Ravi Somaiya wrote:Last month, Cory Jones, a top editor at Playboy, went to see its founder Hugh Hefner at the Playboy Mansion.
In a wood-paneled dining room, with Picasso and de Kooning prints on the walls, Mr. Jones nervously presented a radical suggestion: the magazine, a leader of the revolution that helped take sex in America from furtive to ubiquitous, should stop publishing images of naked women.
Mr. Hefner, now 89, but still listed as editor in chief, agreed. As part of a redesign that will be unveiled next March, the print edition of Playboy will still feature women in provocative poses. But they will no longer be fully nude.
Yeah, I've always taken the subtext of the Birther movement to be, "The rules don't count here! This is different! HE'S BLACK! BLACK, I SAY! ARE YOU ALL BLIND!?
- Raw Shark
Destiny and fate are for those too weak to forge their own futures. Where we are 'supposed' to be is irrelevent.
So whats the difference between it and Maxim now beyond Maxim seems to be aiming for a larger audience (the dudebro frat dudes) while Playboy with its fancy paper and shit is aiming for a high class audience? This doesn't seem like it will increase sells. It almost sounds a bit like what comics are doing, increasing prices and trying to make comics seem more "legitimate" to squeeze their shrinking markets.
The really weird thing is Playboy is still being read at all.
amigocabal wrote:How is this supposed to add value?
It's a business decision to try to make the magazine more "classy" I guess, and thus more appealing to "high-brow" readers. Playboy always tried to pretend to be "classy", to set itself apart from "trashy" competitors like hustler/penthouse.
Of course, the reason for this decision is obvious: nude women bring zero value to Playboy anymore, since nude photos of women are ubiquitously available from every smartphone in the world. People who simply want to see naked women have no use for Playboy anymore. So they've got to do something to survive - I guess this is their "hail mary" attempt at staying relevant.
amigocabal wrote:How is this supposed to add value?
It's a business decision to try to make the magazine more "classy" I guess, and thus more appealing to "high-brow" readers. Playboy always tried to pretend to be "classy", to set itself apart from "trashy" competitors like hustler/penthouse.
Of course, the reason for this decision is obvious: nude women bring zero value to Playboy anymore, since nude photos of women are ubiquitously available from every smartphone in the world. People who simply want to see naked women have no use for Playboy anymore. So they've got to do something to survive - I guess this is their "hail mary" attempt at staying relevant.
How many of those nude photos are accompanied with an interview of the person being photographed?
Lagmonster wrote:The obvious question is whether this just means no nudes in the magazine, but still nudes everywhere else their market may grow, like online.
According to the article the website already dispensed with the boobies on the lines. And apparently that quadrupled their online numbers.
amigocabal wrote:How is this supposed to add value?
It's a business decision to try to make the magazine more "classy" I guess, and thus more appealing to "high-brow" readers. Playboy always tried to pretend to be "classy", to set itself apart from "trashy" competitors like hustler/penthouse.
Of course, the reason for this decision is obvious: nude women bring zero value to Playboy anymore, since nude photos of women are ubiquitously available from every smartphone in the world. People who simply want to see naked women have no use for Playboy anymore. So they've got to do something to survive - I guess this is their "hail mary" attempt at staying relevant.
How many of those nude photos are accompanied with an interview of the person being photographed?
The interview is fairly blatant fluff for the most part. If it's a celebrity, it's usually a little deeper, but the centerfold model is usually some porn actress or softcore model.
IIRC, even their website is going PG-13 and SFW. Apparently now that they don't set off many parental censors they've seen quite a uptick in site visits...
Channel72 wrote:Of course, the reason for this decision is obvious: nude women bring zero value to Playboy anymore, since nude photos of women are ubiquitously available from every smartphone in the world. People who simply want to see naked women have no use for Playboy anymore. So they've got to do something to survive - I guess this is their "hail mary" attempt at staying relevant.
Correct, and I am pretty sure they have done a fair amount of market research to support the policy change. I don´t know and frankly can´t guess the details, but I´m sure they´ve got a business plan backed by a powerpoint with lots of graphs and survey results and attach rates and click-through statistics in it. And a vision statement of course, got to have one of those.
Lagmonster wrote:The obvious question is whether this just means no nudes in the magazine, but still nudes everywhere else their market may grow, like online.
According to the article the website already dispensed with the boobies on the lines. And apparently that quadrupled their online numbers.
Quadrupled, and moved their age-of-reader from "late forties" to "early thirties". Pulling nudes also means they get access to a lot more potential advertising revenue.
Keeping the nudity would be worse than pointless. You can get all the nudity you could ever hope to look at with a google search, on tumblr, or on the Pornhub Network of Sites - and that stuff is all "free". Meanwhile, Playboy nudity recently has been, what, a couple of artistically shot nudes that then ended up pirated on the internet anyways? The nudity was useful back when it cross-subsidized everything else in the magazine, but now it's a liability.
“It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life.” -Jean-Luc Picard
"Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them." -Margaret Atwood
Perhaps the good old days of Playboy legitimately having awesome sci-fi stories from good authors as the venue of first publication are coming back.
"Doctors keep their scalpels and other instruments handy, for emergencies. Keep your philosophy ready too—ready to understand heaven and earth. In everything you do, even the smallest thing, remember the chain that links them. Nothing earthly succeeds by ignoring heaven, nothing heavenly by ignoring the earth." M.A.A.A
Maybe playboy are ahead of the curve, there's nudity and sex everywhere today, esp. in mainstream popular shows and whatnot. It's gotten to the point that it's getting kinda boring and trite actually.
Those who beat their swords into plowshares will plow for those who did not.
General Zod wrote:Why would anyone buy a Playboy for the tits these days when you can just go on the internet?
There's still people who don't have internet access for some reason or another but that doesn't mean those people wouldn't enjoy seeing tits. I know my maternal grandfather barely used the internet before he died (that was about 5 years ago though, but still well within the age of internet porn) though he had a dial-up connection.
I may be an idiot, but I'm a tolerated idiot
"I think you completely missed the point of sigs. They're supposed to be completely homegrown in the fertile hydroponics lab of your mind, dried in your closet, rolled, and smoked...
Oh wait, that's marijuana..."Einhander Sn0m4n
General Zod wrote:Why would anyone buy a Playboy for the tits these days when you can just go on the internet?
Because they want to look at tits somewhere other than at their computer?
Exactly. Looking at tits away from your computer remains completely impossible in the 21st century. Sigh... I thought by now technology would advance to the point where we could carry around small computers in our pockets - maybe like, they could also function as mobile phones as well, and even have high resolution touch-screen displays. That would be amazing.
But alas, that kind of thing is nothing but science fiction, unfortunately. Computers remain huge bulky things attached to our desks... I can still dream though.
His Divine Shadow wrote:Maybe playboy are ahead of the curve, there's nudity and sex everywhere today, esp. in mainstream popular shows and whatnot. It's gotten to the point that it's getting kinda boring and trite actually.
Maybe in Europe Here we still can't get that except on premium cable channels like HBO, Starz and Cinemax. A little buttocks is about the maximum the airwaves will allow.
Granted, it's considerably better than it used to be as far as that went, but still. It's not exactly a household thing, you know?
Even if you don't have a smartphone, I believe Razzle magazine is still putting out issues.
Heheh. Issues.
Does it follow that I reject all authority? Perish the thought. In the matter of boots, I defer to the authority of the boot-maker - Mikhail Bakunin Capital is reckless of the health or length of life of the laborer, unless under compulsion from society - Karl Marx Pollution is nothing but the resources we are not harvesting. We allow them to disperse because we've been ignorant of their value - R. Buckminster Fuller The important thing is not to be human but to be humane - Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
Nova Mundi, my laughable attempt at an original worldbuilding/gameplay project
Channel72 wrote:Exactly. Looking at tits away from your computer remains completely impossible in the 21st century. Sigh... I thought by now technology would advance to the point where we could carry around small computers in our pockets - maybe like, they could also function as mobile phones as well, and even have high resolution touch-screen displays. That would be amazing.
But alas, that kind of thing is nothing but science fiction, unfortunately. Computers remain huge bulky things attached to our desks... I can still dream though.
When I want to look at porn, I prefer to do it on a screen slightly larger than a fag packet, thank you very much.
There are hardly any excesses of the most crazed psychopath that cannot easily be duplicated by a normal kindly family man who just comes in to work every day and has a job to do.
-- (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods)
Replace "ginger" with "n*gger," and suddenly it become a lot less funny, doesn't it?
-- fgalkin
Channel72 wrote:Exactly. Looking at tits away from your computer remains completely impossible in the 21st century. Sigh... I thought by now technology would advance to the point where we could carry around small computers in our pockets - maybe like, they could also function as mobile phones as well, and even have high resolution touch-screen displays. That would be amazing.
But alas, that kind of thing is nothing but science fiction, unfortunately. Computers remain huge bulky things attached to our desks... I can still dream though.
When I want to look at porn, I prefer to do it on a screen slightly larger than a fag packet, thank you very much.
Sometimes you need a quick fix on the go to get the job done.
"It's you Americans. There's something about nipples you hate. If this were Germany, we'd be romping around naked on the stage here."
Zaune wrote:When I want to look at porn, I prefer to do it on a screen slightly larger than a fag packet, thank you very much.
Have you heard of that new Apple product, now what was it, a J-PADD or something? I hear Tescos have there own version for 99 quid these days, a third off if it´s past it´s sell by date, might be just the ticket eh?
Anyway, there is probably still a market for hard-copy porn, but not enough of one to justify keeping it around in a magazine where it's not the primary selling point. And Playboy always did try to sell itself as more than a stroke-mag.
There are hardly any excesses of the most crazed psychopath that cannot easily be duplicated by a normal kindly family man who just comes in to work every day and has a job to do.
-- (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods)
Replace "ginger" with "n*gger," and suddenly it become a lot less funny, doesn't it?
-- fgalkin
Channel72 wrote:It's a business decision to try to make the magazine more "classy" I guess, and thus more appealing to "high-brow" readers. Playboy always tried to pretend to be "classy", to set itself apart from "trashy" competitors like hustler/penthouse.
Of course, the reason for this decision is obvious: nude women bring zero value to Playboy anymore, since nude photos of women are ubiquitously available from every smartphone in the world. People who simply want to see naked women have no use for Playboy anymore. So they've got to do something to survive - I guess this is their "hail mary" attempt at staying relevant.
How many of those nude photos are accompanied with an interview of the person being photographed?
The interview is fairly blatant fluff for the most part. If it's a celebrity, it's usually a little deeper, but the centerfold model is usually some porn actress or softcore model.
This is probably the only thing Playboy would have brought to the table: legitimate celebrity nudes, and they had/have enough name recognition for it to happen.
Granted if some Hollywood actress was willing to show it all for Playboy, there's probably a nude scene she's done (or will do) that you can go watch on Dailymotion. But it was still something, I guess. I mean, they got "official" Marge Simpson boobies done by...well somebody official I guess? I don't know who actually drew her "photo-shoot" for the magazine.
"How can I wait unknowing?
This is the price of war,
We rise with noble intentions,
And we risk all that is pure..." - Angela & Jeff van Dyck, Forever (Rome: Total War)
"On and on, through the years,
The war continues on..." - Angela & Jeff van Dyck, We Are All One (Medieval 2: Total War)
"Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear." - Ambrose Redmoon
"You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain." - Harvey Dent, The Dark Knight
Here we still can't get that except on premium cable channels like HBO, Starz and Cinemax. A little buttocks is about the maximum the airwaves will allow. 
