L.A.J. WEEKLY

Well, I think it’s time for a top ten list here. This is not a happy one though. I’ve had a lot of time to reflect lately, considering I’ve been pretty quiet on the boards and on ICQ, and just sitting back and observing the adult world around me.L.A.J. WEEKLY

Well, I think it’s time for a top ten list here. This is not a happy one though. I’ve had a lot of time to reflect lately, considering I’ve been pretty quiet on the boards and on ICQ, and just sitting back and observing the adult world around me. This much is certain – while I do agree that this is one of the best industries in the world with tons of kick ass people in it, there is still so much wrong with our industry. I’m not just talking about child pornography and copyright infringement either. But while I do feel that our industry is getting better and better as time goes on, following is a descriptive top ten list of things (not in any particular order) still going on lately that really suck, and make a bad day that much worse.

1. Spam – A sure-fire way to guarantee that I or anyone who asks me about you, will never do business with you. Come on! I’m one of the good guys who can see right through the bullshit – not some unsuspecting jackass consumer. But as sure as I wake up with morning wood each day, my inbox is filled with spam. My hobby as of late is to reply to some of the spam email I get with a “please remove” message, and then I’ll include some spam of my own, and of course give them links to previous articles written about what we think about spammers in the YNOT News. Takes only a few seconds really. Then I’ll forward the spams I get to the FTC, as well as a Christian site or two. But would you believe it? The only replies I ever get to my please remove responses are notifications of delivery failure. Cowards.

2. Lack of originality – Sure with music, fashion and yes, even websites – just about everything known to man has been done before. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but blatant rip-offs are bullshit. Thank God the future of cloning is being stopped dead in its tracks (we think) before someone gets the crazy idea to clone YNOT Bob, and claim him as their own and toting it as better than the original! Unfortunately ideas are not copyrightable, and neither is look and feel, but when does imitation become theft?

3. Pop ups (and pop unders) – Why is this still going on as often as it does? Hell, I myself like to surf porn every now and then, but like pretty much every other surfer out there with even an ounce of sophistication, I absolutely DETEST these. I’m sure this especially applies to the majority of the poor schmucks out there surfing porn during work, and losing control of their browser as the boss walks by. It’s almost like a game for me now – see if you can close all the pretty windows in under a second or less. Then remember which sites NEVER to return to.

4. Board immaturity – Want to be treated like an adult, and have visitors regardless of where they are from think that our industry isn’t childish, as we are so often portrayed in the media? Granted we are under no obligation to set an example for any industry, but to bitch about the mainstream’s perception of us, and then see someone turn around and do something like post anonymously calling someone every name in the book, and all the while demonstrating their poor communication
skills is not only hypocritical, but laughable. Hell, I’ll be the first to admit that I am a goof off on the boards sometimes and have posted some pretty immature shit, but it’s always in jest, and I’m just being myself. The only time I’ll bitch about the mainstream is when they interview the wrong people in our industry, or when they do something silly like confuse child pornography with a child’s ACCESS to pornography. Otherwise their weariness of us is often justified.

5. Shameless self-promotion – No matter how hard you try, you just can’t polish a turd. If a product/person/website truly sucks, no amount of pretty packaging and deceptive and excessive self-promotion is going to hide that. Except of course to the most impressionable newbies who don’t know any better, just enough of them unfortunately will fall for something just because it’s all over the place. It’s amazing how much out there is toted as “the shit” when the goods just aren’t delivered. Name and brand recognition alone is no guarantee of quality. Garbage in, garbage out.

6. Cheaters – Plain and simple. If you make a deal with someone, just stick to it! Don’t shave or pull down reciprocal links, or delay payments or not follow up or whatever. Proven cheaters deserve to be publicly branded on the boards, once of course it is factual.

7. Liars – Stats, revenue, unique visitors, dick length, you name it – it’s being lied about everywhere. What shits me the most is how easy it would be to call so many of these people on their lies.

8. Theft – Content, ideas, business models. Theft of all sorts in our industry still runs free like the river Nile. For example, look at all the YNOTmasters.com rip-offs out there. ‘Nuff said.

9. Typos – With the amount of typos I see out there, it’s amazing that some coders are successful. A few typos here and there, I can totally understand, but it doesn’t take a degree in English to hit spell check once in awhile to communicate. Granted I myself am fortunate enough to be able to spell pretty well, and just want to clarify that I in no way mean this specific rant to be personal to anyone.

10. Unity – There are still too many personal gripes out there that cause rifts in our industry. Unity in the general sense is definitely not possible for us, but because we are a relatively small and new industry, there could be a whole lot more ‘working together’ versus ‘working against’ going on.

Well there you have it. A top ten list of shame for the week. To be fair, I will follow this up in the near future with a top ten list of what is right with out industry, and believe me, I feel there is PLENTY! In the meantime, I will continue to thrive here at YNOT and do my best to save the world little by little each day.