Nothing has driven home just how far the VMAs have fallen from grace quite like the first annual Pornhub Awards. Who would have imagined a show with categories like “Top Blowjob Performer” and “Hottest Female Ass” would have been a multimedia spectacle featuring the biggest, and maybe the most controversial, rapper in the world. Co-directed and designed by an unannounced-until-after-showtime Kanye West, who also performed, the Pornhub Awards was like the site itself: You visit with expectations and walk away shocked at how much they were surpassed.
Singer Teyana Taylor's barn-burning kickoff performance was a joyful surprise in its own right, but when West walked out to join her, the building exploded. His time onstage was brief, but his influence was felt throughout the night.
The presenters were also reportedly styled by West, which explains the mix of out-front sexuality and high fashion found onstage. The show was also a technical achievement; the Pornhub Awards was broadcast in 3D 360-degree VR, a first for any awards show. But if the artistry of a porn accolades show was a surprise, the onstage nudity throughout the night was not. Host and fan favorite Asa Akira led the evening with humor and no top.
Unlike the industry's current biggest award show, the AVNs, the Pornhub Awards were focused less on celebrating scenes and films than the stars themselves. Not a single film won at the show. Instead, awards went to individual superstars, based on streaming data and voting, for how fans appreciated their body of work in the past year.
For performers like Lena the Plug, a social media celeb turned amateur porn star who won “Celebrity of the Year,” Pornhub has proved an unlikely source of success. “I think Pornhub is the No. 1 thing associated with nudity on the internet. So I feel like in many ways my porn is synonymous with Pornhub,” she told the Daily Dot.
Lena says her Snapchats got leaked on Pornhub so many times, that people kept coming to the site to look for them, which in turn, opened doors for her career. “It's definitely helped me in that way," she says. "And the fact that they're calling me a celebrity is just super insane.”
No doubt, as much as Pornhub is synonymous with free online porn, it is also known for users uploading pirated content—even if that content has helped expose performers like Lena to millions of people. However, according to Natalie Mars, winner of “Most Popular Trans Performer,” Pornhub has helped her reclaim lost money from stolen work.
“I claimed all the videos that people had pirated onto the site, and Pornhub gave me all the revenue,” Mars explained to Daily Dot. “I think it’s awesome they gave me all the back pay that had accumulated over however long.”
Pornhub’s commitment to becoming a more performer-friendly company might explain the general sense of joy the permeated the night. Silly jokes were met with generous laughter, and performers like Blackbear found a rapturous audience before them. It often felt like any other awards show, just with far more naked people. Then a performer would be presented with one of the West-designed awards, which look like a sex toy out of a David Cronenberg film, and you’d be reminded the Hub was aiming for more.
In that way, you could say the awards were a showpiece for what the site is trying to accomplish not just for the industry, but for the culture at large.
“I hear in a lot of DMs and emails that Pornhub really helps with people's sexuality in general," industry superstar Bonnie Rotten, back from a short-lived retirement, told the Daily Dot. "I'm from Ohio. So I know what it's like to be kind of sexually depraved and put in like a corner about what you're interested in. [Pornhub] gives people the opportunity to go out and do whatever they want, whenever they want, and I respect that.”
With 97 million hits a day, Pornhub was already mainstream before the awards happened. It was just mainstream in the way that pot is mainstream—a thing everyone does or at least tries but lies about in front of their parents. Having West direct the evening might have been a stunt, but it was a stunt that gave the Pornhub brand a social cache that it never had before.
Seriously, MTV, don’t air the VMAs next year. Just figure out how to air a safe-for-work version of the Pornhub Awards. We hear James Gunn is looking for work. Let him help, he has experience with such things.
The Pornhub Awards smashes the stigma of porn with humor and Kanye
The inaugural fete was like a cooler VMAs, with more nudity.
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*First Published: Sep 7, 2018, 9:56 am
John-Michael Bond
John-Michael Bond is a tech reporter and culture writer for Daily Dot. A longtime cord-cutter and early adopter, he's an expert on streaming services (Hulu with Live TV), devices (Roku, Amazon Fire), and anime. A former staff writer for TUAW, he's knowledgeable on all things Apple and Android. You can also also find him regularly performing standup comedy in Los Angeles.
