That is to say, the
Porn industry relies upon technology, at every level. From the secret
antigravity tech used to levitate the saline filled flesh bags on the chests of those stars to the
ethernet cable strung through the dusty shipping warehouse for a computer used to inventory novelties*. Recently I was a temp at one such shipping company, which shall remain nameless, and the experience was interesting and jarring.
Interesting as it was my first real rough and tumble network job, stringing Cat-6 along the (quite) dusty ceiling of an old warehouse that has gone through renovation after renovation. I felt as if I was laying Metro tunnels under the streets of Paris. I watched as cable passed twixt pipes and conduits both new and peeling with paint and through windows which had once looked outside and now house air-vents. The tasks were simple enough, but just doing them is an experience in itself.
Jarring in that, for all the mundaneness of the warehouse and office and the ordinariness of the office life, I was surrounded by stacks and stacks of porn. The Cat-6 I pulled from the server room came down in the middle of the blow-up dolls, passed over the lounge and then over the racks of Doc Johnson dildos before reaching their destination. The office, across the hall from the IT lab has a file server dedicated to holding all of their ripped DVDs for use on a video-on-demand system(46 Terabytes, yowza). They have a small staff whose entire job is cataloging the thousands of DVDs and Toys entering their selection. I would regularly walk past desks covered in CD/DVD cases piled high, filled to the brim with quivering flesh of every race and gender(several of which are artificial).
All of this is not jarring in itself, but the juxtaposition of it with the employees is what I found most striking. In the warehouse, everyone is a working stiff, they behave as if they're moving any other freight. They may as well be shipping cod fish instead of soft jelly anal beads. The office is similar to my last work experience, men and women work there and are generally amiable toward one another. In fact I heard far less innuendo thrown about than in my previous workplace. If not for the pornography, and the various shades of purple the office was painted, I would have sworn that I'd stepped into an episode of The Office.
I am also struck now by the amusing parallel in place here. Pornography and the Adult Satisfaction
Industry has been accused of devaluing sex and sexuality. But, in this office, where it's just merchandise to be inventoried and sold, it is pornography that is devalued, it is unremarkable. A DVD depicting graphic sex wasn't something forbidden or tantalizing, something exotic that catches the inner adolescent eye, it was just another three minutes of work. Many of the people working there are interested in porn but they are so immersed in it that it becomes more of a hobby, they pay attention to the plots. Pornography, often skirting the edge of what is socially acceptable, is declawed in this place.
Weird.
*Note: Novelties include everything from dolls to artificial phalli(or phallopodes if you think the word is Greek{also note that while this is not true, it is fun to say}), which have existed since before the reign of the Romans or the Greeks. To call such an object novel is a misuse, but so it goes...
:Addendum:
RPGeek reckons that the correct plural is phallides from the Greek. However, what I find most amusing is the parallel with Octopodes.
:Adaddendum:
hapax rebukes that phallos is pluralized phalloi. Ah well...