The Alphaville Herald

The Renaissance of Porn – Part 1

by Alphaville Herald on 25/06/09 at 1:00 pm

by Bunny Brickworks

If Second Life residents are one big family, www.flickr.com surely istheir family album. Whenever something important happens, we take a snapshotand share the pictures with the community – our first, second and third wedding,a trip to a tropical beach, a party with friends and the fourth or fifthwedding.  But as in every decentfamily album we do not post our porn pictures on flickr. Never, that’s a no-go!

Cuddling on the beach or in front of a fireplace was acceptable, as the cheekyones uploaded some naughty lingerie shots from time to time – but full frontnudity and explicit sexual actions – whether alone or with two or more partners- those were out of the question. After all, what would Aunt Bettie say? ]

But something changed and suddenly porn was there – everywhere – on Flickr.  Couples,threesomes, orgies, blowjobs, BDSM – you name it, Flickr had it. What happened?

It all startedwith an Italian Flickr artist famous for his Tarantinoesque actionshots. 'Hi, I am and I am an SLPornographer and ". The meme took root and spread. It seemed to be a matter of national pride to join – Italians,Germans, Croatians, Japanese, Spaniards and US residents published their interpretations.

The pictures weren’t theoccasional "noob hires escort for half an hour and takes dozens of snapshots toshow his workmates his erotic ventures in a digital environment" pictures. Instead they were digitalmasterpieces made by some of Flickr’s and SL’s finest and most respectedartists. Pictures with dozens of layers, filters, brushes and all the Photoshopvoodoo one can imagine. They were blatant presentations of virtual sexual acts,but nonetheless tasteful and highly erotic.

The porn outbreakdidn’t remain unnoticed by the Flickr admins

One stream after the other wasrestricted and censored. While the SL Pornographers flocked together andspammed digital picture hosting sites with their ‘smut’, a counter-movement wasformed. The coalition of the willing mainly consisted of bored suburbian soccermoms who spent their days screening Flickr streams for improperly flaggedpictures and reporting them to the administrators. As a rule of thumb one couldsay that if a picture shows partial rather harmless nudity (nipples and butts)it would have to be flagged as modest, but pictures showing primary parts or sexualacts have to be marked as restricted. When uploading several pictures in a row, you might forget to flag some properly, but you could at least besure that the soccer moms detected them.

The more streams wererestricted, the more people joined

Porn suddenly seemed acceptable, it was trèschic! Various artists found their niches:There’s the guy who makes sixty or more shots from a porn scene. If you printthe pictures out and run them under your thumb it must look like a real movie.I never tried it but it should work!

There’s the girl with the violent sex& murder pictures – highly artistic snuff – who soon became the shootingstar of the Flickr community. Many more have found their niches in shibari,hentai, fetish imagery.

Making SL porndoesn’t mean two horny people have their avatars shag happily on the awfulanims of a prefab sex bed. It means buying poses or having them custom made. Itmeans building sets, buying the right outfits and prop, spending hours onediting poseballs and choosing the right light settings, not to mention thepost processing of the images. The process is not sexy at all, there’s nofinancial benefit. As far as I know none of the Pornographers makes a livingfrom their artwork, and your reputation sinks faster than the Titanic.

It is adirty job but someone has to do it, right?