Paul Stag
On September 5th one of the biggest sources of gay porn closes its doors for good as X-Tube ceases to trade and stops enabling millions of guys daily to bust their nut to hot men, reality sex or sleazy fucked up stuff. X-Tube is a company that comes under the mighty Mind Geek banner that owns many of the biggest porn sites going. These include Pornhub the most successful by some distance which famously dumped 9 million scenes overnight last December when it came under attack from an appalling piece of one side ‘journalism/toilet paper’ from out of the American right week religious wacko group playbook. The attacks nowadays in this new wave of ‘The War on Porn’ target the financial institutions and credit card companies that the adult industry (and it is and Industry) rely on. As a rule of thumb Porn hub was a pretty general site with some rules and controls and in comparison, X-Tube is the wild west and the most exposed arm of the Mind Geek empire to the forthcoming changes due in October of this year….but more on that later let’s have a bit of background first.
Back at the turn of the Millenium there were about 40 gay studios and these were big companies with offices and large numbers of staff producing elaborate content with big named often exclusive stars whose images were limited to maintain interest, mystique and longevity (Names you will remember such as Colt, Cazzo, Catalina & Titan now long gone whilst others like say Falcon, TreasureIslandMedia, Lucas Entertainment & Belami are still going strong).. Then came the triple whammy of the internet, PrEP and mobile phone cameras and gay porn was everywhere and everyone including your dad, brother and best mate was calling themselves a ‘gay porn star’. So, it can now be argued that in 20 years we have gone from 40 gay porn producers to just over 15,000. In 2021 the business descends as follows:-1 The big studios and production house like TimTales, CockyBoys, Helix, NakedSword and Eric Videos.2 The webstudios which tend to be run by 1 or 2 guys who produce 8-20 minute scenes rather than films such as GuysnSweatPants, HungYoungBrit, RawRoadNation, MuscleBearPorn & Gentlemans Closet.3 Fansites – These are model produced clips held on a platform like Only Fans or the much more gay friendly JustForFans where each model charges a monthly fee to watch clips and chat which is why it is often referred to as ‘paid twitter’. Some of the best fetish ones are the likes of RopeTrainKeep, Rocco Steele, Ballstretchguy, Gabriel Cross, MilkingCoach, Dolf Dietrich & Dallas Steele. (All have done interviews etc still available on AT’s website)4 The wild edge of gay porn – The free porn platforms like PornHub, X-Tube, Reddit and X Hamster. Anyone can upload anything and view it equally for free or sometimes payment and includes good quality legal scenes from all of the above but also some very dodgy stuff too and due to the massive amount there it is difficult to police – and it is this area where the current problems are arising especially as these sites by accident and lack of controls have featured underage clips and other illegal scenes.
The anti porn lobby is currently focussed entirely on shutting down online porn by any means on moral and religious grounds and as is always the case the relatively legal gay world is being dragged in by the much larger dodgy straight world where it seems so many straight men have a thing for underage girls (One might say that pussy eating seems to rot your brain and your moral compass). Their argument is:-A Protect underage kidsB To stop kids seeing pornC To end sex trafficking D To save the ‘family’ unit.E To stop revenge pornAll very mid-American, white middle class and about as swallowable as a glass of Anita Bryant piss tasting orange juice. Right Wing politicians find porn an easy target and attacks on it are often used to deflect from other things like say a global pandemic, Afghanistan, climate change, an insurrection of the knuckle draggers or in last December’s case a ‘stolen’ election by the worst President ever and king of the all-time losers. They see porn as a ‘public health crisis’, ‘ a drug’ or ‘slavery’ which must mean they are watching very different stuff to the rest of us.
MINDGEEK was started in 2004, has 1400 employees mainly at their Canadian and Luxembourg HQ’s. They have 180 video sharing services and separate companies including such well-known names as Playboy, Sean Cody, Wicked Pictures and Red Tube. By bandwidth they are one of the biggest 5 companies in the world and Pornhub alone gets 1 Billion visitors per month/50 Million per day which is an awful lot of used tissues and old socks. On the 14th December an ‘opinion’ article appeared in the New York Times with no balance whatsoever and Porn hub exploded (For full details see our earlier War on Porn piece). The article was prompted by the very nasty Laila Mickelwait from a group of religious zealots from another age called Exodus Cry. As is the modern trend with all right-wing religious campaigners the links to religion etc are now hidden which means they often change names to more palatable less churchy ones as it seems that all religious references and those to their made-up book are now about as palatable & welcome as a birthday card to Britney from her father. These hidden religious groups are all about gaining funding largely from the neanderthal truck driving dentist dodging Trump followers of MId-America who wish to return to the 1950’s when you could shoot blacks and beat up gays and the cops would help you do it. Exodus Cry’s originator and chief retard Benjamin Nolot compared abortion figures to the holocaust and hugely condemned gay marriage (Remember the golden rule is – those that hate gays the most and talk about them all the time are also the most interested in it and usually long to suck dick all weekend long). So, December 2020 was a victory for the enemy Exodus Cry but it was short lived as Pornhub continued, the industry grew bigger and it all died down.
Legality has been an issue for porn for decades so they introduced the 2257 compliance which you will see referred to all over films, dvd’s and websites of the last 30 years. Basically, on set largely to be able to prove legal age every performer has to provide photographic ID and fill out 2 forms which is what all studios and web studios do even though there has only ever been one case in the world over 30 years in 2007 against Mantra Films (a straight company) so most compliance doc’s just gain dust in filing cabinets of studios from Sydney to San Francisco……because all studio/webstudio filmed content is legal entertainment for those that want their fun now rather than in some made up afterlife. Then the internet took over and everyone started uploading their shags good or bad – almost always compliance, age checking, model releases, ID and 2257 were ignored so putting it simply the greatest majority of porn clips out there now in the lower 2 areas are just plain illegal on paper even though their content would pass any court in the land as they just don’t bother with documentation. Of course, it is a numbers game so no-one gets picked up on it and in fact since internet porn took over from DVD’s there has been NO legal action taken of note whatsoever against any producer and in the Pornhub situation there was no legal moves really it was simply a biased trial my media in the press with no right of reply and the credit companies getting scared for a week until they rediscovered how much money they actually make from jack off clips.
After the easy manipulation of the Mastercard and Visa companies the whole adult industry went into overdrive with platforms like Facebook and Insta suddenly becoming the though police of 1984 and crying foul at the mere hint of a nipple or big toe but when the dust settled it seems the Top 2 groups namely the studios and web studios are fine as they produce legal documented highly popular entertainment. The fansites are made up of so many small producers that attacking them would be like trying to swat away flies like during a watersports scene filmed on a hot day in Palm Springs. So, it is the free sites that seem to have had their day and are bearing the brunt and unless they sort out their uploading clips for all situations or expand their number of moderators, they are prone to attack from the 4 organised anti-porn groups (All American off course a territory which now seems to have the monopoly on dumb and stupid). Therefore, rather than wait Mind geek have taken the initiative and dumped X-Tube faster than the ‘publicity shy’ Meghan Markle’ hungrily chasing down her 14th book deal of the month. That said, we have many industry contacts at the top level and the general consensus is that the pretty awfully managed Only Fans company is a ticking time bomb waiting to explode and weekly they seem to be changing their rules on a whim and losing like King Canute sat on his throne trying to hold back the ocean waves.
At the end of June, the credit card companies met the porn companies and announced ‘We do not intend to stop serving legally produced content’. Yet they did ask for new rules which arrive in October to stop child porn, child exploitation, revenge porn, non-consent and rape. So, every studio is setting themselves up for that date except the self-employed fansite producers and self-unverified uploaders to free sites who may find themselves shortly as welcome as a Belarus athlete at a victory parade in downtown Minsk. So, the war on porn goes on and at present it is about one all but it does seem the religious whack job enemy have already fired their biggest weapon and lost their chief commander to Florida’s golf courses and his gold digging ‘hugely intelligent’ wife. Yet we have no doubt we will be returning to this story soon especially if uber witch Laila Micklewait’s dildo batteries fail again and she comes creeping out of her sexually frustrated hidden religious white picket fence swamp.
For fun – The National Center Of Sexual Exploitation – NCOSE (You see what we mean about associations using friendly cash grabbing names without any reference to their religious roots or leanings whatsoever) publish a ‘Dirty Dozen’ each year of companies to attack who are LBGTQ+ friendly and in 2021 we have:-
THE NCOSE DIRTY DOZEN
The companies that the religious right is currently targeting
1 The Seeking Arrangement dating site
2Tik Tok (they just hate Jerusalema)
3 VISA who are partners with the porn industry apparantly
4 Wyndham Hotels – You should see the movies they have On Demand in their rooms.
5 Netflix – Bridgerton far too much anal
6 Google – because you can search sex words
7 Massage Envy
8 Reddit
9 Twitter – obviously
10 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition
11 WISH shopping website
12 The state of Nevada – these guys are as dumb as an anti vaxxer with a bad cough and a copy of ‘The Art Of The Deal’..
