Remember how in its early days, the internet was lauded because it allowed people, from the comfort of their own homes, to instantaneously and easily share information and knowledge with an unlimited number of people? Except then it turned out that the internet made people stupid (as evidenced by any YouTube comments section) and what they wanted most were pictures of celebrity tits? If anything, the internet, at least in its most commonly used form, isn’t about spreading information; rather, it is the great equalizer, a medium through which any Joe Nobody can rise to fame and any celebrity can be mocked ruthlessly for accidentally face-squishing into a closed glass door.
The same thing is happening to porn. Now that the future has arrived, anyone can earn 15 minutes of fame for jacking off on the internet. Porn fans and porn models alike are faced with a new crisis: the death of the pornstar. When absolutely anyone can buy a camera and launch a porn site on a shoestring budget, how do you tell who is a valid pornstar and who is just a flavour of
the month?
You know things have gotten bad when even Chris Porter, one of the biggest names in gay porn today, claims he isn’t a pornstar, despite having spent years of his life earning respect and adulation in the industry. Confusing, isn’t it? Personally, I’ve always been partial to the term “porn tart” when it comes to up-and-cummers in the industry, but this doesn’t really seem to apply in Porter’s situation.
If anything, it seems that pornstars are still present in gay porn, but we just don’t know it. Porn stardom is a lot like sainthood: it really only comes after you’re gone, when people can look back and evaluate your career as a whole, rather than just asking, “Well, does he look good on camera?” Unfortunately, this throws a wrench into things, because you can’t apply that sort of hindsight to the present, and the argument boils down to semantics, a slippery slope at best.
Ultimately, the title of pornstar is something that comes with time, a counter-intuitive notion when you consider that waiting for porn is a practice completely unheard of. Trying to gauge which of today’s models will, through hard work and patience, withstand the test of time and which will burn out is, well, pointless. It almost negates a model’s work. When you consider that a model like Porter can build esteem in the industry to the point where he’s both an exclusive model for Raging Stallion Studios and the social marketing manager for Naked Sword but still is not considered a pornstar, it seems like kind of a rip. All I’m saying is wait a couple years, then open the discussion.
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