On the surface, the tubes were YouTube knockoffs-porn’s answer to Web 2.0. My time in Porn Valley coincided with the rise of the so-called tube sites. In fact, many of adult’s early online empires were built on foundations of pirated content. Just like the disruptors who moved fast and broke the record industry, the news business, and most other sectors of the analog economy, the geeks who moved fast and broke Porn Valley had little regard for the old order. On the other hand, there were the disruptors-quiet tech geeks with loud online personas who staked out prime online real estate, pioneered digital payments, and christened themselves “webmasters” of an ever-expanding network of adult websites that catered to every imaginable niche. They mostly operated out of the San Fernando Valley, where they produced movies that were distributed via shady and convoluted distribution channels that brought porn to the local video store, and from there, into the homes of anyone with a DVD player. On the one hand, there were the old school producers and porn stars-the Boogie Nights crowd. Like Upton Sinclair once observed, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”īack in 2007, I thought I understood the porn industry. I was a believer, not because I thought Oz was right, but because I knew my paycheck depended on my fealty to Oz’s idiotic claim. In order to work for Oz, you needed to produce clean copy, demonstrate unsound news judgement, and most of all, believe in Oz’s vision of mainstream porndom. The way Oz saw it, porn, which he called “adult entertainment,” or simply “adult,” was on the cusp of going mainstream, thanks to the internet’s power to democratize culture and an untapped well of freak flags just waiting to rise up from the analog ashes of late 20th century moral majoritarian America. Oz-as in The Wizard of Oz- fancied himself as the man pulling the strings behind the curtain. (To protect the guilty, I’ll refer to my former employer as Oz, the nom de porn I gave to the publisher of The Daily Pornographer, my novel’s fictional trade publication.) Back in 2007, that idiot was my employer. I know that’s a tall order, but I’ve got a step ladder, so let’s go!Īn idiot once told me that porn would go mainstream. Like everything I do with Situation Normal, the internet’s 57th best humor newsletter, my goal with Smutty is to bring a smile to your face and (maybe) broaden your perspective. Personally, I think you’ll love both newsletters, but I’m biased.

(Same deal as Situation Bali, if you were around for those stories). You don’t have to do anything to receive Smutty, but if you prefer to receive Situation Normal without Smutty, or to receive Smutty without Situation Normal, you can unsubscribe from one without unsubscribing from both. You’ll find that writing in a new section of my Substack I’m calling Smutty. This year, I’m working on the second book in my Porn Valley Mystery series! To fuel my research (and promote the hell out of these kickass novels) I’m revisiting my old profession by writing about the current state of adult entertainment.

But I’m getting WAY ahead of the narrative.

Also, and I’m not proud of this, the real life me and the fictional version of me were both chased through the Angeles National Forest by a butt-naked man in a werewolf mask. Like my protagonist, I firmly believe that when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro. That’s why my novels, like my Situation Normal stories, are rooted in real life experiences.įor example, I really was a reporter at porn’s second best trade publication, just like my novel’s protagonist, although I never solved any crimes. If there’s an operating theory to my writing, it’s this: truth is stranger than fiction, and the truth is usually a lot more interesting. I went to the AVN Adult Entertainment Expo to research a sequel to Not Safe for Work, the first book in my Porn Valley Mystery series. Today’s post is from an adult entertainment convention in Las Vegas. Hello situation normies! I’m really excited to share a new aspect of my writing with you.

Adult entertainment convention