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The Trap: Sex, Social Media, and Surveillance Capitalism
Sex sells…but buyer beware. Selling sex has never been more profitable—or more dangerous—for everyone on both sides of the screen. Jewels Jade should know. She has spent most of her life working in the adult entertainment industry.Porn isn’t just for men in trench coats and shady video store backrooms anymore. From vanilla to vile, it’s all online, just a click away on any device. While online porn may not exactly be ‘social’ media, the sophisticated business models and technology behind it would make Facebook all hot and bothered. Just like social media, though, online porn banks on fresh content and takes viewer datamining to the bank, creating a snowballing cycle of algorithms, addictive behaviors, and extreme performances that have consequences that go beyond our wildest dreams and worst nightmares.A porn star ‘revealing all’ seems like an oxymoron, but that’s exactly what this book is. From the secret uses of pina colada mix to neurochemical re-engineering, this book is your personal tour of the palace of fun house mirrors that is the business of adult entertainment.
278 pages, Kindle Edition
Published June 28, 2021
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November 4, 2024DID NOT FINISH
Jade reiterates her belief throughout that women who choose any form of sex work, be it online chatting or full service escorting, only do so because they are fiscally and/or mentally broken. She contradicts herself in her own introduction, however, discussing the women she worked with on a phone sex line:
“ … they were regular gals with stretch marks and scrunchies, their deep sexy purr usually the result of a pack-a-day smoking habit more than anything. It was an act, a business, a performance and nothing more.”
If this can be true for the women Jade worked with, why does it not apply for the women she contrasts to the cage in the book?
Further, Jade claims that webcammers are generally excused from the rampant upkeep strippers are expected to uphold. Strippers must seek out plastic surgery, excessive exercise, and a hairless body, while webcam performers have the luxury of catering to a wider demographic of interests.
This notion falls flat when recalling the plethora of queer and kink strip venues. Exclusive and world-renowned clubs like the Sapphire or King of Diamonds might reflect Jade’s vision, but cities like San Francisco and Portland boast the same or more gay strip venues than their straight counterparts (twelve in the former and seven in the latter). It stretches the imagination that the clientele at these clubs would be searching for the dancers Jade posits they must and do.
On the same side of the coin, where is the starving market for queer sex work online? The glut of digital porn diversity, it could be argued, works hand-in-hand with the onslaught of amateur creators that occurred during the pandemic; these days, any fetish, body part, or scenario can be found through the performers who already published it. A hopeful looking to create a fanbase around their size or gender expression, for example, might have better luck auditioning for a non-straight club where their appearance is actively sought out rather than trying to sell their videos to a gorged audience.
(Of course, webcamming is a preferred choice for many. It requires much less physical work than dancing and allows for flexible hours. The queer/kink clubs I described are only commonplace in large, liberal cities, as well. Many people who take the webcam route are facing all three of the above issues and simply cannot do anything beyond online work; but if Jade's theory is that webcamming is the gateway to the cage, these issues don't or gradually cease to exist.)
In Jade’s world, every sex worker wants to get out. Nobody decided to dance, date, or do it for money for any reason separated from tragedy or desperation. “Remember,” she notes, “most of the women who end up as exotic dancers were already damaged or desperate enough to even consider this sort of work.” This is simply not reality.
I was intrigued to explore a perspective I staunchly oppose—sex work abolitionism—offered by someone who operated significantly in the industry, rather than by a clueless bystander who’s street experience ended at Pretty Woman. Instead, Jade attempts to construct an intangible algorithm that lures, captures, and contains damaged women. I appreciate many of her points: the proliferation of private webcam content onto free sites by the very companies hosting said webcamming, for example, is not the mainstream talking point it should be. On the whole, however, I find her message to be inherently flawed and dangerously myopic.
Jade reiterates her belief throughout that women who choose any form of sex work, be it online chatting or full service escorting, only do so because they are fiscally and/or mentally broken. She contradicts herself in her own introduction, however, discussing the women she worked with on a phone sex line:
“ … they were regular gals with stretch marks and scrunchies, their deep sexy purr usually the result of a pack-a-day smoking habit more than anything. It was an act, a business, a performance and nothing more.”
If this can be true for the women Jade worked with, why does it not apply for the women she contrasts to the cage in the book?
Further, Jade claims that webcammers are generally excused from the rampant upkeep strippers are expected to uphold. Strippers must seek out plastic surgery, excessive exercise, and a hairless body, while webcam performers have the luxury of catering to a wider demographic of interests.
This notion falls flat when recalling the plethora of queer and kink strip venues. Exclusive and world-renowned clubs like the Sapphire or King of Diamonds might reflect Jade’s vision, but cities like San Francisco and Portland boast the same or more gay strip venues than their straight counterparts (twelve in the former and seven in the latter). It stretches the imagination that the clientele at these clubs would be searching for the dancers Jade posits they must and do.
On the same side of the coin, where is the starving market for queer sex work online? The glut of digital porn diversity, it could be argued, works hand-in-hand with the onslaught of amateur creators that occurred during the pandemic; these days, any fetish, body part, or scenario can be found through the performers who already published it. A hopeful looking to create a fanbase around their size or gender expression, for example, might have better luck auditioning for a non-straight club where their appearance is actively sought out rather than trying to sell their videos to a gorged audience.
(Of course, webcamming is a preferred choice for many. It requires much less physical work than dancing and allows for flexible hours. The queer/kink clubs I described are only commonplace in large, liberal cities, as well. Many people who take the webcam route are facing all three of the above issues and simply cannot do anything beyond online work; but if Jade's theory is that webcamming is the gateway to the cage, these issues don't or gradually cease to exist.)
In Jade’s world, every sex worker wants to get out. Nobody decided to dance, date, or do it for money for any reason separated from tragedy or desperation. “Remember,” she notes, “most of the women who end up as exotic dancers were already damaged or desperate enough to even consider this sort of work.” This is simply not reality.
I was intrigued to explore a perspective I staunchly oppose—sex work abolitionism—offered by someone who operated significantly in the industry, rather than by a clueless bystander who’s street experience ended at Pretty Woman. Instead, Jade attempts to construct an intangible algorithm that lures, captures, and contains damaged women. I appreciate many of her points: the proliferation of private webcam content onto free sites by the very companies hosting said webcamming, for example, is not the mainstream talking point it should be. On the whole, however, I find her message to be inherently flawed and dangerously myopic.
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