is a real thing, and it’s becoming an epidemic among young men. I have to admit, the last time I was with a woman, I had performance issues. But I had just handed the gal a couple of hundred-dollar bills, so that might have made it difficult to establish the proper mood. 

If you cook eggs everyday, you’ll fix them exactly to your liking, getting the seasoning and yokes just right. You might even use your favorite skillet. But when someone else cooks your eggs, you’ll have to adjust to a slightly new taste. 

Porn is warping perceptions and expectations about sex. The fantasy is becoming reality. Now there’s a generation of girls who think DPs are dandy and that anal is standard on the first date. Not necessarily saying I disagree.

Piracy is another problem. The amount of free content online is making it hard for anyone to make money. An actress told me when she posts her videos, they’re copied and put on multiple websites within minutes. The open culture structure of the Internet has pushed us all into digital ghettos, making it challenging for artists, musicians, and journalists to monetize their content. 

But after years of bad behavior by huge corporations and powerful individuals, the zeitgeist is shifting and a backlash is beginning. We’ve seen this with the Me Too Movement and the downfall of titans like Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein. Mastercard and Visa cut ties with Pornhub last week, forcing them to start cleaning up their act. 

My friend and I were lamenting the loss of our favorite videos on the phone last night. Amateur porn is the real gold of Pornhub—the average Joes and Janes of America banging in trailer parks, the back seats of cars, and cheap motels. I hate to see that go, but it’s a small price to pay for a big company being reined in and made to play by the rules we all have to follow. That’s a step in the right direction for humanity.

The porn will never run dry. There’s enough to keep everyone happy for lifetimes. But I’ll be looking for the green sweater girl. She’s out there somewhere.