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Archive for the ‘the porn industry’ Category

Our friends Kristy and BeerCanMan have spent time with us on our spycams when they’ve visited. They know how it works having broadcast voyeur cams themselves for a time and have access to our sites so they can check our cams to see if we’re awake before they call or just . . . check our cams for fun to see what we’re doing. A number of our meatworld friends who are also porn colleagues have access to our cams so this isn’t unusual and our friends don’t report to us every time they peek in, but BeerCanMan did tell me that sometimes he and Kris hook us up on a big screen next to their regular tv via their xbox (or PS3 maybe?).

He said it’s like we’re all in the same room together, watching tv in bed like we do when we can get together in real life. They look over at the screen and there we are in bed, laughing and watching tv too and it’s almost like we’re really there. They can look over and see us, right there next to them.

*****

On Friday I got into an argument with one of the guys who now has control over that best spycam site we’ve been broadcasting on since 2002, SpyOnYou. The one with audio that our friends use to be in the same room with us and the best quality feeds of any of the adult voyeur cam sites out there. But also the one that’s been the biggest pain in the ass, too. The one I used to get paid to cam on, got fucked in a variety of unpleasant ways by the owner years ago, was no longer paid to be on but still couldn’t advertise my site there and last year was forced to start PAYING to be on and give our members access to it.

To make a long story short, over the weekend this guy disabled our access to the cams. (Note: we still have 24/7 spycams broadcasting on our sites through two other plugins). I wasn’t willing to keep paying for them without having more control and information and he was not willing to provide that information or treat us and our business with any respect or consideration or communicate with us at all except to demand money while moving up the date he wanted us to pay little by little each month and tell me it’s none of my business what the actual operating costs of the site are after we’d been led to believe something different by one of the other guys (the one that I *trust*). He screamed at me on the phone about how much his expenses are and how he’s just hanging on by a thread and then in the next breath refused to show me invoices for the hosting because “that’s personal!!!” Dude, you’re going to have to decide if it’s business or if it’s personal, because if it’s personal? Don’t cry about your expenses to me and ask me to help foot the fucking bill. We have expenses of our own and are hanging by our own threads.

I am used to being treated disrespectfully by camsites, but not having to pay them for that dubious honor.

This guy is part of the reason why our cams are often disconnected in the middle of the night without any warning or explanation, part of why the broadcaster has major problems, etc. when all of the other sites we broadcast on are usually extremely stable. But still, the quality was so much better when they DID stay up and there was the audio which the other spycam sites don’t broadcast. And really? The amount we were paying wasn’t unreasonable at all. Then again, he never responded when we indicated a desire to help pay the programmer to fix the software (which this guy now says he “owns” even though the programmer was never paid by them in entirety which is why it was left buggy).

So. I don’t know if I was just being an asshole or what, but after the way he behaved on the phone and made it his mission over the weekend to take down our cams and member access (and bizarrely and rudely Jess’ and Mina’s, too) because his ego was bruised BEFORE the thirty days I already paid for was up, I am glad to wash my hands of him and want nothing to do with him. I wish him well and everything, and especially two of the other people (Steven and Bonnie) that I worked with over the years at that company but after eight years I am done with wondering “what next?”

*****

Okay, I lied. I will never be done wondering “what next?”

I am wondering if what’s next is to partner up with our trustworthy cam friends to build a better spycam site:

Should we make MySpyCams.com someplace awesome?

We all have the vision and experience to know what would make it special, and more importantly WORKABLE for us as camgirls and for our members. But would it actually make money? Can we really afford the time and money to make it operate the way we envision it and without demanding MORE time and money we don’t have down the road?

I’ve been a camgirl since the year 2000 and have seen SCADS of people become giddy with the prospect of building their own camsites, dump tons of money and time into them, and FAIL MISERABLY. Of course they were different camsites — pay per view — but still. Knowing you COULD do something better than others who’ve gone before you and actually executing your supposed “genius” are two totally different things. On the other hand, this isn’t a crazy complex pie-in-the-sky scheme; mostly we just want to replace what we lost. And at least improve upon it a little. And while we’re at it why not make it totally fucking awesome?!?

Recently we’ve also seen well-established sites with lots of resources (time and money) make gigantic, huge, really fucked up mistakes (I’m thinking of Niteflirt and CCBill) in overhauling systems that basically worked and fucking the people who bring in their bread and butter. Of course I think part of that is that they have a fundamental disregard for the clients (I don’t mean the “end users” who pay for phone sex and porn site memberships, but phone sex operators and site owners) perhaps BECAUSE they have enough resources and can afford to make decisions from a huge distance from the people they will impact. Months later we have lots of  apologies and patched together fixes, but things are never quite the same (in the case of Niteflirt) and no one puts their money where their mouth is to compensate the people who got screwed (in the case of CCBill who should’ve lowered our processing rates/fees if they want us to think they really MEAN that apology; you know the programmers got assloads of money to make something substandard and force us to be their beta testers and lose money but what do we get? An apology! Nice, but it doesn’t make up for months of fuckery and trust lost with our partners – in my world if you make big mistakes you offer some freebies, discounts, etc.; god knows I have when it was the right thing to do even when I couldn’t afford to).

Point is, if these big companies with lots of dough can fail so miserably and hire programmers and project managers who TOTALLY DON’T KNOW WHAT THE FUCK THEY’RE DOING and send everyone’s shit sliding off the rails, how much easier would it be for US to fail miserably and not have the money to hire someone else to fix it? Do I really want to be part of investing time and money and friendships and friends’ time and money into ignorantly (because I know nothing about programming) searching for the right hosting and coders and programmers? That’s hard enough, just putting something like this together even if you DO have money, but when we’re all already putting everything we have already into the sites we already do have (and in our friends’ cases their other full time jobs)? And then what if we hire THE WRONG PEOPLE? Even if those people are well-intentioned and do their best and aren’t deliberately fucking you (and I truly do not believe anyone intended to fuck anybody at Niteflirt or CCBill, that’s just how it wound up; the rectum-ripping dick just wound up sliding right into people’s asses through bad planning, not malevolent intent), the end result could still find us wading in a morass of shit. I do not want to spend weeks, months or years unprofitably wading through shit.

But maybe I’m being fearful for nothing. This isn’t something I will be doing alone and everything could just as easily work out great as it could not work out at all. Still, there are potential headaches and risks even if we have an awesome site with perfect tools that practically runs itself. Some of those headaches and risks are called CAMGIRLS. If you are good at this shit at all, you’ve got a strong personality. Strong personalities working with strong personalities can be volatile, dramatic and time consuming, even if you avoid the former by doing a lot of the latter (consuming time) making sure you only work with people who have their shit together. But jesus fuck I know that’s not even fair or realistic considering *I* do not always have my own shit together and have been known to be a royal pain in the ass.

And how about liabilities? Porn is under enough legal scrutiny and persecution that even static content is risky; add in LIVE 24/7 camfeeds and you have the potential to get into trouble for all kinds of things, even on accident. I don’t even want to provide examples for fear of getting into trouble, but I will mention a couple of areas of concern: music broadcasting and accidental children sightings (not necessarily at the same time). Here’s a situation: maybe your sister comes over with her kids while you’re in the shower and before you had a chance to turn off ALL of your spycams and she brings her baby in the bedroom to knock on the bathroom door to let you know that she’s arrived safely at your house and you don’t even know the baby is in there until you jump out of the shower and open the door naked and then there you are NAKED on a PORN site with a BABY! And ohmygod the whole world is going to crumble because you have done the unthinkable!!!!! And your business will be ruined as soon as someone takes a screencap and sends it to the feds and your payment processor and visa and FOX news and the locals who didn’t even know you were making porn in their neighborhood and there was a BABY involved?!? That’s just a hypothetical situation though. That never happened to me last week at all I’m just describing how easily your life could be destroyed by participating in this industry and having a family. ONE FALSE MOVE AND THEY’LL GIVE YOU THE CHAIR!! Okay, you won’t get the chair but you could wind up in a business-destroying legal battle. Even a little snafu can ruin you. Normally I don’t worry overly much about these things, but that’s partly because I’m only risking mine and Delia’s asses as opposed to the asses of friends. I do not want to be a liability to people who trust me.

So the next question (which should’ve been the FIRST question) is whether or not this has the potential to make money. While I actually have a lot more faith than I seem to have that we could build an awesome site that virtually runs itself (we aren’t trying to do anything nearly as complicated as other camsites; it doesn’t need to be fancy) I have serious doubts whether or not this would actually pay for itself (development and monthly hosting) let alone make extra money as a stand-alone site or even just as a promotional tool for the exhibitors, especially if we don’t have the time or budget to promote it heavily out of the gate. So would it be worth it if it just pays for itself and is a reliable, high-quality plugin for our members? The truth is that all of us are really struggling with the sites we already have and I don’t even know if that many of our members care that much about having the higher quality cams with audio and a chatroom we control (rather than a chatroom where we can’t link to anything offsite, can’t “promote” ourselves, and have to follow their rules, which is understandable but very limiting when you can’t even link to a news article when you’re talking about shit that’s going on in the world). There are so many places you can get explicit and entertaining cam feeds for free now that it seems foolish to think we can compete with a for-pay model where the cams don’t even promise anything exciting; most of the time we’re just washing dishes or blogging or crying over the most recent dip in sales.

The funny part, though, is in my heart of hearts I vehemently believe our camsite would be special and offer something a lot of people (camgirls/boys/couples AND customers) would appreciate and recognize as valuable. After writing all of these fears and doubts and well-reasoned concerns I am too attached to these spycams to let them go. Even though we still have assloads of spycams broadcasting right now! It’s just not the same on those plugins without audio. I am extremely ATTACHED to the idea of a camsite owned and operated by the people ON them who feel the same way I do about them and promotes THEM as much as the camsite itself. Even more than that I am extremely attached to the idea of making something GOOD, and since we would be working with other people that seems a lot more attainable than Delia and I trying to make something good alone.

I am also very attached to the part of my identity that’s been a “camgirl” all of these years. A lot of the experiences I’ve cherished most as a webwhore over the years are exchanges we’ve had via our spycams. There is a raw authenticity on the spycams with audio that’s incredibly intimate BECAUSE it is often so mundane (and when it’s not mundane is all the more intense because of the contrast). There is a dailiness and reliability and easy sharing that I think is a tremendous and comforting gift. While part of me craves more anonymity and less-ready accessibility, a large(r?) part of me is massively attached to providing this spycam experience and I don’t want it to just be mediocre.

I’ve been relieved the past couple of days not to have the audio on our spycams, but also have felt painfully aware that people are missing out on being close to us and knowing what is going on, even if that is nothing very “entertaining”. How will they know we’re laughing at Star Trek? How will they survive without hearing our Captain Janeway impressions?

I started talking REALLY LOUDLY. I don’t know if it was just because I *could* without sounding weird or if it was because I thought maybe people could hear without audio being broadcast if I JUST ENUNCIATED REALLY CLEARLY. Without even thinking about it, I’ve begun exaggerating my facial expressions to try to communicate without sound. Part of my life is knowing you are out there, watching and listening, for better and for worse. It’s like one of my limbs has been amputated and I’m trying on different prosthetics.

Anyway, I don’t know if all of these attachments are good. Maybe I should break away from something that is turning me into a bizarre version of a silent film star wannabe. I can’t seem to decide if this is a business decision or a personal decision. As a business decision it will depend on how much it costs to build. I think my struggle is more personal, though. I’m torn between “these cams are my identity and I love them” and “I really need more time away from work and more time focusing on CREATIVE static work; building another site and business entity with tech that if it goes down would need IMMEDIATE attention so as not to fuck customers and exhibitors doesn’t sound like a good way to get less stress and more private, in-my-head creative time AT ALL.”

So you know how I said I don’t want to spend weeks, months or years unprofitably wading through shit? I’m not even sure I would want to wade through shit for extended periods of time PROFITABLY. As much as I want this lovely spycam site to work out, the truth is there are many other things I want even more. I’m getting to an age where a couple of priorities/desires to create are rising to the top  and realizing that I will have to give up some (a lot of?) things if I ever want to immerse myself in what I want MOST. But I guess I’m still having a hard time letting go of the delusion that I can accomplish way more than I’m probably capable of. I suspect I’ll be happier when I fully accept my limitations and give myself over to one or two things that I want with gigantic private bigness, but apparently I’m too attached right now to these other things. But I could DEtach myself from them right now if I chose to. And this does seem like a perfect opportunity to do so that wouldn’t be a big deal to anybody but myself. So what if our voyeurcams aren’t the best and don’t have audio? SO WHAT? WHO CARES?? My life just got easier!! Why not embrace that??

I just realized, though, that I *can* quit/pull out of this at any point if it doesn’t work out. And right now it’s working out FINE to go forward. Or maybe it’s not. A month before taxes are due I should be making as much money as I possibly can, not spending time and energy on something that won’t be ready to make money for months, if ever. I’ve already dumped more time and energy into this lately than anything else. Hell, in the time it took me to write this tormented blog entry I could have been doing something USEFUL like promoting Delia’s site (which is really ALL we should focus on selling if we really want to make money fast) or at least working on my own site. But spycams are PART of both of our sites, right? Right!!

*****

Thanks for letting me muddle through that. While I sound uncertain, the truth is my mind is already made up that I want MySpyCams.com to work and I feel like I’ve already committed to it.

PLEASE NOTE: I am *not* looking for advice by posting this, I’m just SHARING the process in case you’re interested in reading it. Blogging about it helps, but even with all of these words there are a world of details I’m leaving out so it doesn’t put anybody in a very good position to “advise” me. But that doesn’t mean I won’t solicit feedback and help later! AND you’re WELCOME to share your own stories of similar dilemmas or relevant anecdotes/observations – I would love that! And if you have any recommendations for hosting, programmers, etc. THAT would also be awesome, or if you want to volunteer (or advertise as for sale) your own talents, that TOO would be fantastic! We’ll have a form up later for people who want to actually broadcast on it and more details about how that would work, requirements, etc. All in good time . . .

A truly upper-half-naked animated webcam shot of me:

Oops! There goes my "shirt" . . .

You can check out more Half Nekkid Thursday pics for this week here (links are in the comments).

*****

A lot of people are remarking on the decline of porn as a money-making industry in the wake of the AVN awards and AEE (Adult Entertainment Expo which used to be called Internext when we went). I don’t agree with all of people’s pet theories and some of the observations are either wrong or irrelevant or both, but it’s true that the business model corporate porn and webcam sites are built on is not sustainable; it’s been a steady downward spiral ever since I started camming in the year 2000 but for reasons more complex than any of those “top five reasons” listed like “porn star hookers”, who have a sum total of zero impact on the profitability of porn, or, if anything, INCREASE its profitability.

As my webwhore years go by, I am more and more convinced that the really valuable, addictive, and marketable aspects of internet “porn” have nothing to do with quantity or technical quality or extreme degree of hardcore. I become more and more certain that the tiny, simple, grainy, daily, personal living intimacies are the only things that can possibly hold their value. Too bad they are made virtually invisible by the vast machinery of corporate porn and unrecognizable by the way people have been trained by industry standards and freebie jack-off habits (and devaluing porn whores to the point of giving live face time with them away for FREE) to not SEE it even when they do run across it. I’m not *completely* bashing corporate porn which in many ways is often delightful, just ruminating on how much more potent pixelated animated .gifs and lifecams continue to be for arousing the kind of attachments and naughty feelings that make people want to be lifetime members of a site and collectors of everything someone makes.

I would love to be able to maintain industry standards while also returning to emphasizing our live content and lo-fi personal stuff more, but it’s nearly impossible to attract any attention or have industry people take your work seriously if you aren’t making so much content that you’re able to give 75% of it away for free (and tolerate that the other 25% will be stolen). Instead of spending time being more creative and fucking and masturbating, I have to spend more and more time building “promos”, hoping to dump enough free stuff into the oceans of free stuff to get enough fans to sustain our work.

Note: I totally agree that online gaming and simplistic, yet addictive and time-consuming interactive this-and-thats are taking attention and money away from porn. If I could afford to hire programmers to make a mafia wars style “game” for our sites I think we’d be rolling in dough (I am seriously inspired by the fact that enough people pay to play those games to make them profitable – I’ve been learning a lot from studying the way those “games” work on people’s minds and wallets; those facebook/myspace games have no real value — none at all — yet people feel compelled to shell out oodles of time and money on them; fascinating! I can think of a bunch of ways to apply those principles to porn sites, but of course don’t have the time and money to implement them).

*****

I am late posting my update for members this week which makes me want to make it extra special, except the reason it’s late in the first place is that I didn’t feel like I had something the right degree of specialness to post on Monday. Mulling things over. And building promos in the meantime, of course.

*****

Good news: I called the IRS this morning and was reminded once again that GOVERNMENT BEAUROCRACY IS AWESOME. No, I’m not being sarcastic. When it comes to customer service, the people who work for the IRS are gold. They are ANGELS of mercy. TRULY HELPFUL. So our debt crisis is averted and for now we can keep making all of our payments on things (but obviously still need to magically make assloads more money by April).

Other good news: I don’t know if it’s the B vitamin shot I got on Monday or having my period and a cold or eating better or stretching and exercising or what the hell, but the past couple of nights I’ve wanted about three hours less sleep than usual and have been feeling GREAT (except for the cold symptoms).

In other words, life is good . . . all is well.

Milf Renee: hot car upskirt in mesh panties

Busty Juliann on MilfHunter

I think MilfHunter has been around longer than most of the “Mothers I’d Like to Fuck” porn sites. It also epitomizes everything that’s embarrassing and offensive — and apparently successful — about porno schtick marketing. The guy’s gimmick  is that he “hunts” women. All of the words in these promos are exactly the kind of things that make anti-porners gasp in horror:

"He Doesn't Give a Piss About You"

The crosshairs over the dead-looking chick I think are the real “killer”:

MILFhunter has his sights set on your mom

How do I, personally, feel about this kind of language? Wellll . . . I’ve got mixed/conflicted feelings. I think people should talk about it and recognize it as problematic (and I have a *big* problem with anyone thinking it’s just 100% perfectly harmless and acting like you’ve got to be crazy to criticize it, which is how a lot of men in the porn industry react when you point these things out). On the other hand, it’s hard to take it seriously when it’s just so fucking silly. The notion of this character being a menacing threat is a joke, one that the people responsible for it are well aware of:

Big, menacing(?), pop-up MilfHunter head

Short uber-dork "hunter" & conqueror of Milfs?

It’s hard to argue that the site is really inspiring predatorial behavior when you see shots like this one:

Coconut babydoll makes MILF growl when applied to nipple?

Mainstream porn wouldn’t be mainstream porn, I don’t think, if it weren’t filled with lame, offensive jokes; if you can tolerate looking at it long enough you can see the “joke” is often on the guys as much as it is on the women, making a total mockery of themselves with their gun puns and such.

Yes, it would be nice if there were lots more wonderful and special non-junior-high-y porn out there to counterbalance it, but there’s not and it’s not really the fault of pornographers like the creators of MILFhunter to judge them more harshly as though they’re responsible for this dearth of woman-friendly erotica.

My main concern with sites like this isn’t the content and language itself, but how accessible it is to younger people, desensitizing people even further to violent and dehumanizing language about women (which is out there en force in all kinds of media, not just porn) and reinforcing those kinds of perceptions of women (attitudes that would be out there with or without porn but still — how gross is it to train your boner to spring up to that kind of language?), and how few people are able to talk about these things critically without going all whackadoodle extremist about it.  But can you really blame women if they take a quick look at this shit and say, “THAT IS SO NOT FUNNY AND I DON’T EVER WANT TO SEE THAT CRAP AGAIN!”, particularly if they’re among the too-many who HAVE been stalked and hunted for real by predators? It’s difficult to pass off as a “joke” when you look at it from a victim’s perspective, and you should recognize that there are a whole hell of a lot of victims out there. Too many. Still, the whole hunter vs. game concept pervades a lot of our language (have you ever read a romance novel? The kind women buy up in bunches? HELLO!).

Weirdo stalking woman in tanning bed.

So is it chilling? Or just a tasteless marketing angle that provides a cheap framework to hang the sex scenes on? For me it’s way less freaky (and, as a perv, way less creepily HOT) than the old “bird”-watching magazines (I wish I could find the blog entry I made about those).

On top of that, the only really offensive part (to me) is SOME of the advertising. Other ads and the content itself is just downright sweet vanilla. My impression is that the troublesome ads really don’t represent the kind of porn on the site – it’s a branding tool and a scene-setter. Guys jerk off to the sex, not the women-in-crosshairs banner ads, and hey — the only person I saw actually packing heat is one of the MILFs:

Sexy Russian Babe with Shiny Handgun

Yum! And I *love* that photo of him behind her “helping” her take aim, just as I love these sweet shots starting out with him undressing this scrumptious blonde followed by morphing into a harmless pantyhose-head:

MilfHunter is really just a tenderoni.

MilfHunter likes Sheer Underwear

Puffy Pale Pink Pussy exposed by MilfHunter

MilfHunter distracted from hunt by pantyhose antics.

Blonde Milf laughs at "Hunter".

One thing I appreciate about MilfHunter is that condoms are used in a lot of the scenes. I’m not in favor of OSHA or any other government agency (or the porn industry as a whole) mandating condom use (a topic for another entry), but when I see condoms used in porn it raises my opinion of the site or studio making the porn because it seems like they care about their talent.

Hot lady Becca in glasses on MilfHunter

And hello, thank you for a scene involving a chick and her vibrator and a man NEXT to her, then using the toy WHILE FUCKING — why aren’t there more scenes like this in porn?

Woman using a vibrator AND man for ultimate stimulation.

Anyhoo, enough with the analysis. Everyone I know (women too) who has joined this network of sites always has something good to say about it and usually they wind up rejoining, so here are a few more of my favorite samples from MILFhunter:

MILF Shayla getting soapy in short-shorts.

Brunette MILF in tiny underwear

Hot Redhead MILF with pale skin

Disclosure/Confession: if you join after clicking on one of my links to MILFhunter, I will get a referral bonus – thanks!

Oh, and members of OUR sites: Delia and I are doing webcam shows and chat this weekend (Friday night and Saturday) so hope to see you there!

Milf Renee: hot car upskirt in mesh panties

We went to Seattle on Tuesday for Delia to do a shoot for Shemale Strokers; it’s extremely rare for either of us to shoot for other people so that was a good experience to get us out of our bubble. It looks like next time we’ll shoot something as a couple for SuckMyTrannyCock and I’ll do a solo blowjob and cum-on-the-boobs thing for another site. I can’t remember the last time I had anyone’s cum on me besides Delia’s.

Are we going to start shooting a whole bunch of hardcore for other sites to make quick money? No. There aren’t many people to shoot for in the area and it’s not exactly the direction we want to go anyway for a number of different reasons. On the other hand, if we had more time for traveling and to pornify ourselves with lots of trips to the gym and enough people to work with that we felt comfortable with (for example, people who shoot with condoms) it would be a nice adventure to do that for a few months and get more exposure for ourselves (leading to more exposure for our sites). At the moment, that’s not the plan, though. Maybe in the next couple of years before we totally enter granny status in the porn world.

Part of me is happy to have not had a typical porn industry experience so far, but another part of me feels like we’d be missing out to not experience more of it. The whole testing vs. condoms is a whole other ball of wax, too. While I know most of the diseases that are passed around in porn aren’t the end of the world I’m pretty fucking happy to have made it to this point in my life without herpes, for example, and I’d like to keep it that way. Allow me to clarify: no one is banging down our doors to shoot hardcore, I’m just speaking hypothetically here. Also, I’m not saying that I wouldn’t have sex with someone who has herpes (I *have*) or that I think condoms should be mandatory in porn (I don’t), I’m just saying that my comfort level and goals aren’t conducive to jumping into a hardcore porn fuckfest any time soon. I think we both have too many boundaries and limits to get much work on top of me not being in my prime.

*****

We decided to get a room that night instead of driving all the way back home; one of the bridges we have to cross is having problems and closes for tests every day and all night, plus we haven’t had a night to ourselves off cam in a billion years so we even boarded our dog. It was bliss, and we really should get away for quiet private time on a regular basis AWAY from home; I love working at home for ourselves, but I totally miss the feeling of LEAVING work behind to drive home. We don’t have that and it gets really heavy to never really escape.

We even went to see a movie! Yes, we actually saw A Christmas Carol. I enjoyed it and am glad we saw it on the big screen. Jim Carrey channeled a WEE bit too much of Mr. Burns, but he’s my favorite so that’s fine.

*****

This weekend and the rest of the month we’re trying to shoot as much as we can for our sites here at home. We also got some stressful but potentially good news about our favorite spycam site to broadcast on which alleviates some of the nagging worries we’ve had over the years but means we have to invest some time and money that we really don’t have into it.

I know it’s all going to work out, though.

How?

I’m not exactly sure. I don’t need to know everything about tomorrow, today.

*****

I wanted to post a members-only update last night but it’s getting pressed out later and later because the things I keep getting ready to post have to be postponed for one reason or another, namely because I don’t have time to finish them properly. It may turn out that I wind up editing and posting something we’re shooting tonight or tomorrow.

We’ve been working on a new site, TrixieAndFriends.com. Sounds pretty exciting, right? Like maybe it’s all about me sexing up my buddies? But actually, it’s not. It’s much more practical and mundane than that.

TrixieAndFriends.com is mostly just a preview blog showing our most recent updates (and eventually a categorized, searchable catalog of all of our porn going back to when each of our sites opened so that members can find what they want; THAT is going to take weeks/months of data entry to compile). No one will actually be able to JOIN TrixieAndFriends.com, instead it links to each of the sites in our network so people still have to pick who they want to support, but AmberLily and Delia and some of our members are keen to have a members-only forum/bulletin board so we WILL have a protected area on the site for that.

We’ve been using the members-only area of SpyOnUs for members to go to and see network-wide updates, but it was clunky and not very inclusive — DEFINITELY not searchable, so TrixieAndFriends.com is replacing & greatly improving what we were doing there (we also need to totally revamp SpyOnUs.com to make it strictly about voyeurism, our behind-the-scenes stuff, and of course our SPYCAMS). If any of you techy people are wondering why we don’t have a CMS to do all of this for us, the main reason is that each of the sites in our network is unique and independently owned/operated; we have no desire to standardize everything or force everyone to use one of the limited and difficult scripts on the market.

I feel self-conscious and narcissistic about buying and using the domain, TrixieAndFriends.com, for this (like how I keep saying it over and over? TRIXIE AND FRIENDS DOT COM!!!), but wanted to hurry up and DO IT and couldn’t come up with any brandable, inclusive, open-ended domain that would describe our network and allow for indie sites of any stripe to network with us down the road. Anything with the word “webwhore” in it is off-putting to many and brings to mind the kind of hardcore, stereotyped sites that are pretty much the opposite of what our sites are about (not that I, personally, am ever going to stop calling myself a webwhore, it’s just not a good moniker for everyone). I could come up with a lot of generic and good domain names, but they didn’t feel like anything I thought people would remember and associate with us, though IndiePornPass was one we tossed around, but what if we make sites for tech-incompetent little hotties down the road? What then? It might feel a little deceptive. I suppose, though, that we might network with people who aren’t really great “friends”,  but I think people are used to that term being used loosely (and I *do* love loose friends!).

Speaking of friends (the great kind, not the loosely used), it’s AmberLily’s birthday! One of the things people don’t seem to notice much about AmberLily’s site is that she does assloads of private webcam shows every week, practically every DAY, and those shows are archived in both streaming video and snapshot formats so her site is basically updated every day with a really wide variety of role plays, masturbation, and hot little outfits and fetish attire like pantyhose, gloves, bodystockings, schoolgirl skirts, shiny satin panties, etc. Whenever porn review sites look at her site this fact is rarely mentioned or, if it is, is given very short shrift. It pretty much happens to all webcam content. Instead of being highly valued the way it SHOULD be, reviewers are so unused to seeing it that they don’t get it and just focus on what they’re used to: generic photos and videos. They don’t understand that webcam grabs ARE jerkworthy even though they aren’t HD. It’s frustrating, to put it mildly.

Anyway, my hope is that at least OUR members will see and appreciate (in that very special way they have) how consistently hard AmberLily works and the range of her special offerings. Before announcing TrixieAndFriends I wanted to have all of our October updates catalogued there, but we’re only maybe halfway through representing the days AmberLily has added archived shows. Still, I think it’s already apparent what she’s doing, even if few people really have a clue how much she puts into it, especially considering the heavy burdens and gigantic stressors she and her hubby have been thrown this year.  She’s not the type to complain or let on when the chips are down and she’s under so much pressure that a normal person would just be curled in a ball in bed with a variety of prescription-strength sedatives so I don’t think most of her fans REALIZE. Also, I don’t think she really WANTS to hash over that stuff — she wants to do a good job on cam for her customers and let her mind be taken off all of that bullshit.

Point is, it’s her birthday, I hope it’s a great one for her and that she is rewarded for all of her hard work (and hotness). The week already started out in tears for her when their favorite cat and beloved pet of many years succombed to cancer, so . . .  yeah. If I could, I would shower her with a trip to Disneyland, piles of Star Wars toys, and as many hugs as she could tolerate.

An amazing MUST-READ piece about Tyra Banks media-raping young, too-smart-for-tv porn starlet, Sasha Grey:

Barely Legal Whores Get Gang-Fucked.

I used to have no beef with Tyra. Before we actually WATCHED her shows. I still think some people get crazy-mean criticizing her, but if they do, this is a perfect example of why. Her double standards and bullshit exploitation of young women is a gross freak show. You can’t help wanting to knock her off her high horse. Some of the things I have seen and read about her doing to young women are despicable, mostly because she sees no problem with having malnourished girls get hypothermic modeling in pools of cold water or in violating codes by forcing inexperienced model-wannabes to live more-to-a-room with fewer beds than are allowed by hotel regulations or with promising contracts and money and work that never come through or just plain exploiting these young women’s bodies, inexperience, stupidity, etc. BUT she somehow thinks porn is SO BAD while she’s some kind of a fucking mother-hen angel rescuer.

Tyra’s shows ARE porn. That article illustrates how manipulative, degrading, deceptive, brainwashing, irrational, insulting, and totally FUCKED UP mainstream media and moral standards are and how SHADY the game is of pointing the finger at the skin trade when the skin is the whole reason people are watching your charade. The hypocrisy is grotesque. They lie to guests, twist their words, misrepresent them, costume them in a misleading manner to try to prove their bullshit points and “seduce” audiences with their bullshit and subject people like Sasha who are smarter than Tyra to what amounts to an emotional stoning. That whole scene reminds me of the time a bible-based cult ganged up on me to try to convince me I was possessed by demons, going to hell, my mind was playing crafty tricks on me, etc. Seriously.

But I’m not here to JUDGE you, Tyra. I’m just here to ask you to CONSIDER fucking off and dying. YOU are a pimp, Tyra. YOU.

PS – starving yourself and wearing high heeled shoes that don’t fit and falling off runways and crap are probably more unhealthy and more unnatural than buttfucking.

PPS – seduced by money? Bwahahahahahahahaha!!!!!!!

PPPS – after watching/reading that I can say I’m a now a Sasha Grey fan (VOD or DVD – yes, I’m pimping, too).

Did you see the chick who kept mispronouncing “larynx” and “trachea” on American Idol?

Yeah, well I *loved* her. Because I could relate to her so much. Her seriousness and convictions and reaching for the right words (but getting them all wrong) and insisting upon precision with her responses to questions and bewilderment over the rules of the interview at the end. I loved her voice and she was the kind of smarT I recognize as my own.

I hate myself for watching that show, but almost feel like it’s my duty to know how we’re being taught about our own and other people’s value. If you have bad teeth, if you’re mentally ill, if you’re overweight, if you’re an aspie (see above), if you’re overweight AND wear tight or revealing clothing, if you’re borderline retarded, you’re fair game for the Idol freak show. All of America joins together not just to laugh at you, but to FEEL GOOD about laughing at you without compunction. It’s a family show! Everybody’s watching! It’s okay to laugh in someone’s face, punctuate every gaffe with sound effects, play songs like “Weird Science” when you walk into your audition if you’re a nerd (two scores I’d personally be pleased with — that song is googlyicious GOODNESS and that one nerd with bad teeth could have played Patrick Bateman’s long lost hillbilly cousin!). You can laugh right in someone’s face and still be considered kind as long as you chuckle “good lookin’ out!” and say, “awwww, you should never sing again but I can tell you’re a real sweetie!” as they exit.

They pretend American Idol is a competition only one person wins at the end, but the real reason it’s popular is because we ALL get to be winners at home each and every time they show us another fucking loser. The same people who’ve been targets of cruelty and ostracism for centuries — sissy boys with lisps, fat girls whose pants split, ugly people who dare to smile wide, and village idiots whose ears stick out and eyes are too close-set — willingly subject themselves to torment. Compared to them, the rest of us come out so far ahead! We are smarter, prettier, stronger and more likely to fit in than THOSE Americans. We wouldn’t make their stupid mistakes!

We just watched an episode (Yokel Chords) of The Simpsons that made fun of this phenomenon with Homer demonstrating exactly the behavior I’m talking about, pointing at the inbred hicks on tv, calling them stupid and feeling so good about himself in the process. I totally understand the appeal; in the internet porn industry I’m surrounded by people I subconsciously think of as easy targets (mostly my male “colleagues”); I feel like it’s my duty to be mean and ream them out, but maybe I actually waste time around them on webmaster boards because I’m a small person who wants to pretend she’s an advanced and sophisticated thinker. How petty and embarrassing is that?

It’s taking me a long time to put it into practice, but I really want to stop doing that. Awhile back we heard a comedian on the radio asking why it’s not okay to make fun of retarded people but people who are just plain STUPID are totally fair game. It kind of blew my mind because I like to think I’m one of those defenders of political correctness and sensitivity, but I totally have that double standard that I should be empathetic towards people who are developmentally delayed or have other identifiable REASONS for not being great intellectual thinkers, but it’s not only acceptable to mock and hate on stupid people — it’s like I sometimes feel it’s my fucking DUTY to be mean, angry and impatient with stupid and/or ignorant people. Like they have no excuse for being so dumb or lacking information. Granted, most of the time when I feel that way it’s because they’re acting like judgmental know-it-alls themselves or because they’re idiots writing to me with offensive demands, but it doesn’t really accomplish anything or make me a better person to behave the same way. I feel especially gross about it considering that under other circumstances — if I were in a different role doing a different kind of job (teaching, for example) — I would never allow myself to act that way and would be horrified by other people doing it. There are a bunch of ways I defend my behavior and even as I write this think it’s the RIGHT thing to do in certain circumstances. What I want is to understand what *I* get emotionally out of being an asshole to stupid people and decide whether or not it can accomplish anything positive next time I feel like calling someone a moron. It’s gotten so reflexive that nary a day goes by that I’m not screaming at someone for being a dumb-ass. Dumb fuck, dumb ass, crazy bitch, stupid shit, crazy SON-of-a-bitch, cocksucking moron . . . apparently they’re everywhere I look and it doesn’t really make me feel good to label people that way everywhere I look, even if I only do it in my head or muttering under my breath at the grocery store, “MOVE, you stupid shit-for-brains, MOVE!!”

I wonder why I’ve gotten worse about this as I’ve gotten older. Is it because I’m more socially isolated and feel less connected to other people? Is it because I’m more and more aware of my own limitations and am just projecting my own feelings of inferiority? Is it because I have some hormonal stuff going on that’s making me more of an asshole than I really am? Is it because I know that I’m actually one of those stupid hillbilly nerds they make fun of on television? Whatever it is, I’m going to try to be less of a shithead and recognize that the only person I am in competition with is myself.