Factually! with Adam Conover - Why Porn Bans Will Destroy the Internet with Siri Dahl and Noelle Perdue

Episode Date: November 5, 2025

Half the states in the US have passed age verification laws that put pornography under threat. Not only does this compromise a vital industry, it puts all of free speech in danger as well. Today, Adam is joined by Siri Dahl, an adult performer and outspoken critic of age verification laws, and Noelle Purdue, a writer and internet porn historian. Together, they discuss how attacks on porn have been an entry point for devastating impingements on civil liberties.SUPPORT THE SHOW ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/adamconoverSEE ADAM ON TOUR: https://www.adamconover.net/tourdates/SUBSCRIBE to and RATE Factually! on:» Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/factually-with-adam-conover/id1463460577» Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0fK8WJw4ffMc2NWydBlDyJAbout Headgum: Headgum is an LA & NY-based podcast network creating premium podcasts with the funniest, most engaging voices in comedy to achieve one goal: Making our audience and ourselves laugh. Listen to our shows at https://www.headgum.com.» SUBSCRIBE to Headgum: https://www.youtube.com/c/HeadGum?sub_confirmation=1» FOLLOW us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/headgum» FOLLOW us on Instagram: https://instagram.com/headgum/» FOLLOW us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@headgum» Advertise on Factually! via Gumball.fmSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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I don't know what to think. I don't know what to think. Hey, but that's all right. That's okay. I don't know anything. Hey there, welcome to Factually. I'm Adam Conover. Thank you so much for joining me on the show again.

This week we have a really important episode for you because we're talking about a huge story that not nearly enough people are talking about. The internet. The very internet I'm talking to you on right now is being systematically censored in a way that it almost never has before. You know, when the internet got started, the whole point was that it was a place where there wasn't censorship,

because mainstream media at the time was under total corporate and governmental control. You could only say what you were allowed to say and show what the people in power allowed you to show. But the internet, well, that was a free expression zone, where art and politics and sex could flourish without corporate or governmental meddling. And you know what? It turns out that a lot of people wanted more access to sex and sexual content. It's not an exaggeration to say that pornography and other sexual content was the Internet's original killer app. It was the thing that people wanted, and yes, needed and couldn't get anywhere else.

And that is true today as well. Pornhub is one of the 10 most visited sites on the planet. and it receives more than 5 billion views every month. And that's because sex is a part of human life and therefore content based around sex, otherwise known as pornography, is also a part of human life. In my view, it's something that people want and need

and they deserve to be able to consume it in a healthy way. But, you know, some in our society see pornography as threatening, as dangerous, as dirty, and they also conflate sexual identities like homosexuality, transgender identities, other forms of queerness with pornography itself. And as the right-wing movement has grown in this country, they have started passing age verification laws in states around the country. Now, they say that these laws are intended to protect young people from accessing, quote, adult content. And they've gotten them passed

in 25 out of 50 states. But as we're going to see today, these laws not only do nothing to protect actual young people. They're also a nightmare for free speech, shutting down free expression for all of us. They put all of our privacy at risk. And they threaten the livelihoods of real people in the adult industry, which in my mind is a real industry like any other. And the people who work in that industry deserve dignity and respect just like any other worker does. So how does this rising tide of anti-sex, anti-porn legislation put free speech in danger for all of us and why do we all need to join the movement to fight back against it? Well, to discuss this topic on the show, I have two incredible guests. First, we have Siri Dahl, who's an adult

content creator and performer who has been an incredibly outspoken and thoughtful activist about the threat all of these laws posed to us, and Noel Perdue, a writer and internet porn historian who writes a fascinating substack on porn history and policy. Now, I found this conversation incredibly fascinating. It's one of my favorite interviews I've done on this show in months. I know you're going to love it as well. And if you want to support the show and all of the provocative, thought-provoking conversations, you cannot get anywhere else. Head to patreon.com slash Adam Conover. Five bucks a month gets you every episode of this show ad-free. You can also join our online book club. We have a wonderful community. We'd love to have you. And if you'd like to

come see me do stand-up comedy on the road, coming up soon, I'm headed to Des Moines, Iowa, Atlanta, Georgia, Pittsburgh, Brooklyn, New York on November 15th, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Atlanta. My new hour is, honestly, it's about sex as well. So if you want to come see it, head to Adam Conover.comnet for all those tickets and tour dates. And now, please welcome the incredibly funny and fascinating Siri doll and Noel Perdue. Nuel and Siri, thank you so much for being here. Yay, thank you. I'm thrilled to have you both.

As people who are intimately acquainted with the adult industry, let's, let's, Let's jump right into it. What are these, like, age verification laws that are rolling out around the country and why are they hitch a big deal? Well, about half the country now has passed age verification laws. About 25 states, I think it is. Yeah, 25. And then there's more, there's like 11 more that have things in the works or that are about

to go into effect that aren't yet in effect. So it's most of the country at this point has passed them. And a lot of them use the same language. A lot of them are copycat bills. And they are worded in a way that it's like, you know, this is to protect children. But honestly, they're not really even effective at doing that. Yeah. Because of multiple reasons that we can get into.

And what they are really effective at doing is compromising people's personal security and data privacy. Mm-hmm. And that's pretty gross. And what kind of sites do they cover, just so we know what we're talking about first? It applies largely to porn sites. In the UK, they just passed a very similar law. That is, it's applied to any site that has a percentage of content that is deemed, quote, unquote, harmful to minors. So that has resulted in a blanket application for porn sites, similar to all the states that are enacting this in the United States.

But it also applies to certain Twitter slash X accounts, some Discord. servers, things like that. It's pretty widespread, but obviously this kind of terminology around quote unquote harmful to minors is so broad that it is difficult to kind of assess what it's going to be applied to. But definitely pornography sites are getting it across the board. Yeah, I mean, this reminds me of the kinds of laws that like I thought I remembered in like the late 90s, early 2000s, like we had agreed were bad, like anti-obscenity laws and like what is an obscenity and what sort of things are going to be punished by that. And, like, I remember there being a cultural conversation about, like, we don't really want the government to be legislating this stuff.

And that came along with the rise of the internet where people could, anybody could publish and people could go, you know, choose what they wanted to see. Why do you think we're all of a sudden seeing this big swing back? Because, I mean, porn's been on the internet for like 20 years, like, and kids have been on the internet too. So why is there this sudden furor around I wouldn't say it's so sudden. I wouldn't say it sudden. Yeah, I think that there's, it's been kind of building through, you know, passing of legislation, setting precedent for the past 20 years, even I would say for the past 80 years

since kind of obscenity law was deemed no longer protected by the Constitution. But definitely I would say that the age verification legislation is, is, is. similar to the kind of sesta-fasta of 2017-2018 in that it is sort of changing who is responsible for

somebody's consumption of material or of content so it's changing the responsibility of consumption from the consumer to the host, the platform and that's very similar to what happened with Sesta-Fasta

and then we're seeing it again with these age verification laws. But those past laws, I remember Sesta Foster, there's like, it seemed like every couple of years there'd be some bill that didn't quite make it through and the internet sort of rallied to defend free speech on the internet. And then the bill would be defeated. Yeah. And it seems like this time that hasn't happened and these have just passed almost under everybody's noses. Like I feel like this has happened without most people realizing it's happened. Yeah. Or when people are aware, because I talk about this all the time on my social media. Um, it's like, I, I've been complaining about it lately because I'm like, I, I'm happy to be an activist. However, I'm like, I don't even have that much time to do my job lately, which is making porn. And, and I make, I'm, I make a living from only fan subscriptions. Yeah. And I'm forever, like, apologizing to my own fans being like, hey, sorry, I'm not as productive now as I was like a year and a half, two years ago. It's because I'm, like, I'm, focusing so much of my time and energy on making free content, trying to educate people about the effects of this censorship. And a lot. And I know that things are always like muddy when you're looking in content or comment

sections online on social media. But the amount of people that like, you know, I have over 430,000 followers on Instagram and when I talk about the harms of age verification laws, there are a lot of people that just don't like are completely in denial about it yeah i also think it cannot be overstated people who are otherwise supportive of sex workers and probably consider themselves leftists or have leftist political values and they're like yeah but like you know this isn't something that we can just let go rampant like you know porn is too accessible and we have to do something about it so if there's some collateral damage then that's fine like i see that attitude

all the time. Yeah. And that's when I'm just like, okay, like, but stop and breathe and think about, like, that's not even what these laws are trying to do. Yeah. Yeah. I think it can't be overstated how effective propaganda has been in the last 15 years. And specifically right now, the way that these kind of anti-pornography or largely

these anti-obscenity bills are being pushed forward is so closely tied to. anti-trans sentiment right now. If you look at the wording of these bills and also how a lot of these politicians are kind of marketing these bills to the people that are following them, that are supporting them, it is so often kind of couched in anti-trans terminology, anti-queer terminology. And that's very consistent in when... And that is the Project 2025 strategy. That's the Project 2025 strategy. So I think it's really tied to this kind of red wave that we're seeing undeniably. But I, also think that again, like this kind of think of the women, think of the children, um, technique,

the strategy that has been employed by kind of conservative right wing politicians. So effectively for so many years, we're seeing it pop up again. And we're seeing it pop up and be used again very effectively. And people are not realizing the implications of something that is ostensibly to protect children that is actually welcoming in all of this surveillance, all of this, um, control, all of this, a huge government overreach that they're not even realizing is happening. Okay, there's so many things you guys are saying that I want to like drill down. There's a lot going on. Let's try to do them one at a time.

So let's get the harms first. Let's talk about the surveillance piece of it. You say that these laws are not even actually able to protect children and instead are just like causing more surveillance and privacy violation. Why? Well, in what way? So we can talk about like because Pornhub has actually talked about this. I've interviewed Alex Kikasi, their head of brand about this, and they've seen in all the states that have passed in age verification law, typically what Pornhub's been doing is blocking IP addresses from that state, not because they disagree with the concept of age verification, but because they're like, we're not going to put our customers data at risk.

And this law is basically, well, whatever state is happening, and most of the laws are the same. So requiring them to use like a third-party age verification service to verify all their users. every user for every visit. It's not even like you verify it once when you're logged in. And this is identity, it's bio data. Yeah. Facial scan. ID upload.

Identification. If I want to sign up for Pornhub in Missouri, I have to, what, literally send them a photo of my ID. Yes, exactly. upload a photo of your driver's license and do a facial biometric skin. Or they sometimes use third party. A lot of these sites that are kind of cowing to this, no judge. a lot of them have to, but a lot of the sites that are counting to this are using third-party platforms that have kind of a database of people's identification and biometric data so they can

kind of cross-reference with that database, but you have to upload your biometrics and your identification to that database. And also, I will say if you look at the way that a lot of these rulings are put in place, there is little to nothing about kind of safety of, safety of of that data, like, or what those companies are allowed to do with that data. It's completely unregulated. I'm sure that they're selling it. Why wouldn't they? It's really scary.

It makes sense that people would be really uncomfortable with giving that much information out. Especially when you're trying to access a porn site. A thing that is a very private act. You're opening up an incognito window. You know, you're like, this is something that's. private about me. Now you literally have to send in a photo of your ID that they can, that to a third party company that you don't know, that can cross-reference it with anything else or sell

the data to someone, like, oh, that you had logged into Pornhub at such and such a time. Yeah. So is, do you think the intent of these laws is just to, like, put Pornhub and other sites out of business? Because, like, no one's going to do this. There was an interview. I don't remember who broke the story, but it was like a England-based journalist that did basically like a hidden camera. They pretended that they were like a potential donor and they had a meeting with Russell Vought.

This was like before the election last year. It was like August, I think, 2024. And so it's like this kind of hidden camera interview. And Russell Vought, one of the guys who helped write Project 2025, says on camera, like, like, yeah, like we're doing all these age verification laws now, and that's our strategy to make porn illegal. We're just kind of going through the back door. He said that verbatim, which is also funny in its own way, going through the back door to make it illegal. Russell loves going through the back door.

But he says exactly what you just said. He says, yeah, what we're seeing happen is when we pass one of these age verification bills, the websites don't want to comply. So they just block that state. Yeah, I think that what's interesting. We're essentially putting them out of business. And that's great. That's what we want. And if we could, we would just pass a nationwide ban on porn.

Yeah, I think that that is very open. I think that they're being very, very transparent about the fact that they want to make porn illegal. It's part of Project 2025. A lot of these politicians say that openly. I think that what's not being said and what is kind of the scary underbelly of this is the fact that actually what they want is to normalize this unprecedented level of government surveillance and this unprecedented level of, you know, data tracking and. collection and and really controlling the way that people access content both online and in person. And I think that's what's not being said. That like it's an overall system of control beyond just point.

Absolutely. Because this is, you know, it's setting a precedent that they can later apply to other things. And it already has been applied. Like queer people or like later on the discussion of certain disfavored political topics or whatever else. Abortion medication being accessible by mail, like, is a part of this now. Right. Or accessible online. And kind of in relation to this, it's like I was just looking up on my way over here, the status of the bill that Mike Lee introduced, he's the Utah senator who introduced

the Interstate Obscenity Definition Act of 2025. He's tried introducing versions of that bill in past years, and they've never, you know, passed. They've never gotten enough votes. But it's like, he's going to keep trying. And eventually it probably will get through, given the state of everything else, with laws like this. But that bill is specifically redefining what is obscenity to classify porn as obscenity, which means it would lose all First Amendment protections. And it would essentially become criminalized to produce or distribute it.

So let's back up for a second. And let's talk about porn itself because, you know, you said you're you're encountering people online who are. saying, oh, well, porn's out of control. We got to stop porn. I don't feel this way about porn. I would love to hear, like, how do you guys view porn just as a media product? What is its purpose? What is its value?

And why is it something that we should care about being banned or not? Apart from the effect that it might have on other things, but like porn as itself, like, yeah, what's the case for it? I feel like this is one that Noelle needs to answer first because this is your little specialty. Yeah, porn evangelism is my specialty. That's true. I mean, I think that there are two different

and equally important answers to this question. I think that the more kind of broad and vague answer is that porn is so difficult to define and that and porn really can be anything and part of the reason why I I feel so protective of pornography is because it's so difficult to define and trying to like for example the attempt to ban porn is the attempt to ban so much of human expression so much of human expression can be kind of for erotic intent you know people's sexualities are so broad and strange and delightful, um, that almost anything can be porn. And in fact, you know, in kind of my own

research into pornography and, and very specific subgenres of porn, there are, there are entire kind of genres of pornography or fetishes that, you know, the, the better somebody, a creator gets at, um, catering to their audience, the less explicit the content gets, the less technically kind of mainstream pornographic it gets like there's there's less nudity there's less sex but they're really kind of identifying these key elements of eroticism and highlighting that so for example like like eating or hypnosis or balloon popping balloon popping exactly lunars shout out lunars um but you know all these things where where people are really exploring the limits of human sexuality and and in so many cases is that actually looks nothing like what you'll see on the front page of Pornhub necessarily,

but it doesn't make it less pornographic or less legitimate as a pornography product. So that is one element of it of just like the idea of banning porn. It's like, well, what are you talking about, you know? But also just even the most gonzo, you know, front page of Pornhub media, it's, you know, it is human expression, first of all. And I think that there's value in all human expression. And also, I think to specifically devalue human expression that centers on sexuality really does sort of lend itself to this attitude of shame that so many people have around sex and has been kind of conditioned into us and shame around even like masturbation or pleasure for the sake of itself, this very like puritan ideology that that, you know, sex without procreation or pleasure for the sake of itself. or pleasure for the sake of itself,

this very like Puritan ideology that sex without procreation or pleasure for the sake of itself is sinful or wrong or evil that creates so many issues, including, you know, I think really creates a lot of issues that people have with porn,

you know, that it really centers the shame that we've instilled on it. So I think that we should collectively try to rid ourselves of that shame and that includes Loving porn And that's my case for porn And being willing to defend it

Yeah Yeah Yeah I mean I feel like It feels like it feels like it used to be easier to say things like this in America Just a couple years ago But like jerking off is good for you Like it's just

It's a very nice form of sex It's medically good for you medically good for you It's good for your sex life It's a healthy form of sexual expression And also, sometimes having visual aids can help with the masturbation process. And so that can be something else that's good for you. And I understand why, you know, sometimes people will see particular pieces of porn or they'll see a volume of porn and they'll say, I'm worried that that's bad for other people.

Yeah. And they might have that concern. And like, let's grant that maybe there, you can make that argument or maybe there's some cases that we would say. maybe we don't like this as much as other forms of porn or maybe this is harmful when consumed in such a quantity. That's certainly arguable. But like, if you look back at a time when there was no porn or porn access was really restricted, was our sexuality really healthy then?

Like was was human sexuality? Did we have less sexual assault? Did we have less people having bad times? Did we have? I don't think so. Definitely not. I mean, I can answer this. I mean, there's there's a lot of research on this.

And studies show, no. It's not like women were, or, you know, many, many people. But I think that in a lot of people's concerns around pornography, center on violence against women. And how often kind of very mainstream, very accessible porn films do have this element of kind of dominating women. There can be very violent titles, violent content, et cetera, et cetera. UK recently banned choking in pornography, things like that.

And so they bring that out. And the tricky thing is, is if that were true, if pornography was really kind of making sex worse for women, if it's created this new violence against women, that would mean that there was significantly less violence prior to pornography being widely accessible. So prior to, you know, maybe 2007, 2010, when aggregate sites became really widely available. And obviously, that's not true.

It's women were getting assaulted prior to 2010. The issue, I think, with pornography, and I think that this is true, is that pornography works as a mirror. But it also, you know, it takes everything to the next level. It's an entertainment product, so everything is going to be a little bit, a little bit extra. And what we're seeing reflected back at us is this violence in sex, is this really complicated relationship that that sex holds with us and this violence that really is so much a part of sex in a way that we haven't really been addressing. And that is going to come up in pornography, but it's not being created by pornography.

Yeah, I think so much of the time when we're complaining about media in general, violence in media, guns in media, even when liberals people on the left are like, oh, there's so many guns in video games or whatever. We're having that conversation instead of the conversation about what we're actually doing in our culture, in our actual lives,

in the real world. And either we feel powerless to change those things about the real world, or we are not willing to. And so we just focus on media instead. It's a really great point. Media literacy applies to porn as well

as other forms of media. And it's like a lot of people don't seem to think of that because they don't maybe consider porn like a valid form of media or art in any interpretation but but I'm a big fan of of defending porn as a text like a cultural text in the media that it is and it's also art yeah even the even the most gonzo like a low effort amateur porn video is is art that represents a cultural moment and has a tone yeah that you can read things into that yeah and it tells you something about the culture where

it was made, the people who made it. And that's what art is. Can you tell me, as someone who makes porn, can you tell me a little bit about your like personal relationship with the thing that you make, right? As one of the, one of the artisans. I've, you know, I'm really curious to hear.

I mean, I... Crafts person. It's true. It's true. I mean, I would mostly describe the kind of content, the kind of porn I make as content. It's porn content because, and I say it like that, because

I'm not a creator who generally invests a lot of pre-planning and time into. And I have friends who do do that. Like if you look at a performer like Little Puck, who does incredibly complicated, like, expensive cosplay scenes that she spends months. Genius. She'll, like, hire a body makeup artist and spend, you know, 12 hours in makeup to become a chicken, you know, or like Greta Gremlin. And like, and what she does.

is amazing to me, and I'm like, I could never, like, for multiple reasons, including my own, like, ADHD problems. But what I do is, like, I really, I do a lot more, like, fan service, because I have a, I've started out in 2012, and I have a very, like, dedicated fan base that is very, like, loyal to me. And so a lot of the content that I make is fairly low effort. Like, it's like I shoot almost everything on my iPhone. Like I edit almost all of my videos myself. I'm an Adobe Premiere Pro whiz. You know, I have fun with it. And so for me, I love the process. But because I do, I'm such a control freak and I like to do so many parts of it myself, I kind of streamline that process so that, you know, any one video I produce isn't taking like too long. Because so in other words,

yeah, it's a little more about like quantity than quality, but that works for me. And my fans like that because it's also part of the reason why I keep my content very, very affordable, which from, you know, the beginning, when I started making content of my own instead of relying on like paid shoots from studios, my strategy has always been to keep it as affordable as possible. And that is completely informed by my politics. Because you feel that it's a good for the audience. to be able to access it? Yes, precisely.

And what benefit does the audience receive from that access, you know? Like, I'm just trying to give it. This is my strategy in part because she's gorgeous. Thank you. No, absolutely. No, it's self-evident. It's so funny because I'm like, I'm trying to, I'm just trying to get at the argument because we so rarely hear it or even or make it.

Like, yeah, I mean, people love to look at a beautiful person and come good. That feels nice. But, like, you clearly take a lot of pride in your work. And you clearly, I'm saying, is informed by your politics, you must feel that you are making the world a better place. I do. By doing so. And in what way? I don't just feel that.

I know that I know that I am with the full confidence that I have of like, this is from years of being in this industry and being having very close. I mean, yes. To a degree, parisocial relationships with my fans because they're interacting with Siri, you know, in my public-facing way. But that being said, I don't really have like a persona as I perform. I go home and I'm the same person that I am when I'm having sex on camera. It's just maybe a little more like slightly enhanced when the camera's on. But who doesn't do that? You know?

Who doesn't? It's the same thing as a comic. Like, I'm on stage and a little bit more up. I'm a little bit more up on the show. And in real life, I'm like, just, yeah, slightly different, but not hugely different. But it's the ways that my subscribers and, like, my, my fans feel comfortable being vulnerable with me about their own challenges. And sometimes it's like, it doesn't even get into issues of sex. Sometimes it's just like, you know, a fan will message me on only fans that they, like, lost their job and they're feeling really depressed.

And, like, in some ways what I do in a situation like that is akin to therapy. And so it's like being there for them. Like, you know, being willing to like to listen when maybe some of these folks who like enjoy my content feel like they don't have a whole lot of other people in their lives that are listening or are willing to. And I think part of that is because, and this is a very common thing with sex workers across the board, is that like we're operating in a space where our clients or our customers are able, like, like part of the relationship there is one of vulnerability of like this openness that you that is kind of hard to access a lot of the time especially for men for like cisgender straight men in many other scenarios and I mean going back to like a fan subscription platform relationship it's like most of my fans I don't know they're real name like I'm talking to them by username or like they'll give me like you know goon baby 69 is there and so that's what and I'm like what do you want me to call you. And they're like, call me Goon Baby. And I'm like, all right, Goon Baby? Like, that's cute. That's me on the other side being like, Siri, you look beautiful to that. And I have a lot of, I've gotten a lot of messages over the years from married couples

who are like, we, we just, one day we decided to go through Pornhub.com and like look at a bunch of different performers. And we wanted to like find someone who's video, who we both agree that we like their vibe so that we can have like a favorite a favorite porn star that we share together yeah and so and I hear that a lot like a lot of couples will come to me and be like yeah like we like to watch your stuff together and we bond over that and I'm like that's great that's so cool like that's really wonderful and so there's just so many little examples like that adds up and now they've been doing this for like 13 years I'm like this is a good this is a societal good and no one is going to convince me otherwise I have all the evidence in my inbox

that you you clearly really feel like you're having like a positive reciprocal relationship you're getting something out of it they're getting something out of it I mean the I think the stereotype are that people a deep down belief that a lot of people have about porn is that the people in them do not have that kind of relationship with the audience that they're doing it under duress and to be fair there are economic necessity there are creators who don't there are creators who don't really respect their own fans who have some exploitative kind of relationships with their fans and But that's not a reason to, like, assume that everyone's like that, you know? Yeah. But I do know, I mean, I have fans who have come to me and been like, oh, I subscribed to this person, had a terrible experience. And, like, it really made me salty about ever wanting to, like, go there with another creator. And so, you know, when I encounter that, I'm just like, I'm sorry that you had that experience. Like, please believe that not everyone who works in this industry who does adult content creation is approaching it with that attitude. I'm sure there are people who do the content creation who themselves have bad experiences with the fans or with the industry.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, it goes both ways for sure. And I'll say, like, it is not uncommon. It's not that often that I've had to do this, but I can recall a handful of times that I have told a fan, a subscriber on one of the fan platforms who was very much active in, you know, DMing me, tipping me, buying content in my. my inbox and all that. And I've told them, like, I am going to block you. Like, I'm choosing to block you. And I hope that you understand that I'm making this choice for your own good, because it was becoming very clear to me that they have a very unhealthy relationship with consuming my content. And I assume also other adult content. Yeah. It's like, and there's telltale

signs to that. It's like when they're coming into my inbox and DMing me and telling me about how, like, I feel like I can't stop watching this. Like, and it's in a way that they're not, they're not like the healthy gooner. Because that's a thing that exists. They're not gooner, baby. It's like a fun sport for them, you know, and they have a really, like, realistic view of what their relationship with porn and their consumption of porn is like. And so what I'm talking about is someone who does not have that healthy view of it.

Yeah. That, like, they're like, I feel like I'm teetering on the edge and I'm like, I'm suicidally depressed. and I can't stop. And I'm like, I'm going to block you because at this point, it is very clear to me that it is not a good thing for you to be consuming the content that I make. And I don't feel good about interacting with you when I know that this is what you're going through. Yeah. And I also don't feel good about taking your money. Yeah.

I mean, what you're describing is like an industry and a form of media that has a lot of positive and healthy things about it. it has a lot of potential to be very good and that has many people in it like you like you guys who are doing it in a good way but that like yeah there are people who are exploited sometimes on either side of the equation that's true of every industry yeah correct it's an industry it's an industry under capitalism yeah shocker it's complicated yeah yeah and so what we should want to do is is reduce the amount of exploitation of harm and like improve like outcomes for everybody make it better overall and And it sounds like what you guys are saying is these laws are doing the opposite. They're making it way easier for exploitation to happen. Well, I think that the issue that's happening is that it's not like people aren't going to be watching pornography. It's the issue is that these bills are are only applied to companies that are willing to comply with them. Yeah. You know, it's it's not like they can catch every aggregate site that pops up.

Yeah. Because a lot of, the vast majority of pornography online is completely, you know, unregulated platforms that often are actually designed to be deleted because it's filled with non-consensual illegally pirated content. That's if you, if you just Google porn, like the majority of the result on the page are going to be, you know, Gooner Baby Palace, 1986. Like, like, you know, numbers, numbers, numbers, dot, co. UK, dot, you know. It's, it's, you know, these, these sites. A lot of websites with the word fap in the name. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Like gray market, black market. Yeah. Exactly. And if you actually look into those pages, which I have, a lot of them have had, you know, many, many previous names, many previous domains. And they are seemingly operating from, you know, a central server. And the platform itself is designed to be pulled, either through DMC take down notices or. not complying with local legislation. It's designed to be pulled and then pop back up with a new domain, you know, right after with all the same content because all the content lives, you know, offshore on a server.

And those platforms do not give a fuck about this legislation. They do. They don't comply with anything. And again, this is largely illegal pirated content, not in any way ethical pornography, not a way to consume pornography ethically. The way to consume pornography ethically is with these platforms that are complying with regulation that do make sure that everything that is uploaded is tied with a release form, making sure that everybody in the video has signed off on the release, has, you know, an ID attached to it, all the performers. And those sites, those sites that are complying with all those regulations that are really trying to do a good job of being ethical porn platforms. are the ones that are actually having to comply with this legislation. So if somebody goes on these sites that are actually these, like, good porn sites that are

trying to do well, and they see that they have to upload their biometric data, they're going to be like, why would I do that if I can go to fucking Guner Palace, 566.6.com, whatever, and watch all this stolen content for free, and I don't have to give anybody my information. So it's actually pushing people away from ethically produced content and into unethically produced content. Wow. And then the businesses that want to be compliant, especially smaller, because Pornhub, that's the irony really is, I like that porn. And I appreciate that Pornhub is choosing to not comply with these laws out of, you know, a sense of activism and saying, no, we're not doing this. We're going to protect our customer's data.

We disagree with the way these laws are being written and passed and they're bad. And I fully agree with that. And then you have, but Pornhub can afford to do that. Yeah. Because they're like one of the wealthier companies, their parent company, Alo, is like, you know, been around for a while, has a lot more money than many of the other companies in the adult industry. And when it comes to smaller companies, like studio sites or smaller, you know, platforms that are trying to compete with like Onlyfans, the price of implementing age verification software. is really, really expensive. Like, it's...

It's like a dollar per check. Yeah. Per person. A dollar per person for verification. It's a dollar per verification. And that's not, you don't get verified on like when on purchase. This is, it's just on visitor. And, you know, the vast majority of people visiting a porn site are not going to be

putting money into it. They're, they're interested, they're curious. But it doesn't matter. It's a dollar per check. It's very expensive. And then, if that third party verification system makes a mistake and somehow verifies the age incorrectly of a user, let's say, then in many states that have passed laws like this, like Texas, for example, there's also like a bounty component to the law where if an

underage person does the age check on any adult website and somehow does fool the age check, whether they're using like a fake ID or the biometric scan thinks their face looks older than they are or something like that, if they get verified. Now, the platform is held responsible for The parents can literally sue that platform and the fees are like crazy for suing. Not to mention also many states that have passed these laws for a U.S.-based business that the law is supposed to apply to the fines for not being compliant are like $10,000 per day per violation in many instances. But again, this is only applying to these legitimate porn platforms. So it's just punishing these legitimate porn platforms. So these laws are just genuinely just designed to put the legitimate porn platforms out of business.

Yes. And when they're out of business, that doesn't make the porn universe better for anybody, better for kids, better for young people or better for adults, better for anyone at home. No, it's also, it's ridiculous because porn will still exist online. Of course. And online is full of porn. It still helps them because then anyone who's trying to watch porn and, you know, for example, underage people who are. Googling for porn videos and end up going to like a unmoderated overseas hosted site and their parent finds out, then now this just further feeds into the narrative that all porn is exploitative and bad.

Because now we've, you know, we've effectively made all the good ethical companies go out of business with these shitty laws. So the only porn that's now available readily is specifically the completely unmoderated horrifying kind. Yeah, I mean, even if somebody you describe this company as good and ethical, I'm sure there's many out there.

Someone might disagree. I still don't want to look at, I don't want someone to see that type of, I still disagree with that company. Right. But the fact remains, everyone is being driven to something even worse. Right.

That everybody likes even less. And specifically, I mean, the term ethical porn has become like quite a buzzword in the last 10 years or so. And, and among, I think it's a, I have a different interpretation of what that means as a performer, as a worker in this industry. For me, ethical porn is about labor rights, ultimately.

Oh, yeah. For a lot of the audience, they just think of ethical porn, and they think of what's been sold to them as an ethical aesthetic of porn. Oh, okay, what has been sold? Well, like, if it's like, oh, we're a women-owned company, people will assume, oh, this is ethical porn. Right. I can tell you, I've worked for female directors in the porn industry who have

treated their staff, their crew, and talent very poorly. And I would not, and I've been on sets run by almost all women where I felt like this is the least ethical version of this. Yeah, I think a really good example of this was the Bolesa launch. Yeah. Which Balesa is now a company that operates very legitimately. I don't mean to say anything about how they operate now. But the Bolesa, which is a porn platform. Well, I'm sure a lot of viewers are familiar because Bolesa sponsors almost every YouTube channel that I watch. Yes, I'm sure then. But, and, you know, they have their own studio.

They do great work. If they want to, reach it, I always need more sponsors. Well, they may not want to after I tell us. Oh, okay. Don't say that. Drive them away. Just yet. I have no problem with how Bolesa operates currently.

However, its launch was easily the best example of this where Balesa is a women, I think, owned company. And when they launched, which I believe in. 2018 um potentially 2017 but prior to their launch they did this major um PR run where they reached out to a number of sex journalists they published with a number on a number of platforms including i think um bustle and a couple others and all of these articles were about how this is a new feminist porn company finally finally there's a feminist porn company women everywhere can rejoice and when Balesa launched it was an aggregate site filled with stolen content

it was almost exclusively pirated aggregate content but it was owned by women and by Jove was that site pink it was pink as hell ladies this one's for you all the women in the videos

not being paid no not being paid that is fully stolen on a consensual content. So obviously there was major outrage from the adult industry, from performers, and luckily they did listen and they completely retooled this site and now they have a studio and they also, you know, everybody that is on the platform, it's verified, people are being paid. But just a great example of pink washing, of, you know, just because something is aestheticized to appeal to women does not make it feminine. under my definition of feminism, which, as Siri said, is very much tied to labor rights, to

workers' rights to class consciousness. And that happens all the time in pornography, where I think people are ultimately, you know, not educated on pornography being an industry, a legitimate industry. I think people have kind of a discomfort around pornography as a labor product for many reasons. you know, the way that pornography is being portrayed in mainstream media, one of them, personal shame, another. But I do think it actually prevents people from engaging with ethical pornography in a well-informed way. How can one engage with pornography in an ethically well-informed way? Like, where do you start? Well, paying for it. Yeah. And if you're not paying for it, making sure that you're watching it on a website that is at, like, because

There's free web. Like, Pornhub is a good example in this scenario, because Pornhub has gotten, rightfully so, a lot of criticism over the years. And there was a time, like, you know, when I first started out in the industry, when I began my career in Porn Porn in 2012, I only knew Pornhub as a piracy site. It was like, that's one of the sites that was on my personal shit list of, like, where I'd have to go send DMCA takedown notices monthly because the stuff that I would create would be uploaded there for free. kind of like the early YouTube years where it's like, oh, it's a clone. It's a clone of YouTube. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that is not what Pornhub is now. Like, I mean, for years now, you can't upload anything unless you're a verified creator, one. Like, you have to prove that you're of age. You have to have age verification, model release, documentation uploaded 2257 paperwork. So that's pretty much on lockdown. Also, the review process is crazy. Like, when I upload a video to Pornhub, it's not unusual for it to take four to five days for it to be approved. Wow. And nothing gets seen before it's approved by moderation. Wow. So they individually moderate.

I'm sure that there's some algorithmic technology involved in that. But at some point, there's human review too if you do need to, like, you know, appeal something. No, it's actually, it's so, there's an irony to the fact that, like, all the people who are most, the most enthusiastic in their criticism of pornography. tend to go for Pornhub, because obviously it is sort of the biggest name is the household name. But there's an irony to the fact that, you know, in going after specifically Pornhub, which at this point, you know, everything is verified, everything is moderated, you're actually pushing people towards the reality of unethical porn. You're actually encouraging these unethical sites to flourish. Like, you're actually defending these unethical sites by going. after specifically Pornhub in promoting these age verification and censorship bills.

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It's cornbread hemp.com slash factually and use promo code factually. What's funny is that the way people talk about like Pornhub and OnlyFans just in the cultural consciousness is is really derogatory, you know, like they're they're sort of seen by the public. Oh, everyone has an OnlyFans that blah, blah, blah, when, I mean, is the rise of this model has this been beneficial in the industry? And I'm also curious theory, but sorry, by the way, I started to jump around here a little bit, but I just want to hear you talk about, you say when you upload a video to Pornhub, but you're also having people pay for stuff on OnlyFans, how does that model work for you? Are you like, is the Pornhub like the lost leader?

And then you're hoping to convert them into, in sort of the same way I put a podcast up here. And I'm hoping I get some Patreon subscribers. Is that the idea? It's essentially, yeah, Pornhub's like the YouTube and the OnlyFans is like the Patreon in my model. so and because I don't upload full length content like when I have a new scene out I'll upload the porn have changed their ad revenue model like a year ish ago so now for a video to qualify for ad revenue it has to be seven minutes minimum so basically whatever scene most of the scenes I film are like you know 30 to 40 minutes so I just cut basically a really extended teaser

from that that's seven minutes long and I basically make it just over seven it's like just long enough to meet the requirement and and then I put like there's a you know a plate on the end of the video that's like you know you can see more on onlyfans.com slash Siri doll you know what I love is that someone listening to this podcast they're going to be on porn hub later and they're going to be looking at a video and they're going to see that it's seven minutes and one second long and they're going to be like now I know why it's exactly that length because and they're going to think about this interview while they're while they got their junk in their hand I like that yeah to be honest with the average watch time on Bourneub's

like not even two minutes it's like most people don't even need seven minutes. That's a long run the full length videos are for the people who are there for the plot for the dialogue. That's for the connoisseurs. But yeah, so just in terms of the

rise of those two sites which so now dominate online porn, it's really them and like Reddit I think are probably the biggest The biggest jerk-off destinations. Reddit is its own beast. Also, I have beef with Reddit, like, and I have years. Oh, I want to hear about that, too.

I have some interesting information about fan sites. Please. From a history standpoint, the rise of OnlyFans has been very interesting because I think a lot of people, like you just did, have referenced it as kind of a new phenomenon that OnlyFans and the rise of fan sites is a new phenomenon. on. And people in the adult industry know that fan sites have been around forever. But I will say it is very interesting because fan sites, particularly this monthly subscription style service, is actually kind of the first way that pornography existed online. So pre-internet porn was operating kind of in tandem with the mainstream film industry. There were huge theatrical releases, DVD sales, et cetera, et cetera. And then with accessible internet connection came membership sites. So these kind of bigger name porn stars would set up domains, full domains,

where that would be kind of an archive of their past work and they could upload new content and people could sign up and pay a monthly fee to be members. And that's actually how the subscription model was developed. And also how credit card processing online was developed. It originated in the porn industry. So that was... Like credit card process is for the entire internet. For the internet.

Wow. Yeah, it was developed for pornography. Hell yeah. Yes. And that was in the 90s in very early 2000s. And then with the aggregate site boom, platforms like Pornhub and this kind of free to view model, very similar to YouTube, became ubiquitous.

And that's how people understood you to consume pornography online. But this, you know, the rise of only fans is actually kind of a return. It's actually a cycle back. to how things started on the internet, which I think does speak to pornography as an industry that has cycles, just like many others. And I think a lot of people said when PornHub first popped up that like, well, no one would ever pay for porn again

if there's an infinite amount of porn that's free. And of course, you only need to watch two minutes of it on average or whatever it is. And yet there's like the subscription model is like huge, at least I don't know how big the dollar amount is huge

I mean it is huge and I will say having experienced both sides of this because when I I started out in porn before OnlyFans existed I started out in 2012

and so by early 2013 I had launched my first membership site which was in a network of membership sites and this was still exist to this day it's far less common

now and less lucrative but the model there was like I joined a network, the VNA network of sites, and they essentially footed the bill to build my website. I retained full ownership of my own content, like copyright ownership, which is great, and a good deal. There were some site networks that did not do that good of a deal for performers back in the day. But I retained full ownership of my content. And essentially, it was just like

a revenue split between me and the owners of the network. And it was like $20 a month to join. And anyone who joined would get access to all the other sites in the network as well. But if they joined at my URL, I get the revenue share for it, if that makes sense. And so the network that I was in had, like, I think at its height, like 30 models in there. So it's a pretty good, that's a good deal. If you're spending $20 and you're getting access to like 30 of the most popular porn stars and all of the content available on all of their sites collectively, arguably that's cheaper for like, if you were to like shock it up to like the piece of content that's actually

cheaper than like an only fan subscription would be now, but it's less personalized, it's less individualized, and you don't get as much interaction directly with the stars. And so I think that's why the only fans, like fan site subscription model has fully replaced all these other things and is really competing even with free porn. It's because when people are spending that amount on, you know, a monthly subscription, usually it's not just for the content. A lot of people never unlock any content beyond what's on that basic like scroll feed on the main wall. They're there because they want to be able to ask you questions and like DM or a lot of the time I know it for me and a lot of other creators I know it's like they want the option to

purchase custom made made content. I presume they're also just wanting to be supportive maybe. Yeah, that's a huge part of it. On Patreon, like most people are famously, most people don't interact with the content at all. they're just like, no, I'd just like to give you five bucks. You know, um, we, we have on my patron, plenty of content that people interact with, but the majority of folks are like, you know, probably just watching this and then occasionally dipping in.

And it's about that personal. I mean, I would imagine in the old system that you talked about, if I signed up for that, I went to, you know, Siri's page. I sent it to see Siri and I was like, oh, you get these other 30 people. I'd be like, well, I, but I don't, who are they? I haven't, yeah, yeah, in that model, I mean, in this network of sites that I was in and I think this was kind of across the board common with other sites that had a similar structure. It was like the interactivity was essentially just like a message board, like a bulletin

board that was like inside the website. So you could go to the message board and I post there. I'd check threads there like and so all the subscribers in the network have access to this message board, but like it's not the same thing as just directly DMing your favorite creator, you know. I think it is really interesting that on paper it doesn't make any sense from kind of just like a doing the math perspective that the

company that kind of came to compete with Pornhub a free site is a paid site and you're right when when aggregate sites kind of first took over really dominated the porn industry people thought that it was over you know people were like

why would anybody ever pay for pornography again you know I at one point at its peak before they did eliminate all unverified content, porn have had over 7,000 years of porn. So it's not like there wasn't enough for me. Like there's always been enough porn, you know? It's not about that. It's about, I think it does reflect this desire for people to have an experience of genuine eroticism and desire.

But the fantasy of pornography, which is to connect with another person, which is generally speaking, the fantasy of any sexual act, even if it's impersonal or disconnected from another human body, it still has something to do with how you're feeling. Right. There's something more erotic about having the connection with the other person who's in the thing at all, right? I mean, that's part of, yeah, that's part of sex, is having another person be interested in you or being connected to them or whatever. Yeah, I mean, there's a reason girl next door is so popular. Right. It's literally the reason stepmom is so popular. Yeah.

Noel, you wrote a piece in your newsletter recently about people who say, oh, you know, I like vintage porn. It was more ethical then and the implication that like the performers had more agency. right um how tell me a little bit about that but also i'm curious about how much more agency or less do performers have now in the sort of like influencer patreon model right right right so i disagree with that kind of assertion that vintage porn is more ethical and that uh vintage performers or performers in quote unquote the golden age of pornography um were better treated or had you know, better circumstances. I really disagree with that. I actually think that we are, you know, and Siri could speak better to this, but in a really great age of there being

so much conversation and an unprecedented level of kind of understanding of labor rights and advocacy and everything like that happening in pornography right now. And that did not exist in the 70s and 80s. And in fact, you know, it was a hugely controversial, complicated just kind of social hierarchy and also operated really under kind of the agent model. So in the 70s and 80s, if you were working in the porn industry, generally speaking, you were with an agent. And this is sort of where a lot of the kind of reputation of pornography being exploitative kind of was created is because a lot of these agents in the 70s and 80s were very exploitative,

we're not very kind. We're, you know, incorporating drug use into the industry, et cetera, et cetera. And the great thing about these newer models of pornography and in these kind of newer platforms is that performers are not necessarily tied to an agent. They don't have to be tied to an agent. That is a massive positive advancement in my opinion. Yeah. And that's really wonderful. And also it means that, um, creators and performers like Siri can maintain ownership of their content. They can produce their own content. They can have this platform, even without having, you know, a huge career in, in studio pornography, as was the case. If you wanted to have a membership site in the 90s, you would have had to have, you know, a decade of experience in studio pornography before that. And you would not have any kind of ownership over that film. Very similar to mainstream film.

If you are an actor in a movie, that's not your movie. You can't be like, actually, I don't like it. Take it down. You know, if you're in a commercial. And at least the mainstream actors get residuals. Yeah, exactly. Residuals don't exist in porn and they never have. Yes.

Yeah. Yeah. So I think that I, people have such a fascination with 70s and 80s. porn and like vintage porn and as you know a porn evangelist a porn aficionado a porn a porn appreciator some say porn addict you know many many people are saying this um but you know I love vintage porn I watch a lot of vintage porn but I also think that it's something that um I I understand the circumstances under which this these films are created similar to how I understand the circumstances under really any vintage film of any genre,

probably not great. Yeah, I mean, in old Westerns, they used to kill the horses, you know? Yeah, exactly.

Like, it wasn't, it wasn't awesome for anybody. Yeah, I mean, talk about, talk about, like,

representatives of having too much power that they used to exploit. Yeah. Yeah. Hollywood, it was rife with that, obviously. Exactly. And,

and, and, you know, watching old movies, I have that understanding. Watching old porn, I have that understanding. But I think because of, you know, the ways bodies are represented, people, I think often mostly, I would say, women who feel uncomfortable with pornography feel a little bit more comfortable with vintage porn often because there is a little bit more of a natural look going on. Yeah, they're just enchanted by the full bush is what I was going to say.

Yeah, enchanted by the full bush. Because it's like, yeah, you're going to see a lot of bush if you'll get 70s and 80s porn. but are you going to see a woman who's plus size? Yes. No. Are you going to see a person of color? No. Like, are you going to see a person of color who's presented in a non-fetishized for their race kind of way?

Yes. No. Also, frankly, sometimes I have these conversations with people who are like, I love vintage porn. And I'm like, what vintage porn are you watching? Yeah. Because the vintage porn, I have an extensive collection and that stuff is problematic. how like it's not like like there is a lot that you have to sort of like breathe through in vintage porn um so sometimes i do just think it's sort of like the the rose colored glasses of nostalgia

and like the cool posters and et cetera not to say that there aren't so many wonderful things about um many of these older porn films like i think that there's there's so much of value to that but but yeah the the assertation that that things have gotten ethically worse is just not true. Yeah, there's just a halo effect on the past always. Halo around the bush. I'm curious about this and maybe. I was thinking about what I was saying. I didn't appreciate a joke for a. No, no, no, that's funny. It was really good. Like, in terms of the effect that that Pornhub had on the industry, though, like I think a lot about my own industry where I have more agency than I used to because now I have a whole business that no one can really take away from me unless

there's some dramatic change to the YouTube YouTube algorithm, which there might be. So how much agency do I really have? But, you know, I got my podcast. I got my Patreon. I'm touring. And so I'm making a living. And I'm making personally about as good a living as I was making when I worked in television. The difference is I don't have television.

I don't have that industry. I don't have the budget that I used to have to make something like really good and take my time with it. I don't have like the marketing to like. Like, you know, let everybody know what I'm doing and make sure people see it. It's like the tech industry has taken it over, made us all into influencers. And there are advantages to that, but there's also like, man, we have lost something, I feel, in the entertainment industry that makes it a mixed bag at least. I'm a little bit curious in the in the porn industry.

When I remember when porn up first arose, people saying, oh, this is going to destroy the larger porn houses. And I remember I used to, there's like a free. way in L.A., and I used to drive by it, and there was, I think, like, there's a vivid video like building. And I was like, oh, I've heard of that company. There it is. And then a couple years later, like the sign was gone, a couple years after Pornhub, and I was like, oh, maybe, hmm, something has maybe happened in this industry. And I'm just a little bit curious as, is there, are there any downsides to that change? Yeah. I mean, well, like, when I started out, which funny, because we were just talking about agents and I started out with an agent and

fired that agent nine months in because it was such an exploitative, terrible relationship. The contract I was in was absolutely bogus. And so I basically got out of it by threatening to complain to the labor board and force my agent to release me from the contract because he knew that if I had gone to the labor board, it would have ended up a lawsuit. Like the literal NLRB? Yes. Wow.

Well, no, the California labor board. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because, you know, talent agents in the pornetry are licensed and bonded. the same as any other talent agent in mainstream would be. So they can lose their license if they violate the law. And he was with just about everyone. This agent also is like kind of ousted from the industry because he was found guilty in a class action lawsuit within the last couple of years.

So there's that. So, you know, karma. Oh, drop. Yeah. But, and I only mentioned that because my agency was in the vivid building. Wow. I used to have to report to the vivid building all the time for agency things. Report to the vivid building.

Yeah. Report to porn headquarters. You are needed. But it was already the effect of like the tube site model was already impacting companies in the industry when I first started out. Like it was just and I was new to it all. And I was, you know, I had my rose colored glasses on like, wow, I'm like, you know, this is like a big deal. Like I'm shooting for these big name studios. Like I remember the first time I shot a brazzers scene.

It was really special. And at that point already, whenever I was on set for a studio, I would, because a lot of the people who were working on crews, like as photographers, camera operators, directors, etc., had been in the industry for like 20 years. So they'd been there since the golden days of like the early 90s. And they were like pissed because their budgets were completely shot to shit. And a lot of that decimation was from free porn becoming so readily available on the internet. But also, it's like a lot of, like, people generally like audiences and the public aren't super aware of how the porn industry has been thoroughly monopolized in the last 20 years. There's essentially three companies that own everything. And that is true to this day when you're talking about studios.

Wow. Yeah. And that's bad. Yeah. Generally. Yeah. It's, it is interesting even just kind of on the back of talking about vintage porn and people's fascination with vintage porn is, is when people kind of lament. what vintage porn used to be.

It's not like anything to do specifically with the 1970s and the 1980s. What they're describing is they want something that's a big budget. They want something that has a team behind it. They want something that is sort of a real feature and that takes a lot of money. And ironically, the people that complain the most

about vintage porn was so much better. Porn these days isn't good are some of the least likely to pay for modern day pornography. They're the least likely to put money into what's going on right now and putting money into what's going on right now is what will help it, you know, do what you like about 1970s and 80s stuff, which is you like the big budget, you like the fun soundtrack, you like the costumes, you like the dialogue and like my, you know, my background in the porn industry is like script writing and production. And so I'm, I'm all for that. But it's, you know, I got my start writing for browsers. And it's, you know, I got my start writing for browsers. And it's very, you know, it's very. very high volume. You know, they do some larger, some longer feature-length things, but generally speaking, it's going to be, you know, a 40-minute clip. It's usually more than what people even kind of understand it to be because it's behind a paywall and it's not what's going to be, you know, cut up and put on Pornhub. But definitely the budgets are, you know, 10 times less more than what

they were in the 70s and 80s. And the only way that you're going to be getting that kind of quality and that kind of production value is if you pay for porn. Yeah. I mean, look at what, if you look at like old porn catalogs and like what the prices people used to be paying for a porn VHS, like a compilation VHS in like the early 90s, it's like, it's like over $50 in today's money for a VHS that has like four scenes on it. Yeah. I mean, this, oh, that's also true of music and it's true of DVDs and like the physical media era was like,

it was the media was less accessible which is bad in a lot of ways but also there was like a business model that that supported that stuff that we like but your point is well taken that like a lot of people making those complaints are not actually engaging with with the the thing that they that they claim to care about yeah yeah you know folks I'm a comedian I like telling jokes I like doing this podcast I like making funny informative YouTube videos those are the things that I feel I was put on earth here to do. What I wasn't put on earth to do is admin work. And unfortunately, I have to do a lot of that do because somehow I ended up as not just a comedian, but also a guy who runs a small business. I have freelancers who I work with who make my graphics. They help me research these videos. They help edit them. And I have to make sure that all those people are paid on time because they do such incredible work for me. But, you know, it's a little bit hard for me to keep all that stuff straight. I have attention deficit disorder. You know, know, I would rather be writing jokes.

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Are these laws like just sort of more of the same or what is different? different about this moment? I mean, I think a really marked difference this time around is that the attack is not really, I mean, yeah, you're right when you say, like, the porn industry has never really not been under attack since it's been, you know, invisible, like in American culture. But a lot of these age verification laws now on page and Project 2025, the document itself, right, page five in the foreword of Project 2025, is. it literally states transgender ideology as porn.

So that's a really big difference now is that it's like what these laws are also defining as pornographic is expanding in a way that I don't think the average American actually comprehends that they're basically just trying to redefine anything they don't like as porn and then restrict access to it or ban it altogether. I think, like, to kind of talk about how obscenity law operates specifically is, is interesting because that's classic. Like, this is kind of a classic obscenity law anti-pornography move is to sort of associate it with another marginalized group and kind of demonize and criminalize another marginalized group through people's discomfort about pornography. And it's very effective. Actually, after 1957, which is when pornography or when, sorry, specifically obscenity was no longer protected under the Constitution, in Memphis, and a few years after that ruling, Memphis applied obscenity law to three films.

None of them were pornographic. None of them were kind of extremely violent, but all of them featured interracial relationships and specifically black relationships, black romantic relationships. and that was deemed obscene. And that's how obscenity was applied kind of in the 50s and 60s. And now we're seeing anti-pornography sentiment, anti-obscenity sentiment, specifically being applied to trans people. Yeah, the idea that you hear from the right a lot that the existence of queerness of trans identities is like itself pornographic or is sexual content.

that children shouldn't be exposed to. I mean, it opens up such a can of worms to get into it, but let's get into it. I mean, it's kind of a bizarre connection when you think about it, but it also feels like really related to the American uptightness about sexuality generally, that like we're not, we're not willing to talk about sexuality in a healthy way at all. Yeah. So then any discussion of sexuality, even if it's just queer identity as being legitimate, is like lumped in with pornographic content. And it has like it's a key that fits a lock in like the American cultural brain to think about it that way.

Yeah, definitely. And it's it's something where unfortunately this kind of white nationalist agenda really relies, I think, on this very like cis had. are a sexual understanding of sex and sexuality and on relationships. And I think that both kind of pornography and its expression of sexuality beyond procreation, aside from reading King's stuff. And, you know, but both pornography and kind of gender expressionism really challenges that and it challenges this kind of fundamentalist kind of nuclear family ideal that's so much of this far-right conservatism, nationalist conservatism, relies on. I mean, I'm not, obviously, not the first one to say it, but I am a very big fan of repeating

the phrase when it comes to, like, right-wing attacks on porn, on, you know, forms of art that just they don't like, that every accusation is a confession. And that holds true when we're talking about their attempts to censor the existence of transgender people online by calling it pornographic because if you look like Pornhub has their great little like trends map thing that they do every year and if you look at the uh statistically the states that tend to uh their inhabitants tend to search the most for transgender porn they tend to also be the states that are the reddest and most conservative wow that are the most likely to want to ban the existence of transgender people so they don't want to trans people to have public lives or rights but they want to jerk off to trans people and they want to

make the jerking off as like exploitative as possible for those people to push them into the shadows as much as possible to make it as illegitimate as possible to make it as difficult for them to earn a living safely as possible. But even just on the on on the very root level of you know, oh, they don't want kids to see porn of any kind. Every person passing one of those laws jerked off when they were 15 years old because that's when you start jerking off. Yeah. And I think they probably had something nice to look at while they were doing it, right? If it was a, you know, a playboy they found under their dad's mattress, like, yeah. Well, I think it is so disingenuous to say that that all of this legislation is to

protect children from pornography, but also there is such a, such a history of kind of education about pornography being censored, being not allowed, or sex education generally being removed from schools in the same states that are most enthusiastically pushing these anti-pornography bills when it's shown that obviously, you know, if you were concerned about children consuming pornography or the effects that pornography could have on underage people, you would think that there would be a lot more conversation about it. There would be a lot more education about it. That would make the most sense, but that's not what's happening. And in fact, education is being actively censored. So I have said this before, but anytime that anytime there's sort of

a large-scale moral panic about something, but active censorship around education about it, there's something else going on. If you don't want to talk about it, but you're saying that it's destroying everything, something else is happening that's obviously being used as a tool for some sort of agenda that we're not being told about. Yeah.

And also, I mean, you would also think that it's like a lot of these states, like I can't remember, was it Virginia and Oklahoma, but there was the two where they were like there were legislators proposing to lower the age of consent like wow for for child marriage with like a parents approval so that an adult can marry like a 14 year old

and also that this is to protect children yeah in the same states that are that are passing legislation that's forcing nine year old girls to give birth yeah you know I don't believe for a second they give a fuck about kids yeah I mean, when we start talking about on this level, it really makes me feel like sex is the thing that we like understand least about ourselves as a society that we're least willing to confront, which is bizarre when it's one of the base human needs.

Like if we if we talked about food, this way, we have a weird relationship with food too. But if it was like, food cannot be shown to people under 18, but we're also not going to tell them anything about it. I don't know. That might be RFK's next movie. It's on the docket, for sure. It's so. It's so deeply dysfunctional that, like, we can't look at sexual, you know, sexual content. We're not sure we want adults to look at it.

Most people think they definitely don't want kids to look at it. But they also don't want to, no one can agree on what the healthy discussion to have is. So then there's no sex education whatsoever. So then people, when they actually come of age, well, they've just been like jerking off in obscurity for like five years because they people become sexually active and mature like before the age of 18 as biological facts. So then they go through those formative years with no guidance whatsoever. And then they behave horribly sometimes because they've had no guidance. And then we, but we are unable to address this at all. Like we have a complete societal inability to have any.

kind of positive relationship with it. It's terrifying. It is. I think it's really kind of ridiculous how much it's expected that the porn industry will kind of pick up the gauntlet of sex education where, you know, if people, if young people don't know how to have sex, pornography is to blame. Pornography is constantly being blamed for the ways that young people are struggling to connect sexually. but simultaneously, you know, it's, they're trying to ban porn. Or it's like, okay, so you're expecting porn to do your sex education for you. But the idea of young people watching pornography is so terrible that you want to jail all

pornographers. Like, what do you want? Like, what is, so what, what do you want? Yeah. What's going on? Yeah. Somebody, if someone actually just made porn that was sex. educational. I feel like that would be good, but would also cause even more of a firestorm.

Yeah. Yes. There have been attempts. Yeah, I think that, but this is also part of it. There have been attempts also by educators to incorporate porn literacy into sex education, and they are punished for it. They're fired. There are many cases of this, but it's really, really frowned upon for pornography to be spoken about at all. But there is this understanding that underage people can access content and a fear around what that's kind of doing to them. But it's the only kind of suggestion is to ban pornography entirely and also get rid of all-sex education and hope for the best. It's pretty terrifying. It's so bizarre to expect people to have a positive relationship with this thing at all when we won't we cannot confront it as a society we

cannot have seemingly like a wholesome or reasonable conversation about any of these topics on on any level as people who have spent your lives and careers thinking about these things do you have any like theories for why this is the case like why does sex more than any other topic drive us insane as a society? America. What about America? I'm Canadian and it's it's not better.

That's true. I feel like it is uniquely like, well, yeah, you're right. I think it's a little more intensified because of the puritanical nature of American culture. So there's always that to contend with. But yeah, you're right

because you're seeing in many European countries the exact same wave of attempts to outlaw or heavily censor pornography in like France, Germany, the UK. Like it's, it's happening there as well. And those, a lot of those Western European countries tend to have a lot more liberal attitudes towards sex than Americans do. But they still are having the same struggles with like the existence of porn and, and this battle of like, oh, we've got to save the children.

And so we got to ban porn, and it's a lot of the laws that are being introduced and passed over there are, like, using the same kind of language that we're seeing over here. So, I mean, I think it is, I think it is a lot of, it's big, it's, like, hard to really, like, come up with a concise explanation. But the way I think of it is very much, like, well, one, it's a moral panic for, like, definitively. and I think a really big piece of this is a lot of people's misplaced anxiety about a lot of what's happening with the internet and with like the flattening of culture that's honestly like porn is a part of this in many ways but it's it's not the thing that we need to blame for it. But what is to blame is capitalism and completely unregulated. giant corporations that own everything that we do and touch and need and use. Yeah. I think, I mean, it is, I think people are really reckoning with so many complicated

feelings around sex and also the internet and their bodies, their bodies online, their bodies in person, how the body online affects the body in person. You know, I think we're wrestling with so much and this conversation around kind of sexual empowerment and, you know, what is good sex? Should we feel good about sex? Should we feel bad about sex? All these things. Am I disgusting? Am I free? Am I empowered? All this stuff? These are all really complicated topics that we really kind of just started wrestling with in kind of the latter half of the 20th century. And then the internet came about and through this entirely new, massive factor into this conversation and really complicated things. And it kind of, we created this,

this environment where people could exist, you know, ostensibly without a body, but also bodies were so important for the internet. Pornography is so important on the internet. We see bodies online all the time. And I think that that really made people's relationship to sex and sexuality that much more complicated in a way that we haven't really addressed. And also, I do think that you know sex sexuality gender expression it these are all things that people can be controlled by and historically sex has been one of the main ways to control women kind of throughout time yeah and to control you know bodies and to control queer people all these things it's it's a very effective tool for control and with this kind of new age of sexual expression and you know people

exploring that in so many ways, whether it be gender expression or sexual expression, I think that there is a loss of that control. And to be honest, I think that there is a panic from a lot of kind of bad actors, people that don't have, you know, women and queer people and all these things, or even men, you know, this doesn't work for anybody. But these organizations that are looking to maintain control and regulate and sense, and control access are seeing that that power that this could have and they're panicking and and they're doubling down yeah but it seems to be like they're doubling down is like

causing us to like push into this like new era of like prudishness in american society that i mean just in the history of the internet i think about like the beginning of the internet everyone was when it went mainstream people were like yeah you can get porn on there yeah Hell yeah, or like, oh, boy, there's porn on there, but okay, oh, you know, like, now where, like, if you type a sex word to chat GPT, right? Like, it'll. Yeah, it's like, I can't address that, but, yeah. Whereas, like, Google, Google didn't, like, block porn at the beginning. They weren't like, oh, no, porn's not allowed.

But, like, every new tech product that comes out now, no porn's allowed. People are censoring themselves when they speak on platform. We literally discussed before this podcast started, do we have to say corn instead of porn? No, we can say, we can say sex instead. of segs like it's it's allowed to do that um and you see that pervade we've we've talked a lot about like right wing prudishness but like left wing spaces as well liberal spaces um uh it it's been this bizarre swing back that like oh it's fully permeated as far as i can tell like yeah yeah yeah because i've i'm i'm in a lot of left online spaces and i always have been because i was

a child of the internet and um and it's it's kind of nuts especially just in the in my experience as a sex worker using the internet the difference from like 2014 to now is pretty stark like the way that uh even people who if you were to ask them to define their politics they probably classify themselves as a somewhat enlightened liberal or leftist and then they'll turn around and have the swerfiest takes yeah about and the swerf is sex worker exclusionary radical feminist for those who aren't aware i was enjoying the act of And I was like, oh, that's satisfying swirf. I'm enjoying unpacking it in my mind.

Good mouth, feel. It does. It's always a new combination of phonemes that you never, you never predicted. Yeah. And, but I feel like when we, when we fall for that, like, when we fall for that, we're, like, playing into this, like, desire to shove everybody back in the closet and, like, exclude people. and which really I've felt more and more lately like one of the most radical things people can do is like be just continue to be open about their sexualities

whatever it happens to be because it's this I don't know it seems like a trivial thing but this this like a swerve in American society back to Prudishness seems like really politically important and damaging to me yeah well there's recently a book came out Carter Sherman, the, um, about how young people are not having sex anymore. Yeah. Um, and I think that we are kind of in this period of, of prodishness that I feel kind of two ways about because I think the ways that we have engaged with sex throughout history have not always

been positive. I think that there are, there are so many things to unpack about sex and sexuality. Um, as we kind of said much earlier, there are, I think pornography reflects a lot of the uglier truths often about sex and sexual relationships. So I think that it's worth kind of putting everything out and being a little bit more careful with what we kind of choose to embody or carry on with us into kind of this new phase of sex and this new generation's understanding of sex. And I don't think that that's inherently bad. But I also think it's something where I think that there's a lot of fear around sex right now, and I think that that fear is, is in part because of, of this

legislation around pornography, around, around sex, around gender expression, sexuality. There's just a lot of fear-mongering. There's a lot of morality and media kind of conversation. And it is, I think it's just making people really scared and really kind of, we're going back to a level of shame and fear that we haven't seen. in a while. It really is a feeling of like if I talk about these things, they're going to come for me. Like I'll be demonetized or de-platformed by an algorithm or I'll be the victim of like a right-wing hate mob or even a liberal pile on if I say something that's like slightly against a sexual

norm. And so people are like bottling themselves up again and saying like I can't be myself or they're going to. And that's like very sad to see. after years of, you know, honestly, a civil rights movement around this stuff. So look, in terms of these very specific laws, is there a movement to fight back against them? Like, where is the political activity on this? Because it's bizarre how little even press there's been about this change in America.

You know, go on the New York Times and I'll have a map of here's where abortion restrictions have been passed, right? Obviously, very important issue. You do not see the same level of coverage over, like, here is where porn has been banned, which is a big change. Yeah. I mean, most people aren't even aware of a really big deal Supreme Court decision that happened in June, which was Free Speech Coalition versus Paxton, which was, and Free Speech Coalition is a 501C4 nonprofit trade association representing the adult industry. I'm a member, tons of people, like, every major company you've ever heard of in the porn industry is a member of FSC and a lot of individuals. and a lot of individual creators are members as well because anyone who is a worker in the industry can join. And so FSC brought a case against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton

to push back against Texas's age verification law. Obviously, they chose Texas strategically because it's a massive state with a lot of political import in the U.S., but also because with the likelihood that it would escalate to the Supreme Court, which it did, it meant that depending on what the Supreme Court decided in that case, it would basically spell out the future of what age verification laws will look like. And not so surprisingly, the Supreme Court decided in favor of Texas, upholding their age verification law. Ultimately, like, the meat of the case was that FSC was challenging it and saying, like, this is unconstitutional censorship.

And it was upheld as it was written. And Texas's law was one of the worst in terms of, like, any, it applies to any site that has 33.3% or more adult content, which includes Reddit, that includes Twitter. Yeah, Reddit is kind of like 90%. Yeah, that includes most of the internet, honestly. So it's like, yeah, any site with that amount of porn has to verify age, has to use a third-party service to do so. Which, as we discussed earlier, these third-party age verification services are completely unregulated. They're definitely selling your data.

Yeah. There, a lot of them are just sprouting up new out of nowhere funded by like Venture Capital. So he even knows how, like, secure they are on their own in the database where they're storing this information. Yeah. So not only are they selling it, liable that they could be hacked and it will be leaked anyway. Oh, of course they will be. Of course. Yeah.

Yeah. And any source of, one of the problems with collecting this information is any source of data like that becomes attractive to hackers who want the data. Yeah. And then they go get it because they're smarter than whatever new company has just popped up. Yeah. And I think it can't be overstated how scary it is that this is a simultaneous push for. data collection and surveillance in tandem with this big wave against sexuality and yeah and with full bipartisan support in almost every version of these bills that has been

passed nationwide yeah so it's like all these presidents almost never any pushback from democrats yes there there's a lot of the time they're introduced by democrats too so yeah yes for for data collection and then for being punished when that data is leaked like that is absolutely what's going to happen and yeah it's it's really um the kids online safety act i know has been uh i think i don't know if it died the last time it was introduced but it's it's another one that's going to keep coming back um and really disappointingly like aOC endorsed that bill wow last time around and that was like you know her compromising on some other shit but it's like okay so throw sex workers under the bus essentially and not just sex workers

but anyone who depends on on making a living on platforms because the Kids Online Safety Act was essentially going to massively affect anyone who does content creation as their job. And it was also just a internet-wide

surveillance bill for the U.S. And so, yeah, it's like the only, when it comes to specifically like age verification bills and things that target censoring the porn industry, the only real fight is that's being put out. is by the free speech coalition.

Yeah. Yeah. And it's, I think that the way a lot of these are written, it's like, the free speech coalition is run by like two people.

It is, yeah. It's like, and we know them both and they're great. And like, they are doing their best to do all this.

Yeah. And it's, it's a lot. And it's a lot of weight on their back. Okay. So I guess a, a better question then is like, how do we,

how do we build a movement? Like, like that integrates. I mean, we have a, for instance, a very large and vibrant you know queer right civil rights movement in America and this is an extremely linked issue quite clearly like as you guys have really made the

case for really compellingly well I don't think that that's actually known like I don't I don't think that people realize how much this is going to affect them and is is likely already affecting them because all of this you know we know this because we read the bills because the first line of the bills is we want to jail all pornographers, so we're like, yeah, we should probably read the fine print of this. And then the fine print is like, and transgender people, and we're like, whoa, you know, it's like, but people aren't gender extremists, which is anything. Yeah, what does that even mean? But it's like, you know, it's really something that like, yeah, people don't realize how much it affects them where,

where, you know, I think that the phrase canary in a coal mine is often applied to to sex workers and pornography, but I actually disagree with it because I think that that implies that, you know, if, you know, this will affect sex workers, this will affect pornography, and then later on it'll affect you too. But actually what happens is that when it affects sex workers and pornography, these bills that are applied to sex workers and pornography, that makes it so that it can apply to you. That sets the precedent so that can happen to you. And because with legislation, everything is easier when there's precedent and kind of famously with obscenity, Justice Potter Stewart, I know it when I see it, obscenity is very difficult to define. And so what happens is that this legislation gets created kind of ostensibly under the guise of protecting children from pornography, but it's written as obscenity.

It's written with all these other things in it. And then that, because that legislation already exists, it's very easy to apply it to anything that that kind of gets put under the umbrella of obscenity. And because obscenity is so difficult to define, it's very easy to define other things as obscenity. That's exactly what happened with the Texas anti-drag bill, where initially they tried to ban drag. It was listed as unconstitutional. They took it back. They rewrote it as an anti-obscenity bill. Guess what?

It passed. You know, this is exactly what's happening. happening, but I don't think that people necessarily know how much it's going to The specific language that's used in almost all of these laws is material harmful to minors. That is the vague definition that they're using to define what is pornographic or obscene and worthy of censorship. Which presumes even in it, that porn is de facto harmful to minors, which is what is the, like, that's just a presumption. Well, it's also, it's like, you know, if we're talking about harmful minors, like, anything can be harmful to mine. Like, literally anything.

Yeah, of course. Like there's so much content that is, especially right now, there's so much conversation about all of these platforms, YouTube, Instagram, all these things that are that are creating just like horrific environments for children that have nothing to do with pornography. And all of these platforms are getting a complete pass to generate endless AI slop of, you know, Frozen's Elsa getting hacked to pieces. And this is real. And, um, and this is never getting applied to, to YouTube, of course, it's only getting applied to, you know, the born sites. Yeah. So, so how do we let's just, let's just try to end with some, some calls to action for the audience here. Yeah. I'm so grateful to both for coming on and, and walking me through all this and like showing me how, you know, set like sex workers rights or civil rights, porn rights or so, are queer rights. You know, you know, you know, um, that all these issues are linked. Um, so, I mean, what, what can people be doing? This is a hard one. I know. Well, one really easy thing that you can do if you just care about the fight and, and like, you know, some of these cases being challenged in like, you know,

a judicial sense. Like anyone can, you can't become a member of free speech coalition unless you are a worker or, or someone who, you know, works in a career in the adult industry. But anyone can donate to the free speech coalition. So you could go to a free speech coalition website or just Google it. It's the first thing they come up and they have a donate page. You can donate even if you donate like five bucks, that adds up. And they need it because they do a lot of work to. And they're like really the only defense that the industry has when it comes to like challenging bad laws right now. I mean, one question I get a lot is like, is there a union in the porn industry? And answer is like functionally not really like there have been many attempts at unions over the

years it's you know the point of a union is like collective bargaining power and one of the things well there's a lot of things in about the porn industry that make that very challenging but um I mean a big one is just it's we tend to have a very young worker population when it comes to talent performers content creators like a lot of people are in their early 20s there's also an incredibly high turnover rate because working an adult is for a lot of people who come in the industry they see it as like a means to an end you know it's a stepping stone into like a different career path it's a way to you know pay their way through college or something and so that makes it hard to organize as well because you don't have as many people who are coming into

this industry with the attitude of like this is my life's career this is my life's work yeah I am one of the very rare people that like I chose to do this knowing like I'm, I'm ride or die for the porn industry. Like, oh, yeah. Yeah. That's why you're an organizer. Yes. Yeah.

Yeah. That's a big part is like because I do this because I'm like, no, this is like, I'm, I don't ever intend to leave. The only way you'll ever see me like completely leave the adult industry and not have any foot or limb in it on some level is if it becomes so completely untenable for me to even like make a living. in it. And even then, I'll still defend it. I'll still defend it's right to exist. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. But one thing that I, and I don't know that your audience is the one that needs to hear this particularly, but I'll have to say it anyway. One thing that I am, and I just got to get on a soapbox and complain for a second, is I know so many people that make, like, content creators in adult, people who do very, very well on like only fans and similar platforms. to the degree that they're able to live incredibly comfortable lives. And I know for a fact that they are not supporting this fight financially in any regard. And that is very disappointing to me. And I would even say just content creation of any kind, not even pornographic. If you work in media, if you are somebody that relies on, you know, platforms and relies on views, anything to do with this, this is your fight. I mean, even if you don't work an adult, even if you, even if all of your content is based around hating porn, this is your fight.

Genuinely, genuinely, if you want, if you believe that you should have the right to say that, if you believe that you should have the right to say, I hate porn, you should be supporting porn right now. Yeah. And that's the craziest part of it is that this is actually your fight too. How about this? If you are someone who you made a TikTok or an Instagram reel and you said segs instead of sex. draw the line back to like what you guys are talking about draw line back to Fausta Sesta

because that's why you can't say the word sex and give free speech coalition $5 for every time you've had to say sex yeah it's true and just like care about I think that people are uncomfortable

obviously also the way these bills are written and titled kind of factors in making it difficult to go against like obviously it's sort of difficult to be like Like, actually, I'm against the protect the children bill. Like, you know, it's, it's difficult to, to say that because it's, it, the way that is, it's position, which obviously propaganda 101 is that it would be ridiculous to go against the, the bill titled, you know, we, we have to keep children safe bill. They wrote it so that they can write an attack ad if you vote against it.

Exactly. Of course. And, and so I understand why people are uncomfortable with kind of going against this or maybe even just looking into. it further but but have have the confidence in in actually standing up for what you believe in and also have curiosity around what's going on in legislation like actually read what these bills contain and and you might be surprised and you might be horrified actually yeah we need people to be like loud about that we need people look in the camera and say I like porn yeah don't be afraid to be a pervert don't don't be afraid to be a sick porn pervert

Yeah. You're in such good company. Look at us. We're so cute. We're so nice. You guys are so brilliant and I'm so grateful that you both came on the show. Where can we find more of your work, Siri and then, O'L? So if you're interested in my content that I create personally, if you go to SiriDoll.com, you can find it there. I also do a yearly fundraiser and we just did the second one early in September called Corn Telethon. I was a guest. Hey, hey, you were a guest on Korn Telethon. You had a lot of fun. I had so much fun. You said the phrase jerk off or jerking off or a variation thereof, I think, like, 40 times within three minutes. Was that too often?

No, it was hilarious. I loved it so much. I loved it so much. Take a shot every time. So if you're curious about that, you can go to Korn Telethon.com, and we're starting to put out clips now of the entire. It was like a 12-hour long stream, so it's a lot of material to clip down. But that'll be on the YouTube channel soon. And then I also host my own podcast about first pop culture crushes and sexual awakenings called First Thirst.

And you can find that on anywhere that you listen to podcasts. That's the fun. I'm on substack. If you ever want to watch somebody make porn really boring, boring. No. No, I'm sorry. You have a fascinating substack on porn policy and history. If you want to impress your friends with intellectual thoughts.

You guys are so nice to me. Yes, it is about, it's about porn, but it is pretty, it's more so about how pornography influences culture, legislation, and technology. So I am on Substack, Noelle Perdue, and yeah, feel free to read what I write, leave a comment positive or negative. I like them both. Thank you so much for both for coming on the show. Thank you.

Thank you for having us. My God, thank you once again to Noel and Siri. if you're coming on the show. I hope you love that conversation as much as I did if you did and you want to support the show. Head to patreon.com slash Adam Conover five bucks a month.

Gets you every episode of the show, ad free. You also support the show being free for everyone else who wants to listen to it for 15 bucks a month. I'll be so grateful that I will read your name

in the credits of the show this week. I don't think Aros Harmon, Dylan Roy, Jake Callan. Hey, look at distraction, Uber Elder and Ovaro Eggburger, not to mention Greg 0692. Thank you so much.

Greg 0692. If you'd like me to read your name or silly username at the end of the show, once again, that URL, patreon.com slash Adam Conover. If you'd like to come see me on the road, once again, coming up soon, Des Moines, Iowa, Atlanta, Georgia, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, excuse me, also Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Atlanta, Georgia, Brooklyn, New York on November 15th at the Bell House, a bunch of other great shows as well. Oh, Orlando, Florida.

We just added Orlando in 2026. We're always adding new dates. head to Adam Conover.net for all those tickets and tour dates. I want to thank my producers, Tony Wilson, and Sam Roudman. Everybody here at HeadGum for making the show possible. Thank you so much for listening, and we're going to see you next time on Factually. That was a HitGum podcast.

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