RogueIce wrote:
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.
Yeah... if a celebrity wants to take that step now, either they have to go through something borderline or outright sleazy, or self-publish like Kim Kardashian has basically done. There's no real 'highbrow' porn out there IMO-- Hustler (the original magazine, not all the derivatives) tries, but it's got too checkered of a past. Playboy at least has a more or less genteel history going for it.
The alternative is shit like the Fappening, and that's not something anybody should advocate.
Elheru Aran wrote:The alternative is shit like the Fappening, and that's not something anybody should advocate.
Did anything come (hur hur) of that? I remember there being a bunch of internet excitement and then sudden silence. I've got enough of a porn collection that some random celebrity's naked selfies are pretty "meh" so I didn't pay any attention at the time.
Elheru Aran wrote:The alternative is shit like the Fappening, and that's not something anybody should advocate.
Did anything come (hur hur) of that? I remember there being a bunch of internet excitement and then sudden silence. I've got enough of a porn collection that some random celebrity's naked selfies are pretty "meh" so I didn't pay any attention at the time.
I'm fairly sure they nicked a few guys for it in pretty short order, and Reddit and most of the public forums out there shut it down fairly quickly. Of course you can find the pictures if you care to look, I'm sure, but the big draw of them was "OMG Celebrity Private Pictures" as well as some that haven't appeared nude anywhere yet. Invasion of privacy was the big problem there, though.
Darmalus wrote:Did anything come (hur hur) of that? I remember there being a bunch of internet excitement and then sudden silence.
I think it was atleast on the anuses of the internet largely overshadowed by that Gamergate bullshit that blew up around the same time. I do know it was one of the things that got alot of 4chan turds pissed off at moot when he shut down any "fappening" discussions (though 4chan is still blamed mostly).
Doing a bit of research it seems like the investigation is still ongoing with only one person of interest named last year.
Zixinus wrote:Doesn't playboy have their own style of nude photography? Or is it mostly fairly regular softcore nudes?
Less VAG INNA FACE!, more 'here's a nicely lit pretty dame with some careful airbrushing'. Essentially the glamour-photography side of porn with a prestige-format magazine attached. Bush is OK, some vag is OK, they might have the occasional dildo or other apparatus, but generally no fucking. Occasional lesbian scenes are also OK from what I vaguely recall. Celebrities are almost always solo shoots made to the subject's stipulations-- for example, she may specify being non-nude from the waist down or something along those lines.
Well... 'were' is the better adverb, I suppose...
Joun, I thought Fappening was mostly a Reddit thing?
Playboy's idea of girl-on-girl involves behavior that would be completely acceptable on a public street in a small American town between a man and a woman if they had their clothes on.
"Do I really look like a guy with a plan? Y'know what I am? I'm a dog chasing cars. I wouldn't know what to do with one if I caught it! Y'know, I just do things..." --The Joker
Elheru Aran wrote:The alternative is shit like the Fappening, and that's not something anybody should advocate.
Did anything come (hur hur) of that? I remember there being a bunch of internet excitement and then sudden silence. I've got enough of a porn collection that some random celebrity's naked selfies are pretty "meh" so I didn't pay any attention at the time.
IIRC at least one of the celebs (the Olympic chick who had that "unimpressed face" meme) was apparently 17 when she snapped her pics, so it was technically (maybe) child porn, depending on how your state's law is written.
Which I think is why they got a harsher crackdown than they might otherwise have.
"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
This is where the rubber truly meets the road on the, "I just read it for the articles," excuse cliche.
"Do I really look like a guy with a plan? Y'know what I am? I'm a dog chasing cars. I wouldn't know what to do with one if I caught it! Y'know, I just do things..." --The Joker
The move makes sense to me. When the market changes and affects your sales, you can either step back and think about ways to adapt to, and even take advantage of, the new market while still maintaining your brand identity and your core competencies . . . or you can stubbornly try to make the old way keep working while it becomes less and less relevant. I've never been a Playboy reader, but I'd rather see it stick around and keep the things that made it more than just another porn mag.
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When fascism came to America, it was wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.
That which will not bend must break and that which can be destroyed by truth should never be spared its demise.
Honestly I think a split would have been slightly better. Go to "Playboy Adults" or just plain PG-13 Playboy. Have the adults-only division go mostly Internet only with a print-on-demand magazine available, which would mostly be the PG-13 version with tits and a few cartoons. I'm thinking stuff like Femjoy, DOMAI, Suicide Girls and so forth-- those websites seem to do fine as far as softcore porn goes, and it would fit Playboy's mould without too much trouble IMO.
I think in the 90s that Playboy had largely moved to making most of its money through videos and less through the magazine. I thought they had segued that to the internet in the late 90s but could be mistaken.
I remember some actresses, singers and other celebrities doing Playboy to make a bit of a splash or to be nominally relevant again. These days it seems like if they aren't doing it on their own then they are doing a photo spread in Maxim or Vanity Fair. I wouldn't be surprised if the Maxim shoot is required as part of movie publicity in some cases, considering how many actresses they seem to land
By the pricking of my thumb,
Something wicked this way comes.
Open, locks,
Whoever knocks.
They did try to diversify a little with softcore stuff in the 90s and 00's, and there were always 'see more on the Website' tags on the page spreads, but the magazine was always the primary driver.
I can see how Maxim, Esquire and other magazines would appeal to actresses-- while they're borderline as far as nudity goes, they never really step across that line, and it can't be particularly appealing to most women (and men for that matter, but nobody picks up a Maxim to look at hot guys) to have to take more sessions where they're naked in front of a bunch of people than they have to. Playboy on the other hand was a mixed bag-- it could be either a deliberate move to kick-start a career (see Drew Barrymore), or a last-minute gasp to try and revitalize a middle-aged actress' career. Either way, it was somewhat of a calculated risk given how sex-negative American society could (and can) be.
