11 ms·

Deep Inside: A Study of 10,000 Pornstars and Their Careers

277 points by justinmares 14y ago

johncoogan 14y ago
As always, the regional heat map is useless... http://jonmillward.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/porn-star-birth-places-large.png http://jonmillward.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/porn-... Luckily there is a relevant xkcd: http://xkcd.com/1138/ http://xkcd.com/1138/
- jlgreco 14y ago
  Oh I don't know, I think there is some interesting information to be gleaned from that heatmap. Look at Florida compared to New York for instance.
- strait 14y ago
  I'm trying to make sense of Texas. There's 50 claiming San Antonio (Good Catholic Latinas Gone Bad?) and another 50 centered on land that is merely rural range (but with a little shack outside La Grange!). One from A&M and one from Baylor U. Who wants to claim they're from Lubbock?
- Tichy 14y ago
  The same probably goes for all the other traits (blonde vs brunettes, cup sizes, and so on). At least they are pretty useless without a comparison to the average female population.
- InclinedPlane 14y ago
  I'm surprised more people aren't working on alternate heatmap visualizations, it doesn't seem like an incredibly hard problem to me.
  - capnrefsmmat 14y ago
    It is a hard problem. You could, for instance, divide by population to get a rate instead of an absolute number -- but then rural areas would have all the hotspots. Why? Because in areas with small samples, you're bound to get more variation and noise, so all the extremes will occur in areas where there are few people. There are ways to adjust for that, but basically, you can't win: http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/research/published/allmaps.pdf http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/research/published/allm...
trdtaylor 14y ago
Deep inside, heu heu heu...
pbiggar 14y ago
Honestly, I'm offended. How could any man spend such time so deep in such filth? I understand that people gotta do what they gotta do, but really: Excel?
- digitalengineer 14y ago
  Offended? It's about time somebody brought some order in to that chaotic world. He shows a lot of assumptions are actually just that: assumptions not backed up by facts. Now we know. And why would someone seeking knowlegde offend you? Were you forced at gunpoint to click the link? Or do you feel uncomfortable discussing sex-related topics? Well, most people do and thats what brings us back to those assumptions other people use to create official policy.
  - WalterGR 14y ago
    He's making a joke. The punchline is the last word: Excel.
  - shardling 14y ago
    Err, did you read the comment? It was clearly a (cheap) joke poking fun at excel.
    - digitalengineer 14y ago
      Ah I thought he referred to OP excelling at this kind of research ;-).
  - saundby 14y ago
    Look closer, I think he's referring to the "filth" of a popular spreadsheet program. ;)
  - alan_cx 14y ago
    The post you replied to is so, so short, yet you couldn't even be bothered to the end of it, preferring to react to the first few words. Scary. However, I must thank you because I think you just demonstrated why western society is such a complete mess better than anything I have previously read or seen. A hair trigger reaction with out even bothering to consume the point, let alone understand it. And how could you understand it, you didn't even read it? The sad thing is that you're not even giving yourself a chance. And that is leaving aside the sheer blinding irony of you criticising people for making assumptions.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
mchusma 14y ago
Cool analytical approach to an interesting data set. I wish there was a better way to see income for films, how they enter the business, and where do they end up after. I realize this is in practice and for privacy reasons this is nearly impossible to get.
shardling 14y ago
> one thing’s for sure: most women don’t quit after one film—in fact, the majority (at least 53%) do three or more. Well, I guess that depends on how accurate the database is. To the extent that it might miss performers, it would certainly be biased towards those who have fewer credits, or whose credits are for smaller outfits.
- lmkg 14y ago
  Another confounding factor: there's a decent volume of shovelware movies that consist of non-original scenes edited together, like a mash-up tape. I would not be surprised to discover that one scene results in three credited appearances on average.
  - pessimizer 14y ago
    They flag compilations on iafd. Let's pretend they mentioned that in the article somewhere and I didn't just happen to know.
- qznc 14y ago
  I also assume that there is a difference between "first video" and "first published movie". Those early quitters might never appear in any movie in the database. Maybe as a short advertising clip or something.
- vacri 14y ago
  Also in question is the source of the quote he's opposing - where is that guy getting the numbers that "Most girls who enter the porn industry do one video and quit" and their motives for doing so?
- hkolek 14y ago
  Another important thing to keep in mind here is that IAFD only tracks movie releases afaik. They don't have data about scenes that are available on the web only which is a considerable amount of porn. I bet if you take those scenes into account the percentage will be much higher.
- pessimizer 14y ago
Taylorious 14y ago
This guys other articles are really good too. He has a couple on escorts that are really interesting. The article he has on the last words of inmates being put to death is absolutely fascinating and incredibly saddening.
sirwitti 14y ago
Interesting. But I think there might be porn even outside the U.S., who knew?
jiggy2011 14y ago
I foresee sex work (so, porn , prostitution , "cam whoring") being huge business over the coming years (ok, it's already huge, but I mean even huger) and losing a lot of it's stigma. Here in the UK where prostitution is legal there already exists websites where people can basically browse online directories for various sexual services. Combine high employment with women realising that they can make a solid 4 figures a week by working < 8 hours a day with the male tendency to "seek variety". It's only a matter of time before some business manages to take advantage of this on a huge scale.
- mhaymo 14y ago
  As a UK resident, I had no idea prostitution was legal. Wikipedia says: In the United Kingdom, prostitution itself (the exchange of sexual services for money) is not a crime,[2] but a number of related activities, including soliciting in a public place, kerb crawling, owning or managing a brothel, pimping and pandering, are crimes. So how exactly does prostitution work? It seems like it is effectively illegal.
  - jiggy2011 14y ago
    AFAIK it is legal as long as the prostitute is effectively self employed (so not working for a pimp or brothel) and not selling services on the street, and of course over 18. This is where the internet comes in. There is a certain website known for this which I will not link to here.
    - RobAley 14y ago
      Nope, advertising online (or anywhere else) is illegal (offering sexual services for money). Pretty much the only time its legal is if two adults who have otherwise met come to a spontaneous agreement to have sex for money. E.g. if a friend says to me "I need £500 to pay my rent" and I say "how about I pay that for you and you have sex with me". Just to be clear, thats never happened to me. I don't have £500 spare...:)
      - 14y ago
lifeisstillgood 14y ago
>> If you think that’s bad, you haven’t heard the half of it. Another reviewer mentioned being able to taste the dry saliva of a previous punter on the escort’s nipple while he sucked it O...M...G... Edit: there is something, levelling, and humanising about the sheer unexpectedness of this. Plus no showering in between clients, nope going back to OMG
rb2k_ 14y ago
I would be really interested to see statistics about the differences to the rest of society. On maps of e.g. the birthplace/hair/color/... I'd be more interested in the deviation from national averages. A lot of people are born in big cities, so a lot of pornstars will be born in big cities. I'd be interested to see which cities have a disproportionally low/high number. Even with the hair color, I'm wondering what the deviation from the national averages looks like. p.s. obligatory xkcd: http://xkcd.com/1138/ http://xkcd.com/1138/
- prawn 14y ago
  I'd be interested in comparisons to sport. e.g., in a pro basketball league, a significant percentage of players never play more than a handful of games while a more select group rack up hundreds. Both groups are performing after all.
- vacri 14y ago
  On the xkcd thing, meh. If your users map is similar to a population map, then it means you're appealing to a broad slice of the population. If it's centred in one area, that means you're not appealing outside that area. There's nothing wrong with such a map if it's interpreted correctly.
  - randallsquared 14y ago
    > If your users map is similar to a population map, then it means you're appealing to a broad slice of the population. Er, no, it just means there's no geographic component to your appeal within the limits of the map. Could be a very narrow slice, but even distributed in population.
    - vacri 14y ago
      I think we mean the same thing, but are describing it differently. Certainly what you're mentioning is information in itself, not 'no information'. Of course, this doesn't mean it shouldn't be a pet peeve, just that being a peeve doesn't mean it's actually wrong or misleading, just that it's annoying to the... erm... 'peevee'?
smegel 14y ago
Unnecessarily evocative title
tferris 14y ago
Useless but in parts well designed work of an addict.
CodeMage 14y ago
This is certainly an interesting study, but I can't help being seriously disappointed by this part: Sometimes when I hear people railing against porn, declaring it as the downfall of society, a poison infecting masculine minds and demeaning female ones, I wonder what kind of porn they’re talking about. [...] So when I hear somebody claim that porn is ‘degrading’, I can’t help but ask: which porn? If you think most porn isn't degrading, then you need to look a bit closer and think a little harder. I've already posted my views [1], but I'll copy & paste the relevant part here: First of all, there's very little porn out there where the woman truly enjoys the experience. It's not always glaringly obvious (although we'll get back to that in the next point), but if you actually stop and look, you'll see the discomfort and/or indifference very often. Second, a lot of porn out there focuses on and glorifies the woman's suffering, pain and degradation. Seriously, you only have to read the word "painal" once to realize that. However, if that's not enough, you might also look for the occurrences of "choke", "gag", "destroy", "slut", etc. Third, even the porn that doesn't focus on pain teaches wrong stuff. One might get the idea that the only thing a man need do to make a woman enjoy sex is to pound her fast and hard. On top of that comes the whole issue of hygiene: the way anal is portrayed means that if you try it at home, your female partner will likely end up with an infection. Fourth, it creates unrealistic expectations. Let's just say that gag reflex is not as easy to suppress as the porn makes you believe and that anal sex is not a matter of just sliding in any time you want. TL;DR: No, it's not just about whether the sex if fun or boring. Finally, I find the claim that "female porn stars dictate the type of sex they have by listing in their modelling profiles the acts they’re willing to perform on camera" to be disingenuous. It propagates the idea that everything is okay and whatever isn't okay is "her fault". [1]: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4499803 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4499803 EDIT: Since I'm obviously not trolling, I was wondering whether anyone could help explain the drive-by downvoting. I don't expect everyone to agree, but it might be nicer to have a discussion than to suppress it ;)
- vacri 14y ago
  One might get the idea that the only thing a man need do to make a woman enjoy sex is to pound her fast and hard. While I'm not about to argue that porn is a particularly accurate depiction of sex, I always find it interesting that these kinds of criticisms of it always seem to ignore the frequent cunnilingus in it. One of the things I like about this article is that it's about data mining rather than selection bias. Not to say that the article isn't biased, but that it's less biased.
brador 14y ago
So....can we get that data for download?
- gwern 14y ago
  > An expanded report of this article that covers the methodologies and full results of the analysis will be available for free very soon. If you’re a journalist or blogger and would like early access to the PDF, or if you’d like to go on the list of people who will receive it by email, please contact me via this form. For this and the sidebar, I'd guess he's an analyst for hire - sharing the raw data would let people scoop him. If you want the data, you can always scrape the IAFD yourself...
freddealmeida 14y ago
I would love this level of study of bankers. 10,000 bankers and their careers. HSBC drug cartel bankers get extra points. http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/gangster-bankers-too-big-to-jail-20130214?link=mostpopular1 http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/gangster-bankers-t...
brini 14y ago
Text-only Google cache version: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://jonmillward.com/blog/studies/deep-inside-a-study-of-10000-porn-stars/&hl=en&tbo=d&strip=1 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...
reinhardt 14y ago
Getting 404 and "Powered By LiteSpeed Web Server".. what's this?
- 2510c39011c5 14y ago
  Quite reminiscing to last time when a guy put the vagina-hacking link on HN...every time when something about porn posted here, the website would be DoS'ed in hours, almost without exception...perhaps next time we should at least have the courtesy to notify the author to mirror the site before we link it on HN...
Meglis 14y ago
It gives me a 404. Damn!

277 points by justinmares 14y ago

As always, the regional heat map is useless... http://jonmillward.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/porn-star-birth-places-large.png http://jonmillward.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/porn-... Luckily there is a relevant xkcd: http://xkcd.com/1138/ http://xkcd.com/1138/

jlgreco 14y ago
Oh I don't know, I think there is some interesting information to be gleaned from that heatmap. Look at Florida compared to New York for instance.
strait 14y ago
I'm trying to make sense of Texas. There's 50 claiming San Antonio (Good Catholic Latinas Gone Bad?) and another 50 centered on land that is merely rural range (but with a little shack outside La Grange!). One from A&M and one from Baylor U. Who wants to claim they're from Lubbock?
Tichy 14y ago
The same probably goes for all the other traits (blonde vs brunettes, cup sizes, and so on). At least they are pretty useless without a comparison to the average female population.
InclinedPlane 14y ago
I'm surprised more people aren't working on alternate heatmap visualizations, it doesn't seem like an incredibly hard problem to me.
- capnrefsmmat 14y ago
  It is a hard problem. You could, for instance, divide by population to get a rate instead of an absolute number -- but then rural areas would have all the hotspots. Why? Because in areas with small samples, you're bound to get more variation and noise, so all the extremes will occur in areas where there are few people. There are ways to adjust for that, but basically, you can't win: http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/research/published/allmaps.pdf http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/research/published/allm...

trdtaylor 14y ago

Deep inside, heu heu heu...

pbiggar 14y ago

Honestly, I'm offended. How could any man spend such time so deep in such filth? I understand that people gotta do what they gotta do, but really: Excel?

digitalengineer 14y ago
Offended? It's about time somebody brought some order in to that chaotic world. He shows a lot of assumptions are actually just that: assumptions not backed up by facts. Now we know. And why would someone seeking knowlegde offend you? Were you forced at gunpoint to click the link? Or do you feel uncomfortable discussing sex-related topics? Well, most people do and thats what brings us back to those assumptions other people use to create official policy.
- WalterGR 14y ago
  He's making a joke. The punchline is the last word: Excel.
- shardling 14y ago
  Err, did you read the comment? It was clearly a (cheap) joke poking fun at excel.
  - digitalengineer 14y ago
    Ah I thought he referred to OP excelling at this kind of research ;-).
- saundby 14y ago
  Look closer, I think he's referring to the "filth" of a popular spreadsheet program. ;)
- alan_cx 14y ago
  The post you replied to is so, so short, yet you couldn't even be bothered to the end of it, preferring to react to the first few words. Scary. However, I must thank you because I think you just demonstrated why western society is such a complete mess better than anything I have previously read or seen. A hair trigger reaction with out even bothering to consume the point, let alone understand it. And how could you understand it, you didn't even read it? The sad thing is that you're not even giving yourself a chance. And that is leaving aside the sheer blinding irony of you criticising people for making assumptions.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

mchusma 14y ago

Cool analytical approach to an interesting data set. I wish there was a better way to see income for films, how they enter the business, and where do they end up after. I realize this is in practice and for privacy reasons this is nearly impossible to get.

shardling 14y ago

> one thing’s for sure: most women don’t quit after one film—in fact, the majority (at least 53%) do three or more. Well, I guess that depends on how accurate the database is. To the extent that it might miss performers, it would certainly be biased towards those who have fewer credits, or whose credits are for smaller outfits.

lmkg 14y ago
Another confounding factor: there's a decent volume of shovelware movies that consist of non-original scenes edited together, like a mash-up tape. I would not be surprised to discover that one scene results in three credited appearances on average.
- pessimizer 14y ago
  They flag compilations on iafd. Let's pretend they mentioned that in the article somewhere and I didn't just happen to know.
qznc 14y ago
I also assume that there is a difference between "first video" and "first published movie". Those early quitters might never appear in any movie in the database. Maybe as a short advertising clip or something.
vacri 14y ago
Also in question is the source of the quote he's opposing - where is that guy getting the numbers that "Most girls who enter the porn industry do one video and quit" and their motives for doing so?
hkolek 14y ago
Another important thing to keep in mind here is that IAFD only tracks movie releases afaik. They don't have data about scenes that are available on the web only which is a considerable amount of porn. I bet if you take those scenes into account the percentage will be much higher.
pessimizer 14y ago

Taylorious 14y ago

This guys other articles are really good too. He has a couple on escorts that are really interesting. The article he has on the last words of inmates being put to death is absolutely fascinating and incredibly saddening.

sirwitti 14y ago

Interesting. But I think there might be porn even outside the U.S., who knew?

jiggy2011 14y ago

I foresee sex work (so, porn , prostitution , "cam whoring") being huge business over the coming years (ok, it's already huge, but I mean even huger) and losing a lot of it's stigma. Here in the UK where prostitution is legal there already exists websites where people can basically browse online directories for various sexual services. Combine high employment with women realising that they can make a solid 4 figures a week by working < 8 hours a day with the male tendency to "seek variety". It's only a matter of time before some business manages to take advantage of this on a huge scale.

mhaymo 14y ago
As a UK resident, I had no idea prostitution was legal. Wikipedia says: In the United Kingdom, prostitution itself (the exchange of sexual services for money) is not a crime,[2] but a number of related activities, including soliciting in a public place, kerb crawling, owning or managing a brothel, pimping and pandering, are crimes. So how exactly does prostitution work? It seems like it is effectively illegal.
- jiggy2011 14y ago
  AFAIK it is legal as long as the prostitute is effectively self employed (so not working for a pimp or brothel) and not selling services on the street, and of course over 18. This is where the internet comes in. There is a certain website known for this which I will not link to here.
  - RobAley 14y ago
    Nope, advertising online (or anywhere else) is illegal (offering sexual services for money). Pretty much the only time its legal is if two adults who have otherwise met come to a spontaneous agreement to have sex for money. E.g. if a friend says to me "I need £500 to pay my rent" and I say "how about I pay that for you and you have sex with me". Just to be clear, thats never happened to me. I don't have £500 spare...:)
    - 14y ago

lifeisstillgood 14y ago

>> If you think that’s bad, you haven’t heard the half of it. Another reviewer mentioned being able to taste the dry saliva of a previous punter on the escort’s nipple while he sucked it O...M...G... Edit: there is something, levelling, and humanising about the sheer unexpectedness of this. Plus no showering in between clients, nope going back to OMG

rb2k_ 14y ago

I would be really interested to see statistics about the differences to the rest of society. On maps of e.g. the birthplace/hair/color/... I'd be more interested in the deviation from national averages. A lot of people are born in big cities, so a lot of pornstars will be born in big cities. I'd be interested to see which cities have a disproportionally low/high number. Even with the hair color, I'm wondering what the deviation from the national averages looks like. p.s. obligatory xkcd: http://xkcd.com/1138/ http://xkcd.com/1138/

prawn 14y ago
I'd be interested in comparisons to sport. e.g., in a pro basketball league, a significant percentage of players never play more than a handful of games while a more select group rack up hundreds. Both groups are performing after all.
vacri 14y ago
On the xkcd thing, meh. If your users map is similar to a population map, then it means you're appealing to a broad slice of the population. If it's centred in one area, that means you're not appealing outside that area. There's nothing wrong with such a map if it's interpreted correctly.
- randallsquared 14y ago
  > If your users map is similar to a population map, then it means you're appealing to a broad slice of the population. Er, no, it just means there's no geographic component to your appeal within the limits of the map. Could be a very narrow slice, but even distributed in population.
  - vacri 14y ago
    I think we mean the same thing, but are describing it differently. Certainly what you're mentioning is information in itself, not 'no information'. Of course, this doesn't mean it shouldn't be a pet peeve, just that being a peeve doesn't mean it's actually wrong or misleading, just that it's annoying to the... erm... 'peevee'?

smegel 14y ago

Unnecessarily evocative title

tferris 14y ago

Useless but in parts well designed work of an addict.

CodeMage 14y ago

This is certainly an interesting study, but I can't help being seriously disappointed by this part: Sometimes when I hear people railing against porn, declaring it as the downfall of society, a poison infecting masculine minds and demeaning female ones, I wonder what kind of porn they’re talking about. [...] So when I hear somebody claim that porn is ‘degrading’, I can’t help but ask: which porn? If you think most porn isn't degrading, then you need to look a bit closer and think a little harder. I've already posted my views [1], but I'll copy & paste the relevant part here: First of all, there's very little porn out there where the woman truly enjoys the experience. It's not always glaringly obvious (although we'll get back to that in the next point), but if you actually stop and look, you'll see the discomfort and/or indifference very often. Second, a lot of porn out there focuses on and glorifies the woman's suffering, pain and degradation. Seriously, you only have to read the word "painal" once to realize that. However, if that's not enough, you might also look for the occurrences of "choke", "gag", "destroy", "slut", etc. Third, even the porn that doesn't focus on pain teaches wrong stuff. One might get the idea that the only thing a man need do to make a woman enjoy sex is to pound her fast and hard. On top of that comes the whole issue of hygiene: the way anal is portrayed means that if you try it at home, your female partner will likely end up with an infection. Fourth, it creates unrealistic expectations. Let's just say that gag reflex is not as easy to suppress as the porn makes you believe and that anal sex is not a matter of just sliding in any time you want. TL;DR: No, it's not just about whether the sex if fun or boring. Finally, I find the claim that "female porn stars dictate the type of sex they have by listing in their modelling profiles the acts they’re willing to perform on camera" to be disingenuous. It propagates the idea that everything is okay and whatever isn't okay is "her fault". [1]: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4499803 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4499803 EDIT: Since I'm obviously not trolling, I was wondering whether anyone could help explain the drive-by downvoting. I don't expect everyone to agree, but it might be nicer to have a discussion than to suppress it ;)

vacri 14y ago
One might get the idea that the only thing a man need do to make a woman enjoy sex is to pound her fast and hard. While I'm not about to argue that porn is a particularly accurate depiction of sex, I always find it interesting that these kinds of criticisms of it always seem to ignore the frequent cunnilingus in it. One of the things I like about this article is that it's about data mining rather than selection bias. Not to say that the article isn't biased, but that it's less biased.

brador 14y ago

So....can we get that data for download?

gwern 14y ago
> An expanded report of this article that covers the methodologies and full results of the analysis will be available for free very soon. If you’re a journalist or blogger and would like early access to the PDF, or if you’d like to go on the list of people who will receive it by email, please contact me via this form. For this and the sidebar, I'd guess he's an analyst for hire - sharing the raw data would let people scoop him. If you want the data, you can always scrape the IAFD yourself...

freddealmeida 14y ago

I would love this level of study of bankers. 10,000 bankers and their careers. HSBC drug cartel bankers get extra points. http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/gangster-bankers-too-big-to-jail-20130214?link=mostpopular1 http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/gangster-bankers-t...

brini 14y ago

Text-only Google cache version: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://jonmillward.com/blog/studies/deep-inside-a-study-of-10000-porn-stars/&hl=en&tbo=d&strip=1 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...

reinhardt 14y ago

Getting 404 and "Powered By LiteSpeed Web Server".. what's this?

2510c39011c5 14y ago
Quite reminiscing to last time when a guy put the vagina-hacking link on HN...every time when something about porn posted here, the website would be DoS'ed in hours, almost without exception...perhaps next time we should at least have the courtesy to notify the author to mirror the site before we link it on HN...

Meglis 14y ago

It gives me a 404. Damn!