It's hard for me to get a handle on what aspect of it bothers me...
That part should be easy: her libertarianism.
Sex-positive feminism + Libertarianism = the horror that is "Erotic Capital".
I think a little libertarianism can be forgiven in someone who is barely an adult. At 18 I found some libertarian ideas worth consideration.
I did find it funny that she wants something to be done about the cost of education but apparently can't take the next step and figure out that libertarianism doesn't offer a solution. Of course she could have gone to a less expensive school, I guess. Maybe one that's affordable by stripping or something.
Feminist libertarian principles at work:
PLAYBOY: ... Would you be doing porn if Duke were free?
KNOX: No. If Duke had given me the proper financial resources, I wouldn't have done porn. They have nobody to blame for the scandal but themselves.
(Of course the OP is right that she is surely encountering disgusting, contemptible misogyny. But we can still mock libertarians, right?)
She's got a lot going for her, but she's still a libertarian who goes to Duke.
The quote in 4 is pretty dumb, but it's effective trolling of pretty much everyone.
I have an almost nauseated feeling while reading this story
I know exactly what you mean. Or, at least, I was reading it and involuntarily wincing while wondering why people have to be shitty to each other. You have to figure that the vast majority of Duke students either like porn or are fairly indifferent to it -- how does that turn into needing to be a jerk to this woman because that's how she's paying for school?
(Also, and this is terribly unimportant, I find it really annoying somehow that 'porn star' seems to be the word for 'anyone who appears in porn'. Isn't there a word for 'moderately successful porn actor'?)
You have to figure that the vast majority of Duke students either like porn or are fairly indifferent to it -- how does that turn into needing to be a jerk to this woman because that's how she's paying for school?
Externalized self-loathing.
how does that turn into needing to be a jerk to this woman because that's how she's paying for school
Also, haven't they seen Boogie Nights? Yer cruisin' for a roller-skate curb-job, fratboy assholes!
8: Maybe they're all character actors.
It's more about method, I think. What is my motivation?
"Were it not for imagination, Sir, a man would be as happy masturbating to a townie as to a Dukie."
Stupid Boswell took my "Girls of the Ivy League".
When I saw Samuel Johnson in the recent comments, I thought the comment would be about doing things for money. Also, the battle against opinionated everyone really has been lost.
Can you really earn enough money doing porn during school breaks to pay private-college tuition?
I know a lot of people in the 1995 Women of the Ivy League issue. Three models (two theater scensters at my school, one friend's sister at another), plus a dozen people who streaked in protest of the limited range of human flesh not dreamt of in the Playboy philosophy. They were spotted by a local freelance photographer who sold the pictures to Playboy.
the battle against opinionated everyone
There was a battle? I like opinionated everyone.
From the Daily Beast:
Usually, a female charges $800 to $1,000 for a boy/girl scene, $900 to $1,200 for "backdoor" action, and an additional $100 for each added scene partner. Rates for a girl/girl scene are significantly lower, averaging from $600 to $900. Rates dip even lower yet if it's an oral-only scene, starting at $250. [...] "An average girl makes about $40,000 to $50,000 a year."
The compensation just doesn't seem enough for part-time work that tends to stigmatize a young person publicly for the rest of his or her life. Even though I know that it's her choice, that sex work shouldn't be shamed, I still think there's a lot of post-hoc rationalization going on in her story.
This exchange from the Playboy interview made me sad:
PLAYBOY: Have you told your parents about what you're doing?
KNOX: Yes.
PLAYBOY: How did they react?
KNOX: I don't want to comment about my family.
Of course she could have gone to a less expensive school, I guess. Maybe one that's affordable by stripping or something.
What I'm reading seems to suggest that stripping is actually paid better. You'd have to interact with the punters and go to work more regularly, which are two very real downsides. On the upside, however, it's less likely that your parents could rent a video to watch you discover your sexuality.
25 -- The organized porn film industry is apparently in a complete financial tailspin, according to the one lawyer I know a bit who does some of this work. There's just not a lot of money floating around to pay anyone. If they want to make significant money, the actresses use the films as calling cards for appearance work, often at strip clubs, and/or prostitution.
Duke cost of attendance is what, $50k/year. After tax you could make that in roughly 70 movies (or fewer movies and some strip club appearances). Each movie takes no more than a few hours to shoot, but that's still way more than you could do on just a few vacation appearances. But, you could at least make a very substantial dent in your student loans.
I'm trying to figure out if she got unlucky in getting outed, or if it was just a matter of when. Presumably there are hundreds of college girls doing this, but it's not a scandal that makes gawker very often.
In addition, I think there's also a contract system (e.g. 100 scenes for a production company for 1 year, plus they control your appearances and marketing, in exchange for an advance) for the genuine "star" performers) (note that this makes the "star" designation somewhat more legitimate than it might be otherwise, it really is more like the old studio system in that a "star" is someone who is on the contract roster of stars). But I'm not sure how much that pays. Probably you top out around $75-100k pretax a year, for the top names, but that's just a guess.
As I understand it, from talking with sex workers of my acquaintance, stripping doesn't actually pay that well for your average part-time paying-my-way-through-college dancer. It's enough to get by on, certainly, but the interactions with both the punters and the club management sound horrible in the extreme. In general, it seems like sex work is about like any other kind of intensive customer-service/performance industry where people have an expiration date -- lots of people do okay, there are a few raking in quite a lot, and right at the very top, a handful of people become millionaires.
The estimated cost of attendance on duke.edu is $61,404, which I imagine doesn't include much fun (books and personal expenses are estimated for $3,580 for a school year, and that's where the fun budget would go). At the pay rates I'm seeing, and with the cost of airfare nowadays, she'd have to do a bunch of extra scenes just to pay for the trip to California.
Someone in the industry pays for the trip to CA.
Dealing with strip-club punters sounds like just about the worst possible job ever. They're drunk strangers, you're basically naked, and your mission is to get them to put cash in what little underwear you have left. [Shudder.]
Hopefully she's majoring in petroleum engineering, the only major worth a damn.
32. That would make sense--everything I'm reading indicates an industry that is increasingly willing to push costs onto the performers, to compete with the webcam traffic--but they're probably still flying out people for traditional live scenes.
34.--Nope! Sociology and women's studies.
My guess (and this is really a guess, I don't have any real knowledge of how things work other than this one guy I see occasionally from whom I try to get information, because let's face it this is interesting) is that either she's a contract performer where airfare is part of the contract, or her agent flies her out so that she can earn enough for him to take his 10% cut and make some money.
Further to 32, per this very undergraduate-learning-about-New-Journalism feature in the Duke Chronicle, her agency pays for travel.
OMG if you hover over the little icons at the end of each paragraph on that Duke article, you can react to the graf in question by clicking on "problematic," "provocative", "disagree" or writing in your own response like "sororities ruin our girls".
Isn't it likely that she's using the porn work to supplement other income/financial support? I thought the issue wasn't that she was getting nothing from Duke/financial aid, just that it wasn't enough.
This is just a crazily exhibitionistic thing to do for a woman on a residential college campus with an insular social scene. She was bound to get ID'd.
I wonder what the reaction would be to a male doing straight porn scenes. Socially, a lot more 'you go, bro!' but I think it would still screw up his career prospects at least somewhat.
OMG, he was a porn star too? I guess med school is also expensive.
"a dozen people who streaked in protest of the limited range of human flesh not dreamt of in the Playboy philosophy. They were spotted by a local freelance photographer who sold the pictures to Playboy."
So, mission accomplished?
My brother had a 1979 Playboy with girls of the big 10. I did not know any of them. I believe that magazine is still in the bottom of his desk drawer at my parents' house. They're not big on cleaning out the house- my dad's a hoarder.
What was his stage name?
He was born in the Bronx. So maybe Bernard Grand Concourse?
You know, this really is kind of a wakeup call that literally no one non-extremely-wealthy can afford to be a sociology major at Duke (that is, based on expected income accruing to sociology majors). I guess maybe if you received a full scholarship it could possibly be worth it. But she's probably at the absolute tip-top of income one could earn in college or post graduation, and it's still most definitely not worth it.
This just seems terrible, ugly and likely to end in a wretched and miserable fashion for that poor girl.
In addition, I should like to push against the practice of declaring absolutely everything just fine so long as the person doing it is "OK with it" (whatever that means) to the extent of being able to make it through an interview or put his or her name on a tendentious blog post (last week's "Hell yeah I smoke crack and I've never felt better in my life" thing in Slate comes to mind), when the bedrock evidence (smoking crack, doing porn to pay for school) indicates that the person is not OK at all with anything.
K-sky! No!
I have fought in the battle against opinionated everyone, on two fronts.
First, it undermines the joke, by telegraphing it up front.
Second, it implies that the reader is such a dolt that she would need it explained to her with a marker that a famous person is visiting the blog.
Third, OPINIONATED did not originally mean 'Unfogged in-joke about signing a famous person's name.' It was a specific joke about a specific persona who was opinionated in a funny way. The originator of the gag regrets that it has spread to mean nothing except to undermine its own joke.
How can you be so wrong, k-sky, when you are generally right about things?
Or, put differently, her best-case financial scenario is to do porn through college in order to obtain, without paying $240,000, a degree that entitles her to earn slightly less than she would from doing the porn. And this in a world where porn performers don't earn that much.
I guess that's not her best case scenario. But it still seems like a likely one. Burn Duke to the ground.
45: So, mission accomplished?
More or less. There was some indignation -- it was college -- but mostly people were pleased. One of the models also ran in the protest.
49: How can you be so wrong, k-sky, when you are generally right about things?
I like most everything.
I'm confused by 49.1 and 49.2. In a well-executed OPINIONATED, isn't the name an inseparable part of the joke, and not a separate telegraphing of the joke?
I think people are over, or perhaps under analyzing her motivations. In a piece I read last week she talked about she'd been obsessively into porn since junior high and getting paid a thousand bucks per appearance to have sex, something she loves, rather than earning nine bucks an hour doing retail, which she does not like. She's an eighteen year old with an eighteen year old's ability to think ahead long term saying to herself - I can fulfill a huge fantasy of mine and get paid a ton of money. Not an uncommon fantasy presumably, though not one most genuinely want to turn into reality. But some will, and some subset of those will actually find it fun, and least for a little while.
the person we jerk off to is not supposed to be the same person we take exams with. (Or do anything else with for that matter.)
No, no college students ever have sexual fantasies about fellow students. Or only the weird deviant minority does.
Depending on the kinds of courses they did, a sociology major could get into jobs involving data analysis that pay well. Also, starting salary at first job post-college isn't necessarily the best someone will ever do.
The piece k-sky linked to in 38 refers to her showing off an iPad mini and designer handbags, so maybe she's not focusing on just the essentials to pay for college.
Turns out one of my posing classmates had her pics used against her in a political campaign. That's a bummer. From what I can tell, she didn't have much of a chance in a district that would elect this charmer.
53: Megan's saying that the perfunctory inclusion of "opinionated" in front of names of famous and often dead people who everyone knows are not actually leaving comments here, is not a sign of a well-intentioned OPINIONATED joke.
Wait, how have we managed to get 50+ comments into this without anyone mentioning the most shocking part of all of this? She's someone doing porn claiming to be 18 who's actually 18.
"OPINIONATED" was once a specific way for a grandma to come in here, shout and slam the door on the way out.
But now it just means "I am referring to a famous person on Unfogged", which ruins the joke that maybe Samuel Johnson really has shown up to comment here. And insults us by implying that we wouldn't know if we weren't told.
It is a stupid convention, which has only maybe regained some humor when Moby does it specifically to tweak me.
53: "Opinionated" before a famous person's name is as important as nipples on a Sociology major.
Megan's been on this tear for years, but the truth is that 16 is far funnier as "Opinionated Samuel Johnson" than it would be as just "Samuel Johnson," so she's just wrong. Yes it's a signal that something's a joke but it's often necessary to make it work as a joke.
I had no idea that OPINIONATED was steeped in controversy. Like k-sky, I often like OPINIONATED. Unlike k-sky, I'm wrong about most everything. The mystery deepens!
Without inside jokes, we would be nothing.
I agree with Megan. Opinionated Grandma's comments were usually the wisest in their respective threads.
Opinionated comments are awesome and I'm on board with 61 and 62.
a degree that entitles her to earn slightly less than she would from doing the porn
But for much longer, probably.
In the article I read she said she wanted to be a lawyer. Presumably a Duke grad with really, really good grades has a chance of getting into a law school which is not necessarily an obviously horrible choice. Or she could end up in business school. Even in the present day economy plenty of grads from elite schools end up doing ok financially. Assuming that this doesn't follow her around for the rest of her life.
Yeah, she could go to law school, but she could also have easily done so without either running up $240k in debt from Duke to do so or doing porn to pay off that $240k.
The point isn't that porn is a better career than whatever you could be doing with a sociology degree, it's that paying Duke a shit-ton of money to get your sociology degree seems like a huge fucking ripoff.
I like the modern usage of OPINIONATED comments too. I believe they allow for people who are not as funny as say, Neb Nosflow, to engage in witticisms that would otherwise be closed to them under their regular handles. OPINIONATED GRANDMA should always be welcome at Unfogged, but so should everyone else.*
*Except Pauly Shore, etc.
Which she's (maybe) trying to alleviate by doing porn. Though I agree that the real motivations are probably just being confused and young and maybe having fun with it, maybe making horrible choices.
Assuming that this doesn't follow her around for the rest of her life.
She should be able to monetize this moment in the spotlight enough to pay for law school, I would think.
Okay so I'm going to run this by y'all. As Halford knows, the real way to make money in porn (if you're a woman; dudes go gay or eat cat food, sorry) is in live personal appearances, right? Is this all a really, really well managed staged reveal so that she can make absolute bank on live appearances in the research triangle? Because then she could absolutely for sure clear more than $100k or whatever.
I doubt the move in 73 is deliberate, but I hope it works out for her with $$$$.
You know that Spanx lady is a billionaire. The smart thing to do would be to likewise capitalize on the pornification of society without actually having to do the porn yourself.
Megan is closest to being right about OPINIONATED. Back when giants walked the earth and the blog was funny, if you wanted to make a Samuel Johnson joke, you would just sign a comment "Samuel Johnson". OPINIONATED has to do with a certain tone.
Yes, but like I said earlier, this is an eighteen year old with an eighteen year old's maturity who found the idea of doing porn fun. Eighteen year old does something that could have negative consequences in the long term because they thought it could be fun, and in this case also earn them some cash. News at eleven.
That was some sweet pwnage, I have to say.
78.2 and .3 are about me getting into web development, aren't they?
As has been established before, there's a divide between people who think "opinionated" adds to comments like Mr. Johnson's above and those who don't and the people who don't seem to be in the minority.
Appeals to etymology never win arguments, but going back years, people like Jonathan Edwards, R. Waldo Emerson, and Edgar A Poe and a cat of his acquaintance did not feel the need to declare their opinionation.
As has been established before, there's a divide between people who think "opinionated" adds to comments like Mr. Johnson's above and those who don't and the people who don't seem to be in the minority.
Appeals to etymology never win arguments, but going back years, people like Jonathan Edwards, R. Waldo Emerson, and Edgar A Poe and a cat of his acquaintance did not feel the need to declare their opinionation.
Why? What part of the joke is improved by saying it is from Opinionated Samuel Johnson? What about the comment is specifically opinionated? So far as I can tell, it means, 'I am writing this on Unfogged', which I know because we are both on Unfogged.
I blame the evil alien mecha sheep for that double post.
OPINIONATED has to do with a certain tone.
I agree with this. If it isn't going to be OPINIONATED SAMUEL JOHNSON, you should leave off the OPINIONATED part.
It also means "I am about to tell a joke" and really, people. You should have the courage to tell jokes without announcing them first.
83 is answered in an actually impressively comprehensive review of the historical literature that got posted on Standpipe's blog back in I think 2009. If you haven't read it I really recommend it. I learned a lot.
I think it is funny to imagine Samuel Johnson or Spiro Agnew or a Swingline stapler or whoever happens to be opinionated at the moment sitting down at their PC, firing up AOL and logging in to bloviate ignorantly.
they allow for people who are not as funny as say, Neb Nosflow
But it doesn't actually make the joke any funnier. I can't believe that encouraging weak jokes is in the original spirit of the blog.
I can see validity on both sides of the OPINIONATED argument, but the implication in 86 that Moby may not feel bold enough to make jokes here is blowing my mind.
So OPINIONATED comments have to be in ALL CAPS? Like, shouty? I guess that's fair enough. But I have to say, I always assume the shouting when I read that a comment is being written by someone opinionated, whether they're employing ALL CAPS or not. Maybe your sense of humor isn't very subtle, Megan?
87 cont'd: what was cool is that it was one of those N+1-ish explorations of something very small, you know? that turned out to just have immense historical echoes, and I think really allowed me, at least, to see all kinds of world events through a new lens, but where the original joke didn't stop seeming funny at all. It was kind of.... life-affirming? that seems a litle pretentious but it was pretty beautiful.
But it is even funnier to imagine them participating without first declaring themselves part of an in joke that means something different.
Megan, I have to disagree. I find it a useful tag when the person isn't someone I've heard of: a comment by "Opinioned Alferd Packer" suggests a joke that looking him up makes better. A comment from "Alferd Packer" just draws 'hmm, someone new?'
Or when the person might actually be commenting -- Opinionated Megan McArdle, for example -- remote though the possibility might be.
I can't believe that encouraging weak jokes is in the original spirit of the blog.
Oh. My. God. The post on Standpipe's about this? Haaaah so good. Can't believe they got away with it. And Facebook? In 1996? Glorious. Truly glorious. Well done, Mr. Brennan.
The canon evolves, Megan. It's okay to grow with it.
OPINIONATED GRANDMA DOESN'T KNOW HOW TO TURN OFF THE CAPS LOCK OK AND YOU HAVE TO SPEAK UP BECAUSE THE COMPUTER FAN WONT STOP RUNNING BECAUSE SHE HAS EIGHTEEN TOOLBARS INSTALLED ON IE6 AND ITS KILLING THE CPU
Or something like that. I don't remember who started the trend. It was a separate joke from the famous historical personages.
You are supposed to pretend to already know every possible reference and discreetly google on the side. This blog had standards.
Wasn't the original spirit of the blog something about pro-war swimming posts? I don't think Unfogged Originalism cuts much ice, nor should it.
97.1 made me laugh and captures the original spirit of OPINIONATED GRANDMA commenting but I like the way it has evolved.
EVERYTHING IS A LIE. I WANT TO DIE. I WANT TO DIE. I WANT TO DIE. FIGHT FOR MY NAME. FIGHT FOR MY NAME. FIGHT FOR MY NAME.
ALLAHU! ALLAHU!
If you meet the original spirit of Unfogged on the road, kill it.
FIGHT THE GOOD FIGHT MEGAN
OPINIONATION IS SO MUCH MORE THAN PSEUDONYMY
THIS GIRL AT DUKE IS STANDING UP FOR THE WRONG THINGS
THIS IS NOT THE WAY TO FIND MISTER RIGHT AND WHY IS SHE AT DUKE ANYWAY IF SHE ISN'T A MEMBER OF THE SOCIAL ELITE OR A CLIMBER THERETO
101 is legitimately not funny. I sort of like the opinionated stuff but arguably the anonymity of it just allows people to fall back on cheap jokes that would never fly otherwise.
Megan is 100% correct here. She could be more correct only if she were simultaneously hurling a burning couch from a roof.
Unlike Megan, I don't think adding "Opinionated" really hurts a joke, but I'm ok with not getting a joke because it lacks "Opinionated" and ok with not even knowing it was a joke if I don't pick up on it.
I guess I don't actually know where I come down. I don't mind the opinionated jokes but fundamentally I have found myself using them less. I'm not sure? It could go either way?
I've noticed people don't always use presidents for presidential posting these days. If you got rid of Opinionated, there would be confusion as to the intent of the pseudonym.
Even if the stick to presidents, its a problem. If someone signs "Bill Clinton", are they trying to be anonymous, or funny? "Opinionated Bill Clinton" makes it clear.
Also, OPINIONATED is lot funnier than Opinionated.
I may have to write a special poem or story about this meta-discussion of a meta-joke, just to wring some humor out of it somehow.
109: oh oh oh my god like that one, yes. That was in the standpipe's blog piece, I think? Where the sort of nature of the narrator of the poem as opinionated was contradicted by the unopinionated nature of the piece? But then there was actually kidn of a meta-level where the actual commenter was genuinely opinionated, but was intentionally omitting that in the context of a discussion of the prepending of "opinionated" to comments? I actually that not only that the whole original mishegas was funny, in that circumstance, but the dicsussion of the funniness of the original scenario was at least as funny, and like twice as worthwhile. It's great when that happens organically in comment threads that are talking about, I guess, whether things are funny, and where to talk about whether things are funny and -- maybe most importantly -- how to talk about whether things are funny. Sort of as in Fanon's work.
are they trying to be anonymous, or funny
If you can't tell, the joke isn't funny enough. This is a good example of how Opinionated is a crutch for weak jokes. Sadly, it is crutch that works by saying "I am a joke.", which doesn't make the attempt actually funny.
112 to the blog.
113 was just plain antisemitism.
112 to the blog.
113 was just plain antisemitism.
I... I have nothing. Nothing. So, so sorry.
Again, I just feel terrible. I really do. If you can't accept my apologies, I understand, but they're offered as truly and deeply as I am able.
99 and 94 are true. In addition, the "opinionated" also signals that you are making a joke about some historical person or thing, rather than merely and exclusively being a twit trying to gain points by an obscure reference. The "opinionated" doesn't always work, but it often does.
In any case, that "Opinionated" is often used by Moby is basically QED that it's funnier than the alternative.
I never liked hearing people compared to chopped liver. Gives some folks the wrong idea.
Why are you people arguing about the spirit of Unfogged, when not one of you has offered an opinion about which is Belle Knox's best scene?
SORRY 103 WAS ME
WE SHARE A COMPUTER
ANY PUBLIC FORNICATION INEVITABLY LEADS TO ONE BEING VIEWED DIFFERENTLY BY THE VIEWERS
I REMEMBER BEING INTERVIEWED BY ROLLING STONE IN 1967, I SAID SOMETHING DUMB ABOUT HOW THE GOVT DOESN"T WANT US TO BALL BUT WE SHOULD BALL ALL THE TIME.
I CALLED MYSELF "MOTHER EARTH" IN THE INTERVIEW, NO ONE KNEW IT WAS ME
NOW WE GIRLS ARE HUANTED BY OUR LAME DECISIONS
rather than merely and exclusively being a twit trying to gain points by an obscure reference
"Opinionated" is a poor way to mask this. Because it's still going to be true to the extent that it's ever been true of references here.
LUCKILY, WE DON'T NEED A POLICY ABOUT EVERY GODDAMN THING. POST WHATEVER YOU THINK IS FUNNY.
WITHIN CERTAIN PARAMETERS OBVIOUSLY
114 brought me to this amazing thing. I recently went to a public writers in which Felix was one of the featured SF writers. It took superhuman effort not to yell out "Fuck you, clown" every time he spoke. Having managed that, I slunk away without saying anything at all.
(He was wry, funny, and rather private Not the sort of person who deserves sudden, public profanity, if even he would have eventually figured out the joke.)
I had a lot more respect for OPINIONATED GRANDMA back before I found out she used to do porn.
I thought OPINIONATED was just about having a socially acceptable way to talk in all caps.
88 is exactly right. 96 is too. 123 is hilarious. And I didn't realize that the Felix in 127 was the Felix he is (whom I know chiefly from the tweeter) until just now.
I guess I basically agree with 96. I understand where Megan's coming from, in that the OPINIONATED thing has moved pretty far from its original usage, which was quite circumscribed. I do think the more recent way of using it is often funny, but differently from the original way. I don't think I've ever used it myself.
I've never used it effectively.
||
I believe it was mcmc who, several years back, expressed an interest in whiskey-flavored beer. I can now report that it does exist, and is quite good.
|>
Hmmm. That sounds like it might remind me too much of all of my bad experiences drinking boilermakers.
That's the trouble with boilermakers. Its easy to be reminded of your bad experiences drinking them. Your good experiences, you don't remember.
Felix has a new book coming out -- there's a chapter up on tor.com. From the first chapter, it seems to be at least partially a riff on Chesterton, which makes me happy.
I'm intrigued by Halford's assertion that there's no money in porn any more. Does this mean that there's no longer a significant market for videos of pretty young people fucking each other (which I find hard to believe), or that there's so much out there for free by now that punters can watch it till they die of old age without parting with a penny?
I agree with this. If it isn't going to be OPINIONATED SAMUEL JOHNSON, you should leave off the OPINIONATED part.
When was Samuel Johnson ever not opinionated? It's redundant.
There are quite a few whiskey barrel-aged beers, actually. This one is quite intense. I like the Rye-on-Rye (aged in rye barrels) better, probably.
that there's so much out there for free by now that punters can watch it till they die of old age without parting with a penny?
Yup. Its got me thinking about the idea of decommodification. I'm trying to think of other examples where something became so widely available that there just ceased to be a market for it. It is such a nice reversal on the normal trend.
Also interesting: A lot of the free porn that is killing the industry seems to be coming from people who just want you to watch them fuck. I like to think this represents a return to the idea that sex is about sharing and connecting with people.
||
Uh oh Halford.
(#include the usual caveats about science journalism.)
|>
He didn't rise to the bait when I posted that either, md.
I'm trying to think of other examples where something became so widely available that there just ceased to be a market for it
Unfogged.
Which, when googled, leads me to "Your Voice for Essential Tremor", the International Essential Tremor Foundation.
"Essential Tremor" would be a good pseud.
Sex-positive feminism + Libertarianism = the horror that is "Erotic Capital".
""People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices."
Of course, you can guess what happens next.
-- They contrive to raise prices?
Don't be naive, Jeffrey.
"Essential Tremor" would be a good pseud.
Also a good DVD box set.
139.last: That sounds noble, except that it's indistinguishable from leaked revenge porn, which taints it all. (Unless there's some Fair Trade porn where all the participants explicitly acknowledge distribution within the video.)
"Essential Tremor" would be a good pseud.
Also a good DVD box set.
Or an artisanal amateur porn site.
I was pretty surprised that a post involving libertarianism and 18 year old porn stars devolved into a meta thread about unfogged joke telling etiquette. Encouraging to see that things are back on track.
Although 140 calls for someone to make the porn-libertarianism-paleo-diet connection. I confess I'm drawing a blank.
It seems like every two years or so some headline comes along like the one in 140, is completely debunked, and then shows up again, but I'll wait for other people to do it this time comprehensively before diving in. My guess would be that they've combined people's self-reporting of their diet and haven't controlled for a ton of environmental and social factors, which (among many other reasons) was why the last "meat will kill you" story that made the science journalism rounds turned out to be utter bullshit. Yes it turns out that if eating meat is correlated with people who otherwise live very unhealthy lifestyles for social reasons then yes it will be correlated with living a super unhealthy lifestyle. But I'll wait until someone else actually does the debunking work. It is kind of stunning how incredibly bad nutrition science is, but I've known that now for several years. I guess parenting science is even worse, though.
not one of you has offered an opinion about which is Belle Knox's best scene
I've only seen one, but she's pretty average-looking compared to the other women employed by the company.
Of course, you can guess what happens next.-- They contrive to raise prices?
Don't be naive, Jeffrey.
Is it "naive?" I thought it was "fatuous."
(The picture at the link in the OP is a very flattering one.)
147: There are pay sites that essentially act as Fair Trade amateur porn. The couples involved are given a camera and instructions on how to best shoot themselves and are paid for their efforts.
147 Yup that is the problem. Though some self-made porn effectively is obviously 'fair trade' and not revenge porn, with most of it you have no idea. If you know it's either because you've seen the original personal tumblr or whatever or the person or persons are saying stuff that makes it obvious.
. If you know it's either because you've seen the original personal tumblr or whatever or the person or persons are saying stuff that makes it obvious.
Or because it's you.
The estimated cost of attendance on duke.edu is $61,404, which I imagine doesn't include much fun (books and personal expenses are estimated for $3,580 for a school year, and that's where the fun budget would go). At the pay rates I'm seeing, and with the cost of airfare nowadays, she'd have to do a bunch of extra scenes just to pay for the trip to California.
I don't know about Duke, but I went to an equally expensive college, and they did factor in fun to the estimated cost. I saved about $1500 a year on estimated costs by simply not having fun. They also included travel (3x a year plane flights), which again, I saved money on by going home 2x a year, and flying on cheaper flights. This did also mean I got flagged by the TSA when I flew E-W coast in a 20 hour trip via Detroit, San Antonio, and San Francisco.
My guess is that she gets some financial aid, but not enough to avoid taking out loans. Another very likely possibility is her parents aren't willing to pay their expected contribution, so she has to make up the difference. A lot of financial problems for students at my school (which had excellent financial aid) stemmed from this issue.
157.last: I'm willing to bet she gets some financial aid if she's got enough left over from her few gigs to buy purses and iPads.
I now recall that the classic cheesy movie trilogy is Tremors, not Tremor. Arse.
Not related to Knox, but I also had the impression that financial aid tends to screw immigrant families by not calculating in ability-to-pay their need to send money to other family in the country of origin.
154: intriguing! So the site provides a way for the performers to monetize their exhibitionism and a small amount of quality control, but it's main value to the consumer sounds like being a guarantor of non-horribleness. Hrm, now I'm wondering if there is a kickstarter for porn (which obvs should be called dickstarter).
162.last: Or Cockstarter.
We should add this to the Unfogged business plan.
161: I recently learned that foreign workers in the US frequently can't claim dependents in other countries on their taxes, so that kind of makes sense. I have a married + 2 kids coworker who has to file as "single, no dependents," which is kind of lousy for him.
145, 152, 158: A correction sequence close to one already executed on this blog. But I had forgotten that it had been you that had triggered that one as well (although it was my affirmation that Blandings actually corrected.)
162: I think the trend of "doxxing" and otherwise publicly shaming (mostly) women who are (sometimes) naked on the internet is a pretty strong disincentive.
||
NY Times article on getting the VM movie. Not something I followed, so was not aware of the "be an extra for a sufficient donation" part of it.
"Rob wrote Veronica as this queen of the disenfranchised," Ms. Bell said. "All these people who were affected by Veronica, who say, 'This got me through high school,' were able to say: 'I now have a job. I can give you 10 bucks. Many of the several dozen backers on the "Veronica Mars" set in June seemed to agree with Ms. Bell's assessment, though they had paid upward of $2,500 to play additional guests at the character's high-school reunion.|>
CHIMPEACH THE CHIMPEROR
147
(Unless there's some Fair Trade porn where all the participants explicitly acknowledge distribution within the video.)
There's no official Fair Trade stamp that I know of, but some production companies seem much more sex-positive and feminist than others. It could all be an act, I haven't looked into it that closely, but some look convincing.
Also, there are certain user-generated communities that make an effort to verify that the people in the pictures know what the pictures are being used for. I was disappointed when I found out the system was originally created mainly so people could be sure that lewd chat messages were actually reaching the intended targets rather than the perpetrators of revenge porn or some teen posting pictures of a stranger, but still, it's a start.
169: that prompted visceral memories of childhood sloth. And not the good Kristin Bell kind of sloth, either.
154: intriguing! So the site provides a way for the performers to monetize their exhibitionism and a small amount of quality control, but it's main value to the consumer sounds like being a guarantor of non-horribleness. Hrm, now I'm wondering if there is a kickstarter for porn (which obvs should be called dickstarter).
What was that site from Time Back Way Back that consisted entirely of videos of people's faces as they masturbated? It operated according to similar principles (submissions by the public + editorial control) and I suppose was by its nature reasonably unlikely to involve revenge porn.
Jesus, people, don't masturbate to non-fair trade sloths. What is wrong with you?
172. Jack, you have debauched my sloth!
173: I hestitate slightly to reveal that I know the answer to your question is "Beautiful Agony."
173: Beautiful Agony, which I think was part of the same ecosystem as IFeelMyself, with its notably better-than-average production values.
Let's all post our favorite porn sites. And our salaries.
And the salaries of our favorite porn performers.
Let's all post our favorite porn sites.
A run of twenty consecutive "herpy.net" comments isn't going to be very informative.
Some of those lizards make bank.
Not to mention their SAT scores.
But they're fixing the SAT! There will be a gap of really smart-sounding porn stars. 1600? Smartypants again.
Just to close a loop on 140/150, that study looks particularly ridiculous. The "as bad as smoking" headline is clearly crazy, and the only result that they seem to get is by weirdly dividing up age groups. I'm sure that's not the last word on why the result is ridiculous, but it does seem to be another one in a long line. And, study sponsored and publicized by someone with some kind of vegetable protein company.
OT to Megan:
My husband (unbeknownst to me) started reading your blog after it was linked in that article on CA water. When I found out, I of course mentioned that I 'knew' you from here. Amusingly, he had already decided based on your writing that there was a high probability that you were an Unfogged commenter. (He knows of the place but I don't think reads very often (Hi, dear!).) And then we found £5.
Really? That's funny. Hello, husband of Parenthetical!
BTW, he of course thinks your blog is excellent.
That protein study seems to be utter bullshit. In this case, it seems to have been the researchers themselves who were irresponsible (of course, a bunch of outlets printed the results anyway).
In a piece I read last week she talked about she'd been obsessively into porn since junior high and getting paid a thousand bucks per appearance to have sex, something she loves
This is bog standard porn star interview chatter. It's porn kayfabe. Maybe it's true, maybe not, but they all say those kinds of things.