I see! For the social media-impaired like myself, that wasn’t a factor. This message board and that hideous bl-g that I no longer read (you know the one, he censors everyone who doesn’t agree with him) are all I’ve ever read post-Manshots magazine. I’m on Twatter now … kind of. I bookmarked a couple of accounts that seem to feature explosive cumshots or public flashing.

No, there was no onscreen homophobia at SC (though Brandon just never felt right, and I don’t mind the performative homophobia of a FratX, if it’s hot and part of the story). Stu especially was clearly zero gay on Kinsey, but he was down to fuck and he seemed to have fun. It was the marketing, but also allegedly in the treatment of performers that were gay, many of whom moved quickly on to more accommodating studios or sites. But marketing was half the identity back then — and that whole Hollywood studio system management of a model’s rollout and progression from solo to bi to mm to bottom to kinky etc. as described above.

I'm wondering if there's a distinction here between the content of the video and the marketing around it. And first, recognize what you already know about me, that SC almost didn't exist for me until they went bareback. I remember Bailey's Fuck Buddy and a Nolan scene in a kitchen that I thought looked amazing, but I otherwise ignored them until 2012. At that time, the models in the scenes acted as if they were starved for each other and getting piggier and piggier with Ryan being every hung top's fleshtube; Aidan and Pierce becoming early star bottoms with scene frequency that began to annoy people on this board; and Daniel obviously screaming "cum in my ass" at the top of his lungs while shooting his own load. All of that seemed progressive to me at the time.

The only place where any gay panic is legible to me in the videos is in the athletic frolicking that precedes the video (which in my mind SC adopted from Bel Ami). But in the sex itself, the versatile rimming, sucking, breeding, the relishing of cum, all of those things stood at SC in stark contrast to CM (where Bryan was in love with the stoic models who had to be coaxed into what they were doing), and especially Cocksuremen where guys like Leo Giamani almost never bottomed, almost never gave head, rarely did anything but piston their dicks in an ass. Park Wiley (obviously gay and down for everything) was the exception at CSM and Vander the exception at CM in contradistinction to Brandon (SC’s version of Leo Giamani), the exception at SC rather than the rule, although certainly a heavily promoted exception.

Does what I’m saying resonate as true, tunnel vision, revisionist, or what? And please give me any excuse to go back to 2012 and spell out all of the scenes I’m half-remembering where the SC models delighted in the chance to become pigs without regard to labels or gay panic! I’m not throwing down a gauntlet here, just trying to understand what I missed.

I don't think CF was necessarily homophobic, but they definitely pushed a "we're straight guys with great bodies fucking around, and some of us are more dominant than others" frat house mentality. SC was downright homophobic/abusive with its gay-identified models, and for the first ten years of their existence never wanted any models to be identified as gay. Models were criticized if they ever expressed the idea that they enjoyed gay sex outside of getting paid to do it.

I don't think CF was necessarily homophobic, but they definitely pushed a "we're straight guys with great bodies fucking around, and some of us are more dominant than others" frat house mentality. SC was downright homophobic/abusive with its gay-identified models, and for the first ten years of their existence never wanted any models to be identified as gay. Models were criticized if they ever expressed the idea that they enjoyed gay sex outside of getting paid to do it.

Ooh, jesus. I will try to keep it short but that’s a complicated honors-thesis question. I think that what @disqus_6nRkGdeR7U:disqus said about fickle consumers is the gist, but it has manifested in a variety of ways over the years. I would direct your attention to three unexpected sources for background — Boogie Nights, Brandy Hellville, and The Blair Witch Project.

1. Boogie Nights. Among other things, that movie is about how the shift from film to video cheapened the art of porn, and despite the derisive way that people regard the industry, it can be genuinely artistic.

2. Remember The Blair Witch Project? Imagine if every Hollywood film just gradually trended toward that style of filmmaking. No more Barbie or Oppenheimer, just endlessly self-produced movies with crummy lighting and people trying to perform and hold the camera simultaneously (or trying to fuck in front of an unmonitored camera).

3. The documentary Brandy Hellville is about the horrific effects of conditioning consumers to think that clothing should not be expensive and need not last long. (The irony is that it does last, only it lasts in someone’s landfill rather than a closet.) If newness is the only thing that consumers are conditioned to value, then there is no incentive to invest in production in any memorable way. That has a spiraling effect because sex workers who depend on this for a living have to perform more often until their bodies are wrung out, even if they are otherwise trying to preserve their health.

https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e2b1ff8061a3d0e1879a10e923dcdad0349152f8cdd6aa3aa2b25ced298f58a0.gif

I can’t quite make out who that is under Adam (Jack, maybe?), but do you think he could cum like that if he were producing five or more scenes per week? And for some guys, that’s conservative. Dakota told me that Family Dick shot five or more scenes a DAY, which is why the quality plummeted. Most of the scenes in the Legrand-adjacent genre now require fake loads because they just insist on producing so many scenes and because a lot of consumers don’t care, as long as it’s new. Some of those scenes from the early Mormonboyz days were actually super hot, and you can tell that work went into them. They dealt with the need for volume by breaking one scene into chapters and releasing them gradually, which was a much better strategy than tacking on fake orgasms and treating all of them as independent scenes.

https://c7645702f5.mjedge.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/MormonBoyz-Gay-Porn-Bareback-Orgy.jpg

CF, SC, and CM at their peak were producing three scenes per week but with a much bigger stable of performers, and a third of those were solos or oral. No one was topping more than three times per month unless it was a location shoot.

So that in a “nut” shell is what is wrong with porn these days. Get the point? Good. Let's dance.

https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/174f9c17821b4ad37dc81f15ae2fbee146284d3c7069274efd737bcabb389014.gif

SC (and to a lesser extent, CF) trafficked in very homophobic cultural tropes, forcing their performers to renounce sexual fluidity or gay identity

I can track what you mean about CF, but can you explain this about SC? You said don't get you started, but I'm missing something.

Interesting that Chaosmen I think wanted everyone to be like Darius or Glenn. Furtive at first but gradually warming up. I understand the appeal, but then you introduce someone like Vander, who was an avid bareback pig before the porn public ever laid eyes on him. Try fitting his 8.5" genie in that "this is my first time with a guy" bottle! It's an insult to his godliness.

Honestly, I agree. If the performer is learning the ropes that's one thing, but to deliberately hold them back is stupid.

SC's Curtis is one of my all time faves, but he only started really hitting his stride after a good number of scenes. If a dude is a natural, let em perform at their peak right outta the gate!

I know this board isn't about politics lol. But I have been shocked by how people's behavior is the same across different realms. People trying to reshape reality into what they want it to be, in porn and in politics.

Part of the blame belongs to fickle consumers. Attention spans being what they are, too many viewers are content to throw a model away after the newness has worn off. For them, the only way to keep them interested is if the model is doing something they haven’t been seen doing before, or something they do one in a while.

And why can't a star be showcased doing what they love? Whether that's kink, DP, bottoming, topping, whatever. The idea that a career (or the audience) has to be strung out over months through the obligatory progression of solo, vanilla sex, topping, bottoming, trio, hardcore fetish, DP, epic orgy is so contemptible.

Exactly. I remember all the hype when they announced SC's Brandon was going to bottom for the first time.

Imagine how pissed they would have been if he'd beaten them to the punch and released one on OF before then 😂

I want to say I'm surprised by Matthew's experience but I'm not. What bothers me about what happened is it's clear to me the studios were more interested in capitalizing on his moment than showcasing him as a rising star. Three DP scene offers? Feels excessive with some exploitation mixed in.

There's no real distinction between many of the popular studios these days. Not because many of them are using the same models, but because there's no vision of what the site/studio should look like. Then you add in the conglomerate aspect and it blurs the lines that much more.

As William Goldman famously put it: "Nobody knows anything." I certainly know what I like, as does my Doggy friend. I could't begin to explain the business model or aesthetic logic behind a studio like Men dot Dumb. I've never heard of one person say "I want more non-professional women interrupting sex scenes." And it's certainly not how they got their start. Falcon/RagingHouse seem to be on the decline. NakedSword is doing some weird divide and conquer thing by coopting (ish) Rhyheim while plagiarizing a certain scandalizing school teacher named Collin's WorldofMen approach, and don't get me started on CF or SC.

OF and social media disrupted the studio and subscription site model (social media by making it more difficult to recruit those "straight" frat types that were open to performing with men, but not if their entire network of friends was going to know about it within days of shooting). But those models were never perfection. SC (and to a lesser extent, CF) trafficked in very homophobic cultural tropes, forcing their performers to renounce sexual fluidity or gay identity. The classic FalconHotStallion studios were equally rigid in their ideas about casting and obligatory "narrative structure" in gay porn (suck, rim, fuck).

I think Matthew Ellis (who is everywhere these days, but not at all in a bad way) got to the heart of the issue in an interview/post. He nails the fake industry orthodoxy of career progression and how the studios try to regulate both diversity, taste and performer brands:

I'll start by saying that working with studios can be a very interesting experience, and just like in any work environment, you can have wonderful days and you can have terrible days. My first studio experiences were in July/August of last year, and it was all very positive.

Shortly after I wrapped up my scenes in San Diego I travelled to LA and started filming my first ever collabs (you might remember a particularly iconic poolside DP scene with Rhyheim Shabazz and Elijah Zayne 👀). We decided to release that scene about one week later once I was back in Australia and it really put me on the map and things started to heat up for me. LIFE WAS GREAT!

The studios, however, thought it was not so great and they proceeded to tell me that by releasing not only a DP scene, but an 'interracial' DP scene (their words not mine – you guys know that race is not something I ever focus on in my content), that I had essentially 'damaged' the longevity of my career before it even started. They explained to me that there is a clear progression that porn actors must follow to ensure the longevity of their careers, and I had basically jumped 10 steps ahead. They told me that they would no longer have any way to 'market' me, and that I was essentially useless to them now.

At the time, I remember feeling a lot of frustration because I did not share any of these opinions, and in fact I had a thorough business plan/strategy that involved me getting my name and face out into the big, wide world of gay porn as fast as humanly possible. And that is exactly what I achieved. Studio exposure was just one part of that plan but it revolved primarily around my own ability to build my brand and networks within the industry myself.

Fast forward a couple of weeks and that poolside DP scene had gone viral. My X exploded. My OF exploded. I was being contacted by some of the biggest names in the industry for collaborations. That same scene received a nomination for the 'best all-male collab' of the year at the 2024 GayVNs, AND WE EVEN WON! 🏆

Now, back to this latest studio scene with Phoenix & Shadow… About 1 month later (and much to my surprise) the studios reached out to me and said that they would like to book me for some more scenes in September. Now, I am not one to ever want to burn bridges and instead was seeking to mend what I hoped could still be a valuable relationship to maintain, and so I accepted their offer.

I had to laugh when I learned that I would be filming not one, not two, but THREE DP scenes, one of which was an 'interracial DP' scene (with Phoenix and Shadow). The very thing that I had been warned would completely derail the longevity of my career in this industry just one month earlier! As you'll all see when/if you do watch this latest studio scene, there really shouldn't be any hard or fast rules around these things – because if there were then we certainly wouldn't have ended up with this great scene that the 3 of us created together! Overall, I couldn't be more happy or proud that I followed my gut and did things exactly the way that I planned them.

I'm here for the politics.