There are a lot of naughty bits scattered about the Interweb. As a matter of fact the most troublesome aspect of all the naughty bits out there is their sheer magnitude. No one will ever be able to get through them all in a healthy lifetime. Something must be done to filter out the rubbish and let the gems shine through.
For my part I’ve always been interested in assisting the undergod [sic], interested in elevating the n00b. To this end I have created a guide to surfing for erotica on the vast cyberplanes of planet Earth.
There has been a lot of discussion regarding the question of delimiting erotica from porn (or pr0n, if you prefer). 3r0t!c@ has a long tradition in human history. I suppose in one way or another it has been with us since we slathered pigments on stone walls with our fingers or simply grunted approvingly. Though no guide can determine for you what is erotica and what is porn (just as no book of rules can ever really tell you what is right and what is wrong), I hope that my guidelines will help you in discovering for yourself where that line is drawn and how to stay on your preferred side of it.
Contrary to popular myth, images posted in black and white are not automatically erotica.
Do not be fooled by black and white photographs. It is true that the history of photographic erotica began right on the heels of photography itself. This means that the first (vintage?) erotica was by necessity shot in black and white (and sepia tone and the like). Regardless, we live in a modern world of wonder and a black and white image is but a few slight mouse-clicks away.
In those early days of photography taking a picture was an extraordinary investment in time and equipment. The camera itself was prohibitively expensive, and then there were the other considerations: time (exposures were sometimes hours long), models (people were really ugly in the early days of photography), and development chemicals and costs. This greatly limited the scope of who could shoot photographs and it also meant that once a person committed themselves to photography they likely dived in fairly deep.
By contrast, today any minute jpeg shot on a freebie camera-phone can be instantly converted into black and white. This hardly garners the same assurances as the hurdles imposed by providence in the youth of photography.
One of the most critical analyses one can make of a potential Web site is the occurrence and relevance of surnames. Everybody is born with a surname—some with several. Naughty sites will often present their models by name. Take a careful survey of those names. We must exclude names which are clear and obvious references to anatomical objects, sexual positions, or deviant acts. Names which are clear interpolations of celebrities, places, or current events are equally dubious. And if all the models are singly-named (like Niki and Buck) then you should really be scratching your chin. Of course, this is only a guidepost on your journey and cannot be taken as an etched-in-stone law of the universe. For instance, Cher has no last name but that doesn’t mean she’s a sub-Yugo porn star. Prince has no last name but… never mind. You get the point.
Another fine guidepost can be found in any handy dictionary. As fortune would have it, your browser can sniff out a dictionary better than a swine can sniff out a truffle. Keep an eye on words like virgin, teen, innocent, mom, and cupcake. Consult your dictionary often. It is profoundly unlikely that a geriatric, silicon infested bimbo will qualify as innocent, a virgin, or (stop laughing) a teen. Geriatri-teen. Uh-huh.
Miscalculated page references are a dead give-away. All philosophical discussions about whether we all perceive a particular color in the same manner or whether race exists as a category aside, what is clear is that we all call a pomegranate a pomegranate and not a saxaphone. Does it call a brunette a blonde? Is her yellow dress red?
Grammar, as always, is key. Jumbled word order, a profusion of exclamation points, and uncanny word choices are typical tell-tale signs: “Our girls hot like do sex on you!!!” Grammar is your friend, your ally; let it work for you. You needn’t be a grammar maven to get in the groove, but knowing a little about the language you are reading certainly helps.
It’s not just about pictures though. Film, video clips, and motion pictures. That’s the ticket to realism. Jacky Treehorn can lament the demise of quality, the sacrifices film makers have had to make with the advent of video cassette recorders (and now digital motion picture recorders). However, this has brought a whole new generation of creative works into the universe. Nonetheless, just as with photography, one must needs be selective as one weeds through the sea of slough raining down like dandruff on the lavatory floors.
Being mindful of production values can be assistive in your efforts to sort through the naughty bits. Questions you can ask yourself are “Was the writer sufficiently intoxicated to craft a credible montage of human or superhuman events?”, “Does the dialog have the lilt and flow of retired boxers reading from cue cards?”, and “When the performers moan and gasp does it sound like there ought to be a conductor?”. The question of quality can be a complicated one, but I’m certain you are that much better prepared to address it mindfully.
Another popular myth is that models in erotica do not smile. It may be true that they are a little sad because they know they could be making a lot more money if they would sleep with the photographer, the director, the key-grip, and a few passing strangers; but the models are professionals. Smiling is a part of a model’s job. It’s what they do.
Well, I’ve done what I can for you. The rest is up to you. Go get ’em, tiger. And remember, as Barbie discovered so many years ago, there is more to life than bending at the knees.