It won’t go out of business anytime soon — but for the first time in the digital era, the porn industry has begun to struggle.
Demand has not decreased, but the business model is in turmoil and layoffs are abundant.
Demand has not decreased, but the business model is in turmoil and layoffs are abundant.
Porn exploded in the videotape age, then moved to DVDs, then to internet memberships. Now, it has moved to free websites, which means sharply lower revenues and cutbacks on models, directors, accountants, lawyers, and other staffers.
It’s the Napster effect: If something is available from one competitor for free, it’s hard to get people to pay another for the same product.
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And it’s why Kink.com, a San Francisco-based porn business, is closing its $14.5 million production site this month in the historic Mission District Armory. The firm, which will discontinue filming in February, has seen its membership decrease by 50 percent in the last three years.
“Porn is not nearly as profitable as it was. We have had to change our business model,” founder Peter Acworth told the SFGate news website.
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Moreover, state and local governments have added regulations, such as rules requiring models to wear condoms during taping. The industry has referred to the regulations as “patronizing, cluttered with stereotypes and a sexist approach that strips performers of their reproductive rights and personal and professional medical privacy.”
Porn companies have responded by doing what mainstream filmmakers have done — moving out of California. Since 2012, they’ve fled east toward Nevada, Florida, and even Eastern Europe in search of less regulation and lower taxes.
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The competition has changed, too. It’s not only other porn moviemakers. It’s now adultery sites such as Ashley Madison and apps such as Tinder that have made private, even participatory, porn just a click away.
Others have taken to Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, and Facebook to show off their birthday suits to strangers and garner publicity. Kim Kardashian frequently releases provocative photos that go viral within seconds.
The softer stuff has been driven from the market. Playboy announced at the end of 2015 it no longer would publish nude photos. “You’re now one click away from every sex act imaginable for free,” Scott Flanders, Playboy’s chief executive, told The New York Times. “So it’s just passé at this juncture.”
A centerfold no longer is hot. What’s hot now is an abundance of free porn and accessibility to sexual deeds in person or online. And researchers say this bold new world has taken its toll on relationships.
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A 2016 University of Oklahoma study entitled, “Till Porn Do Us Part? Longitudinal Effects of Pornography Use on Divorce,” found the chances of divorce doubled in relationships where participants watched porn. The study found it damaged intimate relationships and had a “toxic influence” on marriages that actually lowered sexual satisfaction.
“The negative impact of pornography on marriage is very real,” Dawn Hawkins, executive director of the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, told LifeSiteNews.
Perhaps the downturn of the industry will cause us to ponder some of these problems it appears to create, what we get from it, why we use it so much and what it’s doing to our relationships.
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