Some Thoughts On Porn Awards ************* and Memory
By MikeSouth
December 7th, 2011
from
http://www.mikesouth.com
I remember getting my first AVN nomination, it was for my first video. I remember winning my first time as well, it felt good even though it was not at the main show but at a dinner get together the night before. It always felt good to hear my friends announced as winners too, it's a kind of validation that it's not all for the money, that if you do something, somewhat creatively or different then you can stand out from the crowd.
Unfortunately, creative and different began to mean violent and misogynistic and thus began the fall of the house that guys like Reuben Sturman and Russ Hampshire built. You had asshats like Rob Black, Mark Handel (Kahn Tusion) and the like getting all the recognition...as if violent acts were somehow creative.
Rob Black even goes on national television and dares the Attorney general to come after him, vowing that he would never take a plea. Well the Attorney General did come after him and Rob did take a plea and for all of this unnecessary scrutiny he brought to the industry with overtly violent and arguably obscene content we are rewarding him with the Freedon isn't Free Award and induction into the Hall of Fame.
It isn't just Rob Black, if you look at the inductions over the last few years of non performers it reads like a who is who of people who are directly responsible for the industry being in the sad shape it is in. And this year AVN has singled out yet another douchebag who has helped to ruin porn and created a special "Visionary Award" just for him. Well if your vision is to have AHF controlling things and the market for adult shrunk to one quarter what it was five years ago, then yes, Steven Hirsch is indeed a visionary.
But as a friend of mine points out this is just porn doing what porn is best at, eating itself from within, and awarding itself for doing so.
The single biggest battle fought in porn this year was *************. Nobody wanted to take on this battle, not AVN not XBiz not AIM and Not the FSC...Oh the FSC acted like they were in on it but in the end they accomplished NOTHING, NADA, Nil as always.
So a ragtag team of people including myself, Mark Speigler, Sean Tompkins, Michael Whiteacre, Mercedes Ashley and Monica Foster took on what nobody else would. We all suffered slander, insults, threats, we had our families names posted publicly along with phone numbers, kids photos, where the kids went to school, pictures of our houses and faked documents showing us to be HIV positive, criminals and all sorts of stuff. We paid a heavy price for everyone in the industry but in the end our persistence and our tireless efforts paid off and PWL was no more. I got a lot of email and phone calls thanking us for our efforts, many from people I have had long standing issues with, but they knew that everything else aside, this was more important. It cost all of us a lot of money too, yes we got a few donations here and there but compared to what we spent it wasn't much, although is WAS appreciated. but that wasn't why we were in the fight, we weren't mercenaries though we were helped by a few who were, most did it for free, because it was the right thing to do.
So when it comes time to award the the best of our industry does anyone remember what we sacrificed to win that battle for EVERYONE, all 15,000 performers who had personal information on that site? Nope.
Yes I feel slighted but honestly They could leave me out completely and just recognize the rest and I would be perfectly happy, I don't need the recognition, that isn't why I did it.
But it seems the industry forgot.
Yet at this very moment it has been brought to my attention by several performers that a copy of that site has been brought back online, and they are asking me again to please get it taken down, and in all honesty I am not in a position to fight that fight again, if the industry itself doesn't care why would anyone else?
Please retweet, email or republish this as you see fit...I want everyone in the industry to read it in the hope that they will remember.