Given the ubiquity of free porn, saying you don’t know how to find porn on the Internet is kinda like saying you don’t know how to find a middle-aged white man at a Neil Diamond cover band concert. But believe it or not, there are some people out there who just don’t know how to find porn on the Internet.
That’s why porn-themed search engines like Boodigo and even ostensibly SFW search engines like Bing have stepped in to fill the void for these confounded souls, and why an anonymous gentleman in Europe who goes by the name of The Porn Dude has founded an eponymous porn-aggregating website, which is basically the Digg Reader of Internet smut.
The Porn Dude
In essence, the Porn Dude is an exhaustive aggregator of the “best” adult content on the Web based on what’s trending in various categories, from blondes to lesbians to hentai to golden showers/scat porn. Although you’d think the criteria for what qualifies as the “best” porn on the Internet would be fairly broad—isn’t it just, like, nekkid people having sex?—it’s actually fairly specific, as the Porn Dude explained to the Daily Dot in an email.
“There are general meta decisions about content distribution that are good no matter what,” the Porn Dude (perhaps unsurprisingly, he didn’t want to go on record with his real name) told the Daily Dot, citing the ability to download content in multiple formats and fast page loading as examples.
“There might be someone out there that gets their daily dose of porn from Telnet in ASCII format, but for 99.9% of the population, you’re going to want to get a well-rounded experience. My job is to look at the experience from the user’s perspective and to judge how they would feel on a website.”
That said, is it possible to have an objective view of what qualifies as the best porn on the Internet, similar to someone, say, reviewing a video game? (It’s like, about ethics in porn journalism, man.) The Porn Dude says nah, not really.
“You can have a few different things to look at in your review, but at the end of the day, the potential for porn websites is so varied that you can’t just have a rigid review system,” he writes. “It sound super seedy, but you have to feel the site…Porn ain’t easy, but I’m an expert and everything I say on the topic is golden.”
As for what type of content doesn’t make the cut, the Porn Dude says that criteria is fairly straight-forward: “I typically dislike porn that uses bad music, low-quality resolutions or large watermarks.” Porn sites that have bad reputations with regards to credit card processing, an all-too-common experience for the paying porn customer, are also verboten.
Which leads us to what might seem like an obvious point: Why create an online directory for the best paid porn on the Web, when so much of that type of porn is already available for free? It’s a fair question, and it’s one that other porn websites have been struggling with for years, in the wake of the advent of free tube sites like xHamster and Redtube.
But the Porn Dude says not everyone is looking for the same old prerecorded, 10-minute, Old Faithful fap material. Many porn fans are looking for a much more unique masturbation experience, such as picture material on subreddits like r/NSFW, r/gonewild, and r/cumsluts (yup, there’s an r/cumsluts, and yup, it’s suuuuuuuper NSFW), or interactive experiences with live cam performers on sites like Chaturbate and MyFreeCams.
Pretty much every category is fair game, with the exception of scenes depicting underage and non-consensual sex, and sex with animals. “We cover a little more than just sex videos,” he says. “The industry is varied as fuck, so we try to cover as many different aspects of it as possible.”
There are, however, some aspects of the adult industry that the Porn Dude covers that are a bit more unsavory or ethically ambiguous than others. For one thing, the Porn Dude includes a section for the best porn tube sites, which many industry insiders and porn performers have protested on the grounds that they promote piracy, which robs performers of their earnings from shooting scenes. The website also features the shock site TheYNYC, which features adult content, but also footage of gory roadside accidents and suicides.
Additionally, and perhaps most egregiously, the Porn Dude features an entire section devoted to the Fappening, the massive, Reddit and 4chan-orchestrated hack that leaked dozens of celebrities’ private nude photos onto the Internet.
Immediately following the Fappening, the porn industry, which largely places a premium on consent, protested Reddit and 4Chan’s posting of the photos. Adult producer and publicist Mike Kulich offered a high-profile bounty to anyone able to capture the original hacker—an obvious PR grab, but one that made clear the industry’s position on people posting photos without the subject’s consent.
“The adult industry feels very strongly about consent, which is why it has been heavily involved in our support for legislation banning revenge porn, which has become illegal in a number of different states,” Kulich told Vice. “[These women’s] pictures were meant to be private and whoever hacked her computer or phone had no right to ever see those pictures, let alone leak them to the world.”
When I ask the Porn Dude why he’s continued to support those involved with the Fappening by linking to the celebrity photos, he goes on the defensive. “Put simply, I don’t see the release of these nude photographs as being ethically problematic: they’re naked bodies. Everyone has them, and to treat it as some huge deal is quite concerning to me,” he says. “Sure, it sucks that these pictures were stolen and they belong to someone else who didn’t want them shared, but just because they involve nudity and sex shouldn’t somehow amplify the situation.”
As for whether or not the photos that resulted from the Fappening fall into the category of non-consensual sexual content, the Porn Dude remains firm in his stance that making the images easy for viewers of his site to access doesn’t actually hurt anyone.
“People would be silly to think that these things aren’t good for a public image,” he says. “Take a look at [actress and Fappening victim] Vanessa Hudgens: this is her third time getting photos leaked. I know that the whole blaming the victim thing sucks as an argument, but you’d think some celebs would learn that maybe taking naked pictures of themselves and sending them to others is a bad idea if you don’t want your images to be shared.”
Photo via andronicusmax/Flickr (CC BY 2.0)
