Posted by mikezillion at February 25th, 2008

We’re all noticing it. Porn is pretty much a free commodity on the Internet these days.

That’s not to say that there isn’t porn that’s worth paying a premium to see. But so much of the porn distribution going on right now is based on the notion of free loss-leaders that people are having a more difficult time understanding why any porn has to cost money.

It’s possible that our cutting-edge industry has misunderstood the Gillette notion of giving away the razor and selling the blades. For the most part, porn is the blade that sells cable subscriptions, Internet access, computer hardware, fancy televisions, DVD players, and soon Blu-Ray players and HD video downloads.

Maybe we should be selling porn to the companies that make these products and services, rather than trying to squeeze the last few pennies out of the consumers who buy them.

Visualize that for a moment.

Without porn, there isn’t much of a market for cutting-edge passive entertainment electronics. That may sound like an insular position from a pornographer like myself, but give me some credit. I’ve seen the history of entertainment media. Passive entertainment like TV, movies, and porn is losing precious attention share to interactive recreational entertainment like mobile phones and video games.

We’ve already got video games pushing movies and television out of the way in terms of economic impact, and blurring the boundaries between entertainment and recreation. Passive media is hurting badly, and Hollywood is racing to integrate porn elements into everything they do, whether it’s bouncy babes with big titties selling the latest teen flick, or increasingly exposed hot young beefcake stars drawing in viewers for yet another cookie-cutter reality show. That’s porn. Most of it would have gotten the producers and distributors thrown in jail forty years ago.

Folks are losing interest in passive media. Porn generates interest. Human nature seems to dictate that it’s the cock, tits, and ass that we haven’t seen yet that we most want to look at, so new porn will always have a built-in audience. It’s the freshness of porn that keeps viewers coming back. And without those passive viewers, there isn’t going to be a market for those high-end entertainment products and services. Porn drives the infrastructure of the media industry. With so much free porn available, it’s no wonder that one of the few areas of our economy where prices are getting lower for products with better and better features is entertainment electronics. And media companies try to sweep up the dregs by selling consumers the same old content in the latest format.

We’re not going to stop making porn. Folks aren’t going to stop watching it. The market won’t stop allowing much of what we make to be available for free online. The idea of paying for porn, music, movies, television, articles, etc. may seem strange and archaic to the consumer of 2012. He may pay a monthly service fee for a hardware/software/network access package. He may never see any advertisements which are not positioned as product placement. He may pay for personalization of his services only in bulk, but never pay for individual content items. His attention is what he brings to the marketplace.

We need to consider today what that consumer of tomorrow would be willing to pay for.