Mike Rugnetta: Friends, hello, and welcome to Never Post, a
podcast for and about the Internet. I'm your host, Mike
Rugnetta, and we have a desirable show for you today.
Senior producer Hans Buto talks with sexual wellness educator
Courtney Brame and cofounders of SWR Data, Melrose Michaels, and
Mike Stabil about the rise in safe for work content searches
on the very not safe for work platform Pornhub. Why is this
happening? What does it tell us about the Internet at large?
And is it really safe for work? Before we get to Hans, who
attempts to answer these questions and more, some ads,
unless you're on the member feed, and then a quick story
from reporter Bob Woodward in his book, The Brethren, about
some old men in a basement watching body movies. It's the
nineteen sixties in Washington. The men are mostly in their
seventies, and they are the justices of the Supreme Court of
the United States with their younger clerks. They all gather
once a session in the basement or maybe a conference room of
the Supreme Court Building.
They make popcorn, and together they watch a series of
pornographic movies. Because each movie is an exhibit in an
obscenity case that has appealed to the court, and the system at
the time was that these people had to go through them one by
one to judge based on their own direct experience if those films
were, in fact, obscene. Each of the nine judges dealt with movie
day, as they called it, a little differently. Judges Douglas and
Black never attended. Nothing should be banned, they said, and
they dubbed it a supreme court of censors.
Judge Berger just didn't want to go. Judge Harlan, who was ill
and nearly blind by the end of his career in 1971, would sit
just a few feet from the screen. He could only see shapes and
outlines and had his clerks describe to him what was
happening. Famously, around this time, his wife had to read Lady
Chatterley's Lover to him. But maybe most famously, in 1964,
during this ritual, justice Potter Stewart coined the phrase
that would become perhaps the most famous yardstick for
measuring obscenity.
He said, I know it when I see it. Now, I know it when I see it
is not a legal standard by any stretch, but it has lingered for
sixty years as a shorthand for how we think about the nuance of
what is and is not pornography. Our story today is not about
litigating obscenity, but it is about how we know what fits into
which categories when it comes to the murky, the personal, and
the private world of desire and sex. What is and is not safe for
work? Well, maybe we know it when we see it.
And we are looking for it. The data says so. But first, around
the world, there are cameras, cameras, cameras. And a lot of
those cameras are connected to the Internet. And some of those
cameras are on 20 fourseven, pointed at one thing, an
unblinking eye.
And some of those cameras have microphones, always listening,
even when there isn't really anything going on. So in our
interstitials this episode, quiet cams. Live streamed
cameras with microphones in places where really not much is
happening at all. In order, the Namib Desert, the North Circular
Road in Dublin, and Lamai Beach in Thailand.
Hans Buetow: We love some data here on Neverpost. Give me some
data, and I'll give you the world. That is a quote from
legendary Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Terry Bradshaw. I
just made it up, but we believe in it very strongly. So I got
very excited when last December, as they do every December, one
one of the biggest porn sites in the world, Pornhub, published a
report analyzing some of the usage data that they had
collected over the past years.
Search terms, biggest categories, visit length, top
performers, breaking all that stuff down by country and then
even by state. We don't see any data, it's only analysis. So as
legendary Minnesota Vikings quarterback Fran Tarkenton said,
you can tell any story from the data, so be careful. When I
looked at the stats this past December, one thing in this most
recent report made me go like legendary Browns quarterback
Otto Graham did at some point in his life. One of the top six
trends that the data team at Pornhub noticed for 2025 was a
rise in safe for work content.
It said, quote, it might be counterintuitive to think people
come to Pornhub for safe for work content, but over the
years, it has been impossible to deny its rising popularity. Some
of the top gaming categories of 2025, podcast up 327%, gaming up
283%, and music up 62%, shows users interest in creators and
sexuality goes beyond pornography, end quote. This
tickled my brain as much as legendary jets quarterback Joe
Namath tickled his teammates in the locker room in some of the
internet fanfic that I found. Why, I asked myself, would
people be watching safe for work content on one of the most not
safe for work platforms? I expected that the answer was
gonna be a combination of a few things.
One, that Gen Z is in a so called sex recession, having
even less sex than us chaste millennials did back in our day.
Two, that chastity content like anti masturbation stuff is on
the rise, especially amongst the manosphere boys. Three, that
Pornhub had always been used for weird, say, for work
experiments. So weird comedy pranks, full length Hollywood
movie piracy, and just assorted hoozy whats it for a long time.
And four, the fact that due to age verification laws, which
we've covered on the show before, causing Pornhub to be
unavailable in half the states in The US, half the dataset
would be missing, and the data would be off or at least
different.
And truly, some of those four are factors in the rise of
searches for safer work content on Pornhub, but I still wanted
to look into whether I was missing something. And boy
howdy. Spoiler? Yes, I was. So first, let's talk about what you
get when you search for safe for work content on Pornhub.
What are we talking about? Well, not all of what you find with
that label is really actually safe for work. I mean, I guess
it depends on where you work. I don't know where you work. But
there is a gradation of sexualized content.
There are very safe for work videos like-
Pornhub: I got this little card right here.
Hans Buetow: People unboxing Yu Gi Oh card packs. There's hand
cleaning videos. Hi there. ASMR and video game speedrun.
Pornhub: I was trying it. I was looking for that jammer.
Hans Buetow: There are people in front of chalkboards and
whiteboards just explaining complicated math concepts.
Pornhub: The sum notation, which you might have seen as this.
Hans Buetow: Then there are the videos that move into talking
about sex and sexuality.
Pornhub: Otherwise, you're not going to make money.
Hans Buetow: Mhmm. So advice for how to model in the platform.
Sexual wellness discussions.
Pornhub: My husband and I decided, why don't I make, like,
a Tinder account? And I can start flirting with guys.
Hans Buetow: Kink explainers and lots.
Pornhub: Hold on, sex. Stop right there. Before we start,
Hans Buetow: we have big exciting news. And lots.
Pornhub: That's a good question.
Hans Buetow: Of podcast interviews with performers.
Pornhub: Like a threesome in a jail or something like that.
Hans Buetow: Yeah. So these sometimes get not safe for work
when the performers move into performing sexual acts, but they
are often conversations about the porn industry, performers'
sex lives, and other sexualized topics.
Pornhub: Does that sound like something you might be into?
Hans Buetow: So in the 2025 report, there are these stats
about the trending rise in safer work searches in the platform.
And just below those stats, giving some context to why those
stats are important, there's a quote from a guy named Courtney
Brame.
Courtney Brame: And I just approach it from that lens of,
oh, okay. Well, let me see what stands out. Save for work.
Right? That's not even that's not porn.
Right? Like, how did this make it into a top porn category? So
I think that was my initial reaction.
Hans Buetow: Courtney is the founder of Something Positive
for Positive People, which is a nonprofit platform for support,
education, and stigma reduction for people diagnosed with
herpes. Courtney is also the host of the SPFPP podcast, a
video creator, and a consultant for Pornhub's Sexual Wellness
Center, which is how his name appeared on the report. So I
decided to do like legendary St. Louis Rams quarterback Norm Van
Broklin might have done, and I called up Courtney to have him
walk me through what he had written about why safer work was
trending.
Courtney Brame: I think that porn offers us the opportunity
to experience what we're not experiencing. There is the talk
about porn use being consumed for education but I think that a
lot of people who may become the porn hub are looking for
something that is different than what they normally have access
to.
Hans Buetow: For Courtney, the rise in safe for work content
points to more people looking for intimacy online.
Courtney Brame: I think back to when Mia Khalifa went to Rooster
Teeth, the gaming platform, and how popular that was.
Always Open: Mia Khalifa was listening, guys. That's awesome.
Lovely. Mia Khalifa. So lovely.
Hans Buetow: Mia Khalifa was a performer who was listed as
number one most popular on Pornhub in 2014, despite having
had only a three month career. Three years after this, she
appears on a podcast called Always Open.
Always Open: Hello, everyone. Welcome to Always Open.
Hans Buetow: In this appearance, as a woman best known as an
adult performer, she doesn't talk about it. She talks about
her dating life. She talks about using Lyft. She talks about
Twitch streaming video games.
Mia Khalifa: My favorite video game of all time is actually one
that I just played recently. It was called Until Dawn.
Always Open: Okay. Yes. I've heard of
Yeah. And right now, I'm playing You played that with Edward.
Mia Khalifa: Yeah, did. I watched it.
Courtney Brame: When I think about the intimacy, think about
the the connectedness. Right? Sometimes we can feel more like
we know someone and someone knows us. I think that's like
true intimacy. But then there's this one-sided intimacy where
you know someone so well and they don't even know you exist.
So that feels like connection, that feels like intimacy. And I
think that what Safe for Work does is it also gives us that.
Right? You listen to your favorite podcast or you might
watch your favorite streamer or gamer. You may hear people just
talking about their daily life and you kind of feel like you're
there.
Hans Buetow: So then why go to a porn site for that?
Courtney Brame: Because oh, this is I like this question. You you
may have your go to people person. You see them often and,
you know, they get the job done. Right? So you know you see this
person, it's gonna be a quick session.
Right? And I think that having the opportunity to see them in a
different way because when you watch the same person, you're
watching them in their different roles and their different
performances. So that kind of gets old and you still want that
novelty, the newness, the excitement. So the only thing
that you can see them in different outside of their
natural naked bodies might be them in clothes or doing
something that isn't sexual.
Hans Buetow: There's this quote that I love to misattribute to
legendary Miami Dolphins quarterback Dan Marino, which is
and this is it's a little bit long, so bear with me. Quote, I
see Courtney is describing here a desire for a type of
relationship transition from purely explicit relationship
focused entirely on a performer's body, what we might
call a parasexual relationship, shifting to a relationship that
tries to see them as real people, that they can maybe hang
out with, or are hanging out with as a parasocial
relationship. Another reason that I found Courtney's example
of Mia Khalifa interesting is that in between her transition
from porn to becoming a sports podcaster, which she eventually
did, at that exact same time was the launch of OnlyFans. So it
started in 2016 in London, and it was a new platform that at
that time was quickly being adopted by adult performers so
that they could have this direct financial and also communication
connection with their fans?
Courtney Brame: On OnlyFans, there are influencers who people
pay to watch them do dishes. People pay to watch them just
take the trash out or eat their dinner, cook. Right? So the safe
for work content just gives you more intimate access to a
person's day to day life, and that can be just, hey. I'm on my
way to the gym.
This is my workout. This is my Spotify playlist. Connect with
me here. These are some of my favorite video games, and these
are just, like, little nuggets of opportunities for people to
attach and connect to and feel more connected to the person.
Hans Buetow: This connection makes a lot of sense to me. It's
one of the main reasons that people go to places like
OnlyFans or cam sites from a video site. You get to do more
than just watch, and I don't think of those sorts of sites as
safe for work platforms. But what people are buying on those
sites is not really nakedness, it's something else. So when we
come back from the break, we talk with some folks who can
help us take Courtney's intimacy ideas beyond the arena of
Pornhub.
MelRose Michaels: It's it's funny. It's a huge
misconception. I think that everyone on platforms like
OnlyFans or, you know, the fan site equivalents to it are
selling explicit content only or that that's the bulk of what we
do. Really, what we sell is access to us.
Hans Buetow: We'll be right back after a quick detour to Dublin
and the North Circular Road. To put Courtney's theory about
intimacy to the test, I wanted to run it past two folks.
MelRose Michaels: So I'm Melrose Michaels. I am a veteran adult
performer in the adult space for about fourteen years. I also
launched a company called SexRick CEO. It's an educational
company that's completely free for adult performers and
creators. And then I cofounded a company called SWR Data with
Mike Stabil, where we survey adult performers and creators to
get platform data of our industry.
Pornhub: So I'm Mike Stabil. I am a twenty plus year veteran of
the industry, cofounder of SWR Data along with with Melrose,
which we built to try to better understand the industry and and
understand the way that the industry is changing.
Hans Buetow: As folks who run a study about the adult industry,
Mike and Melrose were familiar with the data from Pornhub. So I
ran them through Courtney's logic about increased safe for
work searches pointing towards this growing desire for
intimacy, Melrose immediately agreed. She sells access because
that's what she sees people asking for.
MelRose Michaels: We live in a world right now where parasocial
connection is one of the only connections most people have on
a day to day basis. And so I think really what we're selling
is just an intimate look at who we are as people and what we're
really like. And you're not gonna get to know me as a person
through explicit content. So in order to have connection, you
need access to me, and access is the ability to see what I'm
eating for lunch in a photo. It's the ability to see me on a
lot, like, a livestream.
It's the ability to DM me and have me DM back. It's the real
day to day of what your life looks like. You know, me on a
farm wrangling cows out of my front yard because they all got
out. Like, you're not gonna see that on social. It's not
something I'm posting about.
Hans Buetow: I would love if you could I'm gonna put something in
the chat here. So this is from 12/06/2025. This is your your
account on X. And if you could just read me what you wrote
there.
MelRose Michaels: Okay. So it says, if you ever catch feelings
for me, tip one one one, which is a $111, and I'll give you the
underqualified therapist experience and teach you about
parasocial relationships or how they work. And, yeah, I think
that's a this is something because, you know, it doesn't
get talked about enough, but a lot of adult creators and
performers end up being underqualified and overpaid
therapists for a lot of their fans. You know, they come to you
about challenges they're facing, losses they've had, really
intimate details of their lives. And a lot of it, especially for
a male demographic, they just want someone to talk to.
Hans Buetow: Okay. That's why I did not expect that answer from
you. I thought that you were gonna be like, oh, no. It's
totally a joke of things. But this is you're being like, no.
Actually, this is what No. Part of just my work is.
MelRose Michaels: Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. It's not just
here's a nude topless photo of me. It's actually getting to
know these people and treating them like people and helping
them navigate their lives a lot of the time.
That's a part of what it's become this in this day and age.
Hans Buetow: Melrose shares content and access to her on
several different platforms. And the annual study that she does
with Mike at SWR Data called the state of creator study that
covers a lot of those same platforms. So it's fan sites,
like loyal fans, fansly, sext panther. Those are the biggest
ones that are in the dataset that they collect. But there are
also cam sites like Chatterbait or any of the streaming
services.
And there are also clip sites like clips for sale, and those
allow content creators to earn money while they sleep. They're
just video clip aggregates. Mike and Melrose have put out the
state of Creator every year since 2022 so that they can
better understand this ecosystem and the creators that work in
it.
Mike Stabile: How do we figure out what this community looks
like? Because finding out what they look like helps us find out
what they need, right, and helps us report on them in a a more
realistic way. So over the years, we've talked about things
like banking access. Right? We've talked about things like
what types of content are you making?
Where are you located? You know, how much money do you make? What
platforms are you on? And I don't know that we have, you
know, an exact map. I know that we don't at this point, but
we're getting contours of what this looks like.
And what we've seen in the past couple of years is a couple of
things. Okay. You know, one is there were a lot of people got
into this industry in 2020. The lockdown Yeah. People did not
have another way to connect.
And this type of content really filled that gap, and I think
that it fill still fills that gap. Right? Where people who are
they may not have a social life the way that you might imagine
historically. You know, I think there are a lot of people who do
seek out that connection. I think that this industry
provides that connection to be able to talk about desires that
they have in a nonjudgmental way is not accessible to most people
anywhere else.
Right? And our sexualities are valid. So one of the things that
we we've seen is a huge jump in things like kink and fetish.
Right? People who are trying to, you know, explore their
sexuality and then do it.
And a lot of that is safe for work. You think about things
like ASMR. Right? Yeah. That is sexuality adjacent.
And so there is a lot of vanilla content out there, and a lot of
it is free. So the stuff that makes money often is the stuff
that is more tailored to someone's specific desires.
Hans Buetow: Mike called these sites, these sites like Pornhub,
the the tube sites, Mike called them a launch pad. You go there
because it's what comes up when you feel a desire, but you don't
know where to go except Google. In the first two years of the
study, they found that on fan and cam sites, the number of
folks offering kink and fetish content increased by 70%. So if
we're seeing more safe for work searches on the Launchpad
platform, maybe, like Courtney is saying, maybe that reflects a
growing desire by more users for something more.
Mike Stabile: People really want something that feels authentic
to them, that resonates with, you know, their body. Things
like kissing fetishes, right, have risen dramatically. Like,
all of this stuff that is produced outside of the notion
of, like, oh, everything is going to be hardcore sex. Most
people what we found in our survey is most people are
producing solo content. 70% of creators are not doing anything
with a partner.
You can't make explicit content day after day after day. It's
really wearing. And so people come up with ways to how do I
fill this? How do I do this? What do I look like in this
dress?
What do you think of this? And I think you see that on social as
well as in in the chats. People wanting to engage with their
creators because it's not always about just making a sale. It's
about building a relationship.
Hans Buetow: Right. Well, the gaze is a really interesting way
to to think about that. Like, a solo performer in front of the
camera is going to have a different relationship with the
camera gaze, and especially if they're aware that there are
literally other people on the other side of that camera in
real time and that there's a venue for communication back and
forth between the two of them. It's more like interdiegetic or
like like a documentary style way of looking at gaze than it
is a theatrical performative way of looking at gaze. And, Naraj,
do you think about that differently when you when you
are in different spaces?
MelRose Michaels: Yeah. No. I find that to be true completely.
And the thing about it is is, like, we've had this huge
pendulum swing. Everything was super pretty, super polished,
super edited, super, like, unachievable.
And we had that pendulum swing way back where it's like, I want
people I relate to. I wanna see you, you know, looking silly. I
wanna see you being silly. I wanna feel like you might be my
friend. And that's why like even the the super, you know, crazy
beautiful performers that are like really conventionally
attractive also tend to not do as well as like the girl next
door types that are crushing it on these platforms because they
seem more attainable, they seem more relatable.
And that's just obviously for the female creator lens, but but
that this swing towards less polished, more real, more
authentic has been huge. And and I think that speaks to why fan
sites have done so well.
Hans Buetow: Relatable is not just physical. As soon as
someone is more than just a body on your screen, you're gonna
start looking for commonalities. Right? Like, when we can express
our affection, we want to. Love language is not a phrase that I
like using because it's it's pretty restrictive, it's
ultimately the love languages are pretty random.
But it is a helpful rubric because it is true that we wanna
share affection in a way that's meaningful to us.
Mike Stabile: There are lots of relationships, especially in
heterosexual relationships, where men are used to get
pleasure from buying things for women, right, or giving them
things or, you know, feeling seen by them. And I think that,
you know, looking at some of the stuff that does really well,
clothes may not come off at all. Right? It's something like
financial domination, right, where, you know, someone may
just ask, listen. You know, you're my sub.
I want you to pay me a $100. I'm going to brunch. Who's gonna buy
this for me? Or I want a new pair of new shoes. They send a
pair of new shoes, and then they send a picture of them on.
So it's women taking charge. It's men feeling like, hey.
Listen. I this is an uncomfortable situation for me.
I would like to have some of the pressure off me.
You tell me what to do.
MelRose Michaels: Yeah. And then to that point too, with that
kink specifically, financial domination, a lot of that is a a
fan coming to you asking you to help them make a budget so that
they can spend on you in a way that is reliable and consistent
for you. So you actually help them budget their finances,
which actually helps them. People like to think financial
domination as like you're just draining someone's wallet and
like using them. But a lot of it comes with a lot of care and a
lot of kindness and also helps them get on track in their own
lives.
So there's two sides to a lot of a lot of kink and fetish
specifically.
Hans Buetow: Do you find that that, like, if you expand that
dynamic out of that specific fetish into some of the other
ones, that that sort of pattern repeats itself in some of the
other spaces?
MelRose Michaels: I think to some degree, yeah. Like, another
really big one is jerk off instruction. Suggesting or
instructing a fan on how to pleasure themselves. You can
also maybe suggest or say things that they haven't done before,
which lets them be exploratory with themselves and kinda grants
them this permission because they're just following the
instruction, then that takes a little bit of the pressure off
too. I think that there's a lot of common themes like that.
Mike Stabile: Yeah. You look at, like, a lot of things like make
me buy, and it gives you the permission to say, oh, I didn't
come up with that. I'm not doing that. Goddess has asked me to do
that. And often, they're entirely clothed.
They are just giving you permission to explore.
Hans Buetow: When I start thinking about permission to
explore and mapping that against the idea of intimacy and
parasocial authenticity, it starts to make sense to me that
folks often find a need for those to be hand in glove. It's
a building of trust, not just in the performer, but in yourself.
And I don't know, but I don't think that trust is as easily
accessible through impersonal mass broadcast content.
Mike Stabile: People want something that is a little bit
more custom. Right? They want custom content. They want clips
that speak to them. And so that's really where we we sort
of see the growth is in this really specific articulations of
sexuality that resonate with you.
It's not just about playboy, and it's not just about one body
type. Right? They have this idea that the adult industry is a
monolith and that everybody looks like Jenna Jameson did in
1990. And because, you know, in those days, you had to sell to
the greatest common denominator. Right?
What was the easiest thing to sell to the most people? Now
that doesn't sell nearly as well as things that are specific to,
you know, an individual, and that's lots of different body
types. That's lots of different genders. That's lots of
different sexualities.
Hans Buetow: With a lot of individual denominators and
everyone looking for the one that speaks to them, one of the
markers that becomes important in differentiating them is
authenticity. Courtney Melrose and Mike all talked about being
real and authentic, But I was hearing them use those words and
those concepts differently than I had previously heard. Because
the conversation about authenticity has been a part of
the porn literature for literal decades, But that conversation
has mostly revolved around the realness of the performance. Was
she faking it? Can he really go that long?
Is she always that ready to go? The number of books and papers
that I looked through that were dicing, scrutinizing, analyzing
the quivers and moans and eye rolls and trying to hold frankly
mostly women accountable for being real while performing a
sexual act, most of it was focused on mainstream
heterosexual porn produced by production companies and the
authenticity of the performer's physical desire. I did not see
any of that performative authenticity from Melrose. She
never, when we were talking, gave me the impression that she
was cultivating an aura of always on or hypersexuality. And
in fact, she was doing the opposite.
When I asked her directly about how she thinks about
authenticity, her answer had nothing to do with explicit
performance. It was all values based.
MelRose Michaels: I don't ever want to give someone advice
that's going to harm them. I don't want to ever mislead
someone. I don't wanna ever betray someone's confidence.
Hans Buetow: This is a different valuation of authenticity than
porn scholars have historically noticed in consumers or
creators. And I heard Melrose return to this frequently. How
she wants to show up as a person is how she wants to show up with
her audience, and it has nothing to do with her clothes being on
or off. She is selling authentic humanity as opposed to authentic
performance. But it's also the case that as with any parasocial
relationship, sharing that much to that many that often is a
challenge.
MelRose Michaels: There's a huge emotional and mental labor that
comes along with this job that wasn't necessarily true a decade
ago. And how do we navigate that? What do we do for it? I'm
charging for it. That's what I'm charging.
Hey, disclaimer, I'm not your therapist and I you don't have
to take my advice, but this is what I would do and I'll I'll
listen to you. And a lot of creators are kind of taking that
route forward. Yeah. We're seeing a shift there, would say
for sure.
Hans Buetow: And even with the financial exchange, there can
still be a lot of risk.
MelRose Michaels: There is the parasocial aspect to it. It's
like how real can you be within safety and how how genuine can
you be while respecting your own boundaries? And that's kind of
the line we work. That's the that's the work that we do.
Hans Buetow: Even with safety, constant access is just a tough
thing to sustain.
MelRose Michaels: Creators are like, listen, I don't wanna do
the constant access. I'm tired of being constantly accessible.
Yeah. And they'd rather start building a passive library on a
clip store that pays them while they're sleeping. Which is, you
know, that's one way to approach the business.
It's a great way to approach it. Also, stores clip are gonna have
a lot of internal traffic. A lot of creators have been deleted
off of social media. They don't have a way to drive traffic
anymore. So that pushes them into these other kind of
verticals that can support the business they're trying to
build.
Hans Buetow: It's important to remember that these are
businesses. Melrose is a successful businesswoman, and so
are the folks making explicit content, fetish content,
girlfriend content, niche content, even studio content.
They're all business people. And Melrose bringing up traffic,
driving traffic, finding content, marketing. One of the
things about coming to this question of safe for work
through Pornhub is that their report evaluates search terms,
and those search terms often correspond to the established
categories that Pornhub has already set up, which revolve
around nationalities, body type, ethnic type, or sexual act.
When you're focused on the explicit business, you need
explicit categories to sort it, which leads to explicit titles
and explicit descriptions to maximize SEO, which leads to
more searches for those same keywords. But you can't really
search on Pornhub for what Melrose and Mike are talking
about. Not really. You can't search for friendly or
approachable or cares about animals or help me do a budget.
Mike Stabile: Right. When you're talking about just going to a
site and searching, a lot of people, it's like they don't
know what to look for. Right? This is the beginning of their
journey. You have a lot of people that end up on the site,
and they
look, I
don't know, big boobs. They're trying to figure out what they
want. And I think that that's a way to connect with desire that
maybe falls outside of those big categories. Right? You're
looking for something.
And what is it that turns me on? What is it that I'm drawn to in
someone like Melrose? And I think that that is hard to
search for on a generic platform because there's so much there.
MelRose Michaels: I think that's where adult performers have
really served their purpose in the market too. It's like, you
can go to Pornhub, search a term, one, if you're to a big
site like that, you're probably trying to get in and get out.
You're not really trying to like scroll for hours. Yeah. But on
the flip side, when you're with an adult performer or creator
and you're doing like a fan site kind of interaction, almost you
have like a concierge or like a tour guide to your sexuality.
It's a very different thing than searching a term on Pornhub.
Hans Buetow: This idea of a concierge or a tour guide is
really interesting to me as a way to look at what people are
really looking for. And, okay, I buy it. I buy what Courtney is
saying. I buy what Melrose and Mike are saying in corroboration
with it. It feels like we are looking for a little bit more
intimacy.
It feels like we're looking for a little bit more connection.
Well, my next question then, of course, is, like, why now? Have
we not always been looking for this? So when we come back,
let's ask that. Let's reckon with the why now of this.
Why is this happening in 2025? We will be right back after we
return from Lamai Beach in Thailand. I think this growing
interest in the parasocial aspects of porn has something in
common with a thing we talk a lot about at our editorial
meetings on Neverpost and that we're starting to see talked
about more widely, And that thing is friction. The cut talks
about friction maxing. So does journalist and mental health
writer PE Moskowitz and friend of the show and beauty know her
about Jessica Defino.
Friction maxing is often framed as a reaction against escapism.
So our impulse to avoid the thing that might feel hard, like
talking to someone, moving around, or reading, and instead
opting for a slightly easier alternative, posting, not
moving, and scrolling. You can think of it as a pendulum swing
back from the adulting is hard phase of millennial meaning that
we all went through. It's a realization that sometimes you
want something to be a bit challenging. That is where you
find the value.
And that's how we talk about it when we talk about friction at
Neverpost. Less about escapism and more in terms of an antidote
to the convenience that minimizes the steps taken
between impulse and fulfillment, which allows your habitual self
to run your decisions. Right? In a frictionless environment,
there's less between you and the outcome.
MelRose Michaels: Yeah. Pornhub is a pretty frictionless
experience. You can find something. You can go to the
home see what's trending. It's gonna be algorithmically catered
to whatever you've been engaged with in the past.
So it's likely to be what you're looking for anyway, then you
can, you know, get off and get off the site.
Hans Buetow: Look. I just want to acknowledge the irony or at
least dad jokey ness of where we've arrived and what I'm about
to say, porn is better with a desire for more friction. In
porn, can imagine friction might look like content that isn't
always on, but instead warming up. Not characterized by getting
the job done, but by making a connection. It's searching for
more than just the money shot.
And one component of the search for friction might be bespoke or
unique. Putting in the time, the energy, the resources into
making something feel like yours that seems to be growing as a
tempting choice compared to the free, frictionless thing off the
shelf. It's a little bit more work to get to know the food
preferences of your favorite performer, but when you invest
that work, doesn't it change how you see them when you see them
naked? Friction makes you pay a lot more attention to where you
are and to where you're going, which makes you pay more
attention to how you're getting there, and to what else might be
an option. You find alternate routes, and suddenly you're in
new places you never thought you'd be.
Mike Stabile: We're seeing a more complex, rich ecosystem
emerge, and I think probably the most complex and rich ecosystem
for the adult industry that has ever existed. Right? It used to
always be it was studios. Studios. It was this top down
thing that was created by people who were filming, thinking what
they knew what people wanted.
Then there was this sort of explosion of content and the
explosion of creators. And I think that what we're seeing now
is it is just a much richer buffet of content there. Right?
That that you're looking at clips, and you're looking at
cams, and you're looking at customs, you're and looking at
video calls, and you're looking at free content, and all of that
works together. And whether you're a fan or whether you're a
creator.
Hans Buetow: I mean, that's beautiful. I gotta say it's one
of the most surprising things about doing this story. I did
not expect to have this level of enthusiasm for the current state
with everything swirling about, like, how much of Pornhub's map
was dark and how much, you know, they're coming down on us for
COSA and they're coming down on us for age verification. And it
just it feels a little bleak out there in terms of being able to
have a nuanced, sophisticated, interesting, compelling,
passionate, diverse conversation about desire. And I'm just I'm
really floored by the three of you being so aggressive that
things like intimacy, things like passion, things like
connection are things that you're seeing increasingly
valued and increasingly used by people online, I'm I'm floored.
MelRose Michaels: Well, as someone in one of those dark
states, which is where I live. Yeah. There is still hope at the
bottom line. I think we've always been, you know, on the
leading forefront of innovation of technology, of all of the
things. So while it's a little daunting and, you know, where I
live, especially at times, it's like, well, holy shit, how many
times can you write your senator?
Like how's you know, I have an army of creators at my disposal.
How many times can we all write my senator? But I think at the
base of it, people need connection. Like, people need
people. Like, that's not going anywhere.
So Absolutely.
Mike Stabile: You know, when the entirety of, you know, the the
administration and and conservative culture and and
sometimes left leaning culture is saying, you know, this is
really bad. This is really terrible. You you start maybe to
react and say, you know what? I think maybe you're wrong. I
think that that sexuality is a is a a way to break sort of that
dominant paradigm.
Right? It's a way to say, oh, wait. You know what? I don't
think that way. I don't think that the way that I feel is
terrible.
Maybe the rest of what they're saying is wrong. I think that
it's it's a a really revolutionary aspect of society
that that is underrated.
Hans Buetow: Going into this story, I was not expecting talk
of revolution. But when the levers of power go after sex
workers, the audience moves closer to them. When avenues to
connection are shut off, people are looking for choice, variety,
and exploration. I really do believe that people are looking
for intimacy in a time when intimacy feels less and less
encouraged or maybe even more and more discouraged. And maybe
that's a little bit too big a weight to put on the sixth
biggest change in the numbers from Pornhub last year.
Probably. But also probably not. I keep thinking about this
analogy that Mike made while we were talking.
Mike Stabile: Consuming adult content is like consuming food.
Sometimes you wanna cook it. Sometimes you want takeout.
Sometimes you just are in a hurry. You want something quick.
And sometimes you really wanna enjoy it and savor it. And those
are gonna be at different price points. Right? Uh-huh. Those are
gonna be different experiences.
And I think that, you know, we thought for so long that it was
just as as as Melrose said, you just get on real quick and you
get off. And that's not what everybody wants, or it's not
what they want at all points. Sometimes they want a three hour
cam show. Sometimes they want a personal interaction Yes. And
they want the the chef's table in the restaurant.
Right? And sometimes they are just on the road, and they want
something at McDonald's. This is not a shameful thing to consume.
Right? All of that are ways in which to get in touch with your
authentic sexuality.
Hans Buetow: As he said this, I was literally pumping my fists
in the air. I'm shaking my fists in the air. I'm yes. Just like I
can imagine the quarterback Sam Howell might have thought to
himself as he walked into the locker room
of the Philadelphia Eagles, which
was his fourth team in four years after the Washington
Commanders, Seattle Seahawks, and Minnesota Vikings, we
actually might be getting somewhere. We exercise our power
through our collective desires. And our collective desires are
showing us, like with so many things right now, that the
current state of pornography is not enough. That we want more
pornographies, varied pornographies, exploratory
pornographies, we want personal pornographies, and intimate
pornographies. We want our performers to know us, and for
us to know them.
Platforms can help us do that, but they are not the solution at
the end of the day. I don't know that this is the new face of
porn, but I do believe that more and more of us want to take off
from the launch pad. More and more of us want to find
something new. Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you to Courtney Brame, to Melrose Michaels, to
Mike Stabil for coming and talking with me about all of
this. We covered so much, and all of it really expanded my
thinking. Thank you all. You can find them, Courtney at s p f p p
dot org.
That's something positive for positive people. You can find
Melrose Michaels on all the socials and Mike Stabil on Blue
Sky. And you can find and follow SWR data and the state of
creator study at swrdata.com or on their Substack. Please do go
follow them. They're gonna continue to release data and
analysis of this study and have an upcoming study on AI and the
adult market later in the summer.
And you can find us in all the normal places. Phone, email, air
table, all the details you'd ever need on getting a hold of
us are all in the show notes. A very special thank you to this
episode to America's National Football League, who I can only
assume has only the best wishes for my longevity.
Mike Rugnetta: That is the show we have for you today. We're
gonna be back here in the main feed next week with a segment
about the Internet as a place. But what ordinal number place?
Is it a third place? Fourth place?
Fifth? The kids these days, they got a lot of places. Too many,
if you ask me. We're also going to be streaming a team chat at
twitch.tv/ The neverpost on Monday, February 16 at 11AM
eastern. An edit of that conversation will go out to the
member feed only shortly after, so do not miss it.
Or if you do, hey, consider becoming a member for $4 a month
at neverpo.st. You can help support your favorite Internet
pod and the weirdos who make it, and you can do that for the cost
of a convenience store egg sandwich. Neverpost's producers
are Audrey Evans, Georgia Hampton, and The Mysterious.
Doctor first name, last name. Our senior producer is Hans
Buto.
Our executive producer is Jason Oberholzer, and the show's host,
that's me, is Mike Rugnetta. The dream is to be moved by anything
at all. By this Garfield fan comic in which John collapses on
the kitchen floor, linked triangles and hoops painted onto
a wall stretching three storefronts, mannequins in full
plate clutching their scabbards, folded t shirts, the shape of a
dreadnought through glass wearing all denim. Pass through
a cloud of vape smoke in the canned Isenglass department,
exit bawling at the beauty of all manifest creation. You will
aspire to enter into labor translucent, like a paraffin
sheet, wet and flammable light passing through shape.
Alchemy is based on such fluidity of exchange, all my
affect splattering out into the public sphere, cathecting onto
every measly beloved thing. Excerpt of Secret Mission Orders
for Goblin Romantic by Holly Raymond. Never Post is a
production of Charts and Leisure, and it's distributed by
Radiotopia.