Article: The Rise of Gonzo Porn is the End of the World
 

Not sure if anyone's posted this already, but it seems highly interesting.

http://www.alternet.org/media/141675...l_apocalypse_/

The Rise of Gonzo Porn Is the Latest Sign of America's Cultural Apocalypse
By Chris Hedges, Nation Books. Posted July 31, 2009.

.....

"The following is an excerpt from Chapter II of Empire of Illusion, where Hedges attends an enormous porn convention in Las Vegas:

The largest users of internet porn, which is slowly draining away profits from magazines and DVD sales because so much of it is free, are between the ages of 12 and 17. And porn producers know their market is increasingly underage. "The age demographic has moved downwards, especially in the UK and Europe," explained Steve Honest, the European director of production for Bluebird Films. "Porn is the new rock and roll. Young people and women are embracing porn and making purchases. Porn targets the mid-teens to the mid-twenties and up."

There are some 13,000 porn films made in the United States a year. According to the Internet Filter Review, worldwide porn revenues, including in-room movies at hotels, sex clubs and the ever-expanding E-sex world, topped $97 billion in 2006. That's more than the revenues of the leading technology companies combined: Microsoft, Google, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo!, Apple, Netflix and EarthLink. Annual sales in the United States are estimated at $ 10 billion or higher. There is no agency that does precise monitoring of the porn industry. And porn is very lucrative to some of the nation's largest corporations. General Motors, for example, owns DirectTV, which distributes over forty million streams of porn into American homes every month. AT&T Broadband and Comcast Cable are the currently biggest American companies accommodating porn users with The Hot Network, Adult Pay-Per-View and similarly themed services. AT&T and GM rake in approximately 80 percent of all porn dollars spent by consumers."

It goes on to talk about Arianna Jollee in a gangbang shoot, talking about her first sexual experience. Kind of an unoriginal slant to things. I guess the book would go on more about how this signals the end of our culture, much like the gladiator games in Roman times. Go figure.

Anyway, feel free to discuss.

Is it even legal to produce in hotel rooms and mass-market the content? I know couples do it and sometimes/often sell their homemade tapes to sites, but when it's someone whose business is primarily to produce for the masses, is that just a gray area?

Edit: Woops, a bit tired. Read in-room movies and immediately thought of content produced in hotel rooms! -=)

maybe they are right lol

I would never listen to a guy who refers to it as "the pornographic film world". Did he just wake from a coma?

What?! Internet porn demographics are towards 12-17 y/o's??????

If $10B is being spent in the USA, where's the other 87B going? I find it odd that the US only takes in 10% of the supposed worldwide market.
WG

"The world of pornographic films"... it sounds pretty high class to me :)

"Tonight, on Masterpiece Theatah, we present to you, from the World of Pornographic Films.... Saving Ryan's Privates."

Someone must have told them about chinese traffic :)

I suffered through the intro -- which flails mightily in broad strokes to link the decline of civilization with the rise of consumer culture -- and lost all hope for this article (even _before_ the 97 billion part).

Dude doesn't get it. Optimists do NOT believe in magical keys to success; rather, they just keep getting up when knocked down. Simple as that.

"Lonely Cassandras," etc, Christ, what a snooty whinging douche; I bet he's the life of the party.