Porntifications

Posted by mikezillion at June 29th, 2008

It’s true. I may be a big, burly, bearish guy, but there’s something about hundreds and thousands of people joining together to celebrate pride in what was so recently “the love that dare not speak its name” that really gets to me. Especially when I see the PFLAG group march past, or the happy faces on the gay families with adopted children.

Of course, this year is particularly moving. It’s barely been a month since the California Supreme Court decided that it was just plain silly to prevent loving couples from marrying, just because their plumbing wasn’t in the conventional locations for married couples. San Francisco Pride was brimming with gold leaf lettering against white backgrounds, and it seemed as if everyone was either wearing a bridal veil or applauding someone who was.

And it just makes me well up with tears thinking about it. How far we’ve come. How optimistic we can be about the upcoming elections in November. How likely it is that the people of California will side with their Supreme Court judges and say no to a proposed ban on recognition of gay marriage. Not to mention all the other good changes that could be coming in Washington.

San Francisco is just an isolated bubble of sanity in a swirling sea of confusion today. I didn’t see any protestors, and I didn’t think to look for them. I saw gay and straight people of all ages gathering together to celebrate our pride in being ourselves, whatever the social and practical costs. In the end, what else do we have but who we are?

As a gay man, I take pride in my identity, and in the enhanced perspective it has created in my life. As a bear, I also take pride in allowing myself to be big, to be furry, to be comfortable in my own body, the way God made it, and the way Nature has sculpted it. 

Blessings of the day to everyone out there. Find your Pride, and own it. Woof!

Posted by mikezillion at March 25th, 2008

Subliminal advertising was a big thing a few decades ago. Then they realized that it didn’t translate into immediate sales, and the trend died out. But marketers these days are looking further down the road than the immediate sale. We’re learning now that brand identification can lead to later sales, or even unconscious actions, if planned carefully.

A new study about the longer-term impact of subliminal exposure to recognizable corporate logos shows that the brand identity does carry a message which affects the viewer’s behavior. In this case, flashing an Apple logo briefly and incidentally while testing an unrelated skill encouraged users to think more creatively in a subsequent test than flashing an IBM logo.

The product placement folks are going to enjoy playing with the implications of this. And the question for you and all the other marketers out there is: “What does your brand identity imply?” For example, what do each of the following names do to the observer’s stream of consciousness?

• Chi Chi Larue
• Starbucks
• COLT
• Michael Lucas
• Vivid
• McDonald’s
• Hustler
• Penthouse
• BearParty
• CyberSocket
• Disney
• Oprah
• Playboy
• Hillary
• [insert your name here]

Put a random object next to each of these names, and notice how the name colors your perception of that object. A Penthouse telephone is very different from an Oprah telephone, or a Disney telephone. Once you’ve got that image in mind, how will it affect the next actions you take?

How can your brand make conscious use of that subconscious brand recognition factor?

Posted by mikezillion at March 19th, 2008

They’re always looking for ways to control the marketplace of ideas. I am a big support of protecting minors from having any access to pornography, but I surprise myself when it comes to violent video games.

Violence, unlike sexuality, is a part of life from the very beginning. I don’t think there’s anything particularly mature about wanting to blow somebody else up. It’s one of those emotional issues which we all need to learn to deal with right from the very start.

Sexuality, on the other hand, is something which arrives later in life. Freud might argue that point, but I contend that it’s worth preserving the innocence of youth around issues of sexuality.

I don’t see the argument for restricting children from access to violent video games. It’s not as if the games teach them anything they won’t come up with in their own imaginations in the face of ordinary childhood life. We can’t insulate them from their anger or frustration, so why should we limit their access to tools and techniques for learning how to deal with it?

I don’t play video games. Never have. I have friends who do, and they don’t seem any more or less inclined to use violence than I am. It’s just a way that they deal with those feelings. I deal with mine in other way. So do you.

Restrict children from access to pornography because there is a valid reason for doing so; they are not yet mature enough to understand those issues. But even the youngest of babies get frustrated and scream. Don’t pretend that you can protect a child from rage.

Posted by mikezillion at February 14th, 2008

I know this is a bit off-topic, but bear with me. It turns out that there is an epidemic of teenagers and pre-teens actually choking themselves and each other with bungee cords, ropes, belts, or anything else handy. They say that the effect when the choking cuts off is a dreamlike state.
Now the Center for Disease Control has issued a warning to parents for telltale signs. Apparently some 82 confirmed youth deaths have been linked to this practice.
This makes me wonder about the practice of auto-erotic asphyxiation; a similar practice in which men cut off the blood supply to the brain at the point of orgasm to achieve a more powerful sensation. There are close to 1,000 deaths annually from this. It’s not the sort of thing that I imagine folks discover too often on their own. It has to be learned from somewhere. Probably more folks know about it now thanks to the Internet than ever before. Just the way kids are learning from their peers online and offline to strangle themselves for the temporary high that results from blood loss to the brain.
The question in my mind is one of censorship. Folks try to censor porn all the time, arguing that it is an unhealthy expression of sexual deviance since it takes sexuality out of the context of a committed monogamous heterosexual lifestyle. But only the most extreme voices (like the late Andrea Dworkin) argue that porn is harmful in and of itself. More rational minds agree that porn should at the very least not be made available to minors.
But is it legitimate to try to control the sources of information which spread the technique of self-strangulation? What about simply trying to control the spread of that information to minors? And what about the argument that teaching kids not to strangle themselves is just an invitation for them to try it in order to see what the fuss is about?
I would be interested to hear more opinions about this.

Posted by mikezillion at January 26th, 2008

52 ABC Television affiliate stations face a proposed fine of $1.4 million for showing a 2003 episode of NYPD Blue in which a woman’s butt was exposed and displayed for several seconds. The fine is based on the assumption that a butt is a sexual organ. Challenging that assumption was the basis of ABC’s classically Disney-esque defense to the charge, but that argument was rejected.

I say this is great news for butt sex. Finally, a mainstream endorsement. Huzzah!

Posted by mikezillion at December 29th, 2007

Don’t know why I found this article on the Freakonomics blog so damn sexy. It describes how senior Naval officer candidates enforce discipline at the meal table. They call it “eating by the numbers,” and it involves a complex and very specific ritualized procedure for each bit of food taken. Every step of the process–and there are eight before each bite may be swallowed–is done in unison with all the other cadets in the room.

As one commenter points out, ” It’s amazing how a few months of these exercises can overcome years or decades of civilian living.”

I guess that’s a good thing? <–Sarcasm

Posted by mikezillion at December 11th, 2007

According to an article at LiveScience.com, not only can fruit flies be induced to exhibit homosexual tendencies after genetic manipulation, but that tendency can also be turned on and off in a matter of hours with drugs: “In the new work, University of Illinois at Chicago researcher David
Featherstone and coworkers discovered a gene in fruit flies they call
“genderblind,” or GB. A mutation in GB turns flies bisexual.”

The implications for humans and other species are still under debate. But the first thing I did was run out and register the domain GBMutants.com. Any suggestions what I should put there?

Posted by mikezillion at December 4th, 2007

Some of the bareback studios seem to think that giving the performers treatments after exposing them to unsafe sex on camera makes them responsible. Well, it seem that the term responsible may be getting some testing.

A bareback performer in the U.K. who goes by the name of Craig may be filing a lawsuit against the studio where he claims he was infected during a shoot. It’s a shame it has to come to this. Frankly, I don’t know if the young man has a case; he did make his own choices, and he was old enough to know the risks. It may also not be easy for him to prove that his infection was actually related to the shoot. I am less familiar with the laws in the U.K. than I am with the laws here in the United States. We tend to err on the side of individual responsibility over social conscience.

It’s great that HIV infections are treatable, and that the disease that
can result is no longer a death sentence. I don’t think infected
performers (or people in general) should be stigmatized. The point is that there are real consequences to filming bareback porn. Beyond the overall social impact of eroticizing dangerous activities, there are actual men getting actual diseases on camera for money.

Posted by mikezillion at December 2nd, 2007

Bareback is the norm in straight porn. It is also the driving business model of several edgier gay porn companies. This split comes as a result of the higher level of awareness in the gay community about the dangers of barebacking. Some gay consumers get off on the danger of barebacking, either in their porn or in their personal lives. I don’t know of any studies, but I imagine that the popularity of bareback sex in porn has increased the popularity of bareback sex in real life.

Straight consumers don’t really seem to consider it a sexual act if some body fluid isn’t shared. At the moment, straight porn companies are hard-pressed to sell safe sex porn. Instead, the industry has turned to testing performers. That works for the performers, but it is a cop-out when it comes to social responsibility. Instead of eroticizing bareback sex, we as an industry could be demonstrating the broad erotic potential of safe sex.

The social networking sites are also split between bareback and safe sex seekers. Now a company called Safe Sex Passport is capitalizing on the popularity of bareback sex and the fear of disease with a service that will certify people as disease-free for a membership fee of $75 and a testing fee of about $200 or so. They claim to have over 15,000 registered members already.

It will be interesting to see how this new business model develops.

Posted by mikezillion at November 8th, 2007

According to an article in Forbes, Sumner Redstone, the Chairman of Viacom believes that copyright protection is the incentive which drives the creation of content. To me, that seems backwards.

I would say that copyright drives the production of much mediocre market-driven content (including a lot of pornography) but is actually a disincentive to true creative content creation.

If someone has something to say, and wants to get it said, any limitation on how many people are exposed to it will just frustrate the creative process. This is unlike child protection legislation, which filters an audience by the appropriateness of the message for the viewer. A creative artist wants everyone in the appropriate target audience to see. It is the folks who market the expression as a product who benefit from copyright protection.

On the other hand, if someone has nothing to say, but wants money for saying something people enjoy hearing, copyright is a true friend.

Perhaps this has implications for the writers strike?