Have We Reached Peak Gay Porn?

The Internet.

It has changed the way communities interact and communicate with the world around us.

The Internet has also disrupted every industry is has come across; gay porn isn’t exempt.  

Because of the Internet, the gay porn industry simultaneously seems more alive than it ever has, and like it’s is imploding quicker than ever. With everyone fighting a race to the top that looks like a race to the top, I ask:  

HAVE WE REACHED PEAK GAY PORN?

Today’s Gay Porn

In the golden age of gay porn, a studio would focus on 2-4 major releases a year. They’d feature 4-5 scenes with the biggest stars in gay porn, usually under exclusive contracts, which meant they couldn’t work anywhere else.

[WATCH: "Deep South: Falcon Studios"]

These videos were expensive; luckily, if you couldn’t afford to buy them, you could rent them from an adult book store if your town was big enough. If not, you were SOL. Adult bookstores still exist today, but serve more of a purpose to facilitate anonymous hookups between guys.  

Today’s porn industry is much different.  

In an effort to stay industry-relevant and popular to a generation that doesn’t feel the need to pay for any of the content they’re jacking / jilling off to, studios put out 39 new scenes a week (DRM-FREE!!!) in hopes that someone will buy a $2.99 three-day trial and eventually convert to a monthly member.  

What usually happens, though, is someone will either download the majority of that studio’s catalog once they buy the trial, or bypass all that and wait until the scene is on a tube site an hour after its release and download it for free.  

Quality In The Toilet

Studios keeping up with ridiculous release schedules of 27 new scenes a week that no one will buy comes at the sacrifice of quality.  

Though they’re not the first, Men at Play just put out a scene that NO ONE would expect to be real, featuring Dani Robles, Massimo Piano, and Massimo’s real-life boyfriend, Klein Kerr. The scene was over 20 minutes long, and featured less than 2 minutes of visible fucking. At one point, Klein is thrusting into Dani like they’re fucking, but the top’s cock is blatantly sitting on (not in) the bottom.

You may think that’s ridiculous, but last week, Corbin Fisher put out a scene that featured a poop shot.  

The cum shot was hot, if it's any consolation.

Conversely, in an effort to distinguish themselves by maintaining quality, Titan Media puts out about one new scene per week. But their release schedule is so slow that many of their scenes were shot over a year prior to their release. Case in point? Jake Genesis appeared in Titan Men’s “Face Paced” in July 2014, along with Trenton Ducati. But shot the scene in early 2013, right before he retired and went on that crazy diatribe.  

Once powerhouses in the industry, some studios like Badpuppy and Cocksure Men are trying to tread above water by leasing content filmed from Eastern Europe, where production rates are cheaper. But, no one has ever heard of the majority of the boys.

Their latest update features Marion Anel and Milan Pokorny. Know who these people are? No? Case proven.

[jwplayer id="273091" src="/data/videos/gay/006/013/918/Marion_Anel_and_Milan_Pokorny_-_Badpuppy_mp4.mp4" placeholder="/data/videos/gay/006/013/918/Marion_Anel_and_Milan_Pokorny_-_Badpuppy_image.png"]
[WATCH: Marion Anel and Milan Porkorny - Badpuppy]

And many studios, at this point, are dead.  

Southern Strokes has been repurposing its catalog to look new, though they stopped shooting years ago. While Active Duty is still producing content, it has been doing the same; I was so excited when they sent out an update about Thomas - whose dirty mouth is only rivaled by Jeff Stryker – only to find out that it was his first scene, released in 2007. European porn studio Blake Mason recently sent out an update featuring Mason Wyler, who hasn’t worked in the industry in 5 years.  

Because no one is paying for porn, studios can’t afford fancy sets and production techniques, and some can’t even afford to pay their models. In the hey day of porn, gay porn stars used to get paid per movie, sometimes receiving $12,000 per title, and only shot 2-4 times a year. In today’s gay porn world, models get paid per scene. While studios like Randy Blue and Sean Cody still pay high rates, some (like Dallas Reeves) have allegedly offered models $450 for three scenes. 

Not all disruption is bad disruption

Because of the Internet and advances in technology, cameras, editing software, and other things needed to make porn are cheaper to produce. Because goods and services are cheaper to produce, porn is cheaper to produce. Because porn is cheaper to produce, We’ve seen an increase in three things:

• More breakout “porn stars”
• The amount of gay porn being made
• The amount of niche porn produced

And you can watch porn from almost any genre! Gay porn used to be uniform in the type of content they produced, because production was at the hands of a few. But now, if you’re into something, you’ll probably be able to find it.  

• Intergenerational porn? Yup.
• Interracial porn? Yup.
• Feet? Uh-huh.
• Boys Smoking? Sure.  

Therefore, while the Internet has been disruptive, not all disruption is bad disruption.  

If you want to start your own porn website, you can relatively easily. The Maverick Men were able to turn their stardom from xTube into a full-fledged porn site, and are still going strong-ish. Many porn stars, including Austin Wilde, Rogan Richards, Rocco Steele, and Lucio Saints are using their stardom from their porn careers to launch their own branded sites. There are still new kids on the block, like Harlem Hookups, getting into the game.  

We may have reached the peak, but should porn stop being produced?

It has been said that you can watch one new porn scene every day until you die, and not see the same scene twice.

(And it probably has something to do with Men.Com as they update every day).  

While a studio repurposing old scenes to look new feels like deception, it DOES give new life to porn that, with so many options, can feel like it’s disposable. It gives a chance to rediscover that hot scene, or that boy you loved (especially if they’ve retired).  

One could also argue that in order to survive, gay porn must continue to be produced, just like music. It, just like music, can be seen as a time capsule into a certain period, and in order for us to have record, it must continue to be produced.  

How would we have known what tastes were like in the 1920s had this not been recoded?  

[jwplayer src="https://media.fleshbot.com/data/videos/gay/005/898/980/fleshbot_5595_mp4.mp4" placeholder=""]   

What about the ridiculousness of the 1970s, as told by this bathhouse in San Francisco?

Gay porn is also a sign of the changing social environments.  

Think about how many women are watching gay porn now, compared to years past, which has given sites like Icon Male a chance to thrive. And though muscular bodies and twinks always seem to be in fashion, a variety of body types are seen as hot these days, and sites like Bear Films produce content to glorify those bodies, with stars like Marc Angelo and Steve Sommers.  

Unlike the 1980s, the gay porn of today sees the stigma around HIV begin to wear off and Truvada use increase. Bareback gay porn is coming back into style and is almost a necessity, as seen in the number of performers who shoot both bareback and condom porn simultaneously, when that used to be a no-no (and still is for some houses like Titan).  

So Have We Reached Peak Porn?

The question I have is this. With companies scrambling to produce more content at lower quality, and no one really paying for that content, what does the future of the industry look like? WILL porn continue to be produced, or will we fall back on vintage scenes?

And HAVE we reached peak gay porn? Would you be happy if you never saw another scene produced? Do we have enough? Am I just bitching?

Also, what is the future of gay porn?