Do-It-Yourself Porn

Some names in this article have been altered to protect the privacy of the subjects.

Nineteen year-old New School student Mary has three tumblr accounts. One of her blogs displays her personal photography, another is full of multimedia re-blogged images, and the third is reserved for cum-shots, graphic penetration, and .gifs of bouncing breasts, often starring Mary herself. With 54,000 followers, Mary’s pornography blog has garnered a steadfast group of faithful fans.

When talking with Mary, a tall young woman with a deep, resonant voice, it is hard to believe she runs such a raunchy blog. Currently a sophomore at Eugene Lang pursuing a psychology degree, Mary hopes to earn a Master’s Degree in sexology in the future, a program only offered at a few universities throughout the country.

Mary created her blog in high school, but didn’t start posting content of herself until she turned 18. She initially chose Tumblr as her blog platform because of the anonymity the site offers. “It’s a very, very anonymous site if you want it to be,” says Mary. “There is no profile aspect to the site. There are so many blogs on Tumblr that I look at regularly and can’t even tell who is behind it.”

Mary has never showed the blog to her family, laughing at the idea of them ever seeing it. Of the 130 million bloggers currently using Tumblr, each one has a different reason for devoting time to the site. For Mary, her blog is a medium to express a separate and undisclosed side of herself.

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Finding porn on the internet today is as simple as a quick Google search. But what’s interesting about something like the growth of amateur porn sites on Tumblr is that people are creating pornographic content not for money, but for self-expression. Tumblr is a blogging platform that has cultivated a prominent internet sub-community centered around free, amateur porn. The multitude of pornographic blogs on the site are adorned with millions of flashing .gifs and images of every kind of fetish and fascination, yet the people behind Tumblr blogs are often faceless, camouflaged behind the boobs, butts, and genitalia that make up their web domains.

The porn industry has always been at the forefront of technological innovation on the Internet, and Tumblr is a prime website making media-rich pornographic content completely accessible. Bloggers are allowed to follow other people and repost their content, while simultaneously attracting marketing advertisers from a variety of industries. With nearly 35% of all content on the internet being pornographic, according to the Witherspoon Institute, it seems that the evolution of pornography is an important cultural phenomenon that lacks widespread conversation. According to Associate Professor of Culture and Media at Eugene Lang, Trebor Scholz, “Porn traffic on the internet exceeds that [traffic] of major mainstream media outlets like the New York Times. And yet, there is hardly any public discourse about it.”

Emma Caterine, Program Officer of the Red Umbrella Project, a program which offers support to former and current sex workers, described the motives of sex bloggers on Tumblr as “an exploration of their sexuality, more than artistic expression most of the time. I would say that mostly, it’s for affirmation.” Caterine believes professionally-filmed porn is a dying industry, due to the plethora of free content available on the internet. She also expressed support for amateur porn as a form of self-expression. “When you have your own Tumblr page, you get to control your own content, so it is affirmation on the terms of the blogger,” says Caterine. “Tumblr recognizes the general dynamic that draws people together on the website.”

Tumblr possesses a dashboard interface, which makes it easy to share content due to the visible live feed of the most recent posts from the blogs each user follows. There are other notable blogging platform sites to choose from, like WordPress, Blogger, SquareSpace and a myriad of other new web hosting sites constantly being developed, but Tumblr is distinguished for its accessible pornographic content.

As sexual creatures, pornography seems like an inevitable human expression, however the question of what qualifies as “erotic art” and bonafide pornography remains a grey area. According to Merriam-Webster, pornography is defined as the explicit portrayal of sexual subject matter for the purpose of sexual arousal, while erotica is described as the portrayal of sexuality with high-art aspirations, as well as feelings and emotions.

While a large majority of porn on Tumblr qualifies as “hardcore,” because of graphic depictions of vaginal and anal penetration, the line between its role as erotic art or porn is up for debate. The site allows users to choose their own theme and HTML editing, making it convenient for creating personal touches and aesthetics for a wide variety of content.

Museum of Sex employee and avid Tumblr enthusiast, Randy Watson, enjoys the porn community on Tumblr because he believes that the .gifs and images that inundate the site are an effective form of personal expression.“People make porn to show off, to say ‘look at me’, this is what I look like, and this is my body, and my penis, and my breasts,” he said. “It’s how they are expressing themselves, expressing their body.”

The increasing number of sex bloggers was acknowledged by Tumblr founder, David Karp, in June 2012, when he revealed that porn-related content on Tumblr made up between two and four percent of the site’s total traffic. In May 2013, sex bloggers became concerned when Yahoo! announced its intention to acquire Tumblr for roughly $1.1 billion. The deal closed one month later, and on July 20, 2013, policy updates enacted by Tumblr generated new guidelines for pornographic blogs classified as “NSFW” or “adult.” The exact changes were vague at first, and Yahoo! seems to still be in the process of defining what is “safe” and what is not for  Tumblr’s entire community.

One of the most prominent changes for Tumblr after Yahoo!’s acquisition is the ban on pornographic videos. For erotic bloggers like Mary, this is not a detrimental change, but it is still frustrating. “I understand that they’re doing this to prevent people from promoting commercial porn and making Tumblr a finite porn destination, but it’s damaging to bloggers like me who want to share their pornographic taste and suggestions,” she said. If pornographic video footage is posted to a blog in violation of Tumblr’s rules, the blog consequently becomes at risk for removal.

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While Mary does associate herself with the pornographic niche of Tumblr, she does not identify as a pornstar. “I don’t get paid for it and I don’t want to. I don’t want that career path, if you even want to call it that. I plan on being an influential figure in the future,” said Mary. Sex bloggers have the opportunity to make a profit with advertising that can earn them money along the way, like signing up with an ad network, displaying sponsor websites or signing up with an affiliate market program. But they still do not make any money directly off of the content that they post. Mary does not participate in any of these money-making tactics.

Like many other sex bloggers on Tumblr, Erik Calie, 27, feels that he is taking the porn industry into his own hands. He has been posting pornography on his Tumblr, Fuck-Love-Just-Fuck, for approximately two years and says he appreciates the wide variety of content on the site. “It lets you get a glimpse into the kinkiest parts of some peoples minds. It gives you an outlet to express things you may only think about,” says Calie. Upon visiting his blog, you quickly get an idea of Calie’s sexual interests: a lot of nude women, a lot of butts, and a healthy dosage of butt-plugs. These web domains act as secret canvases for bloggers to paint their most taboo fantasies. When asked why he posts pornography on the internet, Calie bluntly responded, “Because I have no other outlet to show this part of myself.”

Similarly, creator of the blog Teasernpleaseher, Boris, 21, who declined to reveal his last name, created his blog in order to vent the sexual frustration that he was feeling in his daily life and it quickly became a therapeutic, regular habit for him. “Amateur porn bloggers on Tumblr are for the most part, doing things you see in porn but because they don’t have this celebrity air around them,” he said. “You just see a woman or a guy or a couple enjoying themselves, and I think people actually prefer this.” The subject matter on Boris’ site is vagina-centric and features female-only re-blogged content. Boris rarely posts content featuring himself to the blog. “I have, but just a picture or two. I just wanted to see what would happen. I’ve also sent pics of myself to women who ask or say it’s ok,” he said.

The complex web of Tumblr sex bloggers is made up of a combination of creators and consumers, allowing all users to freely share content and develop online personas. It gives them the opportunity to express every kind of secret desire, fetish, and fantasy without forcing them to reveal their real-life identity. In Mary’s case, her real life persona and her Tumblr persona are not a unified entity, but certain aspects overlap. “My blog is huge part of me, but that is not the only side of me,” she says. “I have real friends, I don’t think about sex all the time, and I certainly don’t have sex all of the time, but I can understand that when that is all I am blogging about, people will think that is who I am.”

 Reporting by Dilara O’Neil and Casey Stanton

Correction: January 12, 2014

A name has been changed since this article’s original publication to protect the subject’s privacy.