TOP TEN RULES FOR PORN BEGINNERS
1. Your first porno is best bought and watched alone.
Privacy reduces the potential for the shame and embarrassment that may accompany this momentous occasion. Watching it with someone else is only going to lead to A. Sex, if you're lucky or B. Someone walking out of the room in embarrassment or disgust. Tastes are so individual that the only way to successfully get one for someone else is not to. If you don't go to the store or to the monitor to help your partner choose it, you're less likely to like it, which leads to the next rule.
2. Don't buy porn for people who haven't seen it before (i.e. your wife) unless it's a gag gift.
Any adult who has never seen a porno, not even accidentally, has been actively avoiding it and doesn't want to see it. It's the 21st century--porno is everywhere. Even those who choose to avoid it are more likely than not to have accidentally seen it: walked in on someone watching it; popped in the wrong DVD at a friend's house; typed in "whitehouse.com" instead of "whitehouse.gov"; any of a number of ways. Unless the person you're buying for gives you specifics, don't expect them to like it. They may let you try again, but don't expect initial success. Communicate Communicate Communicate.
3. Porn must be watched while jacking and jilling.
Porn is made for people who are engaging in sexual activity while watching it, either alone or with a partner. You can’t approach it like you would a Hollywood movie. It’s interactive. You have to pull out your joysticks and Fire buttons. If you try to sit and watch Cunt On A Hot Tin Roof in the same way you watch Inception--with your pants on--you will be bored. But start dipping into that inter-thigh wetness, then all of a sudden every single detail becomes exciting. It's like you're having fantasy sex with the people onscreen, and your focus becomes laser-like. Another option is watching the movie but mentally banking the images and sounds for later when you're masturbating.
4. Not everyone sexually behaves the same way you do.
I've heard a lot of people sneer "Fake!" at this or that in a porno. If performers do something that's never occurred to you to do, that's "different", or that "looks uncomfortable," don't assume it's fake or not pleasurable. Try it first before you judge. Porn can be a learning tool as well.
5. Do work.
You can find videos of any kind of sex you want with any kind of people you want if you're willing to do a little internet searching to find it. There are over 11,000 porno videos released a year. (Hollywood distributes about 500.) For every porno that fits the sitcom writer's stereotype of porn, there are 50 that don't. For every body type, there are entire series dedicated to worshipping them. There is more porn on Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than is dreamt of in your philosophy.
6. "Amateur" is a marketing tool.
Pornographers use this word to polarize the stereotypes of "fake porno sex" vs. "real sex" and to get money from consumers who believe that "amateur camerawork" is equivalent to "real couples who LOVE each other having sex." Who is more of an "amateur": a 19-year-old porn performer who's working with a "professional" company and has had sex with 7 guys in her lifetime; or a 43-year-old exhibitionist who's had sex with 150 men in her lifetime and is distributing clips of her and her boyfriend via the internet? The later will label her video "amateur", but either way, it's a performance. It's exhibitionism. The vast majority of porno videos with the word "amateur" on the cover are using porn professionals anyway. Homegrown Video is one of the only companies dedicated to distributing videos made by people outside the porno industry.
7. Trying porn is FREE FREE FREE.
And I'm talking legally free, too. There's lots of porn previews/trailers available from sites like EvilAngel.com, AskJolene.com and FreeOnes.com. And, of course, right here on ADT. In today's world you don't have to waste money paying for pornos you end up not liking. You can watch free previews of the parts of the movie that the director thinks is the best. Heed, though: for some reason many porn previews are better made than the porno itself. The editing and music is much tighter and fast-paced. Some of these previews have the quality of a TV commercial! But then the movie turns out to be the same old point-and-shoot porno. If the whole video was as good as the preview...well, that would be one hot video but it would probably only last 10 minutes. But it'd be so hot I wouldn't need more than 10 minutes. =)
8. There is a short list of things you shouldn't expect to see.
If you're worried about gross surprises, here's what you will probably NOT see (if your first porno is an American porno):
Piss, poop, period blood, fisting, vomiting, necrophilia, bestiality, ch*** p***ography. Legal US porn bought from a store or a legit website almost never shows these things, and it NEVER never shows the last one. If you get the European version of some US-made videos, you may run across a peeing scene.
There is a long list of things you should expect to see in standard pornos, but you can just check out the list of topics in ADT's forum to get a sense of those.
9. Porno does not have anywhere near the cinematic quality of a standard Hollywood movie.
The vast majority of porn has the quality of a home video. This is not an exaggeration. We consumers take Hollywood for granted, and we underestimate how very hard and very expensive it is to make a Hollywood movie. $500,000 is "low budget" in the mainstream movie business. You can make 10 pornos for half a million dollars. So, don't buy your first porno with high expectations, no matter what the box says. The porn videos with the highest production values are one level below a music video. Watching porn is more similar to watching a sports match than a movie. Everyone's improvising moves within a set of rules; everyone's more athletic than you; and the camera is doing its best to follow the balls.
DO NOT believe those people who talk about the "Golden Age" where "porno movies actually had plots." Those people are in love with their *memories* of those movies, not the reality of them. If you watch old pornos like Behind the Green Door (1972) or Deep Throat (1972) after watching The Godfather or Star Wars, you'll laugh at the very idea of comparing pornos to real cinema. If you're looking for "something erotic for your spouse, but not too hardcore/too slutty/too graphic," or "something with a plot," then leave the porn room and rent one of the following award-winning, mainstream erotic films that fit those requirements better than "couples porn":
9 1/2 Weeks
Body Heat
Breaking the Waves
Crash (the Holly Hunter one)
Damage
The Dreamers
Eyes Wide Shut
Frankie and Johnny
Last Tango in Paris
Legends of the Fall
Mulholland Drive
Romance
Secretary
Sex and Lucia
Shortbus
Splendor
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Threesome
Wild Orchid
Y Tu Mama Tambien
10. Porno appeals to your horniness.
That simple. Don't expect artiness or something revolutionary. The question to ask yourself when considering getting a porn video is, "Do I want to watch people performing sex acts?" If the answer is "Yes," then go for it knowing that's what you'll find.
(updated December 2010)
Edited by - BustdownGal on Dec 16 2010
[mod edit: fixed ALL CAPS subject line]
Edited by - killbillvol69 on Dec 16 2010