The
Role of Pornography in Sex Education |
Are
we Simply Selling Smut, or Providing Vital
Instruction? |
As a marketer,
I concern myself with more than simply compelling
the consumer to make a purchase. I also try to
consider the ways in which HOW
I compel that sale might influence perceptions,
foster ideas and -- ultimately -- affect
people's lives.
As an online
marketer
and student of the Web Medium, I'm in a position
to evaluate how the choices I make and how the
choices made by other online marketers affect
the way people think and feel about certain products.
As an online pornographer,
I'm looking at the effect what we're doing has
on SEX ITSELF.
The pursuit of ever-larger traffic acquisition
ROI has led us down the path of ever-finer
targeting. This means: trying to discover
the customer's Flavor
of Demand as specifically as possible,
then making as specific an offer to that apparent
Flavor of Demand as we can, or as our range of
offerings will allow.
You might say that Human Beings are at their
most individualistic
in matters of sex. Who we fuck and how we fuck
them are determined by impulses from the deepest
psyche.
Each of us has a special
thing we enjoy, and we pornographers
(especially, online pornographers) have made a
science of catering as precisely as we can to
the individual's Flavor of Demand.
But, as our keyword lists (especially for highly-focused
content types) begin to resemble the inscrutable
jargon of a secret society, and as more and more
of our traffic acquisition spending follows the
small-but-high-converting traffic "trickles",
I'm becoming concerned that we're neglecting a
more important responsibility, in favor of short-term
"smash and grab" monetization. I’m
all in favor of giving the customer what he/she
wants – certainly, as we all know, he’ll
pay you more for that than for anything else.
| But,
as pornographers, as "smut-peddlers",
as sole stewards (TRULY) of the tone, direction
and quality of Human
Erotica, we must ask ourselves: is a “finer-and-finer”
stratification of our customer base a sound
long-term strategy? |
I’m
worried it may not be.
Now, I DO understand that what I’m saying
goes against a number of accepted online marketing
truisms.
But, there is, perhaps, a consequence of entering
into ONLY highly-specialized dialogues with our
customers, that we may not be considering…
We are communicating absolutely NOTHING about
the soundness, beauty and general “okayness”
of sex (ALL SEX) to the undifferentiated (un-targeted)
masses.
And
if we aren’t doing it, you have to wonder
who is.
Who
IS speaking to the “Smalltown Boy”?
From
whom, and with what agenda, does he receive his
first message of self-reflection?
Certainly, there are information resources (both
on and offline) to steer a young initiate towards
his or her special herd – but that is mainly
rhetoric. Essential rhetoric, to be sure (insofar
as we would immediately want to dispel the notion
in any young person that they might be ALONE in
their impulses), but, still, just rhetoric.
It is only when we finally see the Acts (the
naked bodies, arranged in their needful ways)
that we can say to ourselves: “Yes, yes…
THAT is for me.”
And then we make our sale.
But what does it do for that person’s sense
of who they are against the backdrop of Collective
Human Sexuality? Do they feel included? Do they
FEEL their (rightful) place in the spectrum of
Human Sexuality?
I dunno.
I don’t want to advocate for anything (especially
anything contrary) in particular yet, because
I want to hear what you all think.
But,
what if we make sites for people who are
NOT so sure what they like yet sexually?
What if these sites were part information value
(First
Amendment defensible!), and part titillation?
Wouldn’t we, then have an opportunity to
BOTH inform (orient, reassure, offer acceptance)
to our customers AND monetize them?
Consider these graphical representations of Human
Sexuality.
The first chart shows the 4 sexual orientation
“camps” as we know them -- Gay Male,
Gay Female, Straight Male, Straight Female. These
four categories, these four possibilities,
we're told by conventional wisdom are supposed
to provide for all of Us.
CLICK TO ENLARGE

Depending on where in the world you live, the
Box
you're in may determine whether you are afoul
of the law or in its good graces, whether you
will be able to participate in society as
yourself or have to wear a mask.
If you're lucky, your sexual impulses place you
in a majority. But, if your definition of sexually
attractive differs from the norm or from that
which is prescribed for your "gender"
where you live, you're going to suffer.
I realize the first step in gathering support
for an idea
is to recruit as many like (or similarly-minded)
people as we can under the banner of that idea.
That's why Gays and Lesbians band together --
to achieve a greater sum of individuals -- to
have a louder, more powerful voice.
The paradox is: How can you be yourself AND be
a part of a Broad
Sexual Category?
At some point, it seems we still have to go
along to get along. Four Sexual Orientation
Camps is better than two... but, are we really
all that satisfied with the range of choices,
and with the rights
afforded to the members of certain camps?
Where do you see things going, if we proceed
with the current 4-camp arrangement?
And, I’m talking LOOONG-term – as
in the effects to the Species.
Are we drawing closer in empathy, or farther
apart?
Here's a different way to slice things...

CLICK TO ENLARGE
As I said, I’m going to stop
short of advocating anything in particular –
because (as I said) my mind is not yet made up.
But, let me leave you with a thought or two...
A lot of smart people whose job it is to sell
things online seem to have turned
their backs on MASS MARKETING -- and by that I
mean: delivering a high-level message to EVERYONE.
They've given
their attention, instead, to speaking as narrowly
and as privately to the INDIVIDUAL as the powerful
new technologies at their disposal will allow.
This might do great things for sales, but it
relinquishes the long-held role of consumer product
marketers as shapers
of culture. Radio and Television
are necessarily Audience
Mediums -- they operate on the
one-to-many "broadcast" communications
model. The Web, by contrast, provides for a one-to-one
"dialogue" model between buyers and
sellers -- whether by way of the information online
customers may give them voluntarily or the use
of Surveillance
Marketing Technologies, the online
merchant can now speak uniquely
to one person.
Again, great for sales, but... weaker,
somehow. On the Web, it seems, marketers have
given up the Awesome
Power of the Media they once held.
Once upon a time, you could stick your head out
the window at 8PM on a Saturday night and hear
an entire neighborhood all laughing at the same
joke they'd just heard on TV. And on Monday, all
the kids in your class would be whistling the
same commercial jingles. The advent of the Web,
and the accompanying proliferation of cable TV
channels, have destroyed
that feeling of closeness and connection. How
ironic.
Now, the questions with which I have been struggling,
and with which I hope you will offer assistance
are these:
In the United States today, who is filling
the void in Mass Communications created by Madison
Avenue's online migration? And with what?
At the same time that the traditional, pre-Internet
"airwaves" have been vacated by Commerce,
there is an increase in the amount of censorship
-- coincidence?
The use of sexual imagery by advertisers made
sex both pervasive and mainstream. Now that
the methods of selling have changed so dramatically,
and now that the relationship between Sex and
Marketing has become... abstracted...
whose job is it in our society to provide the
Living Examples
of Human Sex -- since neither
schools nor parents are willing or able?
2HP
Jack "2HousePlague" Mardack is President
of profitLABINC.com.
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