NEW LONDON, Conn. – When Ray Pestola launched his pornographic tube site, PlookTube, he had a simple mission in mind: Without spending any money on content, offer porn surfers a reliable source for full-length hardcore porn videos, updated daily with fresh, new pirated user-generated content.
For several years, Pestola’s plan had been coming off without a hitch. The traffic to his tube site slowly grew, month over month, as did the site’s library of uploaded scenes. Advertising revenue was not making him rich, but it was enough to cover the Connecticut-based webmaster’s bills.
Earlier this month, however, Pestola’s site suffered an attack of what he calls “cyber-vandalism and pseudointellectual subversion,” when an anonymous user uploaded several videos of a master sculptor carving a marble masterpiece — a masterpiece that is in no way sexually explicit, let alone pornographic.
“To be clear, I have nothing against art,” Pestola said. “It’s just there’s a time and place for that sort of thing, and the front page of my triple-X tube site is not such a place.
“Can you imagine how disappointed my users were when they fired up the video and tried to fap to it?” Pestola added. “I mean, the artist is clearly talented, but he’s fully clothed, not aroused and isn’t even carving a nude figure, much less a representation likely to include a satisfying money shot.”
Making matters worse, the sculpting video was merely the first of many blatantly artistic videos uploaded to PlookTube over the course of several days. According to Pestola, at one point old PBS videos featuring Bob Ross painting trees and clouds occupied 32 of the 48 available “latest upload” slots on the site’s home page.
Pestola’s attorney, Tito Mendacio, said the art uploads are part of a “clear attempt to harm my client’s site,” and vowed swift legal action against the perpetrator, once he has been identified.
“You can’t just go around uploading whatever kind of videos you want to tube sites with total impunity,” Mendacio said. “Well, I mean, in a literal sense you can, obviously, but what I mean is once I’ve figured out a cause of action here and identified the uploader or uploaders responsible, I’m definitely going to bill my client for a meeting in which I’m going to advise him to sue the fuck out of those bastards, but also inform him I’ll need $375,000 in advance just to get started, delivered to me in the form of clean, unmarked $20 bills without sequential serial numbers.”
As to why Pestola has suddenly become the target of art-loving cyber-vandals, Mendacio believes it is retaliation stemming from a conflict the webmaster had with another user posting in the comments section of a British newspaper’s website.
“There was an article about sexually explicit sculptures being included in an art show in England and I think Ray’s comments set someone off,” Mendacio said. “It’s hard for me to believe it’s a coincidence Ray is having words with some limey prude one day, then being assaulted with art uploads the next.”
Pestola said while he has to admit Mendacio’s theory makes sense, he can’t imagine why his comments were so inflammatory.
“All I did was write ‘LOL, that’s hilarious,’ and add a little emoji with a pair of stick figures doing it doggie style,” Pestola said. “But the next thing I know, all these conservative types are just going off on me. I did post a few things in response to them I probably shouldn’t have, like how they all have horribly ugly teeth, and I’m glad Princess Diana is dead and in my opinion their national soccer team is going to fail miserably in the 2016 UEFA Euro. Even so, I think any reasonable person would agree uploading serious art to a porn site in response to a few harmless insults is way, way out of proportion.”
Bespectacled art historian Susan Felice said while art attacks were quite rare through the late 20th century, modern technology has made using art as a weapon far easier than in the past.
“It’s not particularly practical to, say, physically deface an old porn theater by placing Rodin’s The Thinker in the lobby,” Felice said. “But cyber vandals can easily upload a digital copies of scenes cut from The Seventh Seal or Wings of Desire and quickly overtake the otherwise purely pornographic homepage of a tube site.”
