Netflix Pornhub doc Money Shot aims to radicalize porn-lovers

In those bygone days when you had to sit on a family computer in the living room in order to access the internet, teenagers watched documentaries like Netflix’s Money shot: The Pornhub Story hoping to catch a glimpse of a world they could otherwise only access by stealing someone’s dad’s Playboy. (RIP HBO’sReal Sex one of the premier providers of this type of content in the ’90s and ’00s.) But one of Pornhub’s big, epoch-shaking innovations was to make actual pornography available to anyone with a smartphone — no credit card required.

There’s a more graphic version of this story thatcouldYou will be told. The beginning of Geld Shot, a woman who’s worked in the porn industry for most of her adult life describes watching an “eight-person geriatric gangbang” the first time she ever fired up Pornhub. “That did set the tone for how extreme things could be on the internet,” she says.

Maybe as an implicit acknowledgment that Netflix cannot compete with Pornhub’s actual content? Geld Shot leaves its analysis of the “gonzo” side of porn there. You can watch this movie here. played in theaters, it’d be rated R for language and a little above-the-waist nudity. (Seriously, though, if you want to see people having unsimulated sex — much of it quite athletic — the site to check is right there in the name of the doc.) That allows director Suzanne Hillinger to focus on the thing that’s really driving the movie’s narrative story: feminist infighting.

X-rated movie star Natassia Dreams sits on a purple couch, smiling smiles and extends her hands out to the side in a shrug as she’s interviewed in a shot from the documentary Money Shot: The Pornhub Story

Netflix Photo

It isn’t sexy, but it’s true. From the moment hardcore adult films stepped out of the shadows and into the zeitgeist in the “porno chic” era of the early 1970s, feminists have been entrenched in a bitter argument over whether pornography is a degrading act of misogynist violence, or a liberating path to sexual freedom. While the debate changes with generational backlash and public sentiment, the two sides remain the same for ten years. Each side has its own grievances. Money shot.

The voices of sex workers, who earn their living by producing X-rated content, are something that are seldom heard in the debate. Geld Shot gives a group of (mostly) female sex workers — one male performer is interviewed, but he isn’t really a main character — the opportunity to defend their industry on camera. According to these women, websites like OnlyFans and Pornhub give them the opportunity to market their services directly to consumers, freeing them from the need for exploitative “producers” and “managers.”

SESTA/FOSTA was passed in 2018. This forced the performers to go underground. Pornhub saw payment processing companies, such as Mastercard, pull out under anti-porn pressure. SESTA/FOSTA was a triumph for the other side of this debate, made up of “anti-human trafficking” organizations who have freaked out countless women online with stories about zip ties, unmarked vans, and innocent girls seduced into a life of sin.

Geld ShotBoldly asserts that the claims of widespread CSAM (Child Sexual Abuse Material), on Pornhub is mostly bullshit. This includes stories about underage girls who suffered traumatization after having their private videos posted to Pornhub without permission. It also asserts that groups like NCOSE (The National Center on Sexual Exploitation — there are a lot of acronyms in this documentary) are using these kids to further a larger conservative Christian agenda. All the feminists, pro and anti-porn, agree that Pornhub should require its poster to confirm their identity before uploading videos. That was long before Pornhub established the policy in 2020.

X-rated movie performer Siri Dahl, dressed in dark blue silk, sits on a bed between two men as cameramen focus in on them in a shot from the Netflix documentary Money Shot: The Pornhub Story

Netflix Photo

Pornhub’s continued existence as a legal tube site over the years is due to MindGeek, its parent company. MindGeek operates with the same techno-libertarian arrogance which led to this week’s SVB collapse. MindGeek is run by shadowy men. They have made their fortunes off the backs, and faces, of sex workers. They’re also perfectly happy to let the performers take the fall, both financially and in terms of reputation, for the company’s laissez-faire attitude toward content moderation.

Geld Shot doesn’t even entertain the idea that watching porn is bad for you, which seems fair, given the fact that most people do it at least sometimes — even those who won’t cop to it publicly — and that society doesn’t seem to be collapsing any faster than it would be otherwise. The film’s argument that tech bros and venture capitalistsThese areIt is easier to accelerate the social decline by placing money and power in control of a few.

That’s Hillinger’s true agenda with Geld Shot. It’s essentially a get-out-the-horny-vote exercise, trying to persuade the people who enjoy porn to throw their political support behind the people who make it. It’s titillation with a side of radicalization. And if any teenagers whose folks have installed parental controls on their computers do watch this documentary late at night with the volume turned down, they’ll learn more about workers seizing the means of production than they learn about sex — which is far more dangerous to the powers that be than any bare breasts or asses.

Money shot: The Pornhub StoryYou can stream Netflix right now

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