- Mandy Morbid describes what it’s been like making the cult-hit YouTube show I Hit It With My Axe (a Dungeons and Dragons group comprised of porn performers), and the absolutely astonishing amount of abuse they’ve received from the gaming communities for being mostly female, and being in porn. It makes the women in tech problems look trite — especially because some of the sickest trolls attacking the women are professional game designers, and validated by their communities.
More Reasons People Found to Hate Me (Mandy Morbid)
- Exactly what prompts Facebook to erase porn stars accounts even when they abide by the rules is something of a mystery. Maybe it’s just because they’re porn stars: Regular people frequently post the same content without fear of censorship.
Porn Stars Want to Know: Why Did Facebook Delete Me? (Daily Beast)
- This item is from Tuesday, but a friend just pointed out a very important piece of information we learn by reading it: Whisper, the “secret” and “anonymous” secret sharing app can: view your posting history, see your geolocation data – and they gladly analyze the data for Gawker. Think about it.
Fucking Uber And Lyft Drivers Is Apparently A Thing (Jalopnik)
- A great interview with one of my closest friends. “Eon McKai made a lot of smut starting in 2006, a time when change was afoot at the adult film production company Vivid Entertainment. Hustler had bought VCA Pictures, and Vivid was being squeezed out and destroyed. Under these difficult circumstances McKai was recruited to launch Vivid Alt. In a last gasp, Eon McKai was handed the keys to the kingdom, a chance to challenge stale industry standards by showing porn as a celebration of women.”
Beautiful things that happen in the dark: A conversation with Eon McKai (The Rumpus)
- The Kickstarter is for Gay Men Draw Vaginas, raising money for “A beautiful book of vaginas drawn by gay men.” Beautiful is one way to put it… the project started as a gag, and turned into a hilarious, celebratory and completely awesome collection of gay men’s artistic commentary on ladybits. I love it! Check out Buzzfeed for backstory and Tumblr for fun. On Instagram too, but destined to be censored.
Gay Men Draw Vaginas (Kickstarter)
OH COME ON, @Salon, there’s a whole parody account for this stuff. (h/t @Matthops82) pic.twitter.com/c0hd8L4vbY
— Andrew Stiles (@AndrewStilesUSA) August 1, 2014
- Former motor-racing chief Max Mosley claims the internet giant is breaking the law by continuing to link to pictures from a 2008 court case.
Max Mosley sues Google over sex party photographs (Telegraph UK)
- I wonder how this is going to go horribly wrong. Three guys have launched Great Fap (greatfap.com), where users upload a photo and then watch porn with performers who look like the person in the photo. The system uses software called ReKognition, designed by firm Orbeus, which built a facial recognition API for Google Glass. This program matches photographs using key facial features, hair color, body type and ethnicity. Right now, Great Fap is only a database of women.
Start Me Up: Is The Adult Industry A Place For Young Tech Entrepreneurs To Make Money? (Forbes)
- This 1997 instructional video can’t decide whether to be informational or sexy and, as a result, succeeds at neither. Tedium has never been this topless.
How To Have Cybersex In 1997 (Digg)
- A witness told Ohio County, W.V., sheriff’s deputies she saw 53-year-old Barbara Jean “B.J.” Geardello taking her boyfriend, Robert Deyell, 56, for a walk on a dog leash. She said he was wearing a hood, and his feet and ankles had been tied. As for whatever was protruding from his butt, she didn’t hazard a guess.
Woman Walks Naked Man on Dog Leash, Puts Unknown Object in His Anus (Gawker)
- A Houston woman is suing Facebook for $123 million, alleging that the social media company was inexcusably slow to respond to her complaints about a “revenge porn” Facebook page set up by an estranged friend. The woman discovered the Facebook page in December 2013, but the page wasn’t removed until February — and only after Houston police subpoenaed Facebook to find out who had created it.
Facebook “revenge porn” lawsuit hits Mark Zuckerberg where it hurts (Salon)
- 4-Hour Workweek author and lifestyle blogger Tim Ferriss is challenging his readers to 30 days of no booze and no jacking off. This Daily Beast writer doesn’t seem to know how to write about someone being simultaneously sex-positive while they talk about not masturbating…
Tim Ferriss Is Bro Culture’s Anti-Masturbation Crusader (Daily Beast)
- “With the possible exception of competitive pole dancing, no sport is more erotic than baseball in late summer… The only sound now was Glavine’s new tool. The baseball bat made a sick, dull thud each time it landed on his meager expanse of ass and muscular hamstrings (…)”
Baseball Erotica #1 John Smoltz and Tom Glavine (VICE)
- Despite its success in developing countries, the female condom has long suffered from a PR problem in the U.S. What would it take to salvage its image?
Can the Female Condom Go Mainstream? (The Atlantic)
- A new study has used a massive and long-running European survey to investigate how differences in cognitive ability are changing. This is super smart, because it offers us an escape from arguing about whether men and women are different in how they think, allowing us some insight into how any such differences might develop.
Are women and men forever destined to think differently? (Mind Hacks)
- I am so in love with this video. The founders of ManServants are two San Francisco women who work in advertising, and they say it’s not a stunt. The service, which launches September 1 in S.F., offers women (and men) a way to rent a custom-made male companion for almost anything she wants, aside from sex and stripping. Watch ManServants’ over-the-top commercial above.
Looking To Rent A Hot Pool Boy? New Startup To Deliver ‘ManServants’ On Demand (SFist)
- “The first time I caught one of my kids playing with their genitals, I said absolutely nothing. I was momentarily paralyzed with indecision. One thing I knew for a fact I did not want to do was to shout, “No!” or “Stop!” What good could that possibly do? Sure, I would be spared the awkwardness of catching my child playing with her genitals on the living room floor, but what kind of lesson is that? To fear or ignore your own vagina?”
This Is What Sex-Positive Parenting Really Looks Like (Huffington Post, via Vu)
- “True Blood” star Anna Paquin defended bisexuality — namely, hers — in a particularly awkward exchange on “Larry King Now.” The talk show host seemed befuddled by Paquin identifying as a bisexual when the topic of her marriage to male costar Stephen Moyer came up.
Anna Paquin defends bisexuality on ‘Larry King Now’ (SF Gate)
- These peaches from Yangshan, in Wuxi (China), an area that’s famous for its lingerie and garment industry, are being sold to capitalize on the the upcoming romantic Qixi Festival. China News reports that these unusual peaches are called “Ripe Fruit” (蜜桃成熟時). They aren’t cheap: A box of nine panty fruit is 498 yuan or US$80.
Peaches Sold as Sexy Butts in China (Kotaku)
- This is such an incredible essay. “At the age of 10, I took a pledge at my church alongside a group of other girls to remain a virgin until marriage… Waiting didn’t give me a happily ever after. Instead, it controlled my identity for over a decade, landed me in therapy, and left me a stranger in my own skin. I was so completely ashamed of my body and my sexuality that it made having sex a demoralizing experience. I’m now thoroughly convinced that the entire concept of virginity is used to control female sexuality.”
It happened to me: I waited until my wedding night to lose my virginity and I wish I hadn’t (xoJane)
I am a white, male role player and what Mandy Morbid describes is not my experience of the hobby. I don’t play D&D, and I’m in the UK, maybe either or both of those facts is relevant and maybe not. The only online gaming community I am part of is the Steve Jackson Games website forums, and I am absolutely certain that trolling and abuse of the nature desrcibed would not be tolerated by the admins there and people posting such things would be banned. Steve Jackson Games is based in Austin, Texas, so maybe my being in the UK is not relevant. We have disagreements on the forums, but abuse is not tolerated.
As a Black, male gamer who’s been doing so online since 1999 I have to admit that nothing Mandy Morbid described in that post surprised me very much at all. I’d also admit the people I’ve known via gaming forums that were European have all been very respectful, but who one is and where one is from has a way of coloring what one perceives as trolling or abusive. There’s no doubt in my mind there are things you or I might gloss over completely that would make someone else feel like a forum was hostile to their very presence.
Not to diminish Mandy Morbid’s experiences at all, but http://failforward.co.uk/post/93348768153/how-dungeons-and-dragons-is-endorsing-the-darkest-parts points to a different experience, especially those she points to as trolls and one she was transphobic towards, and Zak S’ supporters have been particularly abusive. Like doxxing, and cyber-bullying, and literally driving out of the hobby.
@Bazza: Tom Hatfields article on FailForward is a piece of libel. The claims that are made against Zak and Mandy in the article are totally unsubstantiated, and the author have been able or willing to produce literally no evidence at all to back up his accusations. See Zak’s rebuttal here: http://www.dndwithpornstars.blogspot.se/2014/08/how-dungeons-and-dragons-is-totally-not.html