The lucah beraya di kampung suamikubig porn streaming platforms might offer what seems to be a great public service, giving viewers everything they want for free. But the model for these free porn platforms has been bad for porn production companies and has lowered the pay and conditions of their workers.
Not only is it bad for performers/sex workers, it's also bad for the viewer. The reason why many people struggle with their relationship to porn is not the porn itself, but the way that capitalism has organised it and our desires.
Porn sites turn viewers into workers
Historically, to look at porn has been to take part in a sexual activity which was strictly outside of the norms of how a good capitalist subject ‘should’ behave. If we were wanking, we weren’t working, and we were also not having the kinds of sex that might be reproductive (i.e. penis in vagina sex). However, what used to be excessive, obscene, anti-authority, and radical, is now productive labour. Perhaps not to your employer, but to the porn platforms.
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To quote the academic, Dr. Rebecca Saunders, from her bookBodies of Work: The Labour of Sex in the Digital Age: "Digital pornography becomes the means by which capital continues to extract value from the sexual body, now not through strict judicial and religious discipline, but through the consummately pleasurable and voluntary activity of watching porn."
SEE ALSO: How problematic is bi pornography?Porn is part of the attention economy, which means that just being on a porn streaming website we are generating value for the companies that own the platform — to look is to labour. Millions and millions of us do: the most popular porn websites are some of the most visited websites online.
The longer we look, the more value we create for them. Which means they extract our scarce attention in an immersive and bewildering arcadeof windows, clips, categories, tags, phrases, enticements, taboo headlines, and ads. Not that much (or any) of this value goes to the people we might be looking at, but to the platforms that host it. In pornography most of this goes to just two companies Mindgeek and WGCZ holdings.
"Porn is part of the attention economy, which means that just being on a porn streaming website we are generating value for the companies that own the platform."
Porn streaming platforms want us to keep working for them by clicking and looking, and to keep coming back for more. Their business model relies on us to create value for them, they don’t care whether we are having a nice time or not.
Porn sites just want your attention and clicks
Porn streaming sites aren’t interested in us experiencing pleasure or learning about our sexualities, they are interested in our clicks. This means that leaving people unsatisfied is part of the way that free porn sites have to operate. They rely on us clicking on a few things and leaving with a sense of ‘was there something that might have been sexier?’ ‘Is there something I need to go back for?’ Or a nagging sensation that we haven’t found ‘the thing’ that we are really searching for.
Porn platforms (whether they do this consciously or not) tap into this idea that we are lacking and searching for, what psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan would call ‘objet a’ or the object cause of desire. Writers and scholars Bonni Rambatan and Jacob Johanssen explain this nicely in their book Event Horizon: "Throughout their life, the Subject [the viewer of porn] feels that something is missing or not quite right and, often unconsciously, seeks to fill this void through particular fantasies and actions…"
Of course, the porn streaming sites also want people to buy porn, which isn’t necessarily a problem — we should pay for the porn we watch. The issue is that they want people to buy the porn that theymake. The two companies who own most of the porn tube sites Mindgeek and WGCZ Holdings also own a huge chunk of porn businesstoo. This runs the risk of creating an anti-competitive market which squeezes out the small independent companies. But even beyond the paywall, the same immersive and bewildering and seemingly infinite array of porn is there, which offers yet more opportunity for object a. Opportunities for us to feel lack and a sense that there is still ‘the real porn clip’ out there that will be the ‘porn clip to beat all porn clips.’
As academic and author Alfie Bown explained to me in a podcast I recorded with himabout his book Dream Lovers, the Gamification of Relationships, this feeling of lack isn’t necessarily bad. Desiring desire is productive and can give us the possibility of connection and becoming something other. But where desires are categorised, tagged, headlined, and datafied, then those desires might end up being territorialised by the platform.
The divided porn viewer
The desires that we are presented with and which we seek out are thus divided into millions and millions of data points. This data is then used by the owners of the tube sites as their market research for the kinds of content their studios should create. We feed the algorithms with data in order that we receive back a coded version of what our desires are.
If our desires live only on these platforms, we may have a sense of ourselves as a ‘dividual’ which is an idea of French philosopher Gilles Deleuze. Alfie summed this up nicely in his book: "The ‘dividual’ is the idea of the individual as a collection of data but also as a consistent identity who can only follow predetermined paths, just as computational machines can… the ‘dividual’ is an experience of ourselves in which we are encouraged to restart and reorganise ourselves regularly in a ruptures or fractured way." This is deeply theoretical, but for anyone with a compulsive relationship with porn, it probably sounds pretty familiar.
"Instead of gazing, we are encouraged to glance, scan the infinite pages to see if there’s another object cause of desire."
The platforms are not in the least bit interested in our desire to desire, or in what way our desires are productive. They want us to click and look, click and look. Instead of gazing, we are encouraged to glance, scan the infinite pages to see if there’s another object cause of desire. There’s always something else we might be glancing at. Their job is to distract us, to affect us, and keep us just clicking.
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But we also need to get back to work, or to sleep (in order to get up for work). Looking at porn we might increasingly click faster, fast forward, jump from scene to scene, in order that we might stop looking at porn. We are looking to be reset back to zero. Instead of a pleasurable climax, or a jumping off point, we might simply be looking for a scene which hits the spot, in order that we can put the porn away.
What can we do about this?
Apart from paying for any porn we might watch, we might also want to think about where and who we buy the porn from. Instead of buying porn from the big porn companies who own the tube sites we might instead think about buying from independent porn studios or producers. There’s a difference between capitalism (where profits are accumulated and turned into wealth) and commercial activity (where profits are divided between the workers and invested in more and better products). Porn producers such as A Four Chambered Heartalso do a great job in making their labour practices very clear and upfront.
If we are still heading to the tube sites, we could perhaps think about slowing down our consumption. We might easily find ourselves lost in this overwhelming window shopping. So what can we do to give ourselves a gentle reminder that we are there? What can we notice about our bodies in that moment? Is this actually something we want right now? Do we have the time to really enjoy it? If this was sex with a partner, would it be okay? How consensual are we being with ourselves?
Porn is categorised around who is in the content and what sex acts they are doing, but the things we might find sexy may be beyond the categories. Maybe it was how they looked at each other? Or something someone said? Perhaps it was the way they kissed? Maybe the way it was filmed, or the speed, or how bright it was?
Experiment with watching the same same scene over and over again. Can we just be slow and look at it differently? Each time we blink, what else do we see? What can we hear? Do we find ourselves identifying with any of the performers? What kinds of athleticism are on display in the performances? Are we in the room with them? What might we like to do if we were? How did we get there? How do we all know each other? What happens after? What else? After we watch a scene, how do we remember it? Can we recall it later in the day?
By understanding how porn platforms work, and make us work, we might be able to have a more conscious relationship with any porn we might watch. To be able to be slow and pay close attention to both ourselves, as well as the skill and hard work of the performers in the scenes we watch, might help us to explore new ways of desiring which may also be more ethical and pleasurable.