Virtual Reality PORN AMATEURS
At the beginning there is the question: How could it have come that the classic porn industry has increasingly been run down in the last ten years and it is now the porn amateurs who fill out every little fetish niche and generate millions in sales via the Internet?
On the one hand, this is due to the failure of the professionals: they overslept the Internet. Companies like the Essen porn smithy Videorama filed for bankruptcy, they had rested too long on the successes of the past. The amateurs, on the other hand, use the possibilities of the network as if it had been made especially for them. Suddenly customers can be addressed personally, direct contact is possible. Amateurs promise real sex, authenticity, meetings at eye level. But amateurs face the threat of total commercialisation.
My first research station is located in a bland residential area of Essen, five-storey apartment buildings, clean streets, recycling bins. Im visiting Sonia, a 25-year-old fitness trainer who is having a sex orgy with a friend in her three-room apartment today. Three people having sex on a mattress, several people watching.
Sonia selects her guests meticulously: Not older than 50, polite manners, if possible working. If you write to me and talk directly about fucking, you can forget the invitation, she says. She almost always knows the men from one of the last events, regulars. Today there are: a postman, a truck driver, an electrician, a meat salesman, a production technician, a mechanical engineer, a bank employee and a customs officer.
This is the new amateur porn
Sonia has staged a small - as she calls it - erotic buffet: Her body is covered with pieces of strawberry. The gentlemen kneel and pick the fruit from their naked skin. This helps to loosen up the mood. Then Sonia gives the starting signal.
Now lets get started. The men push at the two women, one takes different positions. I stand at the door frame and am the only person in this apartment who is dressed. Nevertheless, nobody cares about me. Ungraded, the electrician reaches for Sonias breasts, which in turn satisfy two men simultaneously with her hands.
Meanwhile, the postman films the orgy. One alternates with the camera. Sonia has also set up a webcam. Everything is broadcast live on the net. If you want to watch, you have to pay. Philip works as an editor for public television in Germany and as a freelance author. He specializes in reportages. He regularly works as a trainer for TV journalists and lives in Cologne. He has researched extensively in the porn industry for two books.
In the 1970s, living room prohibitionists banned their sex fantasies from Super 8 films, which were then sold in sex shops. Today, anyone of age can sell their products over the Internet. So-called amateur platforms act as a marketplace. Those who register for free can distribute their clips and establish personal contact with the users.
That is the difference to the professional producers: Every customer, i.e. user, can write to the actors on the amateur platforms and even meet them for a shoot. This creates closeness, and closeness is the fuel that has made amateur pornography a lucrative business model.
Exact figures are hard to get from amateur platforms. One can assume, however, that in Germany, for example, about 50,000 women and men earn money with porn clips. With most this might be at best double-digit amounts, but there are also amateurs who can live well with sex in front of the camera. Some people try their hand at it, like Mike, the mechanical engineer who put on Sonias High Heels and her pink bra. He struts up and down naked in front of the others, who laugh heartily but also applaud.
I realize that this is more than just an orgy, it is also a protected space where you can try things out. Whereby: One or the other also wears a mask today. The risk of being recognized is then too great.
Sonia is such a typical representative of the new amateur pornography: exhibitionistic, enterprising and self-confident at the same time. But there are also amateurs who dont want to earn any money, who want to have new sexual experiences.
Especially the internet has made amateur VR porn possible
I get a tip and drive to Düren, a little southeast of Essen. There is the biggest porn studio in Germany. In a converted supermarket, producer Hajo Frings has installed a good two dozen rooms: bedrooms, offices, doctors surgeries, nightclubs, even a barn.
German everyday ambience for amateur pornos, staged by a professional. Everything must look ugly, says Hajo Frings during the small tour of his empire. That increases realism. Today the producer organizes a so-called gang bang, a sex orgy with many men and few women. The women are the main protagonists - and they are amateurs: Diana, Petra and Manuela, all around 50 years old and from more or less middle-class backgrounds.
Unusual, I think, but why shouldnt women at that age also shoot porn? Especially since Petras reason for this applies to many hobby pornographers: Im looking for sexual variety, a break from everyday life. Here I can experience something and find myself in a safe environment. The producer is in charge. The 15 men who came - also all amateurs - signed a contract, so they are known by name. Condoms are ready. What drives Petra, the married cleaning lady, is the sexual kick, an adventure. Privately she couldnt organise such an event.
Amateur porn feels more real
In a studio with four circular red cushions it starts. The glittering light chains that swing down from the ceiling could also create a mood in a swingers club. Here we go. To the guns, boys. Hajo loves the clear words. Soon a process has developed: The men stand around the round sofa, whoever is in the mood at the moment becomes active and approaches. The women grab it or offer themselves. Men stand in a circle around a round cushion, three women sit on it and satisfy them.
An older guy is only wearing his T-shirt with the lettering Bad Boy. He puts on a condom while he watches Manuela concentrate as she lets another man invade her. Everything without: negligent practices.
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