Calico Rudasil is a feature columnist for Sssh.com, the award-winning porn site for women & couples. With over 18 years’ experience under her belt, writing about and for the adult entertainment industry, Calico qualifies as something of a Web Porn Dinosaur; similar to a tyrannosaurus, only with far more attractive arms and a less pronounced overbite.
My whole life, I’ve been a sucker for spy stories, both real and fictional, as well as just about any other genre or category which purports to be revealing something which was once concealed. There’s just something about the word clandestine I’ve always been fascinated by, an allure to hidden knowledge, the feeling I’m hearing something which maybe I was never supposed to know.
Sometimes, though, the big payoff I’m hoping for falls depressingly short, because my reaction to the revelation at hand is “Really? That’s it?
That’s the big secret?”
Whether it’s finding out the text beneath those jet black redaction marks on some previously ‘top secret’ document is actually fairly innocuous, or learning the killer in a mystery novel is the least interesting character in the whole book, the letdown of experiencing a “who cares?” type of revelation makes me regret being interested in the first place.
So, imagine how I felt when I heard Facebook is “secretly hoping” porn becomes a major driver of consumers adopting virtual reality in general, and the Facebook-owned Oculus Rift particular.
Why the ‘Secrecy’?
According to my calendar, it’s the 21st century, which means the porn-cat has already long since been let out of its public-outrage-bag. So, just in case the bigwigs at Facebook haven’t heard, I think most people are fairly well accustomed to the idea there’s a lot of porn on the internet.
In fact, I’d even go so far as to say there’s a lot of porn on the internet because a fair number of people who use the internet want there to be a lot of porn on there, not because there is some inherent quality of the internet which is somehow magically causing porn to manifest itself.
Make no mistake, many other people would rather there were no porn on the internet at all, or it were at least less readily accessible. Given the fact the U.S. government itself hasn’t managed to push internet porn into a corner (even given the theoretical ability to craft laws regulating its distribution) with over 20 years to do so, I think it’s safe to say internet porn is here to stay.
Facebook, too, is here to stay. In fact, if there’s one thing people spend more time doing on the internet than watching porn, I’d venture to say it’s posting pictures of their own smiling faces to their Facebook profiles, along with either (a) the details of their latest pet adoption (b) the location of the last place they ran a marathon or (c) a meme in which they demonstrate an almost cultish obsession with some white-haired, bespectacled socialist gentleman they’ve taken to calling “The Bern.”
So, if you’re Facebook, and you are hoping consumers will buy your little VR headset because they want to use it to watch porn and get vertigo at the same time, why the secrecy?
Consumers Care, But Not THAT Much
Somehow I doubt the powers that be at Facebook believe millions of users will flee their platform if the company were to come out and say: “Yes, obviously, just like every other technology which can be used to consume porn, we are hoping Oculus Rift will be used to watch porn, because this will help us sell more of the fucking things.”
After all, a company needn’t endorse everything consumers do with their products in order to hope to benefit from those uses. If I make duct tape, do I necessarily think it’s a great idea for someone to use it to secure their front bumper to their vehicle? No, but when I see a massive tangle of my product next to me in traffic, my first thought isn’t going to be “Boy, we really need to put out a public service announcement encouraging people to go to the mechanic instead of buying 37 rolls of duct tape a year.” I’m just going to maintain a safe distance from their car and silently thank them for their business.
Suppose Facebook were even to endorse officially using the device to watch porn by saying “You know what? Screw it, we’re even going to allow porn content to be sold in the on-deck Oculus store,” how many current account-holders do you think would up and abandon the social network? 1%? More? Less?
Let’s face it, for as much as we hear about boycotts and protests and consumer outrage at bad corporate citizens, how many of the companies people get all upset about have been run out of business, or even run into a change in the policy which upset everybody in the first place?
Did Chik Fil-a either go out of business or stop opposing same-sex marriage while I wasn’t looking? No; they’re still hating on homosexuals as proscribed in their favorite ancient book, and still selling pickle-adorned sandwiches by the millions, likely including to a lot of customers who don’t share their antipathy for same-sex marriage.
How about the dickhead CEO from Go Daddy; have those disgusting canned-safari hunts he enjoys doing resulted in a substantial decline in his company’s market share, or even a reduction in the number of stupid, NASCAR-driver-aided ads he runs? Nope – because a lot of people still want domain names on the cheap, and even they’ll buy them from an unmitigated asshole if he’s the cheapest.
Wallmart? Still here, still paying its employees shit, still driving local businesses into bankruptcy with a big, dumb, smile on its yellow cartoon face. Koch Industries? Heck, people generally don’t even know when they’re shoveling money back into those deep pockets.
So, Facebook bigwigs, whomever you may be, if it’s really true you “secretly” want porn to flourish on Oculus Rift, don’t put yourselves through the stress and angst of trying to operate some sort of porn-conspiracy; come out of the cyber-closet, genitals in hand, and just say what everybody already knows: If you’re going to sit around with some strange device clamped over your eyeballs, it’s not really any less respectable or decent for said device to be displaying an immersive 3D blowjob than displaying the CGI corpses of a bunch of pretend bad guys you just shot with your imaginary machine gun.
Really, it’s OK. When people wake up the next morning, they’ll still want a place to share their favorite memes, and for the moment at least, Facebook remains that place.
Photo Credit: Model: Ela Darling for Cam4VR Photographer: Wilferd Guenthoer
Calico Rudasil is a Sssh.com (@ssshforwomen) columnist and Sssh will be on Peeperz for fun times again in the near future, meanwhile why not check us out:
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