If you’re looking for a generic, big boobs site for a quick jerk-off, then avoid IFeelMyself.com. The reason: Unlike most of what’s on the Web, IFeelMyself.com is an honestly erotic look at orgasms, as shot by the real people who experienced them.IFeelMyself.com is one in a series of reality-based erotic websites created and maintained by “Richard.” YNOT’s Peter Berton caught up with him recently and asked a few questions.
YNOT.com: Please tell us a bit about your sites.
Richard: Our sites are all very different and all completely unique on the net. www.ishotmyself.com, our first site, puts women in control of their own image. As the name suggests, contributors photograph themselves with complete artistic control – with the only provisos that they are fully naked and the pictures are of a reasonable technical standard. The Project attracts a very diverse array of women from all around the world; some send in very beautiful images, some just mess around and have a good time, and some try and shock the viewers with very confronting images.
It was in a conversation with one of the contributors to that site, that the idea for www.beautifulagony.com came up. We wanted to prove that the sexiest part of porn goes on inside the viewer’s head, so we asked some people to film themselves in orgasm, but only from the neck up. So Agony became the only erotic site on the internet with no nudity whatsoever, and it was a huge hit.
Shortly after, we added the Confessions section, where we find out what’s going on inside the Agonee’s heads. Some of the stories and admissions are pretty toe-curling, but what’s most amazing are the secrets that so many people have in common. When we started Agony our pledge was that no nudity would be shown, ever. One day a woman submitted a tape in which, although fully clothed, her entire body is on screen. Since we couldn’t fit it into the regular site format we gave it air time on Overkill, our “bits n pieces” section, and the response was massive.
At first we had to consider whether this had compromised our credo. But a simple thought experiment – watching a person orgasm, without their face visible – proves our point. But Agony wasn’t the venue to take this further, so we decided to develop a site that dealt with female orgasm (primarily through masturbation), and our challenge was “how to film this, in full body view, without capitulating to porn stereotypes?” It could only work if the participants, and the event itself, were filmed tastefully and with emphasis in the right places.
And so we started www.ifeelmyself.com and although we are sometimes criticized for our lighting and camera angles, we’re happy to lose that audience. Overall the response has been incredible and we have a very loyal following, and a great message forum where some very intelligent and perceptive people – males and females – share their thoughts on a range of topics. It really is one of the best adult forums on the net.
In between all this we decided to set up a site for the vision impaired, for “aural stimulation,” if you like. www.sonicerotica.com was launched in 2006 as a free site. We’ve been very careful to stay clear of all the porn cliches and so most of the submissions we receive never make it to the microphone. No “Penthouse Forum” stories – and in fact much of the content isn’t fiction at all, but real sexual adventures, documented in recordings. Surprisingly, this has been the hardest site to produce content for. It is a great deal easier to hook up with women who want to masturbate on camera than people who can write good erotica.
YNOT.com: What motivated you to start these sites? You are clearly not just out to make money!
Richard: We started ishotmyself.com in 2003 in response to what we saw to be the homogenous, bland wall of porn noise on the internet. The porn industry had been quick to exploit the internet as a delivery medium, but the content it was producing hadn’t changed much in 20 or 30 years.
They were so busy finding new ways to put their old product in front of new customers that they never bothered to look at whether it was actually any good.
Contemporary porn fails in so many ways – it burns its contributors, employs low production standards, promotes homogeny and never actually achieves its fundamental purpose – to turn the viewer on. Looking at the offerings on the DVD shelf ,you’d think only cretins like sex. We knew that wasn’t true so we decided to make something that we would like to watch, and that’s what motivates all our projects.
YNOT.com: Where does the content come from?
Richard: We get a lot of folios submitted through the sites, for ishotmyself and Agony anyway. We have equipment located in several places around the world which we make available to people who don’t have good enough cameras. The material for Ifeelmyself and Sonicerotica is all produced in-house or on location here in Australia, except for a few videos which are sent in to ifeelmyself in the category “home made.” We don’t buy any content from other producers.
YNOT.com: Have you been surprised by what you’ve received, in terms of people’s willingness to expose their inner selves?
Richard: Yes, especially for ifeelmyself, and for the Confessions on Agony. People tell us the most intimate details of their sex lives and fantasies. But after a while we’re not as surprised to hear that someone masturbates with a cucumber, rather to hear that so many people are doing it. And it seems that just about everybody has masturbated at work – restaurants, shops, even in medical practices. People usually just don’t talk about those things.
YNOT.com: Please give us some examples of the most striking content you’ve received to date.
Richard: We received a Beautiful Agony submission from a young lady in the USA. We see her face and get the idea that she’s probably masturbating. Suddenly, a splash of fluid lands on the pillow next to her head, and then another, and before long she is wiping fluid from her glasses. We asked her to submit to ifeelmyself, she did, revealing how she is able to ejaculate far above her own head.
It’s amazing. Some of the creative ideas we see in ishotmyself folios are inspiring. There’s a competitiveness that drives some people to photograph themselves naked in the most daring situations – on buses and aeroplanes, in public streets, on rooftops and at public events. But the most gratifying folios are often the simplest, where women make the most beautiful and sometimes sensual compositions using just a simple light source and their body.
The element which makes the folios outstanding is the honesty and humility of an ordinary person experimenting with nude self-photography for the first time, distilling the creative juices which have been fermenting for a lifetime.
And then one time a girl stuck a Barbie doll in her butt.
YNOT.com: What are the good and bad aspects of running your sites?
Richard: The best thing for me is receiving thank-you’s from the women and men who contribute. The overwhelming majority of people who contribute to our sites – whether out of curiosity, exhibitionism, or money – really enjoy the experience.
As I’m writing this I just received an email from a Canadian contributor who can’t wait to see her folio go up so she can submit another. We get mail like this every day. We get a lot of fan mail from members as well, and that’s nice, but you kind of expect that because they are paying to use the site. I love my work but I suppose if there is a downside, it’s the uncertainty of whether we’ll get enough submissions to keep up the daily update regime. We’re pretty close to the wire sometimes.
I also do all of the customer service for our sites – I answer every email personally – so there is a small element of the public that you’d rather not have to deal with. The anonymity of the internet gives them a special kind of courage and a license do say what they please about anybody, to anybody. I guess that’s not unique to our realm though.
YNOT.com: What have you learned about human sexuality as a result of your sites?
Richard: My perception that there is a widespread sexual repression, almost to the point of conspiracy, has been reinforced. The western world is currently mostly under conservative rule and there is absolutely no support for sexual expression other than tolerance of what the governments (assisted by the conservative media) purport to be an aberrant minority.
Speaking from the point of view of an Australian, the current administration is attempting to wipe out all X-rated culture, while violence is widely tolerated. And yet surveys show that 3/4 of the adult population believe non violent erotica should be available to adults, and 1/4 regularly pay for it. And so consumption of, or participation in, projects like ours remains a “dirty secret” for many.
If the porn industry could start producing quality erotic culture, and if governments stopped relegating it to backyard operations, the collective public perception would gradually align with individual perceptions and sexual culture would no longer be something everyone feels they need to publicly deny while privately participating in. It’s organized, state-promoted hypocrisy.
