6 ms·

My Dad, the Pornographer (2015)

34 points by iuguy 6y ago

roland35 6y ago
From the title I thought that this was about the "My dad wrote a porno" podcast and was hoping the next season was coming out soon. Well it turns out there are other dads who have made pornography! Who would've thought?
vmception 6y ago
(2015) Really enjoying the comments
raunakdag 6y ago
Kind of makes you wonder how many other folks have works of art they’ve worked on for lifetimes that are either a) destroyed, b) never released, or c) lost forever.
microtherion 6y ago
The author, Chris Offutt, is a rather enjoyable novelist in his own right. I recommend his short story collections "Kentucky Straight" and "Out of the Woods" for a start. What I find unusual is his perspective: His fiction is set in a very rural and poor environment, and clearly he had a foot in that himself once, but no longer quite fits in (A dilemma spelled out in his memoir No Heroes — and there was a battle on comment sides whether he did or did not misrepresent his native area).
milquetoastaf 6y ago
As someone who has worked in the publishing world, including erotica and "romance" novels, a lot of the retrograde attitudes you see depicted in this article are very much alive today in the US. Perhaps not encoded in law, but it is difficult, for instance, to find a distributor for this material that also caters to a more urbane audience. Romance / erotica books do not have to be trash, they can very much be moving works of fiction in their own right. But places like McNally Johnson won't buy this kind of stuff even though it does sell very well online. Platforms like Instagram make it difficult as well - Twitter is really the only remaining mainstream platform that will not censor images for pornographic content. You can't use payment processors like PayPal or Stripe either, at least not if you want to keep your money consistently. You have to play a war of attrition with keywords on your site so you can hit SEO thresholds but not set off any content sniffing that payment processors do. Meanwhile, sell a book about serial killers and everything's hunky-dory. That book can even include heinous sexual transgressions depicted in gruesome detail but as long as you don't have nipples on the cover or 'erotica' in the copy Stripe will cash you out all day long
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
rzz3 6y ago
Do all of you folks have NYT accounts? I’m not a subscriber and I won’t give them money and I wish people would stop submitting their links to HN.
- ElijahLynn 6y ago
  I don't think most do. I don't. And can't help but think many just upvote the titles.
- Rebelgecko 6y ago
  I'd imagine that most people in HN live in a locale where you can get access for free. It's a pretty common service from public libraries, although you have to periodically re-request access. I'd imagine that most people who read without paying for a subscription are just using some combination of ublock/umatrix/clearing cookies
- drcongo 6y ago
  I don't, but this article wasn't behind a paywall for me.
- ageitgey 6y ago
  You can avoid the NYT paywall by literally just hitting the Stop button in Chrome after the page has displayed but the paywall JS is still loading/rendering. It works 100% of the time for me.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
anonzzz 6y ago
After reading this account, I felt somewhat sorry for his father.

34 points by iuguy 6y ago

From the title I thought that this was about the "My dad wrote a porno" podcast and was hoping the next season was coming out soon. Well it turns out there are other dads who have made pornography! Who would've thought?

vmception 6y ago

(2015) Really enjoying the comments

raunakdag 6y ago

Kind of makes you wonder how many other folks have works of art they’ve worked on for lifetimes that are either a) destroyed, b) never released, or c) lost forever.

microtherion 6y ago

The author, Chris Offutt, is a rather enjoyable novelist in his own right. I recommend his short story collections "Kentucky Straight" and "Out of the Woods" for a start. What I find unusual is his perspective: His fiction is set in a very rural and poor environment, and clearly he had a foot in that himself once, but no longer quite fits in (A dilemma spelled out in his memoir No Heroes — and there was a battle on comment sides whether he did or did not misrepresent his native area).

milquetoastaf 6y ago

As someone who has worked in the publishing world, including erotica and "romance" novels, a lot of the retrograde attitudes you see depicted in this article are very much alive today in the US. Perhaps not encoded in law, but it is difficult, for instance, to find a distributor for this material that also caters to a more urbane audience. Romance / erotica books do not have to be trash, they can very much be moving works of fiction in their own right. But places like McNally Johnson won't buy this kind of stuff even though it does sell very well online. Platforms like Instagram make it difficult as well - Twitter is really the only remaining mainstream platform that will not censor images for pornographic content. You can't use payment processors like PayPal or Stripe either, at least not if you want to keep your money consistently. You have to play a war of attrition with keywords on your site so you can hit SEO thresholds but not set off any content sniffing that payment processors do. Meanwhile, sell a book about serial killers and everything's hunky-dory. That book can even include heinous sexual transgressions depicted in gruesome detail but as long as you don't have nipples on the cover or 'erotica' in the copy Stripe will cash you out all day long

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

rzz3 6y ago

Do all of you folks have NYT accounts? I’m not a subscriber and I won’t give them money and I wish people would stop submitting their links to HN.

ElijahLynn 6y ago
I don't think most do. I don't. And can't help but think many just upvote the titles.
Rebelgecko 6y ago
I'd imagine that most people in HN live in a locale where you can get access for free. It's a pretty common service from public libraries, although you have to periodically re-request access. I'd imagine that most people who read without paying for a subscription are just using some combination of ublock/umatrix/clearing cookies
drcongo 6y ago
I don't, but this article wasn't behind a paywall for me.
ageitgey 6y ago
You can avoid the NYT paywall by literally just hitting the Stop button in Chrome after the page has displayed but the paywall JS is still loading/rendering. It works 100% of the time for me.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

anonzzz 6y ago

After reading this account, I felt somewhat sorry for his father.