Petting Party

The adult industry has really embraced social media as a way to connect with fans and customers on a one-on-one basis that the mainstream film industry just hasn’t . Many pornstars and producers regularly post as themselves on forums, Facebook and Myspace. Often when a question arises about a particular star or a film, the person involved will answer directly. Most pornstars are even happily tweeting away (there’s even a website dedicated to helping you follow your favourite smut queen called Porn Star Tweets) and although only the really savvy ones like Angel Long are using it to seed links to their own work, the rest are becoming all a bit minutiae-of-life, only dirtier.

So with this willingness the adult industry is showing to jump on board with the latest socio-cultural developments in technology, it does pose the question: what sort of impact will geo-tagging have on porn? At the moment geo-tagging does highlight some slight privacy issues, but I guess, only if you chose to tag do you open yourself up to this.

I’ve seen quite a few posts on forums regarding interesting porno-sets and people’s desire to visit them. Geo-tagging could open up a whole new aspect of fan-dom. Obviously, this wouldn’t work for studio sets or anything that’s filmed in someone’s house as privacy is a big deal for those in the adult industry, but I’ve seen tonnes of ‘al-fresco’ or even just unusual locations. For example, last week I was lucky enough to visit a set on behalf of Television X literally skipping distance from my east London flat. The shoot was being held in a vintage clothing store in Stepney, and having shopped there quite a few times I was delighted to think that it would soon be in something I was to watch!

Now this could work in two ways, and I use my recent experience as an example. Returning from the shoot I promptly showed my flatmate my photos and she, also a frequenter of this store, was horrified to see the images of the two stars copulating in the changing rooms and the sofas. I think I’ve tainted the shop a bit for her. On the other hand, were I to show this to some of my other (male) friends, they’d actually be more inclined to shop there, or, at the very least accompany me on my visits.

If people visit the place in Tunisia where Star Wars was filmed, why wouldn’t these same geeky fan-boys want to visit the place that Cathy Barry got spit-roasted in a flat on Park Street in Bristol*. No? Oh well, just me then.

*I don’t know if Cathy Barry has been spit-roasted on Park Street so please don’t ask me what film that’s from. I do know that I have seen Park Street in quite a few Pumpkin films now though!

***Image courtesy of TVXMole’s Blog***

Filed under: porn, social media