The amatuer porn star next door
Susanna* is 18. She lives in Queensland with her cat and her boyfriend and plans to go to university soon. She is also an amatuer
porn star with cult status among her small but passionate online following. Welcome to the bizarre, confusing and, at times,
surreal world of 21st-century online porn. It's a technology-driven world in which anyone can play and where amatuerstatus
is often more prized than being a pro. Susanna's thing - and there's no way to explain all its nuances in drawing-room language
- is known among aficionados as "watersports".
She's totally candid about her sexual speciality, brightly and articulately talking about her website and "community" . You
could try judging her but she's not interested. If you don't like what she does, don't look. End of story. Susanna's career
as a DIY porn star began when she discovered a group of people online who share her particular sexual interest. After a
while, she established her own site, also selling pictures of herself and even mailing out underwear.
"I guess I wanted to give back to the community," she says. "It's a very centralised little community - there are not
that many of us in the world. I just started with some photos and it just grew from there after some positive responses.
"I'm famous in the 'Wetset' community. I don't have an official fan club but I have a lot of fans. At first it really freaked me out."
And her boyfriend? "It's my camera and it's my body and if I want to do something I'm damn well going to do it and if he
can't hack that then that's his problem and we'll talk about it. I won't be tied down." Being a maker of porn rather than
just a consumer is nothing new. Many a distant husband or boyfriend (and it always seems to be that way round) has been
kept on the straight and narrow by the promise contained in photographs of his girlfriend/wife intended for his eyes only.
ACP's "P" mags - Picture and People - owe much of their popularity to their "home girls" section, and the "swinger"
sub-culture of suburban partner-swapping is hardly a recent phenomenon. Flick through the pages of a contact magazine
such as Rosie and it's clear there are thousands of couples and singles busily trading pictures and videos of themselves
doing the wild thing.
But what the digital revolution has changed is the scale on which the solo or small-business porn entrepreneur can operate.
All you need is a digital camera, a computer and a lack of inhibition and you too can be a porn star. It's notoriously difficult
to quantify the massive global flesh business but even a cursory glance online at the number of "amatuer" sites is enough to know
pornography is becoming a boom cottage industry.
Sure, competition from DIY porn stars is not about to make the giants of the business put their clothes on and go home, but
the technology is giving the small home operator an increasing slice of the business. Then there are the dedicated video-cam
servers, which are ostensibly there to let fond grandparents chat with and see distant grandchildren, if the advertising
is anything to go by. Of course, most users couldn't be further away if they tried from this warm and fuzzy image. Log on
and you will be assailed by more genitals (mostly male) than even your doctor could reasonably expect to see in a lifetime.
It's a sort of high-tech "you show me yours and I'll show you mine" flesh fest, except it might be Richard from Montreal
or Sue and David from Perth who've got their privates on parade.
The point about much of this homespun erotica is that these are real people. They are not the unattainable, air-brushed
uber-women who dominate the magazine and video trade. Maybe fat, maybe old, maybe just plain ugly - but that also means
they are attainable. So attractive has the "girl next door" image become, that even the bigger players are now producing "shamatuer" images -
pictures of professional models shot so as to look like "average" people.
Psychologist and sex therapist Mark Anns says classic pornography, for many people, can be more frustrating than erotic.
"A lot of people get turned off by the stereotypical porn images because they are too much a fantasy," he says. "People's
day-to-day experience is that these people are not out there in vast numbers or they feel they would never have a chance
with them, anyway. So for some people the eroticisation of normal people takes place. They want to know they have the
potential possibility of meeting you."
One of the many internet operators tapping successfully into this trend is "Lucky B" (as in bastard), as his mates call him.
Perth-based Lucky is one of a new breed of web-savvy entrepreneurs that has built a successful small business on the back of
the seemingly inexhaustible appetite for shots of Mrs and Mr Average going the full monty.
Lucky's story is that of a hobbyist turned pro. Several years ago he started taking snaps of his girlfriend and himself,
which were then posted on a free site. After 12 months of doing it "just for fun", he began recruiting other amatuermodels.
The site has grown from there, becoming a very profitable business for Lucky. He advertises for "models" through newspapers
and his own site and never has any problem finding new women prepared to take their clothes off in return for a little
fleeting fame and some money - anything from $100 to $200 an hour.
The economics of Lucky's business are very instructive. His site is a members-only affair of which he has only about 200 - a
small enough number to know most of them by name. His members are about half Australian and half American and pay $US19.95
a month to have access to the latest picture sets. That adds up to a very healthy $US48,000 a year for Lucky who, even after
he has paid his amatuerwannabes and other technical expenses, admits he makes a decent profit.
Move a little further up the DIY porn foodchain and you come across operators such as Julian, coincidentally also based in Perth. Julian
and his wife have a stable of about 300 domain names, each of which funnels visitors back to just a few central web
addresses. They even "franchise" porn sites to people without the technical know-how to set up their own. Julian's cash cow
is a site devoted to amatuerexhibitionists, providing a forum for them to swap pictures, videos and contact details.
Being a family business, Julian and his wife do pretty much everything themselves and are self-taught web designers, handling
everything from the "front-end" graphics to complex database management. But Julian is the first to admit it's not that taxing.
He laughs when I suggest it might be hard work. "You go to bed and wake up $US500 richer," he chortles.
Julian and his wife, who used to run escort agencies, generally get down to work in the evening "after the kids are in bed".
The main task involves vetting all the pictures sent in by their amatuermembers to ensure nothing illegal slips through. A
bizarre way to make a living, perhaps, but just work to Julian. "I suppose it's like working in a chocolate shop," he says.
"You just wouldn't eat chocolate everyday, would you?"
Julian compares the DIY porn industry with the day-trader phenomenon. Just as the internet means you can trade shares
without using a broker, so technology now means you don't need to be a Hugh Hefner or Bob Guccione to make and distribute porn. Talking
to Julian and some of the other players in this strange world, I'm struck by the lack of any conventional moral dimension. That's
not to say there is no sense of right and wrong. Indeed, the cardinal sin in the world of online erotica is stealing images, but the
prevailing view is that if people want to take pictures of themselves and someone else wants to see them, then where's the problem?
That's certainly where Susanna, of "Wetset" fame, is coming from. However, in common with most of those I encountered,
she is not starry-eyed about the porn industry. "I'm not just one of those brainless blondes who just wants to do porn," she says.
"It's just a hobby for me. It's not really a great industry - I plan on having kids one day and I don't want to have to explain
[myself] if [my] photos ever pop up somewhere."
* Not her real name.
Source:
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/01/09/1041990052444.html
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