XJ Selman
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Recently, porn software company MiKandi announced that they'd be releasing a porn app for Google Glass, as demonstrated in a video of a fellow pouring some fresh coffee in anticipation of an absolutely capital wanking session.
Mikandi Store
Subtlety is not porn's strong suit.
But just hours after its release, Google swooped down like a mighty mother eagle and banned not only the MiKandi app, but every future porn app that might manifest itself.
But wait -- didn't Google invent incognito mode, a browser that was explicitly created so you can look at porn without leaving a record? Google, like everyone else on the Internet, wants to have it all, and by "all" we mean secret anonymous access to people in their birthday suits. And they're not the only online company trying to figure out what to do with porn ...
Pinterest -- the website that makes women's pupils dilate in a hobby-crazed fever -- has actually had a secret porn dilemma all along. In addition to food recipes and knitting patterns, there's also a shitload of nudity. Now, to clarify, what you probably think of as "porn" isn't what Pinterest users consider "porn." Try to picture whatever your grandmother would consider obscene (e.g., soft-focus ladies in lingerie with their legs uncrossed). Still, Pinterest needs to bring on future advertisers, and the last thing moneymakers want is for Pinterest to turn into soft-core Tumblr. (We'll get to Tumblr in a minute.)
Pinterest via Gizmodo
Pinterest still has so much to show us.
Ultimately, Pinterest decided to switch their policies and embrace their tastefully naughty side by letting users post "artistic nudes." Why? Because Pinterest is about passions, and some people are passionate for half-naked women. If you can't beat 'em, right?
Back in April, YouTube pulled down Robin Thicke's latest music video, "Blurred Lines," because apparently it was inappropriate for the site. And that's fair, we suppose -- the uncensored version had enough topless dancing models to make all the 12-year-old boys of the world keel over from massive coronaries. And a few days later, YouTube posted a less-nude version of the video. So OK, YouTube doesn't like breasts, but it appreciates pop-influenced R&B from white guys. Fair enough.
More than fair, really.
Except three seconds of (not safe for work) searching will reveal that YouTube LOVES breasts. It also loves butts and weens and hoo-has, if you look hard enough. The site is so riddled with (again, not safe for work, unless you work in a body-painting parlor) nudity that the key to posting these videos on YouTube is to just not be Robin Thicke.
Apple has always been proud of their tight porn policies, rejecting porn apps from their App store and pushing fetishists to Android. That is, until Twitter-owned Vine got up and running. Vine, as you know, is an app that lets users post six-second videos, and because this is the Internet, of course videos of people doing it found their way onto the site immediately. Which meant that suddenly Twitter itself was a porn app, and Apple couldn't have it.
So Apple turned around and told Twitter to shut their Vine-baby's porn habits up, and Twitter obliged. And thus the day was saved, and Apple could once again say there was no porn in their app store ...
Bay Ismoyo / AFP / Getty
"A great user interface or buckets of porn. Pick one, not both."
... that is, if you ignore the thousands upon thousands of Twitter profiles completely dedicated to posting pornographic images on Twitter every single day, all of which are easily found if you use the right hashtags. Apparently, blurry six-second video clips are unacceptable, but several gigabytes of pictures so nasty that they'd make Larry Flynt blush are completely fine. Good job, Apple.
In some Asian countries, Yahoo blocks porn from appearing in their search engines. Clearly, Yahoo is the champion knight in the Kingdom of Blue Balls, where even chastity belts have chastity belts. Except that Yahoo just bought Tumblr for a measly $1.1 billion, and what is Tumblr if not one of the most popular mainstream porn sites in the world, where porn is so accepted that over 100,000 people sign up to the bigger Tumblr porn blogs?
Phat Booty Cuties
Phat Booty Cuties is the Ulysses of our time.
Bloomberg has found that 22 percent of clicks coming into Tumblr come from porn sites, while out of Tumblr's top 200,000 sites, 22,755 are porn blogs. And since Yahoo -- in a world where people hate them -- is trying harder to stay relevant than Madonna at a 2008 Lady Gaga concert, they've stated that they'll keep the porn, because Tumblr's "diversity" is exciting. We're sure that's what all the kids are calling it these days, too.
Check out XJ's $0.99 science-fiction novella on Amazon here, with the sequel coming out very soon. And of course, you should look at his writing blog and poke him on Twitter.
