The Great Porn Depression
When I was a kid, my parents were very frugal with their money. Most of my friends’ parents were the same way. One of the reasons so many people, like my parents, were so careful with their money is because, when they were kids, they grew up during this thing called The Great Depression.
During The Great Depression, the stock market tumbled, banks folded, millions of people lost their jobs, and bread lines and soup kitchens were common sights in America. It was a tough time made worse because, back then, there was no welfare or unemployment insurance. Finally, someone had a great idea to have a World War and kill lots of people and steal other countries’ land and resources and, as a result, the economy rebounded.
Right now, we’re in a porn depression. Buyers are returning product in record numbers and they’re either extremely slow payers or they’re not paying at all. The halcyon days of cables sales are history and foreign sales are in the toilet as those guys aren’t paying worth a shit either.
Traditionally, porn has always gone into the doldrums in the summer months. But I can’t ever remember the summer slow-down arriving as early or as hard as it has this year. And my observations aren’t merely based on an early summer slow-down. The Justice Department is scaring the crap out of a lot of people. Legend has laid off a significant portion of its workforce. Companies like Red Light and others have either announced a production hiatus or their simply not shooting and just not saying much of anything about not shooting. And at just about every company I interact with, people are complaining that business sucks more than its ever sucked before.
“Doctor!” says the nurse, “We’ve barely got a pulse!”
“Don’t worry, nurse. Sex sells. It always has and always will.”
“If you say so, Doctor.”
Yep. We are in a porn depression.
So how did this happen?
Well, there’s a lot of stuff contributing to this, not the least of which is the incredible amount of product being dumped into the marketplace.
Economics is about supply and demand. The jiz biz is trying to supply more than the demand can bear. So one of two things happens. (Or they both happen.) That is, buyers take less product than is offered and/or they continue taking the product but, later, they return a bunch of it and don’t pay for what they kept. (Or they pay excruciatingly slow for the product they kept.)
But I have a plan. A very simple plan. I think a lot of you Johnny-cum-latelies to the XXX biz should simply get the fuck out. And, frankly, maybe some of you old-time companies should retire. I know that sounds harsh but a lot of you barely have a clue what you’re doing anyway and your product sucks and you whore it out and, since you new guys don’t have any real juice with buyers anyway, they’re going to pay you even slower if they pay you at all. Besides, a lot of you are going to tank anyway so why don’t you just do the right thing and leave. I’m sure you new guys can sell your investors on other scams where you might even be more accomplished when it comes to pretending to know what you’re doing.
Posted by jimmyD under It's all the same crap. |