What happens when Gen Y gets horny? This ultra-connected, media-savvy marketing demographic does porn a little differently than you might expect. ROBBIE SWAN from the Eros Association takes a peek.

A new survey by a large U.S. internet analysis company called Hitwise has found Generation Y (18-24) visits to adult or sexually explicit web sites have fallen by about a third over the last couple of years. In the same period, Bill Tancer, the general manager of global research for Hitwise and also a Time magazine writer, argued that there was a correlation between this finding and the rise in popularity of social networking sites within the same demographic. In the 25 and over age group (Generation X and baby boomers) visits to search engines like Google and Alta Vista were the most popular but were closely followed by adult entertainment sites.

I have long suspected that the internet would change adult viewing habits in a way that no one suspected. Watching porn on line is a very different experience from watching it as a film on a screen. For a start there is an unlimited amount of variety. Within 20 minutes you can watch a small amount of interracial, amputee, MILF, milkin ‘n poppin, shaved, hairy, amateur and pro sex and then sit back with a cup of tea as if you’d just browsed the latest ALDI catalogue. Although many people in the industry don’t like to admit it, there is a burnout factor in this type of viewing. However desensitisation doesn’t lead to people wanting to take in more and more extreme forms of sex or to rape and kill as religious campaigners would have us believe. No. It actually sends people to dating and social networking sites where they can talk about their sexual feelings and find out more about them.

Tancer’s article rings true in just about every way except his assertion that Gen Yers are “too busy chatting with friends to look at online skin”. Rule number one in the marketing bible is, ‘Sex Sells’. Rule number two is that ‘Sex sells to everyone' – regardless of race, colour, creed or generation. There are plenty of old age pensioners out there consuming sexual media and products and there are just as many generation Yers as well. It’s just that they seek it out in different ways and in areas that baby boomers don’t understand.
 
Many of the sites which cater to this audience have twigged to the changing attitudes, particularly with Gen Y. While they appear to be non explicit up front, behind the ‘dating’, ‘friendship’ and ‘relationship’ buttons lies plenty of explicit content. Sites like the Adelaide-based Red Hot Pie are good examples of this genre. They know that by providing sexually explicit material underneath the non-explicit, they stop people from heading back to the porn sites when they’ve had enough ‘heartbalm’. The operators of these sites would reject the label ‘pornographic’ when applied to their sites because people who post explicit films or photos alongside relationship profiles are not said to be doing it with the aim of titillating prospective partners or friends. It's just ‘relationship information’. To a degree this is true but for generation Yers these are the new porn sites. The operators of them are one step ahead of the rest of the industry and the industry regulators who haven’t quite understood them.

So are there any savvy Generation Y porn sites that start out as offering the kind of explicit sex that baby boomers and Gen Xers are used to, but end up giving subscribers lots of connected Gen Y values as well? Perhaps surprisingly, Australia leads the way in this genre. A series of Melbourne-based sites including Abbywinters.com, ishotmyself.com and beautifulagony.com are all largely run by generation Yers and involve subscribers in a way that is unique.  

Most of their photographers are female and many in their administration teams are former models. Subject matter includes nude yoga shoots and moody sunset masturbation scenes. Discussion boards show models like Violet promoting her love of Chamber music and directing punters who have logged on to see her naked body to listen to artists like Felicity Lott singing Henri Duparc’s L’Invitation au Voyage. A model called Marigold writes serious poetry and encourages subscribers to critique her work. This is not your normal porn site activity where models and actors tend to keep themselves as far away from the punters as possible. They take their clothes off, do their thing and then get out of there. Many of the young Gen Yers on Abby Winters are out there engaging with their admirers and linking them into their own broader networks.

At the recently concluded Adult Entertainment Expo in Las Vegas, the Abby Winters team walked away with the Best Amateur Series award, which was remarkable for their first foray into a U.S. show. Nude yoga and lingerie chess were immediate hits with the punters even if they didn’t quite understand what it all meant. They signed a deal with the big gun, Wicked Pictures, and were the unlikely hit of the show. With many aspects of society rapidly changing now to meet new paradigms and new ways of living, porn is not exempt from these powerful social pressures.

Another unlikely Australian success story is beautifulagony.com. Launched in 2003 in Melbourne, Australia, by a couple of savvy Gen Yers, the site shows face-only clips of men and women masturbating to orgasm. Site coordinator, Richard Lawrence, says “Although Agony is a commercial site, it isn't motivated by profit. It's a passion not a profession. So long as there are sufficient subscriptions to pay for bandwidth and compensate each contributor for revealing such a precious facet to the world, Beautiful Agony will continue to be a demonstration of the extent to which one of the largest and wealthiest industries in the world has totally got it wrong.” Strong words from a couple of amateurs who just stumbled into the business but their huge success is testimony to their ability to judge changing sexual tastes.  

If there is one aspect of the Generation Y ethos that makes these sites stand out from their older rivals, it’s the fact that Abbywinters.com donates $1000 a week to charity. And not just any old charity or one particular charity. They range from animal welfare to Christian charities and from health-based charities to unions. 

Robbie Swan is the Eros association’s publisher. In the mid 1980s he founded a political humour and satire magazine called Matilda and before that was the editor of Australia’s premier alternative lifestyle magazine, Simply Living. Click here for more.

Images courtesy Abbeywinters.com and beautifulagony.com. 

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