LOS ANGELES – In late December of each year, I take some time to look back at the events, news stories, people and companies which shaped the year in porn – or those which made me laugh, cringe, or facepalm with real vigor, at least.
I don’t do this just because it’s an obligatory thing to do among douchebag pseudo-journalists like me, though; I also do it because when late December rolls around, I’m just as lazy, uninspired, stuffed with turkey and/or ham and disinclined to do real work as anybody else.
January: Kink.com announced it was moving its operations out of the Mission District Armory in San Francisco and heading for the greener pastures of Las Vegas.
“It’s a little sad,” Kink owner Peter Ackworth said at the time. “It’s the end of an era.”
The good news is, if you want to recreate the look and feel of an iconic structure like the Armory, or even just a dank basement dungeon which looks like it plausibly could be in the depths of a building like the Armory, Vegas is the ideal place to do it. Hell, they even have an ersatz Eiffel Tower there, so I doubt the building codes will be too restrictive to allow a massive Saint Andrew’s cross motif.
February: In the second month of the year, “porn’s new king” was sentenced to over 11 years in prison for securities fraud and conspiracy to commit securities fraud. No, not that new king of porn, but Jason Galanis the only new king of porn who has never been anything remotely like a king of porn.
March: Well-known as a place which doesn’t tolerate sexual misconduct from anyone not running for a seat in the U.S. Senate, Alabama mulls passing its own version of the Human Trafficking Prevention Act, which of course discourages human trafficking by forcing people who make computers, mobile devices and basically anything else which can be connected to the internet to pre-install content filters which will block “obscene content.” (It’s not clear whether the same act requires shopping malls to install filters which will block Roy Moore.)
April: In what was supposed to be a routine email related to current assignments to his class, UConn professor Keith Simmons accidentally included a link to a video on YouPorn. Clearly, this was not an important story from an adult industry perspective, but it makes my little annual summary here because Simmons’ vague, implausible excuse that his email “seems to have been infected by a bad link” was the worst line of bullshit since I was in high school and told my parents the dog drank their tequila while they were on vacation, not me.
May: CamSoda faked a shark attack on Molly Cavalli as a publicity stunt, presumably because relevant market research revealed that nothing makes people want to spend money on live cam shows like news of a good shark attack.
June: A backtracking quitter named Hostgator M. Dotcom (formerly “Billy Gibby,” so not quite a member of ZZ Top) announced he’d had all his porn-site-advertisement tattoos removed from his face – or the ones he couldn’t cover up with a cap, at any rate. Not since PayPal reneged on its hollow vow to never drop porn site-billing from its acceptable uses has the industry experienced such a heartless, unexpected betrayal.
July: July marked the one-year anniversary of Donald Trump signing the Children’s Internet Safety Presidential Pledge crafted by the anti-porn group, Enough Is Enough. Say what you will about President Trump, but you can’t argue he didn’t take just as much action on this pledge in his first six months as President as he did during his last four months as a candidate…
August: In what may have been a way to announce his intent to compete in the Logic Long-Jump at the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo, Kansas City Royals General Manager Dayton Moore took the occasion of answering questions about Royals pitcher Danny Duffy’s DUI arrest as an opportunity to assure the media he often talks to his players about the dangers of porn. On another note which is just as related to this August news item as Moore’s remarks were to Duffy’s arrest, it turns out Kansas City is somehow in Missouri.
September: RIP Hugh Hefner – and fuck you, Patrick Trueman.
October: Patreon “clarified” its policies on adult content, and everybody was totally understanding of and happy with both the explanation and the new policy itself – except maybe the people to whom it applied.
November: Cherie DeVille and Coolio announced they’re running for the White House in 2020, because clearly what this country really needs is an administration which is an even bigger joke than the one currently occupying the Oval Office…
December: Beate Uhse filed for insolvency, just to remind us all how much the landscape of the adult industry has changed in the last 25 years. You think your revenues have declined? This is a company which clocked over a quarter-billion in revenue per year, not so long ago.
What’s to come in 2018? Only time will tell… by which I mean check back in a week, by when I’ll have published my Obligatory Predictions for the Year to Come, 2018 Edition.
