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For Fun: Start a porn site

startapornsite.smutnode.com

5 points_6tfp11 comments

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I get that perhaps some people are bored with the insistence that companies like Dropbox/Airbnb/etc are just money making machines and arguably (n.b. not my argument) don't make the world a better place... but porn sites seem to make the world a worse place: by making porn users less capable of enjoying ordinary sex (habituation to super-stimuli) and less capable of participation in ordinary sex (increased rates of erectile dysfunction); this doesn't just harm users' sex lives, but also their emotional and romantic lives, and those of the people they'd like to share them with.

I understand and agree with your point, as it is scientifically based. I remember seeing a great TED talk on the effect this is having.

But to play the Devil's advocate, if this person doesn't do this, wouldn't someone else? I mean, in a market with such a great demand, how can you ever detract users from this?

While we can both agree on the detriments this can have on people's lives, what can one person do to fix it? I know that not building this sort of site is a start, but you do have to understand that whether or not this person does this, the world will be roughly the exact same.

Censorship can't be the answer either, as that trades one negative aspect for another, and there's also good evidence to suggest that there are some good from porn sites (people in relationships stimulating it?).

Anyway, I guess what I'm asking is, how do we fix this problem, without trying to tell someone to avoid making money? Because that's not going to work IMO.

I agree that censorship is not the answer. I feel it would do more harm than good.

And I agree that one more cookie-cutter porn site won't make much difference (but it would be part of the problem). The problem is really the porn available in aggregate.

What can we do to fix this?

* Make people aware that this is a problem, and that if they find their sex+relationship lives are suffering that they don't have to continue watching porn. (I'm not convinced this would be an effective tactic --- look how many people still smoke. Then again, fewer people smoke now than a generation ago, at least in the West.)

* Well, this is a business site, can we make money by getting people to not watch toxic porn? Perhaps by getting them to watch non-toxic porn instead? There was a story posted here earlier this week about somebody trying to do that. (But can this ever be more than a niche in the porn market? And does the person behind that site know how to make non-toxic porn, or is it just a hunch?)

So no, I don't have any answers really.

You did accomplished the first point, which I agree with. Here's the link to the TED talk for those interested: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/zimchallenge.html

>I understand and agree with your point, as it is scientifically based. I remember seeing a great TED talk on the effect this is having.

Going off a tangent here, but I would agree with that even if it was not "scientifically based".

For a lot of stuff, especially cultural stuff related to societal norms, the philosophy of it (the "how we want to live" part) is more useful than science.

That is, even without any papers or clinical studies, one can deduce things like the above. It's not like we need scientists to tell us even the more basic things of our everyday existence. Some cannot even be measured or quantified objectively, because they relate to what we want to be the norm, and not what is "objectively right" or "natural". Not to mention that what is a "scientific result" in this kind of issues (i.e outside of physics, math, etc) is prone to lots of biases and/or interests.

It's better to ask "what kind of world we would like to live in" in those cases, and judge by that.

Censorship on porn is not going to do anything. I don't think it messes up your relation. In some cases it can even boost relationships.

And what if porn was censured? There would be a lot more crazy people on the streets.

Please. Knee-jerk reactions like this don't help anybody. I didn't mention censorship, let alone advocate it (and I think censoring porn would do more harm than good).

You're ignoring the fact that porn is actually having a negative effect on society. I'll not dismiss the potential for good, but it's actually quite damaging to young men right now.

>And what if porn was censured? There would be a lot more crazy people on the streets.

Historically porn wasn't that available, and no, you didn't have lots more "crazy people on the streets".

In fact, judging from crime rates, depression, substance abuse and such, modern societies are far crazier than 50 years ago.

It amazes me that anyone can make any money on this. For grins, I've been monitoring new .com TLD registrations for the past 2 months. On any given day, you get roughly 50k to 100k new registrations. 99% of those seem to be ad-parked (or whatever the term is (see sexa1.com, registered yesterday -- textually NFSW)) or misconfigured (understandable, I suppose, for a day-old domain).

I'm guessing maybe 0.05% (half of that remaing 1%) are sex related: tube, cam, and image porn aggregation; escort sites.

I find it truly amazing that so much is built on 3rd party content. After watching these new domains for so long, I started thinking: What am I missing? Can I actually make a little bit of passive income with a $10 domain name and a little forum name-dropping? The OP seems to think that people can. Obviously people do.

EDIT: I meant to finish with, I wish the article gave some real revenue numbers. The dude states he has 200 sites, and I'd love to hear a ballpark figure of how much he earns (maybe even a single site), and a direct example to one such site.

While not a 'porn' site, I did launch a dating site, http://www.silverfoxie.com/

I do have altruistic motives for the site though, which would be different for a porn site.

Generally intergenerational gay dating sites (like Silverfoxie) are filled with porn and smut as entertainment. When I was dating, it was very hard to filter the not very serious guys just looking at porn, from litigate guys looking for a good guy to date. I wanted to take the 'porn as entertainment' out of the 'find a good date' equation, Thus Silverfoxie was born. Not very business savvy to remove the entertainment from a business model but I feel the site will be more effective in function.

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